Endless bummer

Jay passed this along to me, though I kind of wish he hadn't: Once again, the members of the Beach Boys are squabbling. Mike Love of the Beach Boys is suing Brian Wilson over the release of Smile, the release of which he claims "shamelessly misappropriated Mike Love's songs, likeness and the Beach Boys trademark, as well as the Smile album itself".

Fuck Mike Love. I can't believe the gall of this classless piece of shit. In large part, he's the one who drove Brian to a nervous breakdown and is the reason Smile was scrapped and buried for 40 years. Legally, he's due his royalties for "Good Vibrations", the one song he contributed to on that album, and I'm sure he's getting his cheques, but morally, he deserves none of the profits from the miraculous, triumphant reconstruction of a masterpiece he nearly destroyed.

The Beach Boys were America's greatest band, the vision of one of rock and roll's greatest geniuses and the acknowledged peers of the Beatles. And Mike is the reason no one takes them seriously anymore. His turning the Beach Boys into their own cover band has made them a joke from the mid-70s up until the present day. His specific problem this time is with the free giveaway of a Beach Boys compilation that he claims will adversely affect sales of Beach Boys records, and I can see why he's got a problem with it: He's perverted the band into nothing more than a travelling jukebox that plays only the hits. He's not exactly going out there and playing "Anna Lee, The Healer". He's not trying to get people interested in album tracks or in selling the original albums, which would simply supplement that free hits compilation, not compete with it. He's just belching up the fun, fun, fun beach songs and the car songs for casual fans and old fogies chasing their youth. He just wants to move units of Endless Summer or whatever greatest hits compilation is currently in print, and the free giveaway compilation competes with that, and that hurts him in the pocketbook.

Fuck him. Mike is an asshole, a bully, and a pathetic has-been. He's filled his pockets long enough by dragging the band's name through the mud with a touring nostalgia act that is the Beach Boys in name only. You can't have the Beach Boys without a Wilson brother, but Mike's version of the Beach Boys doesn't even have Al Jardine, for God's sake. It's a karaoke act. It's a joke. Mike is a deluded jerkoff not just for thinking no one would notice he was bald if he simply wore a hat for 35 straight years, but also for believing he ever made anything more than a very limited contribution to the band, and, in that time, he's certainly long since squandered any goodwill he was ever due for his part. For all I care, Mike Love can just go get lung cancer and drown in a harbour.

* * *

Update: It seems SamuraiFrog beat me to the punch with a few choice words for Mike Love, which you should go read. (Spoiler: They are "shut the fuck up.")