MICHAEL NESMITH - THE PRISON @ 50

 

Marking its golden jubilee this month is the seventh solo album from Michael Nesmith, The Prison, which was released 50 years ago, in November of 1974. After a half dozen LPs mostly focused on the laid back country-rock sound he'd helped pioneer after leaving The Monkees in 1969, Nesmith was looking to do something different as he kicked off the first release for his very own label imprint, Pacific Arts.

Nesmith spent the previous few years creating incredibly sophisticated music that was mostly ignored by the public, and barely acknowledged by critics. With his obligation to a record label now moot, given that he was his own boss, Nesmith undertook an entirely different kind of conception for this record. The idea was to present a box set with an LP and a book containing stories intended to be read along with the songs on the album. The combination of the music, lyrics and narrative of the texts were meant to offer a philosophical musing on the nature of life, delving into existential conceptions that were a kind of mix of Buddhism and Christian Science, which was the faith he was raised in by his single mother.

Musically, while the album still lingers in a kind of country/folk landscape, the use of electronics, like the Arp Odyssey synth and Roland Rhythm 77 drum machine, take the music into a surreal sort of progressive tangent, almost akin to a countrified version of Pink Floyd, to some extent. The album's seven, often lengthy songs, took on the air of dream-like meditations, in some cases with mantra like vocal repetitions extending off into infinity. It was all meant to function as a contemplation on the nature of existence and, especially, the meaning of mortality.

Upon its release, it met with mixed critical responses. Robert Christgau called it a "ghastly boxed audio-allegory-with-book." It sold poorly and was largely overlooked by even fans of Nesmith, though it remained a favourite of the artist, who reissued the album on CD a couple of times over the years, first in 1994 and again in 2007. Each reissue, however, did not release the original 1974 mix. Subsequent editions drastically altered the recordings, adding keyboards and even updating some of the lead vocals, while some of the original elements, like the drum machine, were obscured completely.

I first encountered the 2007 version, which I initially really loved, but then discovered I could order an original sealed copy of the 1974 LP box set, directly from Nesmith, even getting it signed! Once I got the original LP and got a chance to hear it in its original mix, I was immediately sold on that version, finding the cheesy drum machine and primitive synth sounds far more charming than the updated keyboards from the "enhanced" reissued version. Though the original mix was never reissued on CD, Nesmith did finally take one of the sealed LPs and made a digital transfer of the album, which he then sold from his website as a high resolution MP3 set.

Personally, it's one of my all-time favourite solo releases from Nesmith, both because of the sophistication of the music and its themes, and the ambition of the project. In the use of printed stories with music, it's surprisingly similar to The Residents' Eskimo LP. The Prison would also turn out to be the first entry in a triptych of releases that would appear throughout Nesmith's career. The second part, The Garden, would be released in 1994, while the third instalment, The Ocean, would come in 2015 as a web only release.

MICHAEL NESMITH - INFINITE RIDER ON THE BIG DOGMA @ 45

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. 

THE MONKEES - INSTANT REPLAY @ 55

 

 

Marking its 55th anniversary today is the seventh studio LP from The Monkees, Instant Replay, which was released on February 15th, 1969. With the crescendo of Monkeemania rapidly diminishing in the band's rear view mirror, it's an album that saw the group grasping at the past in order to try to give themselves a future.

By the time Instant Replay hit the record shops, it had been 11 months since the group's fame making TV series had been cancelled, and the group were also in the wake of a feature film that had died a pitiless death at the box-office, followed by a similarly disastrous TV special, both of which had only befuddled and alienated remaining and dwindling fans of the band. Ravenous critics were also salivating at the chance to trash the band some more. Their previous album, The Birds the Bees and the Monkees (1968), had managed to do well despite just missing the #1 US LP spot after their first four LPs had all smashed to the top, and Daydream Believer had been a #1 hit in December of 1967. But the band were running on fumes in terms of popularity, and Peter Tork had bailed shortly after the thud of the TV special hit the airwaves.

Trying to help regroup and reignite their popularity, Brendan Cahill, the band's former road manager and new music coordinator, encouraged the remaining members to pilfer some of the unreleased recordings that were created prior to their infamous "palace revolt", which saw original music director, Don Kirshner, ousted in order to give the band full creative control of their music. There were still unreleased tracks from their initial 1966/67 sessions that were felt might be enough to spur some chart action, so along with a plethora of newer tracks recorded since The Birds, The Bees and the Monkees, the trio began to assemble a pastiche of an album, mixing older songs along with the newer recordings that were waiting in the wings. It's because of this approach that Peter York still managed to make a guest appearance, by virtue of having worked on one of the older recordings. Of the older tracks, Tear Drop City, a Boyce & Hart song, was selected as the first single, but it failed to chart above #56 in the US. In the UK, the band's fortunes were even more in decline. The album itself managed to still crack the top 40 in the US, peaking at #32, but the writing was surely on the wall.

Though they no longer had a weekly TV series, Mike, Micky & Davy continued to attempt to keep themselves in the public eye by making guest appearances on various TV shows, including sharing a square on Hollywood Squares, and performances on the Johnny Cash & Glen Campbell variety shows, respectively. It still wasn't enough to prevent the inevitable deflation of their career by the end of the decade, and only two more albums would follow, with Mike leaving after the next, before their complete dissolution in 1970.

But like all things connected with the band, a renaissance was in the future, a process that would repeat itself virtually every decade since their initial rise to mega-stardom. In 2011, Rhino Handmade issued a super-deluxe expanded edition of Instant Replay, just as they'd done with many of their other records, packing it with unreleased extras, alternate takes, unfinished demos and other ephemera of the era. While it may not represent the group at their peak, there are still plenty of deep cuts lurking on this album to reward stalwart fans who may be looking for neglected gems.

THE MONKEES - HEAD (FILM) @ 55

 

It was 55 years ago today when the one and only feature film by The Monkees, HEAD, officially hit theatre screens with its New York City premier on November 6th, 1968. While the film systematically dismantled the band's carefully cultivated pre-teen "manufactured image" in the hopes of appealing to a more mature, progressive counterculture audience, it ended up only alienating existing fans while the hipsters never even gave it a chance due to the band's reputation. And while it was initially a staggering commercial flop, ravaged by critics of the time, something strange happened in the decades following its release. Since then, it has become a deeply treasured cult film, inspiring in-depth analysis and speculation and, in retrospect, is seen as one of the very few films of the psychedelic era to actually capture the true experience of the trip, rather than portray it within the context of a "cautionary tale".

