Time for those brass tacks again. Someone already mentioned it, but it's worth repeating.
When all of this brou-haha was still bubbling up, a public statement was issued that said Brian and Al had nothing to do with this. What is one of the most unfortunate effects of all this, if not the most unfortunate in my opinion, is that because of the way Mike and his PR handled this going back weeks now, the musical legacy of Brian and Al as Beach Boys is being thrown into the mud. And again, they had nothing to do with any of this other than being founding members of The Beach Boys.
If Mike and/or his PR team had declined the invitation in private, and not leaked a comment to the press, none of this would have happened. It turned into a clusterfuck yet again because it simply was not handled the right way. And there is still no official word whether Mike and his band will or will not play this event.
Remove the political nature of this mess just for discussion purposes, and I cannot think of another time when the legacy of this great band has been called out across multiple demographics, media outlets, and among people who know nothing about BRI, licenses, "set end dates", phony historians and honored guests, and the like. Whether the reasons why are agreed with or not, the fact that a single event had the potential to generate such a backlash should have warranted a more careful plan of action in terms of comments to the press.
Now, we have all this.
And just a personal message to people suggesting this is all a symptom of the "Mike bashing" that originates with a very small minority of non-fans on this forum and blaming this forum in general as a toxic place for Mike-bashing: Get real. Enough of the bullshit. Read those reader comments on any news or web page that ran this story this week before trying to blame yet another fake boogeyman to try avoiding the reality of where this band's image has ended up. All the "campaigns" in the world to try changing and reshaping this one fan forum wouldn't have changed the overall tone of those web comments this week one iota.![]()
When all of this brou-haha was still bubbling up, a public statement was issued that said Brian and Al had nothing to do with this. What is one of the most unfortunate effects of all this, if not the most unfortunate in my opinion, is that because of the way Mike and his PR handled this going back weeks now, the musical legacy of Brian and Al as Beach Boys is being thrown into the mud. And again, they had nothing to do with any of this other than being founding members of The Beach Boys.
If Mike and/or his PR team had declined the invitation in private, and not leaked a comment to the press, none of this would have happened. It turned into a clusterfuck yet again because it simply was not handled the right way. And there is still no official word whether Mike and his band will or will not play this event.
Remove the political nature of this mess just for discussion purposes, and I cannot think of another time when the legacy of this great band has been called out across multiple demographics, media outlets, and among people who know nothing about BRI, licenses, "set end dates", phony historians and honored guests, and the like. Whether the reasons why are agreed with or not, the fact that a single event had the potential to generate such a backlash should have warranted a more careful plan of action in terms of comments to the press.
Now, we have all this.
And just a personal message to people suggesting this is all a symptom of the "Mike bashing" that originates with a very small minority of non-fans on this forum and blaming this forum in general as a toxic place for Mike-bashing: Get real. Enough of the bullshit. Read those reader comments on any news or web page that ran this story this week before trying to blame yet another fake boogeyman to try avoiding the reality of where this band's image has ended up. All the "campaigns" in the world to try changing and reshaping this one fan forum wouldn't have changed the overall tone of those web comments this week one iota.