Mike Nesmith's death last month hit me harder than I expected it to.
A week or so ago, I read a piece in Rolling Stone that helped crystallize for me why that was.
www.rollingstone.com
Not Different Drum, nor even Joanne (a beautiful song that is an indelible part of my coming of age in terms of pop/rock music),
but... The Monkees.
I have all of the TV show albums... from my childhood. No, I probably wouldn't advertise that just anywhere.
Mrs. H has some of them, too -- hers, to my chagrin, are generally in better shape than mine.
All of this led me down the garden path of ripping those canonical Monkees albums over the past week or so.
... and that led me to realize how much I enjoyed and, looking back through the haze of decades, appreciate the songs Mike Nesmith wrote and co-wrote for the Monkees.
He was famously The Disgruntled Monkee -- the prefab Four AI that most wanted to break his programming and be an actual, important pop/rock musician (or so the story goes). According to the above-mentioned RS piece he finally made his peace with his Monkee past... and maybe I have, too.
At any rate, the first album I ripped was, arguably, their best -- when they did manage, at least partially, to break programming and record an album as "themselves", Headquarters. Listening as I ripped, I realized (or perhaps remembered) just how much I like Nesmith's song You Just May be the One.
Headquarters - and I don't mean this as facetiously as it's gonna sound - was the Prefab Four's Revolver. The biggest delta from what had become before.
This one (Daily, Nightly) -- I had no idea until last week that Nesmith wrote it. Y'all probably do know that Mickey Dolenz was one of the early customers for Bob Moog's eponymous analog synthesizer, though.
The next one I ripped was More of the Monkees, mostly because it was the first one I actually owned. The Monkees clicked for me with I'm a Believer. I remember the album fondly and distressingly vividly -- but I didn't know until a few days ago that one of my favorite songs thereupon was written by Nesmith (although not sung by him):
Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones. Salesman, presumably his secret goods were exactly what we'd expect in those days... and What Am I Doing Hanging Round? has that Nesmith country-rock thing goin. Coulda almost been a Bob Weir/Dead song, in retrospect(?).
I think that, of the TV-era albums, The Birds The Bees & The Monkees was the most interesting. Lots of weird stuff, perhaps (?) not surprisingly, the weirdest from Nesmith: Auntie's Municipal Court, Tapioca Tundra, Magnolia Simms, and Writing Wrongs, e.g.
I did their first album last, because it's the least interesting -- but even The Monkees has two Nesmith songs on it, and they're both, at least, kind of interesting.
So -- at any rate -- I guess I've realized way after the fact that I was (am) a pretty big Mike Nesmith fan, even though, except for the five records above, I have identically zero of his recorded output in my collection.
I probably ought to do something about that.
A week or so ago, I read a piece in Rolling Stone that helped crystallize for me why that was.
Me and the Monkee: A Final Visit With Michael Nesmith
Mike Nesmith's final interview: By the end of his life, the man who was legendarily disgruntled over the Monkees' prefab ways loved the band
www.rollingstone.com
Not Different Drum, nor even Joanne (a beautiful song that is an indelible part of my coming of age in terms of pop/rock music),
but... The Monkees.
I have all of the TV show albums... from my childhood. No, I probably wouldn't advertise that just anywhere.
Mrs. H has some of them, too -- hers, to my chagrin, are generally in better shape than mine.
All of this led me down the garden path of ripping those canonical Monkees albums over the past week or so.
... and that led me to realize how much I enjoyed and, looking back through the haze of decades, appreciate the songs Mike Nesmith wrote and co-wrote for the Monkees.
He was famously The Disgruntled Monkee -- the prefab Four AI that most wanted to break his programming and be an actual, important pop/rock musician (or so the story goes). According to the above-mentioned RS piece he finally made his peace with his Monkee past... and maybe I have, too.
At any rate, the first album I ripped was, arguably, their best -- when they did manage, at least partially, to break programming and record an album as "themselves", Headquarters. Listening as I ripped, I realized (or perhaps remembered) just how much I like Nesmith's song You Just May be the One.
Headquarters - and I don't mean this as facetiously as it's gonna sound - was the Prefab Four's Revolver. The biggest delta from what had become before.
This one (Daily, Nightly) -- I had no idea until last week that Nesmith wrote it. Y'all probably do know that Mickey Dolenz was one of the early customers for Bob Moog's eponymous analog synthesizer, though.
The next one I ripped was More of the Monkees, mostly because it was the first one I actually owned. The Monkees clicked for me with I'm a Believer. I remember the album fondly and distressingly vividly
-- but I didn't know until a few days ago that one of my favorite songs thereupon was written by Nesmith (although not sung by him):Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones. Salesman, presumably his secret goods were exactly what we'd expect in those days... and What Am I Doing Hanging Round? has that Nesmith country-rock thing goin. Coulda almost been a Bob Weir/Dead song, in retrospect(?).
I think that, of the TV-era albums, The Birds The Bees & The Monkees was the most interesting. Lots of weird stuff, perhaps (?) not surprisingly, the weirdest from Nesmith: Auntie's Municipal Court, Tapioca Tundra, Magnolia Simms, and Writing Wrongs, e.g.
I did their first album last, because it's the least interesting -- but even The Monkees has two Nesmith songs on it, and they're both, at least, kind of interesting.
So -- at any rate -- I guess I've realized way after the fact that I was (am) a pretty big Mike Nesmith fan, even though, except for the five records above, I have identically zero of his recorded output in my collection.
I probably ought to do something about that.
