Monkee Music: Instant Replay
A revised and improved version of this essay appears in my book Monkee Music, available as paperback, hardback, PDF, Kindle (US), Kindle (UK) and ePub (all DRM-free).
And here’s where I start being harsher about these albums. Head was the last truly great album the Monkees released, and after that album and film flopped so badly, the rest of the Monkees’ career was a panic, with the record label alternating between desperate attempts to regain the band’s commercial success and utter apathy about a ‘past it’ band. Meanwhile, the Monkees themselves were getting sick of being in the band, and looking to get out.
The first to leave had been Tork, who had left after the recording of the 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee TV special, and as a result plans for the band’s next album to be a double, with one side for each band member, were discarded. Instead, this hodge-podge was released, a mixture of More Of The Monkees era outtakes (and remakes of those), a couple of experiments by Dolenz and Jones, and two decent-but-not-great tracks by Nesmith, who was clearly saving his best work for the solo career that would start within a year.
It’s surprisingly listenable, but could have been reduced to an EP without anyone even noticing. It’s a fundamentally lazy album, and it’s clear that everyone here is doing this, not because they ‘have something to say’, or even to entertain, but because they’ve got a contract that says they must release two albums of pop-music-like product a year.
Through the Looking Glass
Writers: Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart and Red Baldwin
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Producer: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
Other Monkees present: None
This plinky, McCartneyesque song about a girl who remains emotionally distant was first recorded during the More Of The Monkees sessions, but passed over (that version is on the More Of The Monkees deluxe edition, and is driven by acoustic guitar rather than piano, and has less orchestration). It was then rerecorded for The Birds, The Bees And The Monkees, and left off that album, but that recording was chosen to open this one.
It’s not a bad song, as such, just thoroughly nondescript. Boyce and Hart at their best were capable of producing garage-rock classics like She or Stepping Stone, and were also capable of pop like Last Train To Clarksville. Those songs pop and spark with life, but this just sits there and says “Are we done yet?”.
Don’t Listen to Linda
Writers: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Producer: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
Other Monkees present: None
Oh dear. Another song with the same history as above – recorded for More Of The Monkees, left off, re-recorded for The Birds, The Bees And The Monkees and left off again – this actually feels like a conscious piece of sabotage.
The original recording (available as a bonus track on the More Of The Monkees deluxe edition) is a pleasant piece of chirpy pop, pitched somewhere between the country-pop of the Beatles’ Help! album and the music-hall revivalism of Herman’s Hermits, though somewhat closer to the latter.
Here, though, it’s slowed down and over-orchestrated, and Jones actually attempts to emote (always a mistake). Slowed down, and sung like they actually mean something, lines like “You’ll end up contender for the loser of the year” just sound abysmal.
I Won’t Be the Same Without Her
Writers: Gerry Goffin and Carole King
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith
Producer: Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: Peter Tork (guitar)
A truly unusual song for the Monkees, this was actually a left-over from the The Monkees sessions (and a mono version of the track is available on the The Monkees deluxe edition), recorded at the same session as Sweet Young Thing. This track seems to have been modelled on (and possibly intended for) Phil Spector, specifically the Righteous Brothers (whose lead vocalist, Bill Medley, sounded a little like Nesmith), though the stomping chorus is more Ronettes.
Either way, though, this track is very Spectoresque, from its Wrecking Crew backing track (with the Dano bass here used not as Nesmith usually did, to double a bass part, but rather to double a guitar line in a very Brian Wilson touch) to the female backing vocals buried in the mix. (Not that it was all Spector’s influence – the drum pattern here is one that recurred in You Just May Be The One).
But then adding Nesmith’s distinctive vocals on top turns this into a country-soul song of a type that would not become normal for several years. By the time it was released, this song didn’t sound hugely out of the ordinary (though it was better than almost anything else on the album by a long way), but at the time it was recorded it would have been hugely avant-garde. Of all the leftover tracks on here, this is the only one that cried out for a release.
Just a Game
Writers: Micky Dolenz
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Producer: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: None
And so, with the fourth song on the album we finally get to something that isn’t a reject from a previous album. This song had been demoed instrumentally during the Headquarters sessions (and that demo was released on the Headquarters Sessions box set), but at that time Dolenz hadn’t yet written the lyrics.