At the time the idea began floating about for doing a Monkees movie, the TV series was wrapping up its second and final season. Both the band and the show's producers were looking to break out of the format of the TV show. While it had been an innovation in TV structures at the time, it still had its own very rigid internal formula, one designed to mostly appeal to a younger audience and was only mildly concerned with making any kind of philosophical or political statements. Everyone essentially knew they simply weren't interested in creating a feature length version of a Monkees TV show episode. In order to help redefine their position and plot a course forward, Bob Rafelson, the show's creator and producer, hired friend and then an unknown young actor by the name of Jack Nicholson to help with the script. As his first foray into the world of feature films, Rafelson was entirely expecting that this might be his only chance to make a movie, so he set the basic premise that he wanted HEAD to be a collection of vignettes, each with a different reference to a Hollywood trope or style. If this was the only movie he'd ever get the chance to make, he wanted to make every kind of movie he's ever loved.

In order to flesh out the details of this conception, Bob, Jack and the band ensconced themselves at an Ojai, California, resort, where, with tape recorder constantly rolling, they got high and brainstormed their little hearts out, spewing forth a barrage of disparate ideas and scenarios, allowing nothing to limit their imagination. At one point, someone asked Bob what the blackest thing in the universe could be and, thinking for a moment, he concluded it was Victor Mature's hair, thus concocting the premise that the entire movie takes place in his hair. After the weekend brainstorming session was completed, Jack took the tapes and began the impossible task of trying to stitch all these crazy notions together into a script that could make some sort of thematic sense. He had to craft ways to get from one scene to another with no apparent connection between them. In the end, he came up with an approach that took the viewer on a journey as if they were watching the TV, flipping through channels and landing on random programs, with a continuity of themes that would keep surfacing again and again with each change of the channel. Ideas of media control, packaging, pandering to expectations, confinement, interpretation and escape all wove themselves together through this madcap journey, dissecting the band's image and intent, and rebuilding it into a commentary on popular culture and the nature of reality itself. Ambitious stuff for something that looked like a hodgepodge mess from the outside.

The music for the film was obviously still an integral component and the band made every effort to ensure that its maturity and sophistication went well beyond anything they'd done before. With two original songs from Peter, one from Mike, one from Harry Nilsson and two more from Carole King, they had a half dozen solid compositions to work with. As well as the band's own performances, session musicians included such luminaries as Neil Young, Leon Russell, Ry Cooder and Stephen Stills. For Mike's Circle Sky, the band were filmed performing the song live, with absolutely zero augmentation or post production overdubs. It's a roaring proto-punk raver that shows the group off as the tight, intense garage band they had become in the real world. Carole King's Porpoise Song became the visual highlight of the film as they utilized the then unknown technique of solarization, a process which was expensive and difficult to achieve and which ultimately caused delays in the post production phase, pushing back the release date. For the accompanying soundtrack album, Jack Nicholson was put in charge of editing the LP together, taking the half dozen songs and interspersing them with a cut-up assemblage of audio and score music cues from the film. The end result is something akin to the likes of Nurse With Wound or Negativland, with bizarre juxtapositions of dialogue and sound effects creating bridges between the album's core musical elements.

Production on the film got off to a rocky start, with the band discovering that only Jack would get scripting credits, something that was necessitated by industry union rules at the time requiring a single name to be associated with the screenplay. There were also disputes over the wages being paid to the band, which resulted in the group going on strike the first day of shooting, with only Peter showing up to the set. It was pretty tense and the friction between Rafelson and the band afterwards never really resolved itself, leaving a permanent rift between the producer and the band.

Promotion of the film was approached with the same sense of experimentation which had driven the creation of the movie. Inspired by Andy Warhol's film, Blowjob, which shows nothing but a man's head and expressions as he receives oral copulation, the poster for the film and the TV ad showed the head of John Brockman, who did the PR for the film. As a gag, the title, HEAD, was chosen because the producers were looking forward to their next film project, where their promotions could proudly proclaim, "from the people who gave you HEAD". The ad taglines summarized it as a "most extraordinary adventure, western, comedy, love story, mystery, drama, musical, documentary satire ever made (And that's putting it mildly)." The band themselves were conspicuously absent.

The evening of the NYC premier, Rafelson commented that he and Nicholson were arrested "for trying to put a sticker on a police officer's helmet as he mounted his horse." With the film deliberately destroying the mythology of the band, young Monkees fans were completely turned off by the product and the critics took it as an opportunity to destroy the band in print. With nearly nonexistent box-office receipts, the film vanished from theatres with little notice and it began its journey through the cultural underworld, waiting to be reappraised by the public.

My first exposure to the movie came on December 30, 1974, when CBS aired it as their Late Movie after the 11 o'clock news. I happened to be out with my parents at their friends place, where I stumbled on the film on TV and got a chance to see roughly half of it before I was yanked away from the screen so we could go home. I desperately tried to find it when we did get home, but it seemed to have vanished from the airwaves. I was a fan of the TV series and had no idea what this was, but I knew I LOVED IT! I was only 11 years old at the time, but something about it mesmerized me. Yet I had no opportunity to see the complete film again until about 1989, when I was loaned a VHS tape with a dub of the film on it, accompanied by John Water's Desperate Living. I watched the two movies while out of my mind on mescaline and had a religious experience with both of them. At that point, I became an evangelist for HEAD, insisting on showing it to everyone and anyone who I could get to sit down in front of my TV for 90 minutes, preferably under the influence of a suitably potent psychedelic substance. There wasn't a single case where the film didn't make an impact, and there are a number of converts who were created by my efforts. I eventually got VHS, then DVD editions of the movie and, once the internet came into common use, discovered that there were many others out there who had come to appreciate the movie the way I do. I still consider it in my top three favourite films of all time, which includes the aforementioned Desperate Living, and The Holy Mountain by Alejandro Jodorowsky.

In recent years, there have been many people who have done in-depth explorations of the film's themes and structure. It has spawned actual university courses! The book The Monkees, Head, and the 60s, written by Peter Mills, who taught the university course, offers an excruciatingly detailed exploration of every element of the film, including the threads that lead to its creation and the aftermath of its release. For many, myself included, it is a critical document of 1960s counterculture. Director, Bob Rafelson, went on to produce groundbreaking films like Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces. For fans of the band, who have long since embraced the film in all its eccentric glory, it has become an indispensable chapter in the band's legacy, one which proves beyond any doubt that they were artistically and creatively valid beyond any criticism for their "manufactured" origin.

THE BIRDS, THE BEES & THE MONKEES @ 55

This month marks the 55th anniversary of the release of The Monkees fifth studio album, The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, which was issued in April of 1968. While it was home to two of the last hit singles to come from the group during its heyday, it was also the first major indicator that the band’s fortunes were about to take a nosedive.

