defend the indefensible: "kokomo" by the beach boys

Throughout the '80s, the Beach Boys had placed several songs in films (The Big Chill, Lethal Weapon 2, Troop Beverly Hills, Soul Man). In '87 the amassed brain trust of Melcher, Love, ex-Papa John Phillips, and Scott McKenzie (of “San Francisco” fame) decided to try to write a song for the film Cocktail, derived from the scene where the Tom Cruise character moves from New York to Jamaica. Recalls Melcher, "We went into it to see if anyone could write a major hit for the band besides Brian. I figured a lot their hits had been travelogues like ‘Surfin' USA' and 'California Girls.'

“John Phillips had this idea about a kind of blues song about some place the band would go before they broke up. We changed all the words and chords around and I wrote the chorus. As far as the feel goes, I always loved Jimmy Buffett records, so I got a steel drummer, Van Dyke Parks played the accordion, Ry Cooder played the guitar and the slide, and Jim Keltner was the drummer, going for a 'Margaritaville' kind of thing.

"I just layered it until it all started to shimmer. What really made it was the out-of-tune accordion: it glued everything together, especially with the steel drum. Then we left the falsettos out of the harmonies rather than having somebody copy Brian." The song shot to No. 1 and led the Still Cruisin’ album to gold.

This is a bit of a banger, this one.

Indefensible. With the sole exception of the aforementioned Muppets version.
-- Stephen C (ihope), Friday, December 30, 2005 3:06 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Link

Above posts make it appear that the Muppets covered the Imus version.

watching the muppets version on youtube, i notice that half of the lines are double entendres.

I brought in a tape with "Kokomo" on it to show & tell in 4th grade, when everyone else brought Nirvana, Weird Al and Guns & Roses tapes. Damn you, Beach Boys. I tried to explain to my classmates that it was Van Dyke Parks unorthodox accordion playing that really made the song, but no one would listen...

when I was in 5th grade, I wrote a pornographic version of this song while attending a performance of Jesus Christ Superstar with my grandma.

Cockomo?

prefer it to all other beach boys songs

Mike Love does it good.

prefer it to all other beach boys songs

-- J0hn D., Saturday, 19 April 2008 15:34 (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^^real talk

insanity

Mike Love does it good.

-- Thus Sang Freud, Saturday, April 19, 2008 3:09 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

love mike love

good tune

In a sense, this horrible makes other songs sound all that much better, so 'kokomo' acts as a palette cleanser of sorts, like the sprig of parsley between salad and entre, or the prune slivovitz between courses.

they are selling "15 Big Ones" for a buck around the corner from me. fuck, i should go pick that up; it's a great record.

crutis if you love it so much, why don't you nom it for 1p3 top 100 songs

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/00/15BigOnesCover.jpg

best album cover artwork, ever, to boot. fuckit, i'm buying this posthaste and gonna slam it up on my walls

I think you get the meaning from my badly worded previous post: kokomo makes other music sound a little bit better.

secretly about this guy:
http://www.afropop.org/img/world_music/african_music/escaping/Kokomo.jpg

Never minded "Kokomo" -- it's exactly how I would have envisioned the BB's sounding in the eighties had I been a littlet deuce coupe in the sixties.

http://www.beachboysband.net/BBBNEWS/MikeLove_Kokomo.gif

quelle douche

The 1p3 Top 100 Songs of All Time

Mike Love died for your sins!

Kevin Love declared early for Mike Love's sins.

I like this song. I'm kind of relieved the see the hate is not universal.

Mike Love died for your sins!

It's true! Wait and see...

let's see, what would I prefer - "teenage symphonies to God" or a pop song that goes well with a rum & coke? no fuckin contest yo, Dom I got the next round

I don't have a problem with the song itself, per se, but hearing it inspires mental images of John Stamos and the rest of the Full House gang, which I'd prefer not to have.

my ding a-ling >>>all other chuck berry songs

mikin' love out of nothin' at all

i just remembered that my family tree includes people with the surname 'love'.. maybe i'm related to mike?????!

i know someone who is related to him and met him in person; no joke. He was every bit as cheesy in the flesh as you'd imagine, from the story my friend related to me.

a pop song that goes well with a rum & coke?

since when did we start using "go well with" to spin "could curdle"

this song is mind torture from start to finish

this song might actually be why i hate the beach boys. my sister used to play it obsessively when we were young.

I guess the divide here is whether or not you had to withstand the song nonstop in 1988? I was 0 yrs old so back then all I ever heard was the Muppets version a couple of times

this song is bullshit~

best beatles song: free as a bird

lol

cue some contrarian asshole saying "b-b-but it is!"

a pop song that goes well with a rum & coke

But to paraphrase what many have sung, some things go better with coke...like approx. 100,000 pop songs (and actually quite a few of those teen symphonies to God).

Actually, I just heard it again and the chorus features a more agreeable chug than I remember. But the rest of the song doesn't. I don't hear how the accordion makes it special at all. And it's still a song abut repressed homosexuality. No gay guys like it. I know - I asked them.

abut = Freudian slip

I give in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckQCvTqswUw

I guess the divide here is whether or not you had to withstand the song nonstop in 1988? I was 0 yrs old so back then all I ever heard was the Muppets version a couple of times

for me the dividing line is I have always found Brian Wilson insufferable and his acolytes more so, so this song has the dual benefits of 1) not being a B.W. song and 2) trolling B.W. fanboys

i find the beach boys pretty annoying in general, but this is like all the worst qualities of typical beach boys shit amped up to 11 with a dose of fresh hell in the mix

oops. sorry for posting it on the 1p3 list.

dude that list is full of all kinds of crap, don't worry about it! haw

mikin' love out of nothin' at all

Tonight I celebrate mike love for you

it's bad

I don't dislike it.

I was born in 1986 and it wasn't until like 2003 that I found out that the Beach Boys had more songs than "Kokomo"

Best thing Stamos was ever involved in.

UMS: compare "Body Like a Back Road," specifically the line "I'ma take it slow just as fast as I can."

― nonsensei (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, July 24, 2018 8:23 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think it makes a lot more sense than this line

though "I'ma take it slow just as fast as I can." def has some "galaxy brain" appeal

song/verse is so so and just kind of there but the catchy chorus alone def makes it. if nothing else then Mike Love hit a homerun there. this is a fast food jingle level earworm.

Yeah I have always liked this song while knowing (even as a kid) it was trash.
And the verses are nice but indeed the most catchy part is Love’s.
Actually I’m pretty sure if you ask 100 persons to sing « Good Vibrations », I’m pretty sure 60% will sing Mike’s chorus part.

60% of people are pretty dumb tbh

I think of the bit where Mark says "c'mon, feel it feel it!"

aruba jamaica oh I want to take you to
bermuda bahama let’s leave it up to fema
key largo montego baby my state’s a frozen igloo
oh I want to take you down to
cancun-o we'll get there fast and then I’ll shitpost slow
that's where mr. trump would go way down in cancun-o

— kilgore trout, back in some form (@KT_So_It_Goes) February 18, 2021