Released
45 years ago this month, in May of 1979, is Michael Nesmith's capstone
LP for his 1970s musical career, Infinite Rider on the Big Dogma. After
spending the decade attempting to establish himself as a solo musical
artist in the shadow of his 1960s fame with The Monkees, Nesmith's focus
was rapidly shifting into another medium, with his Pacific Arts media
production and distribution company quickly moving into the realm of
home video, with ambitions towards feature film production.
While
Nesmith's releases during the first half of the decade had gone for a
laid-back, country tinged coolness, his two albums in the latter half of
the decade began to skew back into the more energetic realms of rock
'n' roll and upbeat pop music. With his previous album, From A Radio
Engine to a Photon Wing (1976), its single, Rio, had inadvertently
invented a new format for the presentation of music in video form,
becoming the first music video to include a coherent narrative,
effectively functioning as what Nesmith termed a "mini-movie". Rather
than simply performing the song in front of the cameras, Nesmith had
conceived of the idea that you could tell a story with the music,
complete with character development and a narrative arc. This approach
would become the blueprint for the explosion of music videos that was
looming on the horizon for the coming decade, something he also had a
hand in by helping to create MTV.
Building
on the foundations laid by Rio, Nesmith's original plan for this album
was that it would be a full video album, with videos produced for all
the songs. That plan never quite managed to come to fruition for these
songs, however the concept did end up leading to the production of the
Grammy winning video release Elephant Parts (1981), an hour long
assemblage of comedy sketches, fake commercials and musical interludes.
Several of the songs used for that production were taken from Infinite
Rider.
Ultimately, the draw of
the video distribution market and film making would distract Nesmith
from music making throughout the 1980s as Pacific arts focused on
building a massive library of VHS titles it would market and sell, as
well as producing a few feature films such as Timerider, Repo Man and
Tapeheads. As a result, Nesmith didn't release any albums of new music
throughout the decade, with his next collection of new music not coming
along until 1992 with his acclaimed Tropical Campfires album. As such,
Infinite Rider stands as a capstone to Nesmith's musical output for the
1970s, book-ending a decade that had begun with The First National Band,
leaving an under appreciated legacy of music that continues to find new
fans as the years roll on, with this album being a prime example of
Nesmith's skill at crafting a catchy pop song.
