Right - because he was being facetious.  Even if what he said was stupid and crass, virtually nothing that he said seemed meant to be taken seriously or literally.  Because that is what a joke is (even bad, tactless ones).  If you found his comments to be glib and insensitive I wouldn't really disagree, but do you honestly believe he was actually being serious here...?

As I mentioned before, I don't believe Mike Love actually thinks Bud Light and the FBI are going to bust him for singing "Surfer Girl."

Beyond that, I'm not sure what "serious" means as it pertains to a perceived "joke." Do I think Mike was just telling a topical joke with no particular personal/political motivation? No, of course not. I've already said that.

I mean, you've either known people like this or haven't I guess. I don't see how it's such an alien concept that some people tell "jokes" that aren't really jokes (meaning, like a comedian just doing a myriad of topical and non-topical jokes), but are motivated by a personal belief/personal politics/some sort of axe to grind.

When Mike has done this, it's *always* topical, and it's *always* of one particular (general) political persuasion.

I've never been one to jump to assumptions or try to read too much into stuff. Sometimes when people tell jokes that don't land or have an apparent mean streak, there was no ill intent. Sometimes it's difficult to tell. And then sometimes it's clearly a pattern of someone's politics or beliefs, essentially the "joke" format as a passive aggressive way to rant or make a point about some issue. In 2023, knowing what I know about Mike Love, and being a student and scholar of this band and its members, which includes the things they've said over 60+ years, I'm quite comfortable putting Mike in the latter "rant" category.

I would respectfully disagree. Not all opinions are the same.

Not all political comments are the same.

Transgender people are real people. Punching down at them is a shitty thing to do.

Yeah, exactly. At the end of the day, as much as it sometimes seems more expedient, when discussing things on message boards, to be as dispassionate as possible when talking about something as inflammatory as Mike Love's politics and latest publicized nasty comment, and just try to look at the logistical drawbacks to making such comments (e.g. it's divisive and just unfunny regardless of one's views), this ultimate is Mike punching down at a specific group. It's Mike *actively seeking out* being shitty to a group that, as far as I'm aware, have not done any of the straw-man things he's suggesting. It's ugly. 

Again, if a group specifically said simply referring to the female gender in the now-60-year-old song "Surfer Girl" was not only wrong, but went so far as to call for Mike to stop playing the song, then I'd disagree with that. (Though I would still say making lame jokes about it at gigs would be truly dumb). But none of that has happened. There's nothing happening in the world right now that precludes him from the performing the song, and no evidence I can find that *anybody* has a problem with the song, or with songs in general referring to genders. Really, there are many, many, many songs with male and female name/characters/pronouns, etc. Like, almost all of them folks.

If you need further proof that this is a multi-tiered conservative political screed, see Mike's reference to the FBI. It's obvious what he's referring to. I'm surprised he didn't claim Obama and the Clintons were going to try to stop him from singing "Kokomo" too.

I dunno, things must be getting really boring out on the road these days for Mike.

"This Too Shall Pass" indeed......

Much ado about nothing.  His joke, good or bad, was just a joke.  And no topic is above making light of no matter how "touchy" the subject is.  

Nobody has ever stopped Mike from doing whatever songs he wants to, or from saying anything he wants to on stage. I've rarely seen such a privileged person who gets everything he wants have such a strong desire to still be aggrieved about something.

I take it you've never been on Twitter before.  

Most aggrieved people on Twitter aren't multi-millionaires doing exactly what they want to do every day, exactly how they want to do it. There are some of those as well, sure. And yes, Twitter is awful as well for a myriad of reasons. If even there was ANY evidence that someone actually attacked Mike for performing "Surfer Girl", or tried to prevent him from doing the song, then his aggravation would be understandable. Even then, I don't know if telling a bad joke about it on stage *every night* for a period of time would be the best way to respond to it. But what's happening is Mike is "old man yelling at a cloud" rankled about another hot button issue, and is creating a straw man to argue against in order to do his HILARIOUS joke that is so funny that even people who agree with his politics are saying the joke sucks.

