Tim Buckley on the Monkees

[Teasing the Korean]

[alocispepraluger102]

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=vMTEtDBHGY4

timmy was/is a personal fav. thanks

[.:.impossible]

What's the story here? I just watched the Zappa clip too.

[JSngry]

The story is that The Monkees wanted to get creative and/or hip once they got SuperBig, so they started getting stuff in their shows that fell outside Normal Bubblegum Parameters. Apparently they didn't get nearly everything they wanted, but they did get some.

Tork & Dolenz came to the group from non-bubblegum backgrounds, & Dolenz was just one of those guys who liked to be where the action was. Only Jones was predisposed to Teenybopperdom, and not surprisingly, he became the heartthrob.

Stuff like this & the Zappa clip were usually inserted as prologues or epilogues to regular episodes, where they could easily be edited out for syndication purposes.

One that I remember (I watched the show back in the day for the humor...hated the music then) was of Nesmith (iirc) sitting with some African-American piano player who was playing (again, iirc), some kind of soul-jazz piano, w/Nesmith shaking a shaker. I've often wondered since if it was Les McCann, but can't find any mention of it anywhere, not that I've looked all that hard.

The amazing thing is that the show was only on for two seasons, from which they went from fad to phenoms to has-beens. It seemed longer than that, and between this type of stuff and Head (if you haven't seen it, you owe it to yourself to do so), there was this little tiny window that allowed the asking of the question "If Teenybopper Bubblegum is getting all freaky and hip and psychedelic, how much longer can the rest of America resist?"

Quite a damn long while, as it turned out. But in real time, one certainly had to wonder...

[Chuck Nessa]

I'm sure it had more to do with managers and production companies.

[JSngry]

I'm sure it had more to do with managers and production companies.

In that world, what doesn't to some extent?

As the years have passed, though, it has been pretty well documented that The Monkees (Nesmith & Tork, anyway) were pretty much willing to sabotage their prefab success in order to get their "messages" out. Hardly a new story, and one can say what one wants about the merits of those "messages", but I gotta hand it to 'em. The TV show got weirder and weirder before it got cancelled, Head is one of the strangest movies ever made, especially one made featuring then-hot Teen Idols supposedly trying to cash in, and the opening & closing segments got more and more anti-Monkee Image.

Predicatbly enough, the whole thing crashed and burned pretty quickly as the money people went elsewhere (Don Kirschner allegedly put together The Archies thing at least in aprt to avoid having to face another round of demands for "artistic freedom"), and also predictably enough, pretty soon "The Monkees" were down to Dolenz & Jones & Who Cares?. The whole thing had sort of a flawed, suicidal integrity to it, the way they allowed themselves to be made into one thing, and then willfully (and for quite a while, irrevocably) got themselves out of it at their own expense.

If you're into Pop Culture (especially in a "compare then to now" type way), it makes for a pretty interesting story.

[Alexander]

I remember once reading that Mike Nesmith became EXTREMELY irate when he learned that the music recorded for the first few episodes of the show was to be released as individual singles as though by an actual band, rather as a part of a soundtrack album for a TV show (which he was under the impression was going to happen).

Certainly not the best of anything, but from what I've read and heard, they had a good deal of integrity...

Edited April 12, 2011 by Alexander

[Teasing the Korean]

The amazing thing is that the show was only on for two seasons, from which they went from fad to phenoms to has-beens.

They really accomplished a lot in two years, didn't they? I mean, just doing two seasons of TV shows, and TV seasons were much longer back then, is a lot of work. And on top of that, they released FIVE albums in that time span, one of which was all them; had 6 hit singles (more if you count B-sides); did a concert tour; and recorded tons of stuff that didn't make it the LPs (they've shown up as bonus tracks and on comps). Granted, most of it was done by studio musicians, but where did they find the time to learn the tunes and go into the studio to sing all those songs?

Is the clip you're thinking about the clip of Davy Jones with Charlie Smalls, who went on to write The Wiz?

[JSngry]

Could be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO4eP_7k-mM

Edited April 12, 2011 by JSngry

[JSngry]

The B-Side of "Valeri"

I swear to god, hitting there was a time when trippy shit seemed happy, healthy, and actually normal.

That was a fun time.

[clifford_thornton]

I like those Nesmith solo records on RCA, actually.

[Joe]

I like those Nesmith solo records on RCA, actually.

