The Smiley Smile Message Board

Very bland idea for a topic, but I’m bored so why not. So I was searching Mike on the copyright.gov website and found a copyright record from 1978 for his unreleased First Love album. I also found a copyright record from 1981 for a “collection of songs by Mike Love” which lists the same tracks as First Love, but leaves out “First Love” and “Sumahama.” Both the 1978 and 1981 copyright records list an alternative name of The Right Kind of Love for the project. Pure speculation, but after re-recording “First Love” and “Sumahama” (with Celebration and The Beach Boys respectively), maybe Mike was shopping around the leftover tracks from the First Love sessions in 1981. If anyone has any information please chime in. I might be the only one who finds this interesting though.

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I think it has been documented and/or mentioned in the past that they took a second stab at releasing "First Love" in the early 80s. Whether that 1981 copyright record is that same attempt, I don't know. You'll often see people throw together a bunch of songs and copyright them just to get the recordings under copyright.

I'm guessing that 1981 "collection" is not a finished, banded album master or anything. Only 8 songs would have made a short album. But they may have been re-registering the copyright on those recordings in anticipation of re-compiling another attempt at the album.

I sure hope it gets officially released eventually along with Country Love. Country Love is absolutely stunning.

Beth on the Mesa is a classic!

For realz though, I think that "First Love" and "I Don't Wanna Know" are two solid songs that certianly deserve an official release someday!

It's seriously doubtful that anything released by him under his name would fare any better than the disastrous Summer In Paradise. He doesn't have the credentials nor the name recognition that Brian does and cannot use the BB moniker. On top of that, what record company would want to shovel money down the toilet for a longshot? I would wonder, as dire as the material is, why he doesn't just put it on CD and sell it at concerts.

If he could sell 100 copies of the CD at every show and they still do about 150 shows a year, that would be 15,000 units a year... that would out sell SIP without difficulties... priced to sell at 10, 12 bucks it would make a reasonably priced  souvenir ( don't they charge $15 for a ball cap?_)

The Beach Boys are the only band i have ever seen that wears their own merchandise. It makes me angry.

Double that (and maybe more for a BB cap). I just paid $30 for a BW cap last month. (Liked the color.)

Mike hasn't shown any motivation, and reissue labels haven't shown any interest, in even reissuing the "Looking Back with Love" album, so I doubt we're likely to see full-album release of "First Love" and "Country Love."

I would doubt they'd sell 100 copies of a "Mike Love - Country Love" CD at every concert, but more importantly, there may be some restrictions in the license granted by BRI in terms of what merchandise Mike can actually sell at merch stands. He may not be able to regularly sell physical copies of solo music. (Yes, Al sold his solo CD at C50 shows; but I'm guessing that was one of pathetically very few concessions given to Al on that tour. Plus, C50 was not done under the auspices of a BRI licensing agreement anyway).

Not to be argumentative, but I disagree with almost everything in your response... First Love or any release other than Country Love, (truly terrible from what I've heard) would move copies if not over priced.. as for BRI licence, Al's solo CD shows that it is possible...
$30 for a bloody ball cap... give me the $15 CD please... and may I suggest, If they did this, make the cd case one of those cardboard sleeves (not jewelbox) where it has a spot for your ticket stub... aww the memories  :)

Could he include them as part of the ticket cost, then classify that revenue separately from the number that is determined for BRI royalty, thus diverting funds back to him that he wouldn't have to share?

Mike already sells stuff at his merch stand that doesn't have any BB logos or trademarks or names (one example is that ugly artwork for "Good Vibrations" from last year), and my best guess is he doesn't have to give BRI a cut of that merchandise.

This was discussed in a thread awhile back. It's possible Mike can sell anything he wants at the stand. He may be able to sell power drills and Sour Punch Straws and old copies of Reader's Digest at his stand. The only thing we can say with a fair degree of certainty is that anything that needs to be licensed by BRI (anything with the BB name or logo or trademarked images) is a case where BRI is paid something.

There could be particular license restrictions to Mike selling solo music at his shows. I'm guessing not, but it's possible. He did giveaway a "solo" re-recording on a USB drive set to an old vintage BB film via his VIP packages.

But back to the larger question: Would solo Mike stuff sell? Of course it would sell to *some* degree. The Union 76 NASCAR album on 8-track would sell to someone, too. I think the only thing right now that Mike has a modicum of interest in as far as solo music is a *new* album. I'm still guessing that *will* materialize at some point, with Foskett and Stamos all over it.

I'm not even 100% sure Mike owns all of the master recordings to his two unreleased solo albums or his one released solo album. So some of those tracks (though clearly not all in light of multiple mixes of "Brian's Back" being released), or least some of the mixes and/or master tapes, may be owned by other labels. So even if Mike were inclined to release the stuff (and I'm not sure he is), and even if it would sell well at shows (I don't think it would particularly, but even 10 copies per show sells him 1,500 copies in a year), it might not be easy to pull off anyway.