After the production coup of early 1967, which saw the group wrestle control of their music away from the dictatorial hands of Don Kirshner, the honeymoon phase that graced their third album, Headquarters, would be short lived. The camaraderie that guided the production of Headquarters, driving the group to handle all the playing themselves in order to prove their merits as a band, began to crumble once they started work on Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.

The reality was that they were four disparate individuals with completely different musical priorities and sensibilities. Reverting to their previous production approach, the group began to rely on session musicians again while they also separated into discrete production teams. By the time they started production on The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, the segregation between the members was essentially complete. Each had their own team of musicians and techs, often working in different studios in the LA area. Whereas the previous two records had the benefit of Chip Douglas’ production to tie things together, he was dismissed for this album and had no hand in its creation. There was still an agreement that all work created under these conditions would be credited as “produced by The Monkees”, but the concept of them being a band was now in name only.

This situation resulted in a collection of songs for the album which was wildly divergent and eclectic in style. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but does make it difficult to give a singular LP product a sense of cohesion, though it was not significantly different than what The Beatles were going through while producing their “White” album. Davy pursued his show tunes style, Mike indulged in country rock and bizarre psychedelic experiments and Micky explored his soul and baroque pop leanings. Sadly Peter Tork’s work remained mysteriously consigned to the outtakes bin as none of his songs were selected for the final track listing. In fact, Peter only played piano on Daydream Believer, so he was effectively absent from the album save for his picture on the cover. One has to wonder how much this played into his decision to be the first to quit the band, but it should be noted that he contributed two songs on the HEAD soundtrack, their next album before his departure.

In addition to the songs created for the album, a couple of tracks left over from the sessions for the previous LP managed to find their way into this collection. These included the hit singles, Valleri and Daydream Believer, both of which hit #1, though the latter would be the last such success for the band. The album also features some particularly innovative elements, especially with the songs from Mike and Micky. Micky’s P.O. Box 9847 & Zor and Zam showed off his ability to deftly slip social commentary into bubblegum pop while Mike’s Writing Wrongs featured an extended, tripped-out arrangement that took the listener through a series of shifting dreamy soundscapes. And Magnolia Simms emulated the squeaky sound of a scratchy, skipping vintage phonograph, much to the confusion of some listeners, necessitating a warning on the LP’s back cover that the “skipping” was intentional and not the result of faulty stereo equipment or a damaged record.

Upon release, the album managed to climb to #3 on the US charts, which wasn’t terrible, but was shy of the #1 slot their first four albums had easily secured. In the UK, the album didn’t chart at all, though the two singles did well. It was clear that the tide was beginning to turn on their popularity, however. The last episode of their TV series aired barely a month before the LP’s release and news of the show’s cancellation soon followed.

With the end of the series, producer Bob Rafelson was ready to bury the project in order to pursue a feature film career and saw the band’s feature film project as the perfect opportunity to desecrate their “manufactured image” while simultaneously making a social commentary on commercialism and consumer culture. Not that The Monkees were victims in this. They were completely complicit in this process and were looking to break out of their "pre-fab four" kiddie band box, a metaphor seen repeatedly throughout the movie. They were desperate to be seen as a legitimate creative force, but the backlash of popular opinion ultimately overwhelmed the group. With the commercial disaster of both the movie and a poorly conceived subsequent TV special, the group soldiered on through a few more albums, shedding members like so many falling leaves, before the whole thing collapsed in 1970.

Fortunately, history has has seen fit to rehabilitate the band’s image and allow them a remarkable renaissance in the 21st century. Their legacy of classic, timeless and innovative pop music has survived the reactionary and unfair misjudgements of the past. Now, we can appreciate all the marvels that lurk in the grooves of these records. Like most of their catalogue, Rhino Handmade have issued a deluxe expanded edition of the album featuring both stereo and mono mixes and a plethora of alternate mixes and outtakes. The sheer volume of the bonus material included in these reissues begs the question of how they managed to be so stunningly productive within such a relatively short period of time. It was really only a handful of years where they were initially active, yet they left behind an incredible catalogue, a treasure trove that would take any musicologist a lifetime to fully comprehend.

THE MONKEES - PISCES, AQUARIUS, CAPRICORN & JONES LTD @ 55

Released 55 years ago today, on November 6th, 1967, The Monkees fourth studio album, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd, would be their forth consecutive number one charting LP in less than two years, though it would also be the last album from the group to hit that height. Both commercially and creatively, it was the high water mark for the band.

After their successful corporate revolution, where they broke free of the iron grip of music director Don Kirshner, their third LP, Headquarters, was a triumphant statement of independence. The band deliberately set about to create the album with no one else in the studio with them save for producer Chip Douglas, who also assisted on bass so that Peter could focus on keyboards and other instruments. Because the group were between seasons of their TV series, they had the luxury of time to dedicate to that album, but the pressure of producing a weekly series came to bare on the next.

It wasn’t so much the mechanics of the first two LPs which were the problem. It was the complete lack of input and creative control that drove the revolt within the group’s ranks. So, when it came time to start work on a fourth LP, struggling against the time constraints of filming, the group recognized the value of the songwriting team they had at their disposal, as well as the expert session musicians who made up the so-called “Wrecking Crew” of loosely affiliated LA players. They’d managed to get some great results on Headquarters, at least insofar as offering up themselves as a credible garage band, and were still going to do a lot of playing themselves, but it would be foolish not to leverage these resources and to be able to produce more sophisticated music for the next album, and that’s exactly what they did.

In fact, they'd never return to the self-contained approach again until their 1996 reunion LP, Justus. Given the individual group member's wildly divergent musical ambitions, it actually made more sense to work somewhat separately and then stitch each member's contributions together for the final product. It was a double edged sword which could offer diversity, but also inconsistency, but for this particular effort, it all came together into a very coherent whole.

Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd would turn out to be one of the group’s most mature and ambitious albums, both musically and thematically. The subject matter covered by the songs includes: allusions to drug trafficking (Salesman), materialism at the expense of happiness (The Door Into Summer), the superficial affections of groupies (Cuddly Toy, Star Collector), the malaise of suburban banality (Pleasant Valley Sunday) and the LA riots (Daily Nightly). Beneath the bubblegum pop sheen, they were subverting their audience with a variety of more critical and cynical messages, a tactic which would belie their image as a squeaky clean boy band for children.