Great stuff, with some superb steel pedal playing from Red Rhodes really enlivening the material. (Nesmith can pen a tune, but his lyrics can tend toward the long-winded.)

[Teasing the Korean]

(Nesmith can pen a tune, but his lyrics can tend toward the long-winded.)

Wow, his I think his lyrics are his strong suit.

It's amazing that Gram Parsons gets all this credit for beginning country rock, yet teeny boppers who bought those Monkees records got at least two tracks of proto-country rock on each album, courtesy of Mike.

[Joe]

(Nesmith can pen a tune, but his lyrics can tend toward the long-winded.)

Wow, his I think his lyrics are his strong suit.

It's amazing that Gram Parsons gets all this credit for beginning country rock, yet teeny boppers who bought those Monkees records got at least two tracks of proto-country rock on each album, courtesy of Mike.

Oh, don't get me wrong; I quite like how "literate" Nes often is. But I do feel that sometimes the sentiments (and sentience) overwhelms the grace of those melodies.

Re: the country-rock question... Isn't that the big joke in the Nes - Zappa clip? "As soon as I quit The Monkees, I'm going to join The Byrds."

[.:.impossible]

That part was funny.

[felser]

I remember once reading that Mike Nesmith became EXTREMELY irate when he learned that the music recorded for the first few episodes of the show was to be released as individual singles as though by an actual band, rather as a part of a soundtrack album for a TV show (which he was under the impression was going to happen).

Certainly not the best of anything, but from what I've read and heard, they had a good deal of integrity...

There is a made for (cable) TV movie about the Monkees that is actually very interesting, as it focuses primarily on their quest for artistic freedom in the confines of their commercial world. Used DVD can be had dirt cheap on Amazon Marketplace. Remember that they took Hendrix on tour as their opening act at one point! Their music from "Last Train to Clarksville" to 'Head' has actually held up remarkably well. I still pull it out and listen to it.

http://allmovie.com/dvd/daydream-believers-the-monkees-story-22014

Edited April 12, 2011 by felser

[Dan Gould]

Being too young to have watched it in prime time, I only saw the TV show in syndication in the early 70s, with no knowledge of the fights between the band and their overseers. Later I heard or read about how they chafed at it .... but while its somewhat interesting to see these clips, in the end it just doesn't mean anything to me.

I guess in this case you really had to have been there.

[AllenLowe]

just to thrown in an irrelevant note, I believe that Nesmith's mother invented White Out.

Also, as I recall, Nesmith was one of the first to do videos for song releases (though I always thought his own music was mediocre). The real champs in this were, I believe, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, if I remember correctly, who wrote a lot of those very good songs.

[Joe]

just to thrown in an irrelevant note, I believe that Nesmith's mother invented White Out.

Also, as I recall, Nesmith was one of the first to do videos for song releases (though I always thought his own music was mediocre). The real champs in this were, I believe, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, if I remember correctly, who wrote a lot of those very good songs.

Yep, Nesmith's mom invented Liquid Paper, and right here in Dallas TX.

Boyce and Hart were responsible for a good many of the Monkees' hits, but they also benefited from material supplied by Goffin and King, Harry Nilsson, Neil Diamond, David Gates, Mann and Weill, and others.

If only music video as a form had retained the charm of the Nesmith clips that are collected on ELEPHANT PARTS...

[Alexander]

Yep. They had some of the top songwriters and studio musicians in the biz making some great sounding records. It's only the hang up over "authenticity" that turned listeners against them for such a long time. And, as I noted above, the Monkees themselves had no pretensions to authenticity. They were actors hired to PLAY a band on a TV show. It wasn't until they were marketed as a band, and subsequently forced to play as a band, that they actually BECAME one. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that much of the music they wrote, played, and produced themselves was on par with the material produced for them...

[Jazzmoose]

Being too young to have watched it in prime time...

You know, I remember watching them, but I don't remember them being in prime time. It was in Federal Way, WA, where I only lived in '67 and early '68, so it had to be first run, but it seems like they were on awfully early. I suppose it just seemed that way in the summer.

[JSngry]

Prime Time started 30 minutes earlier back then, remember?

[Chuck Nessa]

I started an hour earlier back then.

[Jazzmoose]

Prime Time started 30 minutes earlier back then, remember?

I was thinking that might be it, but just didn't want to trust my memory!

[AllenLowe]

I'm with Chuck on this one -