See guitarfool, in your post you have offered some properly thought out criticism of a real incident that had apparently negative consequences (thank you for the info, it is new to me).
Nate asks rhetorically "who wants to see Mike Love?" but doesn't offer any credible reason why he wouldn't. He provides Brian's band with the praise they deserve, but he is apparently unaware of such figures as Scott Totten, who's service to the music has in my opinion been not far off Darian's.
The other fella says he saw a "really bad" version of The Beach Boys in the 80s. Well I can't speak for his experience, but I'd love to have seen a Beach Boys line up that featured Carl Wilson, regardless of how lame that Full House stuff was.
I've listened to the podcast, and it's clearly just some random dudes spitballing and shooting the s**t, and then this also includes Ruess.
The two dudes (the hosts I assume?) don't seem to be particularly knowledgeable about what they're talking about.
Ruess purports to be a bigger BB nerd, and certainly among the "masses" outside of us hardcores here, one would have to be *relative* deep BB fan to pitch doing "Hold On Dear Brother."
That being said, Ruess's attitude towards Mike seems to just be informed by normal fan stuff rather than any personal interaction.
*That* being said, when he asks rhetorically "who wants to see Mike Love?", I think he's talking about Mike's current "Beach Boys" lineup.
No, none of this is the most cogent, detailed valid critical look at Mike.
But as others have alluded to, there's a reason even *casual* fans/music listeners know about Mike's reputation.
As for the "really bad" version this guy saw of the "Beach Boys" presumably back in the late 80s or early 90s, it's difficult to know what he's talking about without more info. I've spoken to many BB fans and just casual fans who saw the Beach Boys at random shows in the 80s and 90s, and some of them absolutely felt it was not so great of a show. I've never heard anybody say Carl Wilson sang poorly. But having seen the band and heard probably hundreds of recordings over the years, the late 80s and early 90s was not a peak time for the band. The drumming was sub-par. The rest of the musicianship was usually fine, but sometimes sounded thin and cheap. And even the vocals were, while generally very good, sometimes strained and a bit wonky.
I think some years back when that 1993 NYC Paramount Theatre soundboard finally surfaced with that great "boxed set" extended setlist, we were all really excited. Once we actually heard it, while it was still great, it was definitely marred by poor drumming, cheap sounding keyboards, and inconsistent (though generally solid overall) vocals.