My thought though, is could he use a 'giveaway' to reroute income that he has to pay to BRI. Say every ticket comes with a Mike CD. The value is $10, but it comes with your 60 dollar ticket. Can Mike now claim the ticket rev as $50 and the CD as $10? Say the avg show is 3000 patrons, that's 30k a show(minus mfg costs) that gets reclassified. 3M over 100 dates not subject to BRI royalty.

Nah, highly doubt it. Such a program (which artists have done) is usually advertised as a "Free Album" with the purchase of a ticket. And even otherwise, BRI would never allow this. I don't think Mike would ever even try it.

Mike (or anybody in this scenario) could just place an arbitrary value on the CD, "I'd charge $50 for the CD on its own!", and all of a sudden there's "no profit" left at the end of the day. It would be super obvious, and as I said, I don't think Mike would try something this brazen and litigation-inducing.

The "shareholders" letting Mike use the trademark have done so for one reason: Continuing the money rolling in. Trying to skim money off the top of BRI's cut with some free CD program would remove the one reason BRI shareholders let Mike tour.

The main controversies I've seen with "free album with the purchase of a ticket" scenarios has to do with huge artists that sell hundreds of thousands of tickets trying to goose their album "sales" and chart position. There are a lot of artists where they can sell out 50 arena dates, but they aren't going to get 50 arenas worth of people to buy their album. So they give away their album with every ticket purchase, and all of a sudden on release date they've immediately sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

Guess the question that needs to be answered is how many $15 Mike Love CD's could you sell to a crowd of 5000?
100 is only 2%, and if the casual fan has a choice between a $30 cap, $40+ T shirt  or a $15 CD as a  souvenir ?  I would
think this would work... perhaps someone who works tour merchandising could chime in on this one?

None of this would even be an issue if Mike had the industry status to get a label to release and distribute a solo album of his, but there doesn't seem to be interest in that regard. Otherwise there would have been something released in the past 35+ years of substance.

None of it would be an issue too if Mike were to self-release the album on one of his own labels or entities, as he did before. Why couldn't he just suck up the costs of manufacturing it from his own vast fortune, and put it out there on CD for his fan base if a CD release is what they want?

I just question if there is any demand for Mike's solo merch at all at "Beach Boys" shows. The fans who buy tickets and buy the schwag are buying The Beach Boys, not Mike.

You'd be amazed how many people to go to, say, a McCartney show and will drop $60 for a hoodie, $40 for a t-shirt, and $30 for a poster who not only haven't bought his latest album, but probably haven't bought a McCartney album since "Wings Over America."

It makes no sense, but at many if not most shows I've been to, the actual *music* being sold at the merch stand (which is usually relegated to the artist's latest album only) is not nearly as popular as the shirts and other gear. I have to guess it's due to a mixture of the hardcore fans already owning the album, and casual fans just being interested in the hits.

Plus, these days, you have the added aspect that in cases where someone *is* awakened to some album or song after hearing it in a concert, they'll just go to Spotify or YouTube to hear it. You can't stream t-shirts and hoodies and hats (not yet, anyway!).

People are going to a Paul McCartney show, not a Beatles show. That's the biggest bugaboo in everything related to anything with The Beach Boys and Mike and merch and fees and the whole deal, the damn naming issue and licensing and all the related confusion and mess.

I could easily envision that, when Mike gets around to putting a solo album out, it might be a digital-only affair. His one-off singles have been (though most artists who still do physical album releases rarely do physical *single* releases). When it's a digital-only affair, the overheard is *extremely* low. Mike has presumably just been bankrolling his sessions himself. He just has to pay someone to master the album, do a cover, and then he just has to get it on iTunes and Amazon as a download (and maybe Amazon will also do MOD CDs), on streaming services like Spotify, and they just take their cut and he takes the rest.

Mike is never going to make much money off a solo album; which is surely one of the main reasons it has been 36 years since his one and only solo album full of new material. He makes the money and gets the attention from live gigs. So if he ever puts his album out, it'll just be on a lark as a sort of boutique curio thing, along the lines of writing a children's book or something.

I also have to think after 35 years of Mike and some of his mouthpieces teasing a solo release 'coming soon", or "we're working on it", if he does ever pony up and release a solo album, he'll have one less topic to hang things on in interviews. Truth be told, in terms of songwriting, he's just not that prolific. And if I were a fan of his songwriting I'd be a little miffed that most of what he does put time into involves covers and remakes instead of honest to goodness new tracks that are not BB's remakes.

