The Smiley Smile Message Board

Been searching, cant find any reviews from Hampton Court. Did find GV on youtube, with Christian sounding ok. Are the guys losing traditional fans....and will their Royal Phil fans buy tickets to make up the difference ? Enthusiasm, anyone ??

Not a lot of feedback. Even on the Yellow board, which has really died off, only one review as copied below


Posted on June 17, 2018 at 11:16:21 by ICP

I attended the Saturday performance at Hampton court.
This is a great small venue in the open.
Mike and Bruce along with the rest of the support group gave a great performance which lasted almost 1 hour 45 min.
Christian Love did a good lead vocal on God only knows, which is hard when people remember how great Carl's lead was on this song.
Jeff was also in fine voice and John Cowsill lead vocal on Darlin was amazing. Great guitar work from Scott Totten.
Mike did All the Love in Paris and Unleash The Love from his solo album plus Pisces Brothers. Bruce did Disney Girls as usual.
They did some filming during the concert which may be used later.
It was fantastic night the audience was behind them right from the start.

Mike has diluted the BB name/trademark by doing 150+ gigs per year, EVERY year, so there just isn't a ton of interest in his day-to-day, month-to-month touring even among hardcore fan communities.

You might find certain boards/communities that seem to go out of their way to be more sympathetic and proselytize on Mike's behalf where there is more discussion of his ongoing touring, though even in those circles I don't see a ton of day-to-day coverage of his band.

Also, I think those Hampton Court gigs are shorter gigs, plus Mike is still filling even his shortened gigs with proportionately a lot of "Unleash the Love" material, which I think even hardcore Mike fans acknowledge (privately if not publically) is a pretty abysmal album.

Even filleplage has disappeared!

Yeah, I cant disagree..........but remain, Yours Sincerely, Disappointed.

You can always at least check in on setlist.fm to see if someone posted a setlist to a given show. They have one of the Hampton Court setlists up on there.

Is this a rhetorical question?  ;D

Even a few years ago when there were semi-regular reviews of these shows being posted, barely any mention was made of Mike's actual performance or the quality or lack thereof when he's supposed to be the focal point of the show, and reasons for that should be obvious. Maybe a passing comment about his skill as a "frontman", and sometimes the occasional hard-truth remark by someone who was actually writing about their experience and not writing prose would slip through. And instead the semi-regular reviews that were appearing reached a point where there was more gushing than Old Faithful in Yellowstone.

“Right” on the yellow(stone) board BBB... ;)

I saw them in Dublin on sunday, sold out show, it was a lot of fun.

Mike did three solo songs, unleash the love, all the love in Paris and pieces brothers.

Standard show, no suprises but as I said such a fun show, the venue was rocking.

I will say I am no fan of Christian Love's butchering of "god only knows"

Thanks Shady. Glad you enjoyed it

. To guitarfool.....well, again, more my way of registering disappointment., not really a question.  I do actually admire immensely both Brians band and the current BB. As they made me a fan of harmony vocals, at least both  bands are still doing this very well and the original guys benefit from the talents of Darian , Scott T et al in keeping the sound alive.

Christian Love came back? Is Foskett out?

Both are there.

Eichenberger left at the end of last year/beginning of this year, and Mike "the C50 tour band was too big and expensive" Love replaced him with two band members: He brought back Christian Love and also brought in a new (presumably less vocally prominent) bass player, which last I checked was still a guy named Keith Hubacher.

Mike has now ballooned his touring band to nine members, and *ten* when Stamos sits in. As opposed to the seven-person lineup he had going for years.

I don't usually see a point in reviewing, but I'll try and remember things from last Friday's show.

More of a casual audience I think just because of the festival nature - it was very much a "picnic beforehand then see the show" kind of thing. They came on stage at 9pm, finished at 10:45. No intermission. The courtyard at Hampton Court is a very nice venue.

Mike's first joke of the night about remembering when Hampton Court was open got a lot of laughs. They were wearing matching shirts The tour is called "Now & Then", which also happens to be the sides of Mike's album.... but there is a cool Now & Then t-shirt which has lots of group shots from different areas - I've been meaning to make a post that identifies all the photos used.

Lots of promo for the Royal Philharmonic Album. Mike and Bruce were very happy that it had gone to #4 that day. The first two Unleash The Love songs fell pretty flat - "All The Love In Paris" was I think badly mixed and the audience seemed untroubled by "Getcha Back". But "Why Do Fools Fall In Love" got the audience going again. I was surprised by how good Jeff was on "Darlin'" and Scott on "The Warmth Of The Sun".

The next two Unleash The Love songs went down well. "Pisces Brothers" being about George Harrison probably helped, and "Unleash The Love" was fun (even if only a minority took part in the "make a U for unleash" dance).
Was very happy they played "Disney Girls", which led into the home stretch of songs. Was surprised that they are still flying in the Dennis vocal of "Do You Wanna Dance". They added "Cotton Fields", which was cool. "Kokomo" was badly placed, as it slowed things down too much. "Wild Honey" rocked. And I was happy to see Bruce still pulling off the end of "Fun, Fun, Fun".

So they flew in Dennis but not Carl that’s interesting .

Too bad they only do it for DYWD. There are so many cool songs with Dennis . Instead they keep choosing the one he never sang after 1966. But I guess that’s how Mike views Dennis’. The drummer they brought out to sing one song a show .

Thanks to BeachBoysCovers for that review. Since I could not attend, it helps to be a " virtual"  member of the au
dience