Technically, the album was one of the first to feature the use of the MOOG modular synthesizer, played on Daily Nightly by Micky and on Star Collector by Paul Beaver. The instrument had been acquired by Micky from the first lot of 20 ever sold. Only The Doors’ Strange Days LP, released in September, predates the use of the synth within the pop/rock domain. The Monkees would soon be followed by The Rolling Stones (Their Satanic Majesties Request in December) and The Byrds (The Notorious Byrd Brothers in January - 1968).

The album is loaded with some of the band’s most significant songs and offers up one of the most consistent listening experiences of their catalogue. It leaps from strength to strength with songs like Love Is Only Sleeping & Pleasant Valley Sunday. Michael Nesmith gets a surprising number of lead vocals in the set as well, which works to add diversity to the songs. Also of note is the group’s last number one single, Daydream Believer, which was recorded during these sessions and intended for the LP, but not issued on LP until The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees (1968). Love Is Only Sleeping was originally going to be the first single, but it got swapped with Daydream Believer, so the LP track listings were changed to remove the latter and insert the former.

In recent years, it has been reissued in a number of vastly expanded deluxe editions featuring numerous alternate mixes, outtakes and demos. Next to the HEAD soundtrack and film, it is unsurpassed in terms of its artistic merits within the group’s canon of work. A remarkably “adult” work from a “fake” band for kids.

THE MONKEES - HEADQUARTERS @ 55

 

It was 55 years ago today, on May 22nd 1967, that The Monkees released what could arguably be called their most significant album. It deserves this status more for what it represents creatively than commercially. If it were only about sales, More of the Monkess would rule hands down. But what is significant about Headquarters is that it represents a triumph of creative spirit over commercialization.

The Monkees never needed to be artistically valid. This artificial concoction of a couple of beatnik aspiring film producers could have been content with top 40 mediocrity, but something took hold within this creation that demanded to find expression. The driving force behind this has to be primarily credited to Michael Nesmith. It was his stubborn determination, against all council, that helped to overthrow the micromanaging totalitarianism of original musical director, Don Kirshner.

The ability to oust this corporate sponsored megalith of assembly line pop production was no mean feat. Millions of dollars in sales were at stake here. Corporations don't take lightly to people messing with the cash flow like this. Yet Mike's insistence (backed by the TV show's producers) became a fulcrum for the band to pry control of their product out of the hands of Kirshner and they dove into the opportunity of creating their own version of themselves with complete dedication.

Though, in some cases, their musicianship may have been limited compared to the seasoned professional session players who had created the music on their first two LPs, what they managed to craft was a thoroughly engaging and inspired example of psyche tinged garage rock that has stood the test of time and rivals the best that the era was able to offer. It's a solid album from Nesmith's rousing opener, You Told Me, to Micky's crown jewel of LSD inspired madness, Randy Scouse Git. In between you get gems like Tork's utopian For Pete's Sake.

The album was performed almost exclusively by the 4 band members along with first time producer Chip Douglas on bass so Peter could focus on keyboards, banjo and other instruments. They'd only ever do an album this self contained again some 30 years later in 1997 with Justus.

After Headquarters, they'd revert to engaging studio musicians again while still contributing themselves as they pleased, remaining in control of the production and selection of songs. It was a kind of hybrid approach combining the techniques from the first two albums with the creative freedom gained on their third. Headquarters hit the number one LP spot in the US only to be unseated by The Beatles Sgt. Pepper shortly thereafter. For all the struggle that lead to its creation, this album is the sound of triumph and camaraderie capturing a moment in time when it was possible to climb the mountain and enjoy the view, even if somewhat briefly

THE MONKEES - MORE OF THE MONKEES @ 55

 

Released on January 9th, 1967, The Monkees sophomore LP, More of the Monkees, is celebrating 55 years on the shelves today. It marked both the peak of the band’s popularity and the turning point for them as a “manufactured image”.

With the wild, unprecedented success of the TV show and their debut eponymous LP in the latter half of 1966, their record company was eager to get more product to market as soon as possible. The whole processed was so rushed, in fact, that the band themselves were not even aware of the 2nd album’s release until they stumbled on it in a record shop while on tour in Cleveland, Ohio. Not only were they taken aback by being so completely left out of the loop, but they were also horrified by the cover. It used a photo take of them wearing some decidedly unhip JC Penny clothing from a shoot they thought was only for an ad campaign for that store. And again, Don Kirshner, then musical director of the show, had exercised his control in picking the songs for the album, out of a batch of some 34 titles they’d recorded late in 1966, without consulting any of the members of the band. Nesmith had still been granted a couple of token tracks for his original compositions, but only one of which where he sang lead vocal.

The frustration at being so disconnected from the music production process ate away at Mike in particular, more so than the others, but he was still able to rally support for his concerns from the other guys as well as series creator, Bob Rafelson, and producer, Bert Schneider. This frustration all came to an infamous head during a meeting with Mike, Kirshner and his lawyers where Nesmith put his fist through a wall right next to the head of one of the lawyers after being presented with a rather large cheque they assumed would buy him off. They got their answer from Mike in the form of a dent in the wall. The final straw came when Kirshner released a single without consulting anyone and he was formally dismissed from his position and the group were finally able to secure control over their musical output.

Despite the contentions, lack of input and the godawful album cover, the record still contains a host of songs which would become classics and it became a massive hit record. Their debut was still in the #1 album spot on the Billboard charts when More… pushed it off the top. Collectively, the two records spent a whopping 31 consecutive weeks in that position, with More of the Monkees taking up 18 of them. The album has since been certified quintuple platinum. In addition to the smash hit single, the Neil Diamond penned I’m a Believer, the album features such other favorites as Nesmith’s Mary Mary, the Boyce & Hart proto-punk of (I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone and a second Diamond gem, Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow).

Though the group would assume significant control over their music on subsequent albums, and those efforts would initially prove commercially viable for album sales, their singles were never quite as popular after the departure of Kirshner. The man simply had an ear for infectious pop hits. However, what they lacked in commercial savvy, they more than compensated for with artistic merit as they took full advantage of their access to studios, musicians, songwriters and recording time to create a massive catalogue of beautifully crafted pop confections, exploring a sprawling array of styles and techniques. While they were certainly a coherent band on the Headquarters album that followed, where they played all the instruments themselves, the albums that came after that reverted to a sort of mixed usage of session players and undermined their cohesion, turning them into four concurrent solo artists pooling their songs on the same albums. At least they were each, individually, able to pursue their own vision of what they wanted to do as artists. While More of the Monkees may mark the high water mark for the band commercially, it was only a stepping stone for them creatively. Yet with so much prolific output to come, it’s still shocking to consider that it would all be over in the span of a few short years. At least for the first chapter of their story.

