The Smiley Smile Message Board

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How come they could make such a mistake? Anyone know?

I don't know, honest. But for my own good and well-being I decided long ago that I would never have it in the house, nor listen to it. Up until now I successfully evaded it, never heard one note of it.

1st solo album ?

In my universe, 1977 comes before 1981.

Yeah that's why I was wondering how come the album cover says it's the first solo album by a Beach Boys member, since it is so well known Dennis beat him to it (not that it were a match).

I've always rather liked this album. Especially the Abba song - somehow it seems appropriate that ML would have empathy for writers whose relationship with the English language is somewhat... distant. Sounds good too. I admire POB a lot (more so since 2008) but always found it a rather depressing listen back then. This always cheers me up. But it's probably my guiltiest pleasure (musically).

It should say "The 1st solo album of a Beach Boys member you should avoid at all costs", then it would make sense.

You should try. Really! Your life will never be the same after that.

Is this still the only track off LBWL to have been given a digital release? (on an ABBA tribute album)

That's what the sex change surgeon said to me too...  :(

Go ahead and give it a try as long as you don't fool yourself. For me, it was one of the last listens of BB-related stuff, and knowing there wasn't a lot else (officially) to hear, I was trying to fool myself. "There's sure to be a hidden gem or two. It's probably actually pretty good." Yeah, uh ... no. It is what you'd think it would be.

And? was he/she right?  ;D

Well I'll say this: this thread hasn't convinced me to go find another copy of Looking Back With Love, but perhaps I'll check out the yellow pages to find a talented surgeon.

I wouldn't know... she was so gorgeous that she convinced me for once and all that I should continue being of the male persuasion.

...but various attempts to persuade her to put her body where here mouth was failed miserably...

Luther! How can we ever become a gay couple if you take that route, sweetie?  :'(

Looking Back With Love obviously wasn't a great album. One could argue if it's a good album. But, I think it's an OK album. I don't think it's a bad album.

With the two Celebration albums, and one Beach Boys' album per year from 1976-1980, Mike was really trying to cash in; he must've sensed that the Endless Summer/Spirit Of America bump wasn't going to last much longer. And it didn't.

There's some decent songs on the album - the title song (there was a video with it, I believe), "Be My Baby", "Running Around The World", "and "Calendar Girl". There were some nice touches in "Teach Me Tonight" and "Paradise Found". The album sounded good, and Mike sounded like, well, Mike Love. If you were a Beach Boys' nut back then, you could find some enjoyment in this album. The biggest drawback was that the album didn't rock, it was a post-disco, early 80's synthesizer driven "pop" album. When the Beach Boys' members diid solo albums (with POB being the exception), something got lost. In this case, it was rock and roll....     

Mike Love is the only guy I'd know who'd sing goodvibrations/assassinations.....sigh...what a rhyme

...and March '81 comes before October '81...

It is awful awful awful. The music is the aural equivalent of the album cover.

Poorly under-produced, criminal lyrics, horrendous nasal singing. I paid £2 for it on vinyl.

The ABBA song is enjoyable, though.

I don't mind listening to "Paradise Found"... but then again, I even bought a South African pressing recently, so you can give up on me anyway...  :lol

Nice how it is immediately promoted with an outright lie. To me LBWL has always ranked among the handful of worst BB's related releases along with Bruce's Going Public. However, its standing might have improved with the subsequent releases of Summer in Paradise and Gettin' In Over My Head. Someone said the cover says it all, and I agree, if the cover doesn't turn your stomach then you might actually like to hear it. To me its a symbol of all that was squandered between Holland and the moment LBWL was released. Pretty much everything that was cool about the BB's was history at this point.

My copy doesn't say "First solo album of a Beach Boys member" on it. That must be a sticker put on by someone way down the line.

And if we wanna get technical, the first solo album released by a member of the Beach Boys was Surfin' 'Round the World by Bruce Johnston, but that was before he joined, so I guess that doesn't count.

