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Author Topic: Kokomo  (Read 9791 times)
Aegir
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« on: June 11, 2009, 09:15:43 PM »

Can someone find me an interview or something stating the name "Kokomo" comes from Kokomo, Indiana? No one ever believes me when I say that, and even the Kokomo Wikipedia article otherwise.
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« Reply #1 on: June 11, 2009, 09:30:02 PM »

Can someone find me an interview or something stating the name "Kokomo" comes from Kokomo, Indiana? No one ever believes me when I say that, and even the Kokomo Wikipedia article otherwise.

The lyric says "Off the Florida Keys, There's a place called Kokomo" so wouldn't it not be in Indiana?
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Aegir
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« Reply #2 on: June 11, 2009, 09:32:18 PM »

Yes, the song takes place off of the Florida Keys, but John Phillips got the name from Kokomo, Indiana. Right?
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« Reply #3 on: June 11, 2009, 09:48:18 PM »

Or "No Particular Place To Go", possibly...
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« Reply #4 on: June 11, 2009, 09:55:42 PM »

Here is more than you will ever want to know Smiley

Kokomo
The truth behind that annoying hit song ''Kokomo'' -- Why people still love the Beach Boys tune that ruled that airwaves the summer of 1988

By Scott Brown, Michael Endelman
It's been derided. it's been lauded. wait, no...it's just been derided. But it's also been listened to. A lot. Its pastel harmonies were a peppy elegy for a passing era, and its commercial success was the last stand of boomer dominance in a business on the brink of the hip-hop revolution. As such, it deserves our reminiscence, if not our reverence. The year was 1988. ''Cocktail'' was in theaters. And suddenly, unaccountably, there was a place called ''Kokomo.''

How did that magical imaginary island come to be? Through the hard work of a weird assortment of master musicians, rock legends all, who for a few days in the late '80s joined forces to evoke the innocuous, anonymous beach resort of the American imagination, giving this country a tropical contact high it would never forget. No matter how hard we tried.

Indeed, ''Kokomo'' proved positively metastatic. It sold more than one million singles and gave the Beach Boys their first No. 1 since ''Good Vibrations.'' It helped propel the ''Cocktail'' soundtrack (which also included tunes like Starship's ''Wild Again'' and Robbie Nevil's ''Since When'') to quadruple-platinum sales and the Beach Boys' comeback album ''Still Cruisin''' to gold. John Stamos thumped bongos in the video. And critics absolutely loathed it. ''Because it's just sooo syrupy pop,'' explains session drummer Jim Keltner (John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello), one of several uncredited famous musicians who helped create the song. ''But while the critics killed it with their words, they couldn't kill the 'hitness' of it. It's just a bona fide hit record, that's all there is to it.'' Bermuda, Bahama, come on, pretty mama...

It was the Beach Boys...and yet, not the Beach Boys. Not all of them, anyway. Drummer Dennis Wilson had drowned five years earlier. The emotionally fragile Brian Wilson, estranged from the group he guided to greatness in the '60s, was recording his own comeback album with therapist/caretaker/Svengali Dr. Eugene Landy.

The Beach Boys had been recruited to record a tune for ''Cocktail,'' a cheesy romantic comedy about a studly bartender in the tropics. Tom Cruise -- fresh from success with ''Top Gun'' and ''The Color of Money'' -- was set to star. It wasn't exactly a glamour assignment, but the Beach Boys needed the gig -- in the late '80s the band was floundering. Label-less and without a new album since 1985, they paid the bills playing oldies gigs at state fairs and amusement parks. In 1987, they had been reduced to recording a cover of ''Wipeout'' with corpulent rappers the Fat Boys.

The Beach Boys took on the assignment, but they were only partially involved in its composition. That task mostly fell to a weird trio of well-respected California-rock veterans. There was the late Mamas and the Papas founder John Phillips, the man who brought us ''California Dreamin''' and ''Monday, Monday.'' Also on board: Scott McKenzie, a longtime Phillips collaborator who's best known for his 1967 smash ''San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)''; and Doris Day's son, Terry Melcher, an L.A. music veteran whose numerous claims to fame include producing the first two Byrds albums and a tragic acquaintance with Charles Manson, who once tried to recruit Melcher to produce his music. (Not long after, Sharon Tate was murdered in the house she and Roman Polanski had rented from Melcher and his then girlfriend, Candice Bergen.)

''Kokomo'' started off innocently enough. ''John Phillips and I were writing in his SoHo apartment in New York when John got a call from our California friend Terry Melcher,'' says Scott McKenzie. Melcher told them he'd been hired to work with the Beach Boys on a song for a movie and asked if Phillips wanted to help. ''John and I began throwing around ideas, and in a few minutes he began to sing: 'Off the Florida Keys, there's a place called Kokomo. That's where you want to go to get away from it all...'

