THE MONKEES - GOOD TIMES @ 5

 

May 27th marks the fifth anniversary of the release of The Monkees 50th anniversary comeback album, Good Times!, which was released on this day in 2016.

It’s strange how a mere five years seems like a lifetime ago now. Back then, we were teetering on the precipice of the decent into hell that would be the Dumpo presidency. It didn’t seem possible, yet it happened and now we’re in this surreal pandemic dystopia looking down the barrel of potential social, economic and climate collapse. I remember when this album came out, it was a slap in the face to all the toxic pessimism that was rearing its head at the time. It was like the most revolutionary thing that you could do was to put out an album of unassailable joy.

There are simply so many inexplicably marvelous facets to this album, but it could easily have been something so much less than it was. It could have been nothing more than maudlin nostalgia and rehashed, recycled cliches of 1960s “summer of love” bullshit. Yet somehow, the right people came together at the right time to make this happen. They were able to unearth some foundational bits and pieces from the Rhino archives and then carefully stitch them together with contemporary extrapolations and augmentations which did far more than simply recollect the past glories of this cherished pop phenomenon. They effectively re-birthed it with an inexplicable sense of vitality and freshness that belies the half century legacy of the product.

Shortly after its release, Micky Dolenz summed up the extraordinary nature of its success by trying to imagine someone from 1916 revitalizing their career in 1966. The cultural gulf between those two eras is so clearly great from our contemporary retrospect that it starkly puts into perspective the idea of The Monkees reviving their essence so successfully for this sophomore decade of the 21st century. This was all made possible by a carefully assembled collection of creative professionals who not only understood what they were working with, but imbued it with a sincere passion and love that pushed it beyond mere marketing and consumer exploitation. They found the FUN in it again and infused every aspect of this project with it, from the first track to the last, including the clutch of bonus tracks that were sprinkled in various editions along the way.

For me, it became the soundtrack to my summer that year, a season which culminated with the opportunity to actually see The Monkees perform live for the very first time when they came to Vancouver’s PNE on September 4th of that year. What a painful irony it was that I would end up having to duck out of the last 15 minutes of the show due to medical issues which would end up resulting in my having to undergo heart bypass surgery on Sept 12th, the exact date when The Monkees TV show debuted on NBC back in 1966. That coincidence has never been lost on me and forever ties all of these events together into the strangest package. Fortunately, I’m still here to write about it and recollect the release of one of the best Monkees albums since their heyday in the late 1960s.

DOLENZ, JONES, BOYCE & HART @ 45

 

May 29th marks the 45th anniversary of the release of the eponymous titled debut album by Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart. That is: Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart.

For all practically purposes, this was a reunion of The Monkees, but in 1976, the legal rights to use that name did not reside with any of the band members nor the song writing duo who created many of their biggest hits. This was nearly 10 years after the debut of the TV series and almost exactly 6 years since the release of the last official Monkees LP, Changes. Since that time, the value of their brand had taken a nose-dive and the world was still nearly 10 years away from the infamous MTV marathon of the TV show, which would kick-start a massive wave of nostalgia for the band. But in 1976, to be a Monkee was to be a has-been; forgotten and often despised and ridiculed. Yet enough time had passed that a little nostalgia for the boys was percolating to the point where principal lead vocalists, Dolenz & Jones, and the creative core of the songwriting and production team, Boyce & Hart, felt that they might be able to tap into the old vein one more time. Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork were both approached to participate in this, but declined.

To record the album, Boyce & Hart recruited many of the same musicians who’d been part of their house band at the time they did their original hits. Chip Douglas, who had produced the band for several albums after the ousting of Don Kirshner, also came onboard. Together, they managed to craft a pretty nicely updated version of The Monkees, even though they couldn’t call it that. They’d embraced the sounds of the times and the vocal talents of Dolenz & Jones were always reliable. The selection of songs is quite good with maybe one or two exceptions. Overall, they created a very enjoyable and listenable album.

Sadly, the public weren’t quite ready for it and not even the help of a tour and a number of national TV appearances could help push the record into significant sales. The album pretty quickly dropped from sight, but it still managed to get Peter Tork to change his mind and join Micky and Davy to record a Christmas single, Christmas Is My Time of Year, released in time for the holiday season of 1976. Again, however, the spark of sales didn’t quite ignite and, after the tour, The Monkees went their separate ways again for the next decade. They’d bide their time on solo projects until that fateful day in February of 1986 when the world would rediscover them and set ablaze the Monkeemania that would continue to flare up again and again to the present day.