I pretty rarely agree with you, Jon, but we're two peas in a pod on this one.

I have the 7" of Be My Baby/Teach Me Tonight but never bothered to play it though I've heard that Brian's helped a bit on the Ronettes cover.

Heard the title track and On And On And On on another occasion and while the Abba song struck me as rather inoffensive, the title tune sure is to these ears one of the most laughable pieces ever recorded by one of the Beach Boys.
Always struck me as kind of weird that Mike would make a solo record with only one writing credit attributed to himself, by the way. Seems like he didn't have that much to say at that point.

Well, he had recorded two albums full of material he wrote all by himself in years previous, but they never got released, probably because no label wanted to put it out. While I personally enjoy those two (and his 2004 solo album, too) better than this one, I don't think it's a surprise that the only one of his solo albums to see official release is the only one where the majority of the songs were written by someone else.

First Love and Country Love certainly both have their moments, most notably in terms of melodies, which I find to be rather pleasant from time to time. That said, I can totally see why not one single record company would want to release Rock'n'Roll Country Bride.

Haven't heard too many songs off Unleash The Love but Pisces Brothers seemed quite enjoyable (while overly sentimental) to me and in my book Cool Head Warm Heart would even cut a fine figure as a Beach Boys song.

The picture shows the French pressing, hence the same words in 2 languages: "le 1er album solo d'un membre des Beach Boys" / the 1st solo album of a Beach Boys' member"

I don't remember the U.S. pressing I bought at the time of release having that sticker, so perhaps someone in France made an honest mistake...perhaps...

Or it could be a Canadian pressing since we're bilingual up here...

Curt Becher (Boettcher) produced this album, which is definitely ok but nothing special

Isn't it weird how people don't talk about how Brian ruined LBWL the way Mike ruined SMiLE?

 Little does anyone know, the original vision of LBWL was a movement of 3 parts:

1. When I Had Hair (Californ-I-A ,Baby!)
2. When I Grew A Beard And Lost Most Of My Hair (Acid Illiteration-Real Bummer of a Trip, Man)
3. Bowel Movement

It was one clear cut vision, and Mike was steady laying down these beautiful pieces of music in the studio. He had reached the point where he was levitating on a daily basis, and had reached that inner place hardly any of us go: 50 Million Dollars in his bank account.

'Stray Dog' Tom McCoy was the drummer on those LBWL sessions, and says Mike was in another world, musically: 'He was just coming up with stuff all the time. He'd pick up a guitar and basically write a pop symphony to Buddha right there on the spot. He'd do these drum parts that were mind blowing, like a thousand Keith Moons on one drum set. He didn't need us there to do music, because he could do it all. He basically allowed us to just bask in his glory. I guess that was part of his 'Mission' that Marahishi gave him. To let others worship Mike and realize real genius'.

Mike had a lot of the tracks laid down when Brian unexpectedly stopped by the studio for a visit. Mike, proud of what he had done so far, played Brian some of these mind blowing tracks. Brian sat stone faced for quite awhile before giving Mike advice that was a blow to Mike's ego: 'It sucks'.

Mike immediately wiped the tracks after Brian left, and went home to his house in the hills and didn't return to the stuido for a month. When he did, it was with 4 ten year olds he hired at the local elementary school and 4 synthysizers. Together, they laid down what became LBWL.

Stray Dog again: I just think it was a crime that Brian trashed the music like that. Clearly, everyone knew that when it came to writing music, Mike wasn't very sure about his skills as a writer. And Brian knew this, and threw it in his face by trashing the music. What I heard when the final product came out was a real bastardization of the music.  It was like someone took those beautiful tracks and stripped them down to nothing.'

Why don't people talk about this?

well... the pressing I'm holding in my hands says: "grave et presse en France", so that solves your question.
'cause we're all affraid that might lead to a re-recorded release in 2018, 37 years after the project was shelved...  ;D


with raving reviews...  :ahh

Honestly, out of the Love-ster solo cannon, I can only take his newer stuff (though re-using Brian's Back and slowing it down way too much, let alone his and Brian's relationship in the 2000's) and the Mike and Dean stuff, but they're pretty bad 80s oldies covers...somehow, I still have an ear for it.