MICHAEL NESMITH - 'AT-A BOY, MIKE...

 

I was 3 years old when The Monkees TV show debuted on NBC in September of 1966. I probably wasn’t watching TV that night and most likely don’t remember the show from its initial run, but when it went into syndication and became a Saturday morning staple of the late 1960s and early 1970s, it became essential viewing for this kid. I never missed the show for as long as it held that slot along with Batman and Star Trek. Those were my “holy trinity” of childhood TV and I’m sure there’s something in that to explain why I became the fucked up adult that I am now.

Hearing about Michael Nesmith passing today, the third member of the group to leave the material realm, is somehow unreal in some ways. It has been said that certain aboriginal peoples believe that photography steals your soul, so I can only imagine what being on a hit TV show that’s been in syndication for five decades does to it. Somewhere in my psyche, they’re still all in their early 20s, romping around their LA beach house under the watchful gaze of Mr. Schneider, the stoic mannequin who occasionally offered up sage advice. They’ve become immortal in that sense, their images and antics forever cycling in the minds of successions of generations who keep rediscovering their magic.

Mike was an exceptional component of what turned out to be an extraordinary cast. Four guys who were brought together in order to cash-in on the popularity of a British group of mop-tops while simultaneously offering the show’s producers a chance to subvert primetime TV with some Beat generation counter-culture. Co-creator, Bob Rafelson, was a hip dude who was turned on to the underground and wanted to inject those influences into the mainstream and he succeeded by hiring four similarly hip kids to be his proxies. But he and his co-conspirator, industry insider Bert Schneider, also played Frankenstein and cobbled together a monster when they hired those boys to play the parts of a struggling rock band who could never catch a break. In the case of The Monkees, the errant brain that caused the monster to develop a mind of its own, or as Micky would put it, “turned Pinocchio into a real boy”, was Nesmith.

He was a true artist and bristled at the idea of being nothing more than a tool and a puppet for his masters. He fought tooth-and-nail to get the band control over their music, both as writers and performers. It was a well placed fist through a wall next to a network executive’s head that was the catalyst that got music director Don Kirshner fired and put the boys in the driver’s seat. After that, Mike was responsible for contributing some of the most memorable of their original songs. Even if their record sales never again reached the peak that Kirshner’s productions achieved, what they may have missed commercially, they more than made up for in terms of artistic integrity.

After leaving the band to go solo, Mike spent the better part of the ‘70s pioneering the genre of country rock, a thankless, unrecognized contribution that was lost behind the backlash of post-Monkees infamy, where they were individually dismissed as has-beens. While I recall songs like Joanne and Silver Moon from my mom’s stack of 45s as a kid, it wasn’t until the early 2000s that I started to collect his solo albums and discovered how truly magnificent they are. It’s a stunning catalogue of sophisticated, thoughtful and fully original music that remains utterly timeless. But Mike was just getting started and his next move would light the match that would change the music industry, for better or worse, for the rest of the 20th century and beyond.

In 1978, he made a promotional video for his song, Rio, not even really comprehending that all the label wanted from him was a clip of him singing the song. His mind went somewhere else entirely and he came up with the idea of making a little “movie” of the song with a fully developed narrative thread and structure, complete with sets and extras and props. Oddly enough, this idea hadn’t really been done before. A lot of people give Queen credit for “inventing” the music video with their promo for Bohemian Rhapsody, but it was Nesmith who truly hit on the structure which would become the modern music video. Shortly after producing this clip, he created the first full video album, Elephant Parts, and started to develop the idea of a TV program that was composed entirely of little music stories. This lead to the idea of putting to use a failed shopping channel satellite feed and, BAM!, MTV was born!

But Mike didn’t want to run a music TV channel, so he sold the rights to it and, with additional funding from his inheritance after his mother, the inventor of liquid paper, had passed, he formed Pacific Arts, a film production company. He then began to work on producing films, eventually succeeding in helping to create cult favorites like Tape Heads and Repo Man. He’d spend most of the ‘80s focused on this phase of his career and wouldn’t return to music until 1992 when he released his critically acclaimed Tropical Campfires album. Since then, he’s been a pioneer in the realm of internet VR tech, starting one of the first portals for subscribers to experience interactive virtual concerts and performances.

For a long time, people assumed he kept his distance from The Monkees out of some sense of shame, but the truth was simply that he was too wrapped up in other business to be able to participate in reunions with the group, though he did make a guest appearance for a show in LA in 1986 following the group’s revival after a marathon of their series aired on MTV. It’s somehow fitting that the channel he birthed would become instrumental in giving the group new life for a new generation 20 years after their debut. Ten years later, he was instrumental in spearheading a return to the studio by all four members for the recording of a brand new album, 1996’s Justus, where the band returned to their Headquarters roots and did it all themselves, even more so than in their early days. Flawed as that album may have been, it at least showed that he wasn’t averse to stepping back into the fray again and he even produced a TV special to coincide with the album’s release.

After the death of Davy Jones, the first member of the band to pass in 2012, Mike started intermittently touring with the group in the ensuing years, at least when he wasn’t busy performing solo concerts or working on his memoir, Infinite Tuesday, a book that’s well work checking out if you want a marvelous insight into his amazing and complex life. After Peter Tork passed in 2019, Mike & Micky set about putting together what would become their farewell tour. I was actually going to see them when they came to Vancouver, but that show was scheduled for March of 2020, right when the first wave of the pandemic shut the world down. The show was then postponed twice before being cancelled, though US dates were eventually pulled off this year and their final show in LA happened only a couple of weeks ago. I was heartbroken when I knew I wouldn’t get to see them on this tour because I had a sense that this was it and the last chance I’d get to see him live. I did get to see Micky and Peter when they came to Vancouver’s PNE on their 50th anniversary tour in support of their magnificent Good Times album in 2016, but Mike wasn't on that tour, except for the LA gig.

Michael Nesmith was a true artist, from the tips of his toes to the top of the ball on that wool hat he made famous 55 years ago. He may have started out as merely a character on a TV show about a made-up band, but the sheer strength of his creativity and character almost singlehandedly transformed it into a credible creative force, one which ultimately produced some of the most memorable and timeless pop music of the 20th century. Without him, all we’d have had was some sticky sweet bubblegum that would have lost its taste after a few chews and ended up in a forgotten wad under the desk of history. Instead, he helped ensure The Monkees left behind a sprawling landscape of incredibly well crafted musical gems and then he went and did the same with his solo career. He leaves behind a magnificent legacy and an indelible impact on the cultural landscape in ways that are both profound and sublime.

