Mike Love - Unleash the Love - Due November 17 - w/ 2nd Disc of BB Remakes

[lee]

I'm curious what's going to happen as far as these songs making the upcoming setlists. Mike clearly isn't going to drop "The Beach Boys" for any amount of time to tour under his own name but I'm sure he'll be trying to talk up this album at shows to create sales. BRI would clearly limit him to how much solo material he can perform while touring under The Beach Boys name. Hopefully no more than a song or two. Correct?

[KDS]

I'm curious what's going to happen as far as these songs making the upcoming setlists. Mike clearly isn't going to drop "The Beach Boys" for any amount of time to tour under his own name but I'm sure he'll be trying to talk up this album at shows to create sales. BRI would clearly limit him to how much solo material he can perform while touring under The Beach Boys name. Hopefully no more than a song or two. Correct?

I'm thinking that's one of the reasons for the BB remakes.  Plus, a couple of the songs on the 1st disc have appeared on BB releases.  So, he could put a few of those - maybe Daybreak, Cool Head Warm Heart, etc - in the BB setlist, and still be "promoting" the new album. 

[SMiLE Brian]

This is a branding clusterfuck....

[The LEGENDARY OSD]

This is a branding clusterfuck....

Not that he's litigious like his effed up cousin, and instead of wasting precious time listening to this mahagarbage crap, I'd love to see Brian & Co. find a loophole that drags that hairless crumb through the court system, if only to see a guard tell him to take off his hat after entering the courtroom.

[SMiLE Brian]

Good one OSD! Looking back without a Hat!

[SurfRiderHawaii]

The Facebook comments on this release are scathing.

The title track is horrendous! The cover is atrocious!

The BB sticker would seem to be a clear violation of his license. And the remakes are a way
to get his naive concert goers to buy his product instead of a BBs album. This cuts revenue
to BRI while increasing his.

[CenturyDeprived]

I almost (not even kidding) feel like the title track could be a hidden reference to unleashing what's behind the zipper. And if anyone thinks that's absurd, ridiculous, or just being gross, lest we forget Rocking the Man in the Boat.

Could this tune be male counterpart to his classic chestnut from 1981?

The song sucks hard, and reminds me of a tune by The Wiggles.

That said, it's definitely recorded in good fidelity.

[SMiLE Brian]

CD! Unzip the love....

[acedecade75]

I have to say, I'm looking forward to hearing the version of Wild Honey with John Cowsill.

[branaa09]

Auto-Tune is in full force! Robo-Mike is back and with revenge from the Beach!

[The LEGENDARY OSD]

Good one OSD! Looking back without a Hat!

[Pretty Funky]

Am I correct in saying that neither Brian, Carl, Dennis, Al (or even Bruce and Dave) have ever promoted their album covers with the ‘of The Beach Boys’ tag? (NASCAR aside)

But giveaway a CD with a newspaper and that warrants a lawsuit? Reunion ends in 2012 due to confusion in the market?

[B.E.]

Hear the title track here: https://soundcloud.com/theendrecords/mike-love-unleash-the-love/s-t7WXN

Auto-Tune is in full force! Robo-Mike is back and with revenge from the Beach!

I don't think so. Do It Again 2017? Absolutely!!! I just listened to it again and it's even worse than I remember. That track is an embarrassment. I couldn't help but laugh numerous times. Unleash The Love, on the other hand, is much more tastefully done. It's a fine song and it sounds great (or good, at least). If it's indicative of the quality of the rest of the tracks, then I think it's a worthy release by Mike and good on him for releasing music (I'm speaking more about disc 1 than disc 2). I think if some of the hardcore fans removed their feelings about Mike from the song for a moment they'd hear a harmless, nice-sounding song. Basically, I don't think it would be fair to trash it.

[The LEGENDARY OSD]

The Facebook comments on this release are scathing.

The title track is horrendous! The cover is atrocious!

The BB sticker would seem to be a clear violation of his license. And the remakes are a way
to get his naive concert goers to buy his product instead of a BBs album. This cuts revenue
to BRI while increasing his.

Thanks SR for the heads up regarding the comments on the BB FB page. Excellent reading!! myKe luHv is getting his "due" which he so richly deserves.

[wilsonart1]

Serving Turkey this year...playing it for our Thanksgiving guests.  This Turkey will stop all future celebrations at our house for generations.  Oven Turkey and Mike's new sounds are what we need tonight.  Anyone want cranberries with their serving of Love?