I have in front of me the US release LP.  Boardwalk NB1 33242, UPC 7912-33242-1   I actually like the LP. I ordered it and Carl Wilson's first solo LP from The Beach Boy's fan club newsletter's classifieds. I spent 40 dollars for the 2 of them back in 1983. I always liked the catchy style/ sound Mike brought to The Beach Boys sound, so it is no wander i liked his LP. I love everything on side one. And on side 2, the only I I like is Calendar Girl. I never got into all the politics or disputes among the group, so I was/ am in it just for how it sounds to me. Hence, why I bought the LP. MY copy doesn't have the sticker you show in this thread. I learned much later on that Mike released HIS LP in light of knowing about the popularity of Dennis'. It didn't/doesn't really matter though to me. I just enjoy any music they put out. Solo or as a group.

It is a pretty bad album. Even the Mike and Dean records were more fun due to the cheese factor. First Love and Unleash The Love were both good albums on the whole, and I am surprised that they never came out. The stuff he cut with Adrian Baker is even worse then this album. Much worse.

What's Brian's involvement, I feel like he had something to do with Be my Baby. And what's with Mike choosing that song? "oh, I don't even know what my favorite song of all time is, how about Brian's fav, I'll dedicate and ruin it!"

Brian plays piano on Be My Baby, actually.

This is a fun little album. Not great, not bad, doesn't strive to be anything more. And for the umpteenth time - MIKE ONLY HAD A HAND IN ONE OF THE LYRICS!

Mike couldn't write something as bad as "Good Vibrations, assassinations." He wrote the words to The Warmth of the Sun for f***'s sake.

Right, I know he didn't write it, but if any BB would sing that lyric, it'd be the Lovester

Calendar Girl: The arrangement is pretty much the same as on the BB outtake (from 15 Big Ones ?).
For collectors who wanna have them all:
France: Running Around the World/One Good Reason (w. PS)
Germany: Looking Back.../One Good Reason (w. PS)
Germany: Be My Baby/Teach me Tonight (w. PS)

Just listening to the album and my mum made fun of me when she was singing "Runnin' Around The World".  ::)  However, I like this song, it has a catchy refrain. The bass line in "Over and Over" is cool, "On and On and On" and "Rockin The Man In The Boat" are nice rockers, I don't mind "Be My Baby", though I like the alternate version much more. The title track is nice enough and I love "Calendar Girl". The last 3 tracks are boring but overall I like this album.  :)  It is a lot of fun. It's unusual that Mike would play almost the whole album live (besides 2 tracks, I think).

The singing, production and, in some cases, the choice of songs make this unlistenable.  The worst BB-related album by a country mile.  Now if only he managed to release First Love instead...

Also sings bvs and produced the basic track back in summer 1980.

Strange he wasn't credited...you think that'd be a major selling point...maybe they couldn't work it out with Caribou.

 ;D sorry, I just had to quote this, because it's so funny... and we should stop seeing the Lovester as the bad banana in the Beach Boys basket. He ranks up there with Bach, Shostakovich, Mozart, and Debussy, to put it mildly. And 'Caroline, No' sinks into oblivion when compared with Mike's genius 'Hair' suite... it's a little known fact that Van Dyke Parks had composed the transitional music for Mike's magnum opus. They already had secured a deal with the prestigious RCA Red Seal record label too...

And damn, all we have got left is that Unsurpassed Farts compact cassette with the 34 seconds that some neighborhood kids taped outside of Mike's studio... tantalizing and utterly frustrating. What might have been if Brian 'Brain' Wilson had just taken a tab of acid that day instead of visiting Mike? We will never know. Perhaps, someday, a writer will write a novel about it: Glimpse: Eavesdropping With Love, or something.