MICKY DOLENZ PUTS YOU TO SLEEP @ 30

 

October 22nd marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Micky Dolenz Puts You To Sleep, his debut solo album, which hit the shelves on this day in 1991.

Considering Dolenz was one of the best pop vocal talents of the the late 1960s, it’s somewhat surprising it took over two decades for him to finally get around to doing a solo album after leaving The Monkees. He’d done a few solo singles throughout the 1970s and been involved in a couple of collaborative projects like the soundtrack for Harry Nilsson’s The Point (1977) with Davy Jones & the Monkees reunion albums: Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart (1976) & Pool It (1987), but a true solo effort remained off the table while his career shifted into TV production as a director, mostly in the UK.

For his solo debut, Micky came up with the idea of doing a collection of songs that would be adaptable to being sung as “lullabies”, something that could have been incredibly saccharine had it been handled by a lesser talent. But Dolenz manages to pull it all together in a manner that delivers on the “sweetness” without becoming insufferable. This comes down to two key factors: song selection and arrangements.

With the first factor, Micky went with some classics by great composers like Lennon & McCartney, Harry Nilsson and even a remake of the psychedelic Monkees masterpiece, Porpoise Song by Goffin & King. It’s territory that was always successful for The Monkees and is no less so here. The arrangements on the album are gorgeously elegant and understated. Each one snuggles comfortably into the laid-back twilight vibe the album seeks to inhabit with its goal of sending the listener off to dreamland. It does so with gentle ease, while never being boring. Micky is in perfect voice for the album and delivers every song with a sincerity and softness that is as comforting as a cup of hot chocolate.

In terms of a legacy, I don’t think a lot of people really know about this album, which is a shame. I didn’t discover it until very recently and was blown away when I finally heard it. It deserves to be appreciated far more than it has been as it offers up a fully realized concept, elevated by first rate songs, tasteful performances and production which holds up three decades after its release. Nothing sounds dated or is weakened by trendy production techniques. This could easily have been created at any time in the last 50 years, so it truly deserves to be called “timeless”.

THE MONKEES - JUSTUS @ 25

 

October 15th marks the 25th anniversary of the release of The Monkees 1996 reunion album, Justus. It was instigated as a way to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the debut of the group’s TV series, which aired for the first time on September 12th, 1966. It would be the first time all four members would record together since 1968, and the last time before Davy’s passing in 2012.

Like clockwork, The Monkees seemed to try some sort of reunion album every ten years. In 1976, the Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart album came together, though not officially under The Monkees banner due to the name being in legal limbo at the time. It was an album that was, overall, quite successful artistically, but failed to make much of an impact commercially. In 1987, on the heels of a hit single, That Was Then, This Is Now, which was spurred on by a revival of the TV show thanks to an MTV marathon in 1986, Micky, Davy & Peter put together the Pool It album, which was pretty much savaged by critics and is considered the group’s all time worst album by many. The next cycle brought them together in the summer of 1996 to begin work on Justus.

This time around, it was Mike who got the ball rolling. After playing his then fiancé, Victoria Kennedy, some tracks from the Head soundtrack, her enthusiastic response got him to organize a jam session with Micky on drums, Pete on bass and himself on guitar. The session went so well that they called in Davy to complete the group and began working with label Rhino to put together a reunion album. For this project, the group wanted to go back to one of the best times of their early career, when they’d broken free from the shackles of being a “fake” TV band and got control of their music to record their third album, Headquarters. They wanted to recreate that magic of it being only the four of them at the helm and they even decided to up the ante by writing all the songs themselves and producing the album on their own. As the label says on the tin, it was to be JUST them.

It was all set about with the best of intentions and approached with the utmost sincerity, but when it came to what was delivered, something about the sum of the parts didn’t end up adding up quite to what it should have been. For one thing, the primary influence of the era was the zeitgeist of the “grunge” movement, which drove the group to attempt to update their sound to that contemporary standard and the truth was that it wasn’t the best fit when they strayed into that territory. Anger and cynicism weren’t a good disposition for a group who were so strongly associated with fun and games. Not that they hadn’t offered up some cynical songs before. Pleasant Valley Sunday was a cutting commentary on suburban conformity, but it was wrapped in bubblegum pop sweetness to make its attack one of stealth rather than a full frontal assault.

The strength of the songwriting wasn’t quite up to par either. Though they’d all been able to deliver classic songs in the past, they didn’t seem to come up to scratch this time around. It’s not that the album is necessarily “bad”, but being “middling” is always a pretty weak form of praise. Many found the lack of Nesmith’s more country-rock influence and lead vocals another disappointment. Some better songs did brighten things up to a degree, particularly Davy’s pieces as they skewed towards a softer pop sound, but even at their best, the production still sounds dated today, especially when the songs try to push into edgier hard rock. The hollow sound of the vocals is particularly jarring on tracks like Regional Girl. It’s got a thin, brittle tone to it that doesn’t hold up to contemporary listening and begs for a modern remix to try to address the gutless feel that pervades the production.

Critically and commercially, the album failed to garner a lot of success or praise and lackluster reactions put a damper on the sense of achievement that should have been present for such a momentous reunion. The group did also manage to produce an hour long TV special in February of 1997 to help promote the album, but that too suffered from the same kind of unsatisfying results. Even with Mike, who’d pioneered the fusion of music and narrative with projects like his award winning Elephant Parts video, shepherding the script and handling the directing, somehow it didn't add up to what it should have. It all, on paper, should have been a marvelous rebirth for the group, but somehow the spirit and timing simply didn’t seem to jive.

It wouldn’t be until 2016’s 50th anniversary reunion album, Good Times, 20 years later, that all the pieces would fall into place to create an album which truly reignited the group in the right way. It’s an album that manages to bring their sound into the present without losing the essence of what made them so appealing in the past. Whereas Justus tried to bring them into a contemporary landscape where they didn’t seem to comfortably fit, Good Times manifested in the present without feeling like it needed to conform to the times to let The Monkees be what they were meant to be, a rebelliously fun escape from the traumas of the modern world. Justus, in the end, was an admirable and bold effort that was, sadly, not yet ready to bring the group to where they’d eventually end up in these late years of their career, but they would get there when the time was right.

THE MONKEES @ 55

 

Celebrating its 55th anniversary today, The Monkees debut album was released on October 10th, 1966. While it may have been a "manufactured image" at this time; a construct built for a fictional TV world, that didn't mean there weren't true creative talents working to put it all together.

