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Just my opinion, obviously, but the anti-Love stuff on the internet has not snowballed in the last decade. It has actually decreased in terms of the proportion of negative-to-neutral-to-positive. It was pretty uniformly negative stuff back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, probably in part because the wounds of the remnants of the band splitting were still fresh, and also because even many Mike Love superfans would agree that the live show he had put together in 1998-1999 was relatively sub-par, especially in comparison to a decade later.
By the mid-late 2000’s, it seemed to die down to some degree, probably due to a mixture of time passing, Mike’s live show improving, fans become rather apathetic to the cause of demanding Mike stop using the BB name, Brian’s solo career being an actual going concern, and so on. Certainly, the decades-old negative impression has never gone away, and we’ve spent thread after thread trying to dissect how much of all the old negative crap (“don’t f*** with the formula, “Smile”, etc.) concerning Mike is fair or not.
I’ve rambled about this numerous times, but Mike gained a HUGE amount of goodwill and positive commentary for doing the reunion in 2012, from some of the most jaded, crusty, cynical Beach Boys fans ever (and the press as well). Unfortunately, the aftermath of the reunion pulled the rug out from under some of those cranky fans so severely, it led to a disproportionately huge negative backlash.
By the mid-late 2000’s, it seemed to die down to some degree, probably due to a mixture of time passing, Mike’s live show improving, fans become rather apathetic to the cause of demanding Mike stop using the BB name, Brian’s solo career being an actual going concern, and so on. Certainly, the decades-old negative impression has never gone away, and we’ve spent thread after thread trying to dissect how much of all the old negative crap (“don’t f*** with the formula, “Smile”, etc.) concerning Mike is fair or not.
I’ve rambled about this numerous times, but Mike gained a HUGE amount of goodwill and positive commentary for doing the reunion in 2012, from some of the most jaded, crusty, cynical Beach Boys fans ever (and the press as well). Unfortunately, the aftermath of the reunion pulled the rug out from under some of those cranky fans so severely, it led to a disproportionately huge negative backlash.
Agreed.
I remember ages ago there was a Mike Love Fan Club page where the level of hate spilled over into Brianistas handing out death threats to other posters on occasion, for example.
(I didn`t know that Ambha Love had to go to school with a bodyguard after receiving a death threat several years ago until I saw it while searching for something else on this site though).
This is very sad, any way you look at it.