It's a fantastic thing that moments in the BB history like this, have been quietly swept under the rug.

Now as long as Mike doesn't release another Solo LP The BB will remain cool,  ;D

Also I agree with The Real Beach Boy, Mike Wrote lyrics to WOTS and All I Wanna Do etc, he could of done better than this, amazing how he has written some of the best and worst lyrics in history haha

I remember buying it back in '81 when my music tastes tended to the cheesier (I was a lad, after all) and liking side one, hating side two.  I can remember that I enjoyed "Rockin' The Man In The Boat" and "On and On and On" particularly, and I have a feeling I'd still enjoy the latter song...I remember Mike's leering delivery actually suiting the song, and the modern arrangement of an ABBA cover being an unusually canny move.

And, actually, "On And On And On" was barely a year old when Mike covered it, and it wasn't really a hit for ABBA in the U.S.

As far as I remember Abba have cited Do It Again as a direct influence on writing On And On And On, so this might be the reason Mike chose to do that cover version.

Yeah, and there's that little "hey now" tag in it, so that's probably right.

Unsurpassed Farts...doesn't that have the rare experimental track "George Fell into his Ass Horn" ?

It has those beautiful 80/81 production values - think Tootsie soundtrack. Not bad, but barely ok. I'm sure two or three tracks from it van find their way to our Mike Love fan made anthologies. :-)

Yep. It also features an out-of-this-world version (in stereo) of 'Let The Wind Blow', some copies have a scratch 'n' sniff cover.

Here is Abba's version of On and On and On: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8G2V6dsVuU

I like Mike's a lot better.

I've been a BB nut since 1964 and I find it less unlistenable than Gettin In Over My Head on all those counts .... it's all subjective, huh?

... not something you could say about some of his wives

having listened to pretty much everything beach boys related at this stage even "LBWL" and "unleash the love" should i find "first love" or "country love" and give em a go? I mean really? should i?

still havent listened to "goin public"  or "many moods" either. maybe some day... :p

No. It's that time again, MBW: take two green and three yellow pills with water, and go to bed. You know what those first two albums did to you, don't you?

On and On and On is hilarious. I love the campy feel of it! Even better I found a promo copy of the album at an antique store for $5 mint!!  ;D

A. Promo. Copy. Of. A. Mike. Love. Album.

I think I never will be able to top that. Perhaps I should leave this life. The hope for any big prize has been lost just now. Oh, what hast thou done to meek me, Surfer Woman? The trophy is thine, and woe is mine, and ne'er again shall I taste the full richness of this here life again... :'( :'( :'(

First Love.

Country Love if you can put up with some corn and the Lovester's Western twang.  Personally, I find it no more offensive than Jagger's. But I really don't like LBWL.  Try the second Celebration album too.  Try Going Public if you want to be disappointed (or pissed off) with most of the tracks - but it's not all bad!

There is one (1) brief moment of joy on 'Going Public', and that is in 'I Write The Songs', when for around 3 seconds suddenly a choir chimes in. The rest is utterly forgettable.

Fantastic post, got a good laugh out of that.

Thanks, WHIS! Since this is my last peek of the day here, it is a lovely surprise to read your comment!

Hey it doesn't beat drinking alcohol with Brian's band now  ;)

If you know LBWL, you already know a good number of "First Love" tracks. First Love is ok/good, Mike can write songs, but when you put 12 of them together it lacks some... musical richness. The rotten quality of the boot doesn't help either. I think if we could listen to them in the same quality as "Brian's Back" in Endless Harmony the material could breath a little. I never spent much time with "Country Love".

Don't forget the first two Celebration albums. "Sad Sad Summer" is a really good song. Mike doesn't sing all the leads in the albums, but they're worth a listen... in a MIU way.

If only that choir on I Write the Songs had been the BB...  I also like Thank You Baby and Disney Girls.

None of the First Love songs turn up on LBWL;  however, several are on his latest unreleased opus.