Only the second song Dolenz wrote for the band, this is stylistically different from anything else the band did, even Dolenz’s other songs. It seems, in fact, to be styled after French chanson, with flurries of conversationally-sung words gesturing at a melody, rather than singing every note precisely on the beat, and with Dolenz’s feather-light vocal belying the lyric, which is painfully paranoid and insecure. The arrangement’s lovely, as well, being mostly harpsichord and a few strings, but with some jazz clarinet noodling on the instrumental fade.
It’s not hard at all to imagine someone like Scott Walker performing this on one of his early albums, and while it’s only one minute and forty-nine seconds long, it has more invention in it than half the rest of the album put together. Tork has often said that in his mind the great tragedy of the Monkees is that Dolenz never fulfilled his creative potential, and on the evidence of the handful of songs he submitted to the band, it’s definitely true. A lovely little track.
Me Without You
Writers: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Producer: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
Other Monkees present: None
Oh look, this Boyce and Hart song was only rejected from one previous album (The Birds, The Bees And The Monkees, the box set version of which contains some very slightly different mixes of this). And it’s not actually terrible, as such, it just sounds like the theme tune to a bad sitcom. There’s also a mix, included as a bonus track, with some hideously inappropriate fuzz guitar and lazy ‘bop shoo-wop’ backing vocals.
Don’t Wait for Me
Writers: Michael Nesmith
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith
Producer: Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: None
This is a generic Nesmith country song in the same way the previous track was a generic Boyce and Hart song for Jones. Admittedly that makes it one of the better songs of the album so far, but still the ultimate feeling one gets from this track, as with much of the album, is a sense of “Will this do?”
It’s pleasant enough – I’d go so far as to call it good, in fact – and a definite highlight of side one. But it’s hard to imagine that this mattered to Nesmith, in a way even a potboiler like You Told Me feels like it matters.
You and I
Writers: David Jones and Bill Chadwick
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Producer: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: None
Now this is more like it!
Not to be confused with the song of the same name on Justus, this is far and away the best Monkees track for which Jones ever took responsibility, and one of the highlights of the album.
This is utterly, absolutely unlike anything else Jones ever did. The structure of the song is actually closer to his ‘Broadway rock’ than it might appear, with its drops into 3/4 time to emphasise the end of verses, but it’s utterly transformed in the production.
Neil Young takes lead guitar here, and the track actually sounds far more like Young’s own work with Crazy Horse than anything else – but while Young’s guitar style is, of course, one of the most distinctive in rock music, this is actually a much harder rock track than anything Young had attempted himself at this point. In fact, given that Young’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere wouldn’t start recording til six months after this track, and given the incredible similarity in sound, it’s not unreasonable to say that this track is where the loud, grungy Neil Young style starts.
But what really makes this track is the lyric. Originally by Chadwick, but rewritten by Jones, it’s an attempt to look back calmly and understandingly at the way the Monkees’ career had rapidly gone downhill. It starts resignedly (“You and I have seen what time does, haven’t we?”, probably the best opening line of any of Jones’ songs) but soon becomes very bitter (“In a year or maybe two, we’ll be gone and someone new will take our place/There’ll be another song, another voice, another pretty face…”)
For once Jones is singing about something that matters to him, personally. He’s clearly utterly furious about what he perceives as his mistreatment by the record label and TV producers, and the result is Davy Jones inventing grunge in mid 1968. Utterly astonishing.
While I Cry
Writers: Michael Nesmith
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith
Producer: Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: None
A leftover from The Birds, The Bees And The Monkees, this is one of Nesmith’s better ballads from this period, and has some nice backing vocals from Nilsson.
The problem is that at this point Nesmith’s dragged his own baseline up so high that a merely very good song like this leaves little to discuss. We expect miracles from him, so when all we get is a nice country song, there’s a vague feeling of disappointment. It’s still one of the best things on the album, but it’s just average for Nesmith.
Tear Drop City
Writers: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Producer: Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart
Other Monkees present: None
Dug out of the vaults and sped up, this recording dated back to October 1966 (the recording can be heard at its original speed on the More Of The Monkees deluxe edition, but was hugely improved by being sped up), and was essentially a reworking of Last Train To Clarksville , being based like that track on a train rhythm and three seventh chords.