''I said, 'That's a beautiful melody, John, but what's with Kokomo? Kokomo's a place in Indiana. It's about as Caribbean as Fairbanks or Switzerland.'

'''That's exactly why it's a great title,' John replied. Which is only part of why John Phillips was a great songwriter.''

Phillips sent their composition to Beach Boys frontman Mike Love, who had a few important suggestions. ''I told John that it didn't groove enough for me,'' says Love. ''So I came up with the 'Aruba, Jamaica' part. And I changed a couple of words. He had it as 'That's where we 'used' to go.' I said, 'That sounds like an old man lamenting his lost or misspent youth.' I changed it to 'That's where you 'wanna' go.'''

Am I tired of that song? I'm more tired of that song than any other song on the planet.'' This is Jeffrey Foskett, who sang ''Kokomo'' more than 300 times while on tour with the Beach Boys as a backup singer throughout the '80s. But that doesn't mean he can flip the channel whenever it comes on. ''There are people sitting next to me in the car that say, 'Oh man, I love that song!' the minute they hear it. I'm about to reach for the button, and somebody will say, 'Oh, I love this part!'''

Let's just come out and say it: ''Kokomo'' is a stupendously maddening ditty, with a chorus that has an almost ''99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall'' quality about it. But it's also, in a strange way, something of a classic. ''It has a transporting power,'' rhapsodizes 23-year-old indie-rock favorite Adam Green, who does a bare-bones cover of the tune on the B side of his single ''Jessica.'' He first heard it when he was 7. ''I'd never been to the tropics at that point, but it had 'that feeling.' It had a huge effect on me.''

That feeling. '''Kokomo' is saying, in a blue-collar way, there's a better world somewhere,'' says guitar great Ry Cooder (''Buena Vista Social Club''), yet another music giant who played on ''Kokomo.'' ''People are having fun, they're having drinks -- they made it somewhere where life is good, even if it's only for a day, or a moment, or the duration of a three-minute song.''

After Melcher, McKenzie, Phillips, and Love had finished crafting the composition, another famous name got involved: Van Dyke Parks. Parks has been a close friend of Brian Wilson's since the '60s (he wrote the lyrics for Wilson's unreleased masterpiece, ''Smile''), and therefore hadn't worked with the Beach Boys for many years. He and Love didn't get along, but helping out ''was an attempt on my part to be civilized,'' Parks says dryly. ''Didn't work.''

Parks' case in point: Melcher invited him up to his house in Monterey, Calif., to help with the vocal arrangements. Parks chartered a small plane for the trip. On the way back, Love offered to share the plane and split the fare. ''He gave me his card,'' recalls Parks. ''When he got out of the plane, he INSISTED I call him to make sure he paid for the trip. So I called him the next day. He had changed his number.'' (Love denies this ever happened.)

In early '88, a parade of rock notables -- Cooder, Jim Keltner, Phillips, Melcher, saxophonist Joel Peskin (Frank Zappa, ''Weird Al'' Yankovic) -- attended a series of sessions to record ''Kokomo'' at Santa Monica's 4th Street Recording Studio. Despite the supposed plane incident, the resourceful Parks was also on hand, having been tapped to rustle up some steel drummers. He also played accordion on the track (yes, there is an accordion on ''Kokomo'').

Brian Wilson did not attend the sessions, although he did end up contributing some synthesizer to ''Still Cruisin','' the Beach Boys album on which ''Kokomo'' eventually appeared. Wilson (whose PR rep kindly explained to EW that he had no desire to talk about ''Kokomo '' anytime, with anyone, ever) was attempting his own comeback in 1988 with the long-awaited ''Brian Wilson.'' His first single, ''Love and Mercy,'' was released only three weeks before ''Kokomo.'' It was a total flop.

Opinion among the musicians who played on ''Kokomo'' was mixed. Parks found it ''formulaic'' in the best sense, ''what Randy Newman would call a well-crafted tune. I don't think it should be put down, because it's obviously intended only as a piece of entertainment.'' But not everyone saw it that way. ''I wondered why we were cutting this song,'' remembers vocalist Foskett, who now tours in Brian Wilson's band. ''It was baffling because it was such a departure from [earlier] Beach Boys. Quite frankly, I didn't think anything would happen with it.''

Foskett was right -- at least at first. When it came out in July of 1988, ''Kokomo'' didn't make much of an impact. ''It took a long time,'' says original Beach Boy Al Jardine (who left the group in 1998 and now tours with his own revue of Beach Boys music). ''At first, we got no response whatsoever when we played it live. I was thinking, Jeez, this is a difficult sell. Why are we doing this? But Love insisted. It just lay there like a flat tire. And frankly, it still does.''