First and foremost, there was the powerhouse duo of Boyce & Hart, who wrote most of the songs and provided their house band to perform a good chunk of the music. They forged a distinct, slicked up, jangling garage rock style that would be the foundation of The Monkees success. Their contribution of Last Train to Clarksville proved to be chart topping gold, even though it stealthily smuggled in an anti war message.

The album also featured songs from the likes of David Gates, Gerry Goffin and Carole King. And even though the band themselves were only ever intended to contribute vocals to the songs, Michael Nesmith was allowed to contribute a couple of his own compositions, which he co-produced at his own recording session. When it wasn't the Boyce & Hart boys playing the music, the legendary Wrecking Crew musicians were there to round out the album.

As a result, regardless of any criticisms of them being the "pre-fab four", the combination of expert musicians, inspired songwriters and the lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry and personalities of the Monkees themselves added up to a sum which has proven itself against the unforgiving tides of time. This album still holds its charms and power and has rightfully earned its place in the pantheon of classic pop music.

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.

MICHAEL NESMITH & THE FIRST NATIONAL BAND - NEVADA FIGHTER @ 50

 

50 years ago this month, in May of 1971, Michael Nesmith released his third post-Monkees solo LP and the last with his “First National” backing band, Nevada Fighter. The album continued his journey into the freshly plowed furrows of the “country-rock” genre he’d helped pioneer. The album is evenly split between original songs on the first side and covers on the second. The most well known of the originals is Propinquity (I've Just Begun to Care), which was originally demoed for The Monkees in 1966. It was then recorded by them properly in 1968, but remained unreleased until many years later on one of their “Missing Links” collections. While the First National Band mostly dispersed after this album, replaced by the “Second National Band” for one album, pedal steel guitarist, Red Rhodes, would remain and continue to be an indispensable component of Mike’s solo work until Red’s passing in 1995.

Like most of his post-Monkees work during the first half of the 1970s, this album was largely ignored at the time of its release. With the Monkees having been such a massive phenomenon at their peak, there was the inevitable backlash against them after their fall from grace at the end of the 1960s. That was a shame because Nesmith produced some of the most amazing music during this time, but history has vindicated his efforts all these decades and generations later. Now, serious popular music aficionados rightfully acknowledge the craft and quality of these albums and they have taken their place among the essentials of the American song book.

Personally, while I was a Monkees fan from childhood, appreciating their music’s true value came much later in my life and I didn’t seriously begin to delve into Mike’s solo albums until the beginning of the 21st century, though I do remember my mom having singles of Joanne and Silver Moon when I was a kid. When I did open the door to his solo career, it didn’t take long for me to be awestruck by the breadth and scope of what he’d achieved while no one was paying him much attention. So do yourself a favor and do some digging and discover this man’s music for yourself.

SONG TO THE SIREN - SURRENDERING TO THE SEA OF LOVE

If there is such a thing as a “perfect” song, my vote goes to Tim Buckley’s Song to the Siren as the most likely candidate.  Ever since it first entered my life in 1984, it has been a go-to piece of music whenever I’ve been gripped in the melancholy of romance.  It’s the song you want to put on whenever you’re feeling alone or when that special someone you thought was your soulmate turns out to be another lost leader.  It’s the perfect “poor me” tune or the ideal song to sink into when you’re adrift in that sea of forlorn love-sickness.  Most people who know the song are familiar with the 1983 version by This Mortal Coil, but there are a lot of other splendid versions out there too and it has something of a fascinating history, which starts with that oddball “pre-fab four”, The Monkees.

By the beginning of 1968, The Monkees had reached a point in their career where they were able to have a bit of a say in not only their own artistic direction, but in helping the careers of other artists whom they admired.  This manifested in ways like using the set on their TV show to display the work of various upcoming visual artists, bringing Jimi Hendrix to tour with them as an opening act and featuring performers on their TV show like Frank Zappa.  On what would turn out to be the final episode of the series, The Frodis Caper, director Micky Dolenz booked upcoming singer/songwriter Tim Buckley to perform on the show in his first network television appearance.

For the performance, which was recorded live and not lip-synced, as was normally done for such shows, Buckley insisted on playing a song he and his songwriting partner, Larry Beckett, had written sometime in late 1967, but hadn’t released yet.  This wasn’t a popular decision for the show’s producers because such opportunities were generally used to promote new releases or some physical product the public could go out and buy, but Tim insisted and the appearance was recorded with him debuting Song to the Siren for the world.  The episode first aired on March 25, 1968.  Not long after this, spurred by the disastrous box-office of their debut feature film, HEAD, NBC pulled the plug on the Monkees TV show and set the band adrift.

On March 4 & 5, 1968, Buckley went into the studio and recorded a version of Song to the Siren using the same basic arrangement he’d use for the Monkees TV show.  The only addition to his 12 string accompaniment was a bit of minimal electric guitar and bass.  This version, however, would never be released in Buckley’s lifetime.  It got shelved and would only ever come out years later, first in 1999 as part of an interment only collection of rarities, and then in 2001 as part of a CD retrospective collection. 

It was two years after the Monkees appearance that he re-recorded the song with a very different, more psychedelic arrangement featuring electric guitar accompaniment instead of the 12 string acoustic.  This was the version released on Buckley’s 1970 LP, Starsailor.  In addition to the updated arrangement, the lyrics were modified slightly as the line “I’m as puzzled as the oyster” didn’t sit right with Buckley and was changed to “newborn child” on the 1970 recording.  At the time of its release, Starsailor represented something of an abrupt shift in style for Buckley, veering off the “folk” trail and into more jazz & experimental territory.  As a result, the album would require some distance from its release before people would retroactively begin to appreciate his bold adventurism.  Because of that, Song to the Siren probably lost a lot of potential fans at first.  This, however, wasn’t the first version of the song to be released.

The first ever official release of the song was by Pat Boone on his 1969 album, Departure.  Boone’s interpretation completely misses the nuances of the work by treating it as if it were some kind of novelty sea shanty.  He even crudely grafted on this ridiculous “Yo-ho-ho” pirate refrain as an intro before proceeding to bluster his way through an entirely unsympathetic rendition.  As such, it was up to the original Monkees performance to buoy the song along in syndicated reruns for the next 2 decades.  The song wouldn't find its full flower until 1983.  This was when Elizabeth Fraser & Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins would record a version for the 4AD label’s “super-group” collaboration/compilation project, This Mortal Coil.