This would have been rather racy had it been released at the time, with its mild drug reference (a sound of inhalation right before the line “I was high on top but I didn’t know it”), but while it’s pleasant and catchy enough, it’s a filler track that should have been used for a romp scene in the TV show. As it is, though, it was released as the album’s single, and only reached number 56 in the US chart.
The Girl I Left Behind Me
Writers: Carole Bayer and Neil Sedaka
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Producer: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: None
This Sager/Sedaka schlock had been tried three times in total, first during the More Of The Monkees sessions, then for The Birds, The Bees And The Monkees (that version can be heard on the The Birds… deluxe version and on the Music Box box set) and finally here.
Frankly it didn’t deserve even one go. It’s not that it’s bad, as such, although it is. It’s just that like much of the rest of this album, this song is just there.
A Man Without a Dream
Writers: Gerry Goffin and Carole King
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Producer: Bones Howe
Other Monkees present: None
This track was produced by the legendary Bones Howe, who amongst other accomplishments was just about to produce the music for Elvis’ comeback special. As a result, it feels more alive that most of the album, and Howe’s pop-soul arrangements suit Jones very well.
There are hints in various parts of this album and the outtakes around it that the Monkees were considering going in a direction similar to, say, Dusty In Memphis, with slick, horn-driven soul-lite arrangements of pop songs. If you put together this with, say, Rose Marie, I Won’t Be The Same Without Her,Changes, Little Red Rider and a couple of others you could have had a truly interesting album in that style. But as it is, Instant Replay seems the work of people who aren’t sure what they want to be doing. This track, at least, is the work of people working towards a clear goal, and it shows.
Shorty Blackwell
Writers: Micky Dolenz
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz, Coco Dolenz
Producer: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: None
But the album ends on Dolenz’s masterpiece, an attempt to write something in the style of A Day In The Life, about Dolenz’s cat.
Well, ostensibly about his cat, anyway. How many cats are involved in the record-making process (“Everybody’s talking faster, “Hurry up, get me a master,””), are unhappy, spend a lot of money on cars, “speak very crude”, own a house on top of a hill, and could be said to have “finally gotten everything you wanted/and you’re taunted by the power/that you really don’t want anymore,” ? It just might be possible that this is about someone else.
Whoever the mystery subject of the song might be, this is a psychedelic masterpiece. We start with a huge bombastic fanfare, before cutting to Dolenz singing, off tempo and a capella in a silly voice, before the first verse proper starts, with McCartney-esque tack piano and Coco Dolenz singing lead (the first time on a Monkees record that someone other than the four band members has sung a lead vocal).
We then get the addition of horns, bass and Micky Dolenz doubling his sister for a second verse. So far, this sounds like a typical sunshine pop record of the kind that the Association or the Cowsills might make.
But then we get two verses with doomy orchestration, all trombones and tympani, both ending with the line “he’s going mad”. The song has started to get very strange. And it continues to as we have a long section with the Dolenzes singing “he’s going mad” over and over more frantically as a trumpet squeals the opening vocal phrases, slowly turning into a full horn section fanfare.
We have one more verse with the same musical material as before, before going into a completely different section (“Black and shiny…”) based on a tick-tock musical phrase, which then goes into a performance of Sobre las Olas, with the Dolenzes eventually joining in and singing in sarcastic, high-pitched voices. We then get another verse with an orchestra overwhelming everything else, before going into a jazz version of the Sobre las Olas musical material in 5/4 time to fade.
It’s quite, quite bizarre, one of the most ambitious pieces the Monkees ever did, and comparable with great pop-psych tracks like My World Fell Down or Heroes And Villains. This just shows what this band were capable of when they bothered.
A demo of this can be heard on the The Birds, The Bees And The Monkees box set.
Oh, and on a totally different subject…
“The house, originally owned by Doris Day, sat high on top of a hill in Beverly Hills and cost Michael $200,000. Then he proceeded to spend an additional $50,000 in remodelling the house that he named “Arnold”.”
Total Control: The Monkees Michael Nesmith Story By Randi L. Massingill
Bonus Tracks
Someday Man
Writers: Roger Nichols and Paul Williams
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Producer: Bones Howe
Other Monkees present: None
Another Bones Howe production, this song shows how desperate for a hit the record label were – or how little concern they had for the Monkees at this point – as it’s the first time they were ever allowed to record and release a song from a publisher other than Colgems.