And you know what, I don't think what Mike's doing on stage is really a "joke." As in, he just thought of a funny joke and wants to tell it on stage. It's a topical comment on a clearly polarizing present-day issue. I think most or all of Mike's on-stage political "jokes" are born out of his personality and politics. This has only become more prevalent and transparently political (and conservative) in the post-2016 era as far as Mike's concerned. I think that was the point at which is was no longer a realistic possibility that Mike was even partly unaware of how polarizing his politics are. He no longer cares.

Yes, we should all be aware that, especially at 82, Mike Love is indeed gonna Mike Love. I'm not surprised by any of this. It's kind of fascinating to watch someone be unprofessional at 82 years of age after 62 years in the industry.

I guess he's gotta find an outlet for airing his politics on stage, as his previous go-to of doing political events with the "Beach Boys" name attached was shut down (no pun intended).

...or more realistically he's just poking fun at the whole Bud Light debacle because that's what has been topical lately.  He's been making politically-tinged jokes (for better or for worse) for decades now.  I don't think he's really "aggravated" about anything but was merely being facetious.  I think you and others are reading way too deeply into this.  Groan at his sense of humor all you want but he's allowed to make jokes, even politically sensitive jokes you might not agree with, all he wants.  

This is the same debate that’s been going on for decades among fans and scholars of the band. And it has multiple layers, because we’re not only parsing the motivation and beliefs of Mike Love himself, but we’re also getting into the credulousness of some fans. It’s not a coincidence that the more like-minded a given fan is with Mike as far as politics and general disposition, the more likely they conveniently seem to feel Mike’s just “tellin’ jokes” and anyone who thinks it makes Mike (and by affiliation the band) look like tools or creeps just “don’t have a sense of humor.”

What’s interesting to me is that this apparent credulousness has been much less believable in light of Mike’s own stated politics of more recent years. Mike has not backed off or become more chilled out about politics. He has become more aggressive, more willing to let there be no confusion about his political beliefs and affiliations. As the country has become *more* polarized, Mike has seen fit to “pick a side” rather than try to unite. His dumb “Surfer Girl” joke isn’t about bringing anybody together.

In short, I don’t believe Mike is just writing jokes about current affairs, with no political motive or motivation. His jokes are always about the old rich white dude conservative position. Not surprising given he’s an old rich white conservative dude.

But don’t let anyone ever gaslight you by saying Mike’s just working on his late night stand-up routine. These are political screeds, masked as passive aggressive jokes. That should be very, very apparent, whether you agree or disagree with his sentiment. And yes, on top of all of that, they are groaners. They’re never funny. That is also increasingly apparent, again even among people who might tend to agree with his politics.

That’s why I always find this stuff fascinating, when Mike comes across poorly because of *clear* political bloviating, and also isn’t even funny while doing it. It’s like the ’88 Rock Hall speech. A speech *like that* could have been a great, renegade moment. But he did in such a way that he just looked like a fool and went a long way towards cementing his image, as Rolling Stone put it to him a few years ago, Rock and Roll’s biggest a**hole.

Again, I would say that if anybody (or any organization) was calling on Mike to not perform “Surfer Girl”, then I’d absolutely find that ridiculous. But that hasn’t happened. What’s happening is that Mike is doing his usual lame schtick on stage, punching down, and assuming it’s fine because his audiences are like-minded and like him demographically. His audience skews much older and whiter than a lot of shows, so I’m sure there are fewer people offended by the sentiment of his joke. But ironically, even a lot of old, like-minded fans from what I’ve seen have found this latest bit just tiresome and needless.

Maybe when you’re 82 it’s easier to start doing bad political conservative stand-up rather than singing more songs.

Ironically, that circa 2004 Mike solo stuff is probably, at least some of it, his best solo stuff. I'll take "Cool Head" over "This Too Shall Pass" anyway.

Interestingly, while I'm not a huge fan of Christian Love's voice (I don't dislike it, I'm kind of ambivalent about it), the couple of a songs he sings on that 2004 collection (especially "Too Cruel") are better than the re-re-re-recorded versions Mike did on "Unleash the Love" later on.

I still think it would have worked well to have Al sing "Too Cruel" back in 2012 for the reunion album.