[RubberSoul13]

The band sounds fine on "Unleash The Love"...I'm assuming it's the touring band. But the lyrics are just as trite as I'd expect. Also, despite the attempts to beef it up with autotune, Mike's voice sounds very fragile on that track. I'm still not convinced I should spend money on this.

[Lonely Summer]

I'm curious what's going to happen as far as these songs making the upcoming setlists. Mike clearly isn't going to drop "The Beach Boys" for any amount of time to tour under his own name but I'm sure he'll be trying to talk up this album at shows to create sales. BRI would clearly limit him to how much solo material he can perform while touring under The Beach Boys name. Hopefully no more than a song or two. Correct?

I'm thinking that's one of the reasons for the BB remakes.  Plus, a couple of the songs on the 1st disc have appeared on BB releases.  So, he could put a few of those - maybe Daybreak, Cool Head Warm Heart, etc - in the BB setlist, and still be "promoting" the new album. 

I'll bet there will be at least as many of these songs in the setlists as Brian does when he has a new album out. And I suspect Mike will keep them in the shows for several years. Even when SIP died a quick death in 1992, Mike and the guys kept playing those songs year after year.

[rab2591]

Hear the title track here: https://soundcloud.com/theendrecords/mike-love-unleash-the-love/s-t7WXN

Auto-Tune is in full force! Robo-Mike is back and with revenge from the Beach!

I don't think so. Do It Again 2017? Absolutely!!! I just listened to it again and it's even worse than I remember. That track is an embarrassment. I couldn't help but laugh numerous times. Unleash The Love, on the other hand, is much more tastefully done. It's a fine song and it sounds great (or good, at least). If it's indicative of the quality of the rest of the tracks, then I think it's a worthy release by Mike and good on him for releasing music (I'm speaking more about disc 1 than disc 2). I think if some of the hardcore fans removed their feelings about Mike from the song for a moment they'd hear a harmless, nice-sounding song. Basically, I don't think it would be fair to trash it.

Meh, as someone pointed out above, this seriously sounds like something the Wiggles would record. It brings me back to my Vacation Bible School days when I was 5 and they handed out cassette tapes of mediocrely written children’s worship songs.

I’m not referring to the backing track or (most of the) production at all; those sound pretty damn good to me. But the lyrics are so vapid it’s not even funny, especially considering this guys history.

This song does have a completely different vibe from what we’ve all gotten used to from him, so I gotta give it that at least.

[CenturyDeprived]

This song does have a completely different vibe from what we’ve all gotten used to from him, so I gotta give it that at least.

+1 on that. It's not like anything I've heard from Mike, but I think that's because the song itself feels *so* completely written by other people not named Mike Love (although it's not like we have many examples of songs with backing tracks written by Mike)... it feels like some random band had Mike as a guest singer on a track that is fairly out of left field. It's just weirdly un-Mike, un-Beach Boys, but also wholly uninteresting to me.

I'll give it one thing - it does sound more tastefully produced, relatively speaking, than other recent stuff by Mike. It's probably closer in production to Cool Head, Warm Heart, probably the only newer tune by Mike that I quite like a lot. But other than not being *super* put off by the production in an allergic reaction type of way, I don't really have anything at all good to say about this. At least the production doesn't quite suck as much as other aspects of the song.

[guitarfool2002]

If Mike had released "Unleash The Love" in 2012, Mitt Romney would have used it as his campaign song.

[Summertime Blooz]

Hope it's decent.

[Hickory Violet Part IV]

Auto-Tune is in full force! Robo-Mike is back and with revenge from the Beach!

Agreed. It's virtually unlistenable.

Also, had no idea what 'Rocking the man in the boat' meant until reading this thread.  How bizarre and horrible giving the female genitalia a male identity. There are some truly strange people about.

And as for comparing this to the Wiggles, what on earth did the Wiggles do to deserve that?

Leave the poor f**king Wiggles be.

[B.E.]

And as for comparing this to the Wiggles, what on earth did the Wiggles do to deserve that?

Leave the poor f**king Wiggles be.

I hadn't heard of the Wiggles prior to this thread, but they are anything but poor

[HeyJude]

I've only listened to the new version of the title track on SoundCloud on crummy computer speakers thus far, and I haven't A/B'ed it directly against the circa 2004 "album" floating around, so I can't tell if it's a full re-record or just heavily overdubbed.