The license/naming and its confused marketing is indeed unfortunate and has been for nearly 20 years.

The main thing I was speaking to in terms of a McCartney show (as a random example) is a large segment of "fans" having, for whatever reason, a predilection for clothing and other (in come cases) more narcissistic and superficial stuff sold at shows rather than the *actual music.* I'm not saying everybody that buys a shirt at a show is narcissistic; I've bought the stuff myself at some gigs.

But people value the stuff they *can't* stream or just steal for free on the internet *more*; stuff like hats and shirts and all of that.

To relate this McCartney example back to a theoretical "Country Love" CD at Mike's merch booth, the thing is that McCartney fans will spend *hundreds* on tickets and merchandise and yet not care about his new CD, *even* when the new CD actually did well and hit the Top 5 or 10 in its debut week. So this sort of effect would only be more pronounced, in my opinion, when people are at a Mike gig and see a shelved 1978 country album from Mike at the merch stand. A new CD/album would no doubt spur *a bit* more interest, but even on C50 I don't think as many copies of TWGMTR were flying out of the merch stand as they would have liked, and at some point they even in rather odd fashion started trying to sell "10-Packs" of the CD with one autographed copy tucked in. They had to sell the new BB album as a piece of memorabilia and as a "Party Favors" set.

All valid points.... only thing that would be different here is if the CD is only available at the shows.... TWGMTR was available  outside the concerts so many people who are more than a casual fan already had it...

Selling his CD exclusively at his shows would make even less sense; it would narrow the audience for potential purchases and actually confine sales to a group that isn't quite the ideal target demographic. Plus, it would just hasten pirating of the CD.

The points are good, yes and I agree, but there is still the issue in this case of those casual fans going to a Beach Boys show versus a Mike show, and same with Macca's concerts. I think if there were a table full of the Beatles catalog of albums at Macca's shows or Ringo's shows, I wonder how many casual fans would buy them versus already having them in some format before going to the show. But again, they're going to see Paul and Ringo, not the Beatles, so selling Beatles merch at those shows could be done but what would be the point? The show is under the aegis of Paul's corporate interests or Ringo's or whatever, and I don't know how many people would buy discs versus the usual concert schwag as mentioned before.

But with Mike, there is still the 800 lb gorilla present of people coming to the Beach Boys, and not a Mike show. I'd think if there were an actual demand for or an audience willing to buy Mike's solo albums in general, there would be some label interest so he wouldn't need to place it on a merch table at Beach Boys shows next to Beach Boys ballcaps and shirts. That's why i question if there even is a market for it, and if not he should just self-release it on one of his own labels and eat the manufacturing costs to do so.

What does he have to release on an album though? He seems to lack much actual songs these days...

To answer your question, Probably nothing that anyone would want to listen to.

"untitled 12 minute TM lecture".... ;)

Folks go to those shows [the current rendition of the Beach Boys] to hear the Beach Boys body of work.  That Mike has agreed to allow l.p. tracks like Farmer's Daughter and Betsy into the show requires a tip of the hat to Scott [Totten] because these 'things' would not and could not be accomplished without him...to say the very least.  They add to the show imho.

To go to the merch table and find some nondescript c.d. featuring an onslaught of songs never-to-fore heard by anyone in [normal] captivity along with that questionable attempt at 'songage'...Pieces Bruther...it has to be bruther...where the hell did I hear THAT before???  [and why am I hearing it again?]...won't sell 100 units per show.  If they GAVE them away...1/2 of 'em'd hit the ground or garbage before the car doors were unlocked.  1/2 of the remaining discs would hit the pavement on the way home...tossed out the window in disgust.  1/2 of those which made it from point A to point B would end up in the garbage or be offered up for a buck/50 cents in a yard sale.

Further to that ... if and when people get it home and eventually toss it on 'the player'...just exactly how many tickets will that 'attempt' at doin' music sell?  Dang close to 0.   [O.K. ...maybe 3 or 4 a show...after a close inspection followed by the obvious reaction...wtf is this sh*t?]  It might, though, have an extremely negative impact on moving tickets for the 'groups' return in 2 or 3 years.  Anyone mildly interested has heard the musical celebration that is Michael Edward over these many years.  [and that celebration shyte was gawd-awwwwwwwwwwwful and entirely disappointing back when I had no bone to pick with the arsehole which would emerge, for all to see, from under that incessant  baseball cap.]

The guy with the least amount of talent shouldn't be tarnishing his own image anymore than he already has.  He spends enough time doing it to Brian/Carl/Dennis in front of anyone who'll hold a mic or a pencil and pad up to his yap.  He doesn't need to further bury himself and chase away all of the remaining girls who still show up for the " BB's" by issuing anything likely and accurately best named "Yikes!!!"

:woot :woot :woot :woot :woot