Feb 252010
This special, early edition Friday Flashback is at the request of Townsman alexmagic. This video came to mind as part of an ongoing discussion over the most disappointing collaboration ever. In that thread you will find some strong challengers to the legendary Ja-Bo collaboration, deemed the Rock Crime of the Century, and a recent guest stint by Ray Davies with Bon Jovi. The following collaboration, however, if not the most “disappointing” or even “disheartening,” may be the most bizarre one we’ve seen. Only in America! (Careful study of this clip may also come in handy for a possible upcoming examination of the Satanic influences in The Beach Boys.)
This post initially appeared 7/8/08.
Our nation carries on!
Mic Love. I have to admit I was looking for the carnage that would ensue if LaToya sang.
Oh, Lord. Has there ever been anything as embarrassing as Bruce Johnston’s arm wave?
Waitaminnit! I just figured out that Mic Love is trying to point out the teleprompter at the foot of the stage!
JULIOOOOOO!
This is brilliant!
“Man, we stood bare-chested in 90-degree heat packed in with total strangers for eight hours. I got sunburned, dehydrated and thrown up on, and my feet ached for two days after. But man, I saw The Beach Boys, with Julio Iglesias singing half of a song. And LaToya Jackson – um, standing there. Fucking rocked.”
The most puzzling aspect of that video is that most of the people in that crowd are REALLY PSYCHED at what they are hearing.
I watched this without the sound first and – after the part at the very beginning where Al Jardine tries and fails to get himself a spot between LaToya and Mike Love – immediately locked onto Bruce’s arm waves. Is it possible that Bruce Johnston is even creepier than Mike Love? That’s even with Love ripping the cheat sheet out of Julio’s hands.
Check out that whole exchange…Julio starts with a pretty smooth move to pull out the card with the lyrics on them. The way he takes it from around LaToya is like a reverse on the old yawn-and-arm-around-your-date-at-the-movies move. Then pause it at 1:41 to see the look of terror on Julio’s face when Mike leans in and yanks it away. He must be thinking, “This is it, he wants to fight me!” But then he sees what Love is pointing at, and covers the whole thing by pointing at it too. An excellent recovery for Iglesias, and even Mike Love has to do something approximating human laughter.
Then Julio looks after Love and tries to reach for him (1:50) when Love stalks away across the stage, which can only mean he was going to pull Love in with his other arm, so he’d have one arm wrapped around LaToya and one wrapped around Mike Love. If only he’d pulled it off! Finally, at 2:17, Julio playfully stabs Mike Love in the stomach with his mic, and Mike is only able to muster up a little bit of capering by this point.
My question is, at 2:22, is Love pointing at Julio to acknowledge an uneasy understanding between them, or is he pointing to his henchman Bruce, who immediately lunges in to grab Julio’s arm and whisper something, possibly a threat, to him?
Anyway, that flag in the crowd around the 1:30 mark, all bent down, tired and sagging…yeah, that seems about appropriate for this clip.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, can dissect a video like alexmagic. He should be teaching an A Level course in this stuff.
I am so glad Brian didn’t live to see this. Oh, no, wait a minute.
Remember the uproar back in the early 80s when James Watt banned the Beach Boys from the 4th of July concert on the Mall because they “attracted the wrong element”? Could it be this is what he had in mind?
Let’s get right to the elephant in the video – what the heck was LaToya on?
p.s. thanks alexmagic for digging this up. I thought I’d remembered it from the Halls of Rock but couldn’t locate the link.