Much ado about nothing.  His joke, good or bad, was just a joke.  And no topic is above making light of no matter how "touchy" the subject is.  

Nobody has ever stopped Mike from doing whatever songs he wants to, or from saying anything he wants to on stage. I've rarely seen such a privileged person who gets everything he wants have such a strong desire to still be aggrieved about something.

I take it you've never been on Twitter before.  

Most aggrieved people on Twitter aren't multi-millionaires doing exactly what they want to do every day, exactly how they want to do it. There are some of those as well, sure. And yes, Twitter is awful as well for a myriad of reasons. If even there was ANY evidence that someone actually attacked Mike for performing "Surfer Girl", or tried to prevent him from doing the song, then his aggravation would be understandable. Even then, I don't know if telling a bad joke about it on stage *every night* for a period of time would be the best way to respond to it. But what's happening is Mike is "old man yelling at a cloud" rankled about another hot button issue, and is creating a straw man to argue against in order to do his HILARIOUS joke that is so funny that even people who agree with his politics are saying the joke sucks.

I mean, not even *the other Beach Boys* have prevented Mike from doing a song he wants to do. I don't think anybody else in the band was clamoring to perform "It's OK" or "Kokomo" or "Still Crusin'." And "Surfer Girl" is an especially dumb example to complain about, because when was the last time that song *wasn't* in the setlist? The 60s?

And you know what, I don't think what Mike's doing on stage is really a "joke." As in, he just thought of a funny joke and wants to tell it on stage. It's a topical comment on a clearly polarizing present-day issue. I think most or all of Mike's on-stage political "jokes" are born out of his personality and politics. This has only become more prevalent and transparently political (and conservative) in the post-2016 era as far as Mike's concerned. I think that was the point at which is was no longer a realistic possibility that Mike was even partly unaware of how polarizing his politics are. He no longer cares.

Yes, we should all be aware that, especially at 82, Mike Love is indeed gonna Mike Love. I'm not surprised by any of this. It's kind of fascinating to watch someone be unprofessional at 82 years of age after 62 years in the industry.

I guess he's gotta find an outlet for airing his politics on stage, as his previous go-to of doing political events with the "Beach Boys" name attached was shut down (no pun intended).

From what I've heard, Mike's been doing this particular joke schtick for a while now on tour.

He's been doing this for decades. Listen to the '93 Paramount "boxed set tour" show; he does a dumb bit about Clinton and taxes.

Thanks to Elora's great YouTube channel, we can also have easy access to things like this from the truly halcyon days of the year 2000:

"mike love rants like an insane person about good vibrations, weed + bill clinton" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv_5pdlgIHM

His latest thing is just more of the same. Yes, it's dumb, and it's *needlessly* polarizing. And it's a straw man argument that I'm sure Mike doesn't believe, but thinks is funny (as one article points out, does Mike really think the FBI is going to bust him for performing "Surfer Girl?").

Nobody has ever stopped Mike from doing whatever songs he wants to, or from saying anything he wants to on stage. I've rarely seen such a privileged person who gets everything he wants have such a strong desire to still be aggrieved about something.

A possibly interesting tidbit regarding the amateurish cover art on this thing that looks like a fan-made 90s boot cover: When you look at the cover art at this site: https://www.musicredemptions.com/MikeLoveNotWar/

The metadata on the image appears to suggest the image dates from 2019. It also has a name for a photography studio that supposedly prepped the art. That same metadata also labels the art as "promotional art" for "Make Love Not War" (rather than "Mike...").

It almost feels like they promised a "new" album with 2023 tour tickets, then panicked and just grabbed a bunch of those 2004 unreleased solo album tracks, 7 out of 10 of which had already subsequently been re-purposed for the 2017 "Unleash the Love" album (and 9 out of 10 of which had already circulated from the circa 2004 set of solo recordings). And they also possibly may have just grabbed cheapo album cover art that was prepped years ago as well.

This new thing ostensibly has 3 wholly "new" tracks, only 1 of which fans haven't heard before, and it's almost like it only accidentally even has *that* many "new" songs.

It's like, even if they just wanted to not really do an actual "new" album for this, they could have created a more interesting solo "best of" or solo "rarities" collection.