And it’s an absolute masterpiece. Easily the best Monkees single to feature a Jones lead, this song should have been as big a hit as Daydream Believer, which it resembles slightly in the chorus. It’s a dizzying kaleidoscope of different musical styles, but Howe’s arrangement (which writer Paul Williams duplicated almost exactly when he used this as the title track to his 1970 solo album) guides us through the shifts in tempo and style so smoothly they’re almost unnoticeable. And Jones steps up to the challenge, delivering one of his best vocals.
In a just world, this should have rekindled the Monkees’ career. Certainly it’s the first thing since Daydream Believer to have felt like ‘the next Monkees single’ (D.W. Washburn and Porpoise Song are great but don’t feel like singles, and Tear Drop City feels like ‘the Monkees single from two years ago’). Unfortunately, this isn’t a just world, and this track only hit number 81 in the US charts.
Smile
Writer: David Jones
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Producer: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: None
One of Jones’ best ballads, this sounds like nothing so much as early McCartney, with its brief descending chromatic guitar passages and two-part harmonies. It could very easily have been an album track on Beatles For Sale or something McCartney gave to Peter & Gordon. It also ends rather cleverly, building to a big climax that never actually happens. The only problem is some very poor multi-tracking on Jones’ lead vocal.
St. Matthew
Writer: Michael Nesmith
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith
Producer: Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: None
And finally, in an unreleased bonus track, we get Nesmith on top form. This great sludgy, violin-led production sounds very like his early Sweet Young Thing. Nesmith’s yearning melody (with his vocal put through a Leslie speaker in the mix heard here, though not in the early mix available on Missing Links Vol 2) contrasts wonderfully with the driving rock riffs underneath. This track sounds like nothing more than a country Phil Spector, with no individual element audible on its own; there are guitars, organs, violins, drums, but they all just merge into one great noise.
As for the lyric, it’s one of Nesmith’s most inscrutable. Fortunately, he’s tried to explain it (that explanation can be found in the Sandoval book and in the liner notes for Music Box). Unfortunately, that explanation seems to bear no resemblance to the lyric itself. Apparently, this song was intended as a commentary on what Nesmith saw as Dylan’s subconscious incorporation of the Biblical figure of the Holy Ghost into his lyrics.
But it doesn’t really matter what it’s about, this is one of the great Monkees-era Nesmith tracks, and it’s a real shame this got left on the shelf while merely decent tracks made the album.
Monkee Music: Head
A revised and improved version of this essay appears in my book Monkee Music, available as paperback, hardback, PDF, Kindle (US), Kindle (UK) and ePub (all DRM-free).
And so we come to the last album the four Monkees would all appear on until the mid-1990s.
Head is a wonderful trivia-quiz question supplier – “What album, compiled by Jack Nicholson, features Neil Young, Frank Zappa and Bela Lugosi?” as an example – and by far the strangest album the Monkees ever released.
In late 1968 the Monkees released their film Head. Written by Jack Nicholson and Bob Rafelson from ideas that the group had supplied, the film is a collage of loosely-interrelated sketches and what would now be called music videos, a psychedelic montage which tries to link the Monkees’ status as plastic pop idols with the Vietnam War, with both being regarded as traps of the mind, to be escaped from by attaining mental or spiritual freedom. It features, among many other scenes, Peter Tork punching a female impersonator, the Monkees as dandruff in Victor Mature’s hair, and Davy Jones beating Sonny Liston in a boxing match.
The film is bizarre, and utterly unlike anything you might imagine from the phrase ‘a Monkees film’, but is in its own way a masterpiece. Probably the closest comparisons are Frank Zappa’s 200 Motels and Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life, both of which came out much later, and neither of which were aimed at an audience remotely comparable to the Monkees’. On top of this, the film had an…interesting…advertising campaign, based around the ideas of Marshall McLuhan, which didn’t bother with giving information like the fact that Head was a film, or that the Monkees were in it, choosing instead just to show the head of advertising executive John Brockman with the cryptic slogan “What is Head? Only John Brockman’s shrink knows for sure.”