Of course. I had the latter in mind.

There are three Celebration albums, actually. The third one's called Disco Celebration. Mike co-wrote four of the five songs on it but you can only hear him on one track - he sings backing vocals on the mainly-instrumental version of California Girls. The one track he didn't co-write is First Love, which is the same song he covers on the eponymous album.

I have a lot of stuff by Bruce Johnston, but Going Public isn't one of them! I'll pick it up eventually, but I'm in no hurry after hearing that horribly butchered version of Deirdre. He took everything I loved about the song and flushed it down the toilet. Something I've been looking for is an album called Love You So by Ron Holden. Bruce produced it and wrote 9 of the 11 tracks. Here's one of them - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1pSB0MbiCo

Yep, the version of  Deidre's horrible!

Bruce's sixties stuff and even the Barry Mann album are quite good, his 77 solo album blows. I think it's the only Beach Boys LP I got rid of and never replaced.

oops.

Oh, sweet Surferwoman, thou hast awakened thy servant from those lethal musings... I thank thee for these uplifting words!

*...is quickly running out of Old English words...*

?

His latest unreleased album is way better than LBWL, despite some of the cornball lyrics.

Agreed, it is a well thought out album with good songs overall. It's easily the best thing Mike did since the 70's.

Is LBWL as bad/good as 15BO?

Concerning Bruce, I think he is the biggest underachiever of all the BBs! He showed at times that he was capable of producing and writing incredable songs. And he could've done so much better then Going Public.

By the way, I think that Mike love circa LBWL looks like the excorsist Bob Larson! Look him up! I don't know how to put pictures on here.

It's not even close. 15 Big Ones has been hammered for 32 years now, but I predict it will someday be shown in a better light. I still believe there are 9-10 very listenable songs on that album. Brian showed that he could still produce tracks on 15 Big Ones; there's some great stuff on there. One overwhelming problem was the final track selection; it doomed the album. The other problem was the lead vocals, specifically Brian's and Dennis's. There was nothing they could do about that, other than not let 'em sing.

15BO is 15x better.

You need to take my Intro to Literature studies and I am sure you'll find some more  ;D

15 BO has a charm that's nowhere apparent on LBWL.

I completely agree. To these ears it has a charm that seems to elude so many people... I would be the last to deny that there are corny things on it, mind. But I think these are compensated for by the highlights. "Just Once In My Life" is superb. "Rock 'n' Roll Music" in all its simplicity points forward to "Love You" (use of synths, overall minimality). "Blueberry Hill": another highlight, intro and the Spectorian grandeur of the rest. "Chapel Of Love" has another Brian fun trick: the synths always seem to chime in a tiny bit too late.
I love it, and it is better than "Holland" for me. The latter is a bit too 'heavy', sombre, pretentious. 15BO is, with all its shortcomings, a return to form. It is awful that Brian, soon after "Love You", fell back into his illness and its concomitant habits... so the band decamped to Fairfield, Iowa, after that.

And did I mention "It's OK"? No. Shame on me.

It's OK, the last great summertime song by The Beach Boys. Can't beat that bass line. Dennis just incredible on the tag, love his strained vocals here.
I've said it before: Imagine this coming out as a BW-produced single when Endless Summer still was at the top of the charts. Should have been a huge hit.

Nice call -

I still remember that jolt within me after hearing It's OK for the first time, 1976. And another specimen of proof: It's OK is present early in the sequence of 'The Warmth of the Sun', and hey: it's a real highlight amidst the '60s classics! You can't ask for more evidence that that.

'It's Ok' is GREAT. It's often paired with the likes of 'Some of Your Love' and 'California Calling', which is nonsense. Best summertime song Brian wrote since 'Do It Again'.

