defend the indefensible: "kokomo" by the beach boys

This song was awesome on an 80 degree day walking through soho with a bunch of vice magazine types with it blasting distorted out of a solar powered radio on a banana seat bike

yah that sounds awesome :/

that sounds horrible! but kind of perfect for the song.

calling a woman you are attracted to "mamma" is just fucking weird.

just because people dress like idiots doesn't mean they're not nice.

calling a woman you are attracted to "mamma" is just fucking weird.

-- Tracer Hand, Wednesday, April 23, 2008 11:57 AM (22 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

That's racist

truth bomb-bitty

http://www.kathygarver.com/mlovet.jpg
"step off, mama"

(Q)- You co-wrote "Kokomo" along with the late "Papa" John Phillips. (In 1988, The Beach Boys had their largest sales hit single, titled "Kokomo." The song, "Kokomo" was a featured in the motion picture "Cocktail" and "Kokomo" really put The Beach Boys back into the international spotlight.
Mike Love- I did indeed. John Phillips came up with the concept for the song in the verse and then I came up with the chorus. (Mike Love begins singing "Kokomo".) That was my contribution. I changed two words in the first verse and I rewrote the second verse in a little less, half a verse. So it was a true collaboration between John Phillips, myself and Terry Melcher, who produced the song. "Kokomo" went to Number One in 1988. Now that song, really, we're talking had a multigenerational appeal. It really helped to rejuvenate The Beach Boys career.

I was listening to some tracks from his unreleased "Unleash the Love" recording from several years back. It's actually pretty good in parts. Plenty of the Kokomo-ish vibe, for those who are so inclined.

I really love this song.

Well, okay, but a really weird one that has five recent, emphatically non-hit songs. If Magical Mystery Tour counts as an LP surely this does?

Magical Mystery Tour is a compilation too! (if in LP form)

i'm pleasantly surprised that a thread that i started with at best a half-serious intent has generated this much passionate debate.

carry on ;_;

and everybody's right, it's not like it's a big deal, it's just kind of an infantile thing to do and makes the people doing it look like fuckin morons, so i thought one of 'em might wanna know

that song, really, we're talking had a multigenerational appeal
that song, really, we're talking had a multigenerational appeal
that song, really, we're talking had a multigenerational appeal

so does anybody know where I can score an a cappella of this track

right here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyei99D1Mq8

ilx: solutions

I wouldn't have expected any better from Mike Love, but it was kind of sad to see John Phillips sink this deep musically.

Best Concert Ever.

I think the objectionable thing about this entire endeavor is the transformation of the "Beach" in the Beach Boys' identity from a sort of plausibly "universal" (ie teenagered) conception of sun, surf, fun, and all that...through the wistful-but-still-adult-reconsideration-of-same ("All Summer Long," "Surf's Up" etc)....to this boomer retiree scenario of "I scored a great deal on a time-share!" [...] The threat posed by "Kokomo" is that it will ruin all those other, less commodified beaches of yesteryear.

I would add to the above that it also moves the Beach of the band's name from any beach, your favorite beach, the beach at Lake Lanier Water Park, whatever....to a private resort beach for couples on tropical getaways. Sort of implicit in the above, but the place-d-ness of this bugs me, perhaps even moreso than the decision to firmly re-establish the Beach Boys as a Hawaiian-shirted beach-themed novelty act instead of a band that could, in theory, sing about all manner of things.

And yet I can't bring myself to really hate this:

i can practically set my watch by how this thread revives at opportune moments in my life o_O

This is a bit of a banger, this one.

― Dom Passantino, Saturday, April 19, 2008 11:43 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

you can't front on that

this song reminds me of my grandparents' garage

http://www.sporcle.com/games/kokomo.php

I know all of you will get the first six but the last three are for KOKOMO PROS only.

i got eight/nine but call foul because it didn't allow the florida keys. smh.

one of the first earworms I ever remember getting

ok, this is playing on oldies radio. i realize it's a band whose popularity peaked 20 years before i was born, but still hearing a song released within your own lifetime on an oldies station for the first time is depressing beyond belief :(

it's really not that bad a song

hot sax

saw this performed by faux-hawaiian girl ukelele duo last week

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.

― Pillbox, Sunday, April 20, 2008 2:57 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark

Yes! And then I want to smash those images in the face with a bat.

Good record for playing at the wrong speed.

I have good memories driving down to Lafayette to see the Beach Boys w/ America at the Cajun Dome with my Dad. We played the Beach Boys Greatest Hits cassette that finished with some Fat Boys track and Kokomo. That was a good road trip.

Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama
Key Largo, Montego
baby why don't we go

not surprising John Phillips wrote this

The only piece you'll ever need to read on it

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2012/06/beach_boys_kokomo_worst_song.php

"Kokomo" is not even on a list of the Top 20 Worst Beach Boys Songs. (Anyone who prefers to hear "Salt Lake City" to "Kokomo"? Anyone?)

And when you dare take them out, what you're left with is the far-superior drum pattern from "Just Like Honey," . . .

Uhhhhhhhhhh.

A friend just now on FB:

Kokomo is Jimmy Buffett calling out his hos in different area codes. Ahead of it's time.

"Kokomo" is not even on a list of the Top 20 Worst Beach Boys Songs. (Anyone who prefers to hear "Salt Lake City" to "Kokomo"? Anyone?)

(raises hand)

"Salt Lake City" at least has great production going for it (the overall richness, the understated single bell-like vibe notes that start the instrumental bridge, the a capella closing section), whereas "Kokomo" couldn't be any more anodyne. And unlike any place name-dropped in "Kokomo", I can at least afford to go to SLC if I wanted to.

In 2006, Beach Boys member Mike Love recorded a critically panned Christmas remake of the song, titled "Santa's Going to Kokomo".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6U2ubpBd28

GREAT FUN FROM THE MASTER

SURF5UP 5 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-x_FHj9yLo

^ worst

we'll get there fast and then we'll take it slow

i have no beef with this song

"Kokomo" is awesome, but then i sort of grew up with it alongside the other classics.

I liked this song better when I thought the line was, "we'll get there faster if we take it slow." way too subtle and zen-like for a yacht rock era Beach Boys lyric, but I want to believe that's how it goes.

i think people get too hung up on this being a "beach boys" song. as a random-ass mike love/john phillips '80s soundtrack collabo featuring carl and john stamos it's a shocking success

though, tbf, while i like the beach boys a lot more than i used to, i'm not too reverent about the whole wall-of-thumbsuckers gestalt

Does the new BB album have anything as catchy as this?

To Martinique, that Monserrat mystique

I just realized that I've been mishearing "Monserrat mystique" as "mounds of rotting steak"

if that was the real line, it's about the only thing that could make me like this song more than I already DON'T