But in the months after ''Cocktail'''s release, ''Kokomo'' slowly exploded. Finally, in November, it hit No. 1, and soon the tune had blossomed into a huge cultural phenomenon. The video -- which for some reason featured longtime Beach Boys fanatic and then -- ''Full House'' star John Stamos -- was in heavy rotation on MTV, VH1, and Nickelodeon. The Beach Boys hawked the tune everywhere from ''Sesame Street'' to an episode of Stamos' sitcom. ''I remember the Olsen twins were on Arsenio Hall's talk show,'' says Love. ''He asked them, 'Who's your favorite group?' They said, 'The Beach Boys!' It blew Arsenio's mind.''

''Kokomo'' seemed like a sure thing, going into the 1988 Grammys; a once-classic band enjoying massive commercial success made it prime Grammy fodder. ''Terry, John, and I sat together at the ceremony,'' McKenzie recalls. The trio watched the Beach Boys lose Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture to Phil Collins' ''Two Hearts''; they held out hope for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group. But the award went to Manhattan Transfer. ''We sat silent for a few moments,'' says McKenzie. ''Then Terry quipped, 'Clean sweep.'''

The Beach Boys never had another hit (Mike Love still tours using the band's name, even though he's the only original Beach Boy still involved). But ''Kokomo'' lives on. ''It scores extremely well,'' says Charley Lake of WJMK-FM, a Chicago oldies station. ''In fact, it may be the only song from the '80s that we play.''

The song has lent its name to tropical-themed bars, vacation condos, a catamaran company in Antigua, even a restaurant in Minnesota's Mall of America. Joe and Lindy Roth, who own the Kokomo Beach Bar at the Holiday Isle Resort and Marina in Islamorada, Fla., are typical of the ''Kokomo'' cult. ''We're beach freaks,'' says Joe. ''We just watched ''Cocktail'' the other night. We have three or four copies of it. 'Kokomo' sounds like our lifestyle. Along with 'Don't Worry, Be Happy,' it's one of my favorite songs. We play it all the time -- probably once a day. It's on all the jukeboxes on the property.''

And if that seems like more ''Kokomo'' than any sane human -- even one with a fondness for fruity drinks and Hawaiian shirts, warm sand and cool ocean breezes -- could possibly endure, well, maybe there's just something wrong with you. As Mike Love puts it, ''Unless you're basically anhedonic -- meaning you can't experience pleasure -- it's just a great, fun song.'' All together now: Aruba, Jamaica, ooh, I wanna take ya...
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TonyW
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« Reply #5 on: June 11, 2009, 10:25:18 PM »

I've come across a reference to a "Kokomo" in a Tim Buckley song ... can't remember which one ...  Smokin
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« Reply #6 on: June 11, 2009, 11:23:14 PM »

The Beach Boys were on Sesame Street?
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« Reply #7 on: June 11, 2009, 11:29:09 PM »

There's a Muppet music video of Kokomo. Maybe that's what they meant?
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« Reply #8 on: June 12, 2009, 12:51:09 AM »

I prefer the Bob and Tom version of it  Grin
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« Reply #9 on: June 12, 2009, 03:33:21 AM »


 Kokomo was The Beach Boys version of Smoking Joe's Cafe.
 The Spanish version RULES!
 
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« Reply #10 on: June 12, 2009, 04:22:31 AM »

Not forgetting the mid-1970s UK blue-eyed soul outfit (the less successful London counterpart to Glasgow's Average White Band). Did a great cover of Womack's I can Understand It. Totally irrelevant (name apart).

Van Dyke P was on Kokomo? Blimey.
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« Reply #11 on: June 12, 2009, 06:41:34 AM »

 One band member felt Kokomo was a fluke.
 
 Mike Love in action:
 
 http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=57467621
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« Reply #12 on: June 12, 2009, 10:16:27 AM »

''It took a long time,'' says original Beach Boy Al Jardine (who left the group in 1998 and now tours with his own revue of Beach Boys music). ''At first, we got no response whatsoever when we played it live. I was thinking, Jeez, this is a difficult sell. Why are we doing this? But Love insisted. It just lay there like a flat tire. And frankly, it still does.''

"It just lay there like a flat tire. And, frankly, it still does." Still does? If Al is referring to how "Kokomo" felt to HIM, well, OK. But, at every Beach Boys' concert that I ever attended, "Kokomo" was anticipated, constantly requested throughout the show, and went over fantastically.
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Aegir
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« Reply #13 on: June 12, 2009, 01:29:17 PM »

When I saw Al Jardine & The Surf City All-Stars last year, they played Kokomo, and afterwards Al said to the guy singing lead, "That's a nice Mike Love impression", and then they both made of fun Mike's voice and mannerisms for like a minute.
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« Reply #14 on: June 12, 2009, 03:29:42 PM »

When I saw Al Jardine & The Surf City All-Stars last year, they played Kokomo, and afterwards Al said to the guy singing lead, "That's a nice Mike Love impression", and then they both made of fun Mike's voice and mannerisms for like a minute.
When Al sang Mike's part on "Sloop John B" with Brian in 2006 he plugged his nose to achieve the effect.
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« Reply #15 on: June 12, 2009, 09:28:32 PM »

I think Al was referring to how the song went over before it became a hit. And let's face it: People will love and call out for a request a song when it's a hit -- not when it's some random recent tune that a band is forcing on you.
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« Reply #16 on: June 13, 2009, 02:59:13 AM »


 The best part of Kokomo is the deep knee bends:

 http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=57467621


 Join me the cheap seats!
 
