This newsletter often revels in the successes of our noble order. It’s important though, especially on this, the 29th anniversary of the Beach Boys’ album “Still Cruisin’,” to remember our greatest failures.

The year was 1986 and the Grand Lock’s song writing robot TUNIVAC had gone through a controversial re-engineering. Rather than writing hit songs, TUNIVAC could now script entire performers–their songs, performance style, names, even their fashion. Its blockchain-powered algorithm (literally–TUNIVAC “eats” cassettes fed to it by a moped’s chain driven 2-stroke engine) spawned some massive success in 1986 by generating both Billy Ocean and Eddie Money. In a recent interview, TUNIVAC lead engineer Key K. Henders revealed, “We thought there might be a blockage somewhere in the artist naming module but you know..hey ‘whatever works.’”

In 1988, TUNIVAC’s massive success inspired the High Keys to commission a song to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the Grand Lock Secret Castle under Van Nuys, California. In an uncharacteristically bold move, this song would publicly flaunt the power of the Order of the Grand Lock–though obfuscated enough that it wouldn’t be obvious to the common listener. The High Keys wanted a hit–big enough to capture the stateliness of the Grand Lock’s own pleasure dome–our own Xanadu.

Key K. Henders now confesses “We didn’t know what the High Keys meant about this ‘Xanadu’ stuff. Apparently it’s a poem or something? We just thought they really liked the movie Xanadu.” Thus, 10 copies of the Xanadusoundtrack were fed to the TUNIVAC blockchain. This wouldn’t be a problem if the engineers had seen the movie; sure the ELO/Olivia Newton John stuff is great–but there’s also a lot of Gene Kelly tapdance-y big-band revival stuff in there too. It didn’t play well in 1980 and unfortunately for us all, TUNIVAC obeyed to the letter–and created one of the biggest embarrassments of the 20th century: Bobby Trombones.

Suffice to say that Bobby Trombones’ big band jazz/disco single “Secret Castle Rag” (backed with “Charleston Choo-choo Illuminati Blues”) failed to ignite the imaginations of the public. It sold fewer than 5,000 records and the unsold copies are said to be buried in a secret landfill in southern New Mexico. Bobby Trombones was quietly swept aside–a stain on the legacy of the Grand Lock (though “Secret Castle Rag” would later find some success when the Brian Setzer Orchestra covered it for a Gap commercial in the mid 90s).

The Grand Lock had revealed weakness and our enemies seized on it. In 1988, film producer and Guardians of the Orb member Terry Melcher was tapped to find a theme song for the Orb-bankrolled film, “Cocktail” [definitively, Tom Cruise’s worst movie -Ed.]. Melcher reached out to two fellow Orbs: the worst members of the Mamas and the Papas and the Beach Boys, John Philips and Mike Love, respectively. These creative parasites drilled into some unseen well of spite and indignity to pen a response piece to “Secret Castle Rag:” the pernicious earworm, “Kokomo.”

Now few people know that “Kokomo,” listed among the song’s other locales of Bermuda, Jamaica, et. al, doesn’t actually exist. Officially, it’s a fiction of Mike Love’s dark alchemical mind meant to evoke a sense of the exotic. Even fewer people know that Kokomo actually does exist–a secret island in the Florida Keys and the central seat of power to the Guardians of the Orb. Thus, “Kokomo” stands not only as a tribute to Orb hubris but as the ultimate Grand Lock diss track.

The Beach Boys’ “Kokomo” spent two months at number 1 but its legacy persists to this day. “Those who seek Kokomo” have become a sort of dark pilgrims–driven to Jimmy Buffett concert parking lots and Myrtle Beach shrimp shacks–ultimately seeking the promise of Kokomo. A legion of sun-baked Kokomo truthers, inspired of the insipid false promise of Mike Love’s lyricism have been driven to join our rival lodge.

If there’s a golden lining to this tale, it’s that “Kokomo” would ironically contribute to future financial success for the Grand Lock. “We actually fed ‘Kokomo’ back into TUNIVAC’s algorithm in 2000 and it ended up making Jack Johnson so that’s been great for us,” says Key Henders.

The Beach Boys album “Still Cruisin,” featuring “Kokomo” was released on August 28, 1989. On this day in history, let’s all take a minute to definitely not listen to Kokomo–because say what you will about the Beach Boys, we can all admit that “Kokomo” is a bad song that sucks.

From Volume 872 Issue 39 – Subscribe here, members, to be the first to get the next newsletter!