The film was, understandably, a gigantic flop, and inspires mixed emotions in the band members these days. Nesmith, when he will speak about the Monkees at all, regards the film as a masterpiece. Tork is proud of it as a technical achievement, but dislikes what he sees as its overly cynical attitude. Jones, on the other hand, loathes it, blaming the film for the destruction of the band’s career.
That may or may not be the case, though from singles sales the band were probably doomed as soon as the TV show went off-air, but what Head did do, very successfully, was show future generations of fans that there was more to the band than the TV show and hits, when shown on late-night TV. Tork, Jones and Dolenz acknowledged this in their most recent (as of this writing) reunion tour, by opening the second half of their show with all the songs from Head.
It’s not the place of this book to go into the film in any more detail, but anyone with any interest in the band should read the slowly-updating but exhaustive analysis of the film and its making by comedy site Some Of The Corpses Are Amusing [FOOTNOTE: http://head.sotcaa.net/ ].
The soundtrack album is, in its own way, as interesting as the film. Edited together by Nicholson, the album was inspired by The Mothers Of Invention’s We’re Only In It For The Money, and mixes the seven songs from the film with collages of dialogue (both from the film and from bits of other films excerpted in the film) and orchestral soundtrack music. All of this was taken out of context, so for example the line “Boys, don’t never, but never, make fun of no cripples” from one scene in the film is followed by “Somebody come up and giggle at ya, that’s a violation of your civil rights” from a vox-pop section, while the question “Are you telling me you don’t see the connection between government and laughing at people?” is followed by Tork’s “Well, let me tell you one thing, son, nobody ever lends money to a man with a sense of humour.”
The result preserves many of the best lines from the film while recontextualising them, and the repetition of different snippets of songs and dialogue gives the album a through-line that’s missing from many of the Monkees’ other records. While this is the Monkees’ most ‘experimental’ album, it’s also, without a doubt, the one that has the greatest feeling of unity to it, thanks largely to Nicholson’s editing.
It’s also, after the largely solo The Birds, The Bees and The Monkees, slightly more of a group effort. While only Ditty Diego (and the live version of Circle Sky used in the film but not the album) features all four Monkees, the majority of the tracks feature two of them. And after Tork’s near-absence from the previous album, and Dolenz’s general lower profile, the two dominate this album at the expense of Nesmith and Jones, who only get one song each. The level of group control over the creative process in this album can be seen by the fact that it’s the only 60s Monkees album to feature no Boyce & Hart tracks.
After this, the Monkees only did one more project as a quartet, the deeply strange and uncommercial TV special 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee, the music from which has never been released on CD, before Tork left, frustrated that the four were no longer working together in the studio as a unit.
While the two albums that followed have their moments, this is really where the Monkees meet their end.
All the actual songs on the album are credited as produced by The Monkees, with the exception of Porpoise Song which is produced by Gerry Goffin.
While a 3-CD deluxe edition of this album does exist, it has relatively little in the way of new music, featuring mostly alternate mixes, some live tracks from the concert that was filmed for the Circle Sky scene, and lots of promotional material (radio adverts, interviews with Jones and so on) that doesn’t really come under this book’s remit.
Opening Ceremony
This track starts as a collage of lines from various parts of the film, over sections of music from Porpoise Song , As We Go Along, Daddy’s Song and Circle Sky, while two people say, as dialogue, “Head” ,“Soon”, over and over.
It then cuts to a speech from the opening scene from the film (the dedication ceremony for a bridge), overlaid by additional sound effects.
Porpoise Song (Theme from Head)
Writers: Gerry Goffin and Carole King
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones
Producer: Gerry Goffin
Other Monkees present: None
This is Goffin and King being all cod-psychedelic, but it works here. While the lyrics are gibberish (where they’re not in-jokes like “riding the backs of giraffes for laughs”, a reference to Dolenz’s child stardom on Circus Boy), the music is perfectly put together.
The verses are, roughly, inspired by A Day In The Life, in their stately rhythm, especially with the piano chords early on, while the bridge and chorus are both tips of the hat to A Whiter Shade Of Pale , being as they are progressions based on a single chord each but with a scalar descending bassline. This is most notable in the organ part, which sounds near-identical to the Procol Harum song.