Two things I will say is that, first, the "new" version sounds overproduced compared to the 2004 version. I think some of his 2004 "album" is pretty decent, especially compared to his other solo output or SIP, etc. (I've always thought a better solo track for Mike to fly into TWGMTR in 2012 would have been "Too Cruel" with Al on lead). I liked that it sounded (relatively) understated and dry. Indeed, the stuff was probably all rough mixes. But this new version sound too over-embellished.

Hand in hand with that is also the obvious: As with the other stuff Michael Lloyd has produced of Mike's (e.g. "Alone on Christmas Day", etc.), this new version of "Unleash the Love" is SWIMMING in autotune. It also sounds like Mike's voice has either been digitally pitched-up a bit or sped up, and/or the autotune just give the effect of his voice sounding way too high/chipmunk-ish. Not hugely so. But the whole thing sounds even more synthetic when it sounds pitched too high *and* is awash in autotune.

Here's what I'm thinking: Mike had the balls to throw autotune swipes at Brian and Al a few years ago, but then when Mike actually for the first time in *36 Years* came to actually putting an album out of his own stuff, the autotune bug was just too difficult to resist, which is what has happened with a myriad of older and younger artists.

In any event, and this isn't surprising at all, but the hypocrisy of criticizing Brian and Al regarding autotune a few years ago, not to mention raising a huge stink about it in his book regarding its alleged use during tour rehearsals in 2012, still boggles the mind.

Giving this a little more time and a little perspective and breathing room since the announcement, and some wise words from some wise folks discussing this upcoming album, I'm going to still try my best to not just rail against this thing from moment one. I honestly think, from a pro-Mike perspective even, the CD or remakes is ill-advised. That is, if he wants his new solo stuff to be taken seriously at all. If he wants to be Lou Christie, if he wants to be Joey Molland re-recording flaccid Badfinger remakes, if he wants to be back in "Salutes NASCAR" territory, then he's fine I guess. It doesn't matter if Scott Totten and Michael Lloyd can do better BB remakes than Adrian Baker. It doesn't matter if John Stamos is drumming. It's still tacky. And it will be even moreso if that second disc is *also* swimming in autotune.

I think Mike could have been advised much better regarding this release. Give it a different title, a different cover that isn't goofy and a ready-to-Meme without touching it, and instead of pitching it as a "Double Album", pitch it as a *New Solo Album* with a free bonus disc (if the second disc *must* be included), and re-jigger the tracklisting so *all* the re-records are on that bonus disc.

So I'm going to try hard to not be too pedantic and predictably anti this new album. But I'm going to at least stick to my guns at the outset and say the "Beach Boys" sticker on the cover, *especially* actually using the BRI-owned BB logo, is ridiculous on its face and certainly ridiculous in light of the past Mike lawsuit from the previous decade. I don't care if it's just a pseudo "file under" sticker. The use of the actual logo in concert with re-recording a myriad of BB songs, and confusingly labeling (in the press release at least) the second disc as "Mike Love/Beach Boys", is something I hope BRI *politely* puts a stop to.

I'm not opposed to a sticker that mentions that a guy is a Beach Boy. Both Brian and Al have done this. But something more like this is much more appropriate and classy:

[HeyJude]

I'm curious what's going to happen as far as these songs making the upcoming setlists. Mike clearly isn't going to drop "The Beach Boys" for any amount of time to tour under his own name but I'm sure he'll be trying to talk up this album at shows to create sales. BRI would clearly limit him to how much solo material he can perform while touring under The Beach Boys name. Hopefully no more than a song or two. Correct?

There's no evidence BRI instructs Mike as to how many "solo" songs he can play. He has been doing "Cool Head" and "Pisces Brothers" for years on and off. I want to say he even did "Unleash the Love" years ago. Maybe a few other solo things I'm not remembering at the moment.

I highly doubt Mike would do any gigs "solo." He might do some TV shows, but even on those, even when he's promoting a solo track (like "Alone on Christmas Day"), it's a murky thing where it's "The Beach Boys" performing a Mike solo song.

I think all we'll see is maybe another solo track or two added to Mike's setlist.

I *wish* BRI would clamp down more on Mike blurring the Beach Boys/solo line as far as promoting his solo stuff versus doing live shows. But I don't think they will, and they haven't at all in the nearly 20 years he's been licensing the name to tour.