"Calfornia Girls" parody

[juggler]

A friend who's a fellow Californian, and knows that I'm a BB fan, sent me this funny/sad parody video:

"I Wish We All Could Leave California"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApfBvkql0lI

p.s., I don't intend this as a political thread and I'm not interested in a debate on public policy, but I do find it sad that the "California myth" created and celebrated by Brian and the BBs in the '60s has indeed died to some extent. The U-hauls are indeed mainly headed outbound.

[Robbie Mac]

Lame.


The Babylon Bee is the conservative/MAGA version of the Onion. Only not funny like the Onion.

[Lonely Summer]

I'll be a good boy for now and just leave it at this: it's like this nearly everywhere now. I was going through downtown Vancouver, WA a couple days ago and saw the same thing I saw in Portland, OR: homeless camps everywhere, tent, trash, etc. Even the small rural towns have it now. It's very sad.

[HeyJude]

So dumb.

I was going to write stuff, but just see what Robbie Mac said above. That's the crux of it.

Also, for historians of bad, cringe, politically-motivated Beach Boys-related satire, this is definitely NOT the first time we've seen this sort of thing. It's always so, so, so bad.

Why isn't anybody issuing "takedown notices" on THIS stuff? Geez.

[juggler]

Why isn't anybody issuing "takedown notices" on THIS stuff? Geez.

Really tough to make a legit copyright claim against a total parody version, cf. Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. in which Roy Orbison's publisher took on 2 Live Crew for their parody of "Pretty Woman."     2 Live Crew's version lifted not only the melody but some of the lyrics from Orbison's original.   Publisher got smacked down 9-0 at the Supreme Court, with court ruling that the principle of obvious parody as "fair use" is essentially inviolate under the first amendment.

[HeyJude]

Why isn't anybody issuing "takedown notices" on THIS stuff? Geez.

Really tough to make a legit copyright claim against a total parody version, cf. Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. in which Roy Orbison's publisher took on 2 Live Crew for their parody of "Pretty Woman."     2 Live Crew's version lifted not only the melody but some of the lyrics from Orbison's original.   Publisher got smacked down 9-0 at the Supreme Court, with court ruling that the principle of obvious parody as "fair use" is essentially inviolate under the first amendment.

Yes, yes (well, possibly no kinda, because the two songs aren't analogous in the amount of the "original" they use), but there are a lot of items on YouTube that are clearly "Fair Use" that get taken down. All it takes is one e-mail from even an alleged copyright holder. I was pointing out the irony that out of all of the things that are unfairly taken down, something like this stays up.

[AKA]

Fucking vile, on multiple levels. Shouldn’t have even been posted here in the first place.

[juggler]

Fucking vile, on multiple levels. Shouldn’t have even been posted here in the first place.

I'm sorry that you feel that way.  

As I said, I was not and am not interested in a public policy debate as the social, economic and demographic issues surrounding my native state are complex and not on-topic here.

 I will leave it up to the mods here to decide whether to delete the link.  Love it or loathe it, it is relevant content, IMO.  A few-day-old parody version of one of Brian and the BBs' iconic songs has half a million views on YouTube.  That's a story in and of itself. "California Girls" is 57 years old, and it's an iconic anthem that has stood the test of time and is as relevant now, hell perhaps MORE relevant now, to the mass culture than it was in 1965. Wrap your head around that.  Imagine a song from 1908 having that cultural relevance in 1965.  I still have to shake my head at how utterly wrong Murry Wilson was in the '60s when he thought the group's success was a fad and that his sale of Sea of Tunes was a shrewd business move.

[HeyJude]

I don't think there's anything wrong with posting the link so fans know this garbage exists, and also nothing wrong with folks expressing their thoughts.

If the idea is to discuss this without getting into politics, that's obviously difficult as the entire crux of the video is entirely political. It has nothing to do with the BBs and not really actually anything to do with California particularly. And it's not about "demographic issues" within the state. It's a stupid, dumb "culture war" political thing.

It's gross, but not illegal, to use a beautiful song to express vile garbage and set out entirely to divide people.

When I see stuff like this, no, my first thought is not "Wow, more evidence of what at timeless song this is!", I think instead "I just lost brain cells watching and listening to this, and it's among the most vile ways to use beautiful music."

[SMiLE-addict]

I'll be a good boy for now and just leave it at this: it's like this nearly everywhere now. I was going through downtown Vancouver, WA a couple days ago and saw the same thing I saw in Portland, OR: homeless camps everywhere, tent, trash, etc. Even the small rural towns have it now. It's very sad.

I was in Grant's Pass OR a few years ago and was surprised at how many homeless people there were for such a small city.

[Zenobi]

This song's music, with its pseudo early '60s pastiche cobbled together by its composer, one Brain Williams (or it could be Bryant Williams), could have even been harmlessly pleasant, but it is dragged down by the over-subtle satirical lyrics, so subtle indeed that their nuances are totally lost on a non-American like me. They wish they could all leave California, but why? That remains mysterious.
I have heard a parody where one Nick Loves (really an apt surname!) replaces the original lyrics with a supposedly humorous ditty about the girls of California, Texas, Arizona, Minnesota, Iowa, New Hampshire etc. Though the obsessive listing of most of the US states soon gets old, paradoxically Nick's simplistic parody manages to work better with the faux '60s music than the rather pretentious original lyrics.

[18thofMay]

This is horrendous. Get it off!