Both Dolenz (on the verses and bridges) and Jones (on the choruses) turn in stellar performances, but what really makes this track is the extraordinary arrangement by Jack Nitzsche, one of the great unsung heroes of American music in the 60s. He manages to combine a string arrangement perfectly in the style of George Martin (using only double basses and ‘cellos) with the Procol Harum organ, but then adds reverbed, clanking bells to remind the listener of the sea.
This is especially effective on the extended mix used for the single, which features an extended instrumental coda for strings, bells, organ and cymbals that is one of Nitzsche’s most beautiful pieces of work.
The whole thing seems to be a response to the Beatles’ psychedelic work, saying in effect “Okay, we can top that” – an effect which is added to on the album by the police sirens at the beginning, giving a reminder of I Am The Walrus. Unfortunately, the Monkees weren’t able to take the teen audience with them the way the Beatles had, and this single only reached number 62 in the US charts.
Ditty Diego-War Chant
Writers: Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson
Lead Vocalist: All four Monkees
The last pre-reunion track to be released featuring all four Monkees, this is a parody by Nicholson and Rafelson of the Monkees Theme, with verses alternating between skewering the band themselves (“Hey hey we are the Monkees, you know we love to please/A manufactured image, with no philosophies” “Hey hey we are the Monkees, we’ve said it all before/The money’s in, we’re made of tin, we’re here to give you more”) and describing the film’s plot and structure (“We know it doesn’t matter, ’cause what you came to see/Is what we’d love to give you, and give it one, two, three/But it may come three, two, one, two, or jump from nine to five/And when you see the end in sight the beginning may arrive”).
This chant, spoken at times by the full band and at times by individual members, is spoken over a barrel-house piano part reminiscent of silent-film comedy accompaniments, and the whole thing is then sped up and slowed down to sound like the tape is stretched and distorted, before there’s a sharp cut to the band exhorting a concert audience to “Give me a W! Give me an A! Give me an R! What’s that spell?!”
This track is so breathtakingly cynical about the Monkees themselves, it may be the bravest thing ever recorded by a major band. It’s not, however, worth listening to the twenty-two minute session excerpt on the deluxe box set more than once.
One of the oddest moments in Tork, Dolenz and Jones’ reunion tour of the late 80s was that they performed an abbreviated version of this in a hip-hop style.
Circle Sky
Writer: Michael Nesmith
Lead Vocalist: Michael Nesmith
Other Monkees present: None (studio version)/Micky Dolenz (drums), Peter Tork (bass), Davy Jones (maracas and organ) (live version)
The closest thing to a hard rock track the band ever recorded, this is for the most part just hammering away at a single chord in a manner inspired by Bo Diddley (apart from the instrumental breaks, which are just descending bar chords from B to D, and the middle eight, which is the minor-chord equivalent of the breaks). Lyrically, it’s a stream-of-consciousness description of Nesmith’s impressions of a Monkees tour (“Colours, sounds/all around”), although the themes of circularity and repetition (“it looks like we’ve made it once again”) work well with the themes of the rest of the album and of the film.
This song was very specifically written to work well for the band in a live setting, and the performance in the film is taken from a real live show – possibly the first time a rock band had used actual live footage rather than mimed performances in a film like this. However, strangely, the version on the album is a nearly-identical studio take, performed by Nesmith with studio musicians.
This upset the rest of the band, especially Tork, who blamed Nesmith, but Nesmith himself now says that he prefers the live version and had nothing to do with its replacement on the album. Either way, the live version is now included on all CD reissues along with the studio performance.
The band later rerecorded this for the Justus album, making the only song to have been released by the band as part of two proper albums. That version will be dealt with in that chapter.
Supplicio
Some Moog wind effects, a snatch of orchestral music, a cymbal with backwards reverb, and a voice saying “Quiet, isn’t it, George Michael Dolenz? I said…” (the latter taken from a scene in the film where Dolenz becomes delirious in a desert).
Can You Dig It?
Writer: Peter Tork
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: Peter Tork (guitar and vocals)
This is possibly the most 1968 piece of music ever, with pseudo-Indian sitarish acoustic guitar, bongos, and a chorus that goes “Can you dig it?/Do you know?/Would you care to let it show?”, as well as a long instrumental freak-out at the end.
However