 WODS.COM
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« Reply #17 on: June 13, 2009, 03:44:43 AM »

When I saw Al Jardine & The Surf City All-Stars last year, they played Kokomo, and afterwards Al said to the guy singing lead, "That's a nice Mike Love impression", and then they both made of fun Mike's voice and mannerisms for like a minute.

And that might be one reason Al's playing rythym guitar for The Surf City All-Stars. Razz
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« Reply #18 on: June 13, 2009, 03:51:49 AM »

I think Al was referring to how the song went over before it became a hit. And let's face it: People will love and call out for a request a song when it's a hit -- not when it's some random recent tune that a band is forcing on you.

But Al said, "It STILL does." I interepreted that to mean AFTER it had become a hit. Although I obviously couldn't hear the entire audience, "Kokomo" was the only song I remember people calling out for, and this was years after it was a hit. I do remember Richie Cannata getting applause after his sax solo, and the group getting a standing ovation after the song.
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The Heartical Don
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« Reply #19 on: June 13, 2009, 04:04:53 AM »

Wonderful thread. I like Kokomo, but am not obsessed over it. Whenever it plays in my supermarket, I smile and do my shopping. Could it be that since the original band went into cult territory, that this one makes us happy because we feel a bit, erm, vindicated? As if we say to the general crowd: 'See, that's our band!?'.

It also for me evokes the yuppie era, and the beginning of the end of it. A time when everyone thought they could become a vague type of 'manager', chose MBA studies over medicine or history, and thought they were entitled to a swimming pool of their own, as if by natural right. Oliver Stone's 'Wall Street' had, of course, already laid bare the dirty meannes of the inner workings of that lifestyle, but the real killer would be 'Glengarry Glen Ross' (1993) by James Foley - Alec Baldwin was a better monster in that film than Hannibal The Cannibal ever could hope to be. And so, for this person 'Kokomo' has become a swan song for a period in history that I hope will never return.

All that ensued: the internet implosion (in stock market terms); and the credit crunch. We are learning hard lessons.

But Kenny G is still touring, I hear. Not all is well yet.
« Last Edit: June 13, 2009, 04:05:56 AM by The Heartical Don » Logged

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« Reply #20 on: June 13, 2009, 08:53:11 AM »

a swan song for a period in history that I hope will never return.

I don't see where it ever left. It's evolved some, and not really for the better. But that's a whole other topic.
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« Reply #21 on: June 14, 2009, 03:10:38 AM »

a swan song for a period in history that I hope will never return.

I don't see where it ever left. It's evolved some, and not really for the better. But that's a whole other topic.

I respectfully disagree. But indeed, this is not meant to be a political thread. Thanks for that last remark. Political discussions usually lead to heavy discussion, then serious rows, then deep alcoholism, and finally to a police cell to sober up.
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« Reply #22 on: June 14, 2009, 06:08:22 AM »

Kokomo  was not only the last hurrah for the BB, but also the last hurrah for the BB's contemporaries' shot at getting their new music played on youth-oriented Top 40 radio and thus becoming a hit.  If there was a vintage act that had a hit after Kokomo, it could not have been that much later than 1988 because by the early 90's, radio was ignoring thee new records of the BB, McCartney, Stones, etc.  Clapton being the sole exception to this.

As for Kokomo, I liked it in high school, disliked it in my early 20's and have mellowed toward the moderate in my 30's. What no one has mentioned yet is how much Mike, Terry  and VDP  borrowed  from cousin Brian to complete the song. The solo vocal in the chorus sung by Carl is the kind of soaring high vocal young Brian might have used.  Plus the chorus hook has the same type of key changes Brian was fond of using (see California Girls, Little Girl I Once Knew, H & V). Looking back, I'm surprised Landy never had Brian try and sue over the song because beneath the Jimmy  Buffett vibe, the Brianisms are quite obvious.
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« Reply #23 on: June 15, 2009, 08:43:41 AM »

Howz about Six Degrees of Kokomo?   That game might get a little cumbersome.  Based on the article quoted above, in one or two jumps you'd have the entire roster of AF of M Local 4 in there.
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The Heartical Don
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« Reply #24 on: June 15, 2009, 08:49:11 AM »

On the whole, I'd rather be on Kokovoko.
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