Perplexing and interesting.

I sure hope that John gets back with The Cowsills. They just put out a new CD and are still sounding good. The touring bboys band has become a joke.

I'm sure Mike's beach boys will be playing Trump rallies next year.

Better be careful! The other board is threatening to delete comments and shut down threads at the slightest mention of politics being involved in the firings.

"Firings?" Plural?

Totten and Cowsill were both replaced at the same time.

There is a new Al date with his Endless Summer Band scheduled for August 26th at The Ridgefield Playhouse in Ridgefield, Connecticut. I'm not sure why Al and his team have not publicly announced it yet. Tickets for this show have been on sale for a few weeks now.

https://tickets.ridgefieldplayhouse.org/eventperformances.asp?evt=23

Thanks for the heads-up; I've added it to the top post schedule. They're not always great about announcing dates, especially when it's kind of piecemeal like Al's dates tend to be.

Added a new date for September 4. Also updated a few setlists from June. All in the top post.

What the heck is RSD? As a non-native English speaker, I find this overuse of acronyms obnoxious. A Google search resulted in this:

https://www.abbreviations.com/RSD

I guess it is Record Store Day from page 2 of the list, but really, guys...

I'm not a big fan of excessive acronyms, I get it.  But RSD is pretty common in music forums.

If you Google "rsd long promised road", the first hit is the "Record Store Day" page for that album. 

Here's the press release blurb:

https://blog.siriusxm.com/beach-boys-channel-2023

Looks like the SiriusXM Beach Boys channel went back up today.

I think I've exhausted all of the ways to do free trials that aren't a pain, so I'm probably not going to be listening this year. I suspect it's going to be the same pattern of programming as previous years.

Regarding releasing "Sweet Insanity" material, while I'd love to see all of the group and solo stuff cross-promoted and combined to make everything stronger, I'm not sure that the very strictly solo Brian stuff is likely to be smushed together with contemporaneous BB material.

Once we get into the late 70s and certainly early 80s, the material (both group and solo) gets increasingly niche, so I'd be fine with Brian and his camp releasing a solo box set with several discs of rare and unreleased solo material. Or hey, if they want to keep just dumping tons of rare solo tracks on his website like they did a couple years ago, I'll take that too! There's literally a full disc's worth of rare solo material on his website right now. Like a 5-disc set of *that* type of stuff would be wonderful.

There is a two-chord motif in "Rooftop Harry" that is similar to "From There to Back Again" (which Brian and/or Joe also re-used in "Half Moon Bay" on the NPP album).

While there are a number of mind-blowing, tantalizing embryonic things on those Brian "Sail on Sailor" set tracks that definitely led to later tracks, I'm not *as* convinced that "Rooftop Harry" led to "From There to Back Again." With some of the other stuff, there are three or four-chord sequences, or melody lines with a number of notes, that all match up making the link more obvious. With "Rooftop.." and "From There...", it's a two-chord pattern that sounds generically sort of vaguely jazzy enough that I could see that arising out of a lot of different writers/songs.

I'm not saying the link isn't there, and that one chord change *is* the same (probably in a different key, but the same still), and it's pretty interesting whether the direct link is there or not.

I also don't think we can ever fully understand the elements of Brian's brain composing this stuff, and what he knowingly grabs from the past, versus things that are just floating around in his brain, versus simply similar composing techniques that might tend to lead to similar chord changes or melodies.

I think Paley was still involved to a limited extent — perhaps just the work on “Hotter” — and synthesist Michael Bernard carried over, too.

I wouldn't be surprised if it would take some forensic work to even collate a list of all of the musicians and singers on the SI sessions. But yes, certainly Paley was not allowed as far as I'm aware to play a role on SI in the same way that he did on the '88 album and certainly the mid-90s sessions.

Given Landy's increasingly isolationist attitude with Brian by 1990-1991, I'm surprised Paley got in there at all.

The “Sweet Insanity” period is undeniably fascinating, and we know less about it than some other periods (e.g. the 86/87 Usher period) because Landy and cut Brian off even more from outsiders by that point.