Dennis sang the bass vocal on Its OK  too. I agree this single was one of the last brilliant gasps of the BB's. It had the Mike Love retro-thing but it also had a very compelling rhythmic groove, and Dennis' bass vocal gives it a slightly darker texture. Should have been the lead single in '76. BTW, much of this song was already in the can in '74/75. To me 15 BO does not measure up to the potential that Its OK hints at, although time has improved the album's standing due to some of the weak crap that came afterwards like MIU, KTSA and SIP.

I also think they coulda scored a great summertime hit with "Keepin' The Summer Alive", had it been released in '75 or so. 

Yeah, it could've scored big. The version we have is crying out for better production--it's just incredibly dry and flat. The live version is better, but that's one song I wish BW would've produced...

The whole KTSA album sounds over-compressed and less dynamic than its predecessor, LA Light.  When LA Light was mixed, they used the Aphex Aural Exciter...maybe they should have also used that on KTSA.

Brian obviously having a blast on that song is actually one of my favorite moments of the whole Knebworth show. That said, I never found Carl to be all that convincing in this type of rock mode.

Which begs the question about a Mike Love album called "One Big One."

Comments...

Or the unreleased Dennis Wilson dance album...Bamboogie.

I think KTSA could have been a hit in 80 had a single version reflected the live version and had it been the first single off that album, instead Goin On.

I heard it on FM radio in '80, shockingly enough.  It sounded great.

If they had REALLY wanted a hit in '80, they should have released Carl's take on the Mann/Weil tune "I Will Always Love You" (heard at the CWF Foundation event).  You want to talk about a commercial ballad totally in tune with radio at the time?  That song could have gotten tons of play.  I guess it was too unlike the other stuff on the album...that is, it was a hit.

While I liked "Keepin' The Summer Alive" and "Goin' On", what I thought was a stronger song was "Livin' With A Heartache". It had a great hook, a strong and emotional Carl lead vocal, and it sounded the most contemporary of all the songs on the album; it wasn't retro Beach Boys. It was released as a single, with a single mix, but it stiffed. I still enjoy the song when I listen to it. The album isn't the greatest, but Keepin' The Summer Alive might be in Carl's all-time Top 3 albums; he really shines, saves the album actually....

It's not Carl's best material wise, but he was seldom in better voice then on KTSA.

Eh? Mike doing a whole album about his manhood? Suggested titles:


I Go To Great Lengths For You

Standing Up For Love

The Finest American Flagpole

and so on...

Suggestions?

I actually like the KTSA album a lot, and I suppose it's because of how Carl shines on that one. I kind of felt like that KTSA was their last progressive album. It's not as out there as some of the early 70's stuff, but it just feels like a pretty solid album with more contemporary arrangements. "Oh Darlin" "Living With A Heartache" "Santa Anna Winds" "Goin' On"- I can't argue with those.

Such a disturbing thought. Disco version of School Girl anyone??  :lol :lol :lol

A cover of AC/DC's "Let Me Put My Love Into You"?

Interesting. KTSA was probably the best they could do at the time. What I find most annoying es that, with Dennis and Brian's voices shot, everybody is singing a wrong part in the harmony stack. Up until some years earlier, the BB vocal sound was about each member singin in a particular range where their voice rang the best. Now, they were all over the place: Alan singing falsetto, horrible nails-on-chalkboard group singing ...

Anyone know if this, or any of the Mike Love solo tour shows, were recorded?
http://members.tripod.com/~fun_fun_fun/11-6-81.html

And who was in his group at the time??

You hit the nail on the head as far as why I don't like anything after 1974 quite as much as what came before it. Brian did sing falsetto after 1974 but it was thin and shrill. Sometimes his voice was in acceptable shape (MIU sessions) sometimes not (Love You). If somewhat shakily, Dennis could still harmonize as late as 1980. I actually think he managed at Knebworth to get his old parts down OK. When he sang by himself there was a huge difference, but in tandem with the others his place in the blend was deep enough for him to still get semi-close. Now by 1981 he couldn't sing, and even before that on records like KTSA he didn't sing at all. So yes the parts were way off by then.

ROFLMAO.   :lol