I have met a pile of so-called pop stars, and in terms of being

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I have met a pile of so-called pop stars, and in terms of being a decent man with a decent heart, Mike Love is pretty goddamn high on the good guy list. Most of you just hate him because he’s in a band called the Beach Boys without Brian Wilson. You think that the fact that he keeps the Beach Boys going is somehow denigrating of or defiant of the great achievements of that band, but it’s just the opposite; Mike Love has kept the Beach Boys, a vital American institution, alive and working in the face of great odds and even greater derision.Go see the current touring version of the Beach Boys.
The band is made up of able, passionate and credible musicians: Jeff Foskett, Scott Totten, John Cowsill, Brian Eichenberger, and Tim Bonhomme are all committed and credible cats with an honest and real devotion to the songs, sound and legacy of the Beach Boys (and Foskett has been with the Beach Boys for 34 years, longer than Carl or Dennis Wilson were in the band, if you’re counting). Shit, if those guys were backing Jason Faulkner or Matthew Sweet, you’d be saying they were the best band in the world. But instead, they are part of a band with Mike Love and Bruce Johnston called The Beach Boys.
The current Beach Boys do great honor to the work of Brian Wilson (and to the work the Beach Boys did without Brian), and they keep the legacy of a valued American treasure full of vigor, harmony, and the power to move and emote. Listen, I’ll come out and say this: I vastly prefer the current Beach Boys to the Brian Wilson touring experience. Brian’s band is amazing, and they play his compositions and his arrangements with loving detail, but there is no escaping the fact that at the center of the stage is a man who often looks like he doesn’t want to be there, like he’s just a sad ghost inserted into the middle of the world’s greatest Beach Boys cover band. Every time I see Brian Wilson, I leave depressed; but every time I see the current Beach Boys, I leave elated.