Remember as well that they actually played a tiny bit of the SI material on the disastrous “Primetime Live” story/interview that Diane Sawyer did with Brian and Landy. If the chances of SI getting released before then weren’t already zero, they were by that point. (And frankly, they got off easy by playing, as I recall, a tiny bit of not-the-worst song of the sessions, “Rainbow Eyes”).

As to the issue of how much of a role Brian has played on his solo records since 1998, I think the two extreme sides of that argument have both done themselves no favors. No, it wasn't totally smoke and mirrors with someone else doing most of the work all the time. But also, it was not the same process or style that Brian had in the 60s/70s (and even early 80s). Brian sought out and needed a facilitator to varying degrees during the 80s/90s/2000s.

Certainly, Brian leaned sometimes very heavily on others to actually get the work done and released, meaning the production, mixing, etc.

When it gets into the songwriting aspect, it's obviously difficult to always discern. Demos (either vintage stuff that he re-used years later, or contemporaneous pre-production demos that are known to be all-Brian) obviously help us figure things out.

I also think, to *some* degree, fans could be forgiven for circling back around to some of his solo stuff and wondering if his co-writer was handling a lot of the heavy work, because Brian even back in the 90s and 2000s could be low-energy/lethargic/struggling both in interviews and on stage. We often never got to see the spark re-light in the studio and/or while writing. Even some of the upbeat footage of Brian seemingly "on" during stuff like the "Imagination" sessions was kind of questionable, only because it all seemed very polished, very EPK-ish.

I absolutely think there are items on his collaborations from 1998 and on where his co-writer was the dominant voice, whether we're talking about Joe Thomas or Scott Bennett or Andy Paley.

But certainly yes, the assumption or accusation that like Joe Thomas or Andy Paley were writing whole albums and having Brian sing them is certainly incorrect, and I do think a lot of the stuff was *truly* collaborative.

I guess it boils down to the fact that Brian has definitely not been "uninvolved" in his solo career, but has definitely needed a collaborator/facilitator/fixer to varying degrees at various points.

Also, as another aside, I have to say that I don't even mind cases where someone else wrote most of a song and had Brian sing it. If the song is good and if Brian sings it well, I'm down for that too. "Let It Shine" is one of my favorite Brian solo tracks, and that composition is probably easily 80-90% Jeff Lynne.

There were guests on the sessions (David Marks, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, etc.) as backing vocalists or musicians.

But no, there was not any type of producer/co-producer figure on those sessions the way there had been for the '88 album and '88 pre-production (e.g. Gary Usher, Russ Titelman, Andy Paley, Jeff Lynne). The closest the "Sweet Insanity" sessions had to that was of course Landy himself.

Which obviously explains in large part the lack of any sort of commercial sensibilities on the "Sweet Insanity" stuff, not just in terms of trying to get a "hit", but even just in terms of getting a streamlined, listenable product that played to Brian's strengths. "SI" is still music that came out of Brian, and therefore it still has interesting moments. And certainly, the contents of those sessions helps speak to a larger story of what was going on with Brian at the time.

But I'm sure two of the main reasons the "SI" stuff couldn't snag them a record deal were 1) The material just wasn't very good, and 2) Word has surely gotten around the industry that the album was a mess and getting involved in something so heavily controlled by Landy was a bad idea.

You can tell in Gary Usher's book on the 86/87 sessions (essentially the "pre-production" period for the '88 album) that Warner (Sire) and everyone is trying to wrestle the album away from Landy as much as possible to get the thing to sound decent (and therefore hopefully do well with critics and sell well), and every step of that process from everybody involved was a knock-down drag-out fight with Landy.

It seems both sides learned their lesson in the aftermath of the '88 album. Most anybody in the industry wanted to say away from Landy (and therefore Brian) as much as possible, and Landy learned that the only way he could have full control over the project was to remove *any* potential interlopers, which meant no collaborators or co-producers. You can tell Landy still tried to sprinkle in some guest spots for the album, probably both to try to sell the album itself, and also because on some level he knew Brian needed some kind of external influence or motivator at some point in the project.