While the D, J, B & H LP vanished into the ether for many years, eventually, aficionados for the band would dig it back up from its grave and it would see a reissue on CD in 2005 and is now readily available on streaming mediums like YouTube. Fans of the band have recognized its value after all these years and it is widely accepted as a legitimate part of The Monkees canon of albums. And it deserves this recognition since it is a full fledged representation of the people who were always a part of the project, even if the name is missing.

POLYESTER @ 40

 

May 29th marks the 40th anniversary of the release of John Waters’ crossover film, Polyester. After a decade of working on the fringes of midnight movie cult cinema with such low budget features as Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble and Desperate Living, Polyester was his first attempt at doing anything approaching a “mainstream” feature. Being shot on actual 35mm film and featuring a real Hollywood star in the form of one aging heartthrob, Tab Hunter, it was a significant step into accessing a much broader audience than the freaks who’d slither into a late night theater when most respectable people were all tucked up in their beds. That's not to say it was bereft of the bizarre transgressions of his earlier films, but it did tamp them down enough to smuggle them into a few mainstream big screens.

In 1981, I was still living in Thunder Bay, ON and had only come across a few scant mentions of John Waters and Divine in the odd punk music magazine. Yet I knew enough to realize that, when I saw his new movie advertised as playing in the local theater, I had to check it out. The advance promo regarding the “Odorama” gimmick also piqued my curiosity. So when it came, some friends and I made our way downtown and settled in for a scent filled evening of warped suburban dysfunctional family fun!

The film begins with a scientist describing the Odorama process and offering some examples of how it worked and what you were supposed to do. This was all inspired by the old William Castle style gags and tricks he’s incorporate into his horror B-movies. Everyone was issued a card with numbered pink circles on one side and the Polyester logo on the other. We were instructed to scratch a numbered circle whenever the corresponding number appeared on the lower corner of the screen. The first number on the card, when scratched, gave off a lovely rose smell in conjunction with the rose the scientist displayed on the screen. After this demonstration, the movie proper started and we found ourselves in the Fishpaw household master bedroom as Francine (Divine) and her husband are in bed preparing to go to sleep. As we see the number 2 begin to flash on the screen, we all scratch and the unmistakable sulfuric scent of a fart fills our nostrils as poor Francine begins fanning her face with her hand in disgust at her husband’s foul bowel expulsion. That was when we knew that we were likely not going to get too many pleasant scents wafting off our scratch cards for the remainder of the movie. From there, it was everything from airplane glue to dirty sneakers to skunk and any other unsettling odor that could be stuck under our noses. It only relented with the final 10th circle at the end of the movie when we got to smell some air freshener to leave us with a “happy” ending!

Multi-sensory gags aside, the movie is a riotously melodramatic descent into a struggling housewife’s crumbling marriage and the trauma and stress of dealing with two delinquent teens - one a daughter dealing with an unwanted pregnancy and the other a son obsessed with women’s shoes and smashing their feet in terrible random assaults. Francine’s only support through it all comes from her dear clueless debutante friend, Cuddles, played to oblivious perfection by Edith Massey. The tears and the sorrows of the Fishpaw family become an exercise in schadenfreude comedy as each progressive indignation leads to more and more hilarity for the audience.

From here, the gateway drug of Polyester sent me into the theater again and again whenever a John Waters movie found its way to any local silver screen. Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble and Desperate Living became essential staples in my underground cinema education. After crossing into more mainstream works, I continued to follow him through Cry Baby, Hairspray, Serial Mom, Pecker and A Dirty Shame. John Waters became more than just a film director for me. He became the fount of a particular kind of “trash” culture which sent me searching for so many other bizarre examples of movies, music and fashion as well as histories of people and events which went beyond the mundane realities of so called “normal” life. Aunt Ida from Female Trouble gave me a guiding principal that I’ve since held onto when she famously said, “The world of the heterosexual is a sick and boring life.” I wholeheartedly concur with that and continue to be dedicated to seeking out the bent in all things. That quest found its “ground zero” in the work of John Waters. For me, Polyester was the flash point which began that journey.