Fraser and Guthrie managed to finally grasp the song’s ethereal essence and translate it into a recording which immediately captures the imagination of anyone who hears it.    Fraser’s angelic voice was the perfect vehicle for the song’s mythical lyrical threads and she became the very embodiment of the “siren” from the Greek legends which inspired the song.  Her voice sounded enchanting enough to lure any number of sailors to their doom along those rocky shores.  Along with a suitably intimate and beguiling promotional video, tailor-made for the emerging MTV generation of the era, the ingredients were at last right for the song to become enshrined as a pop music touchstone.  

Since then, it has continued to build momentum as a popular standard with a multitude of cover versions snowballing with each new generation of music makers.  Since it’s re-emergence in 1983, it has received some very respectable treatments from the likes of Sheila Chandra (2001), Robert Plant (2002), Bryan Ferry (2010), Sinéad O'Connor (2010) and Dead Can Dance (2013), to mention only a few of the more notable renditions.  It’s a song that has also proven to be relatively bulletproof in terms of interpretation, at least since its butchery by Pat Boone.  It’s a song that lends itself well to a variety of vocal styles and arrangements while maintaining its ethereal beauty.

In its essence, the song comes to life thanks to the emotional resonance it generates.  It’s a kind of tension between longing and loss and a contrasting sense of hopelessness and optimism.  Thematically, the foundational concept of it is the myth of the Greek sirens, the enchanting creatures of the sea who vex sailors with a song so alluring that they are inescapably drawn to the shores where their vessels are smashed against it’s craggy rocks.  It uses this myth to weave a braid of the feelings of helplessness, anticipation and sorrow which one is possessed by when experiencing the deep passions of romance, particularly the tragic kind.  There’s a sense that love is a doomed adventure, but that it’s so beautiful that it’s worth the price of one’s own demise.  There’s a kind of surrender to the inevitable in the lyrics.  “Should I stand amid the breakers or should I lie with death my bride?”  Should I try to resist or should I give in to my doom?  “Swim to me, let me enfold you” is the act of surrender and sublimation into the inescapable nature of it all.  It’s a kind of melancholy that washes over you like the tide.

Structurally, the song has been referred to as the perfect marriage of melody and lyric and for good reason.  There’s a flow to it all that makes every movement as natural as rolling waves on the shore.  Each line and verse flows together so seamlessly that you can’t resist the current of it as it carries you along.  There’s not a wasted meter or measure in it as it has that ideal economy of an ecosystem in immaculate balance.  The tune swells and subsides as automatically as breathing.  It’s no wonder that it has become such a favorite standard for contemporary vocalists.  

For me, and for many others, the definitive rendition remains the one by This Mortal Coil as it was the one which breathed new life into the song after languishing, mostly forgotten for over two decades.  This was the first version I can recall, which is odd because I have been a huge fan of the Monkees ever since I was a toddler when the show debuted.  Yet I don’t recall Buckley’s performance from my youth and it was only when the show was revived by MTV in 1986 when I saw The Frodis Caper episode again and had to pick my jaw up off the floor when I realized where the song had originated. I have found myself returning again and again to that Monkees show performance since then.  There, in the simplicity of Tim's heartfelt rendering, with nothing but his voice and guitar, that you feel like you're witnessing the birth of an angel.  That it would end up being the “swan song” for the TV series is somehow appropriate as The Monkees became victims of their own tragic love story, lured into their own rocky shore.  But we can be thankful that this rendition has survived in these reruns for future generations to be able to witness this remarkably intimate revelation as it occurred all those years ago.

Check out my complete playlist of even more versions on YouTube.

THE MONKEES - CHANGES @ 50

50 years ago this month, in June of 1970, The Monkees, or what was left of them, released what would become the final album of their original era of their existence, Changes. After a mere 5 years, they had gone from the staggering heights of screaming teen heart-throb superstars to plunging to the level of "red-headed stepchild" of pop culture. Dismissed, reviled and ridiculed, they'd fizzle out like a dud firework. Or did they?

After the wild success of their first 4 LPs and two seasons of the TV show, things started to take a turn in 1968 with the double whammy of a feature film box office disaster, HEAD, followed up with an ill conceived and somewhat nightmarish variety special, 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee. It was all too much for Peter Tork, who split after the TV special was filmed, but they soldiered on as a trio through a couple more LPs and a smattering of TV guest appearances on things like Hollywood Squares and the Johnny Cash show. By the end of 1969. however, it was enough for Michael Nesmith, who was the next to depart and move on to a more creatively fulfilling solo career.

With the proper "musicians" (and control freaks) out of the picture, the two "actors" of the group, Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones, were looking to rekindle their chart success and, not being driven by the need to have that full say in their material, reverted to the format of the group prior to the creative "revolt" and musical director, Don Kirshner's dismissal. They went back to the record label's stable of pop song-smiths and Wrecking Crew studio musicians and put together another "pre-fab" style LP, the kind they'd been so successful with on their first two LPs. But the bloom was too far off the rose by this point to score any chart success and the commercial failure of the album put the final nail in the Monkees coffin. Jones and Dolenz went their separate ways, thus ending the initial lifespan of the group.

But what kind of album do we actually have in this swansong? It took me a long time to give it any attention or consideration. I'd always dismissed it as the last gasp of a dying concept. It was the last album from the original era that I bothered to add to my library and I only initially did so out of my obsessive-compulsive habit of wanting "completeness". When I collect a band, I like to get EVERYTHING they did, good, bad and ugly, and I assumed this album pretty much tagging only two out of three of those attributes and you can guess which ones.

When I finally got around to giving it a proper, objective listen, what I discovered was that it is actually a rather nicely crafted bit of bubblegum pop music. Firstly, you've got the vocal talents of Micky Dolenz. I don't care what anyone says, but I consider him one of the great vocal talents to emerge from the 1960s. And then there's still good songwriting talent coming to bare on the record. Andy Kim and Jeff Barry contributed most of the songs to the album and there are some great tunes in the bunch. Ticket on a Ferry Ride is a sublimely beautiful bit of pop confectionery. Even Dolenz contributes a spry tune in the form of Midnight Train, though I must say that the album version pales in comparison to the a-cappella demo version he did with sister Coco. She was Dolenz's secret weapon throughout his career and it's no wonder she's still a critical part of his touring entourage to this day, solo or with The Monkees. With a similar vocal tone, but slightly higher range, she was often the vocal "flying buttress" that helped lift Micky up to the heights he might not have fully scaled on his own.

Ultimately, while this may not be The Monkees best, it is definitely not their worst (Pool It takes that "honor"). What it is, is a beautifully crafted, neglected pop album with more good to it than bad and worthy of a second look for fans of the group who want to dig a bit deeper than the obvious hits. It was the last chapter in the first part of their story, but it wasn't a tragic one.