I didn't see that comment anywhere, just curious as to where you saw it on Facebook? Usually when other band members have departed in the past there's supposedly been some sort of gag order in place, so I'd be surprised if JC bluntly stated that he was let go. Would be curious to see that in writing from him.

Cowsill said it in a response to someone's comment under one of his posts (I think the one with simply a link to his website).  You have to dig through them.  It's way down in a chain of posts and responses.  But yes, he writes "I was let go by the Beach Boys."

Several of the unnamed sources in the Gaines book are pretty easy to deduce, especially in retrospect.

Did Gaines just come out and name some of them in those old threads? I can't remember.

But yeah, when you've got like detailed, intimate conversations between two or three people, only one of which is Brian, it's sometimes pretty easy to deduce who was recounting those conversations.

I suspect a revamp of the Gaines book would be difficult due to potential litigation. I've heard other stories of biographies that were published, went out of print, and in the course of attempting to update and republish the work, all of a sudden potential litigation makes it difficult.

His tapes would certainly be an invaluable source; but my recollection of his discussion of those tapes in that old thread was that he didn't seem to be open to making them accessible to fans/scholars, even in the long term.

A revised edition of the Gaines book that fixes all of the easy-to-fix factual errors, and perhaps with the help of a co-writer/editor who could massage the thing from the point of view of actually loving the music, could make it an even stronger must-have as a biography. As many have pointed out, Gaines had the non-music story down and covered some areas no other book did (the Brian psychodrama in the late 70s being just one example), and clearly had a number of sources that subsequently rarely or never gave interviews on the record again (certainly not *those* types of interviews). The main weakness of the book has always been that it treats the music itself as secondary (but hey, we all already know the music is good), and therefore the salacious-but-accurate stuff in the book kind of seemed extra salacious with little to balance it out.

As is usually the case, the best way to learn about the band is to throw everything, Gaines, Leaf, Carlin, White, Preiss, Stebbins, and so on, into a blender and consume it all. I know some fans think the Gaines stuff is too icky, but it's all part of the story. Yes, even Dennis's alleged prison fantasies.

Also with Howie recently bumped up to co-producer on the archival releases, I can only see a more forward thinking and in-depth dive into the vaults. This stuff has to be handled perfectly. It's all about vision.

"Feel Flows" and "Sail on Sailor" (and "Sunshine Tomorrow" and the other archival sets since) are the best proofs of concept for what we can have in the future. Even "Sounds of Summer", which could have easily just had a new sticker slapped on the cover, was re-made with thought and care.

The last several years have given me way more optimism about the archives than decades past, when it was Radio Shack compilations and Hallmark CDs with 7 live tracks.

And to the original question of the thread, I'm sure "Love You" has been on the radar along with the rest of the 70s (and beyond, hopefully). That would fall under the "Caribou to MIU" type of release that has been discussed in the past. As we all know, things evolve over time so we don't know exactly what form this will all take.

I'm particularly glad that both studio *and* live stuff is continually being examined and released.

I looked at a few sample pages, and there are some very egregious typos and misspellings. I don't recall my old physical copy having that type of editorial problem.

Perhaps others are more familiar with e-publishing, especially with older books, but my guess is some sort of automated process was used to convert/scan the text from the original book to an e-book, and nobody proofread for typos.

I would just get one of the gazillion old copies of the physical book. Despite some wonky aspects and an obvious focus on the salacious stuff rather than the music, it has a lot of important information for scholars of the band's history.

I'd think an "Endless Summer" reissue of any kind would be unlikely (outside of perhaps the vinyl reissues they do every so often). Howie Edelson mentioned in one of the podcasts promoting the "Sounds of Summer" expanded reissue that one initial idea instead was to expand "Endless Summer", but the label pointed out that "Sounds of Summer" has been moving more units and can get more sales certifications, so that's the "title" they want to expand/reissue because they can stack those sales on top of the original.

Not particularly pertinent, but I never would have guessed the guy was only 45 years old in all of that footage from back in 1983 when the Beach Boys stuff went down. He looked much older. If you had asked me yesterday how old he was in 2023, I would have guessed near 100. He was barely older than the Beach Boys back in 1983, which I guess kind of makes his attitude towards and level of familiarity with "rock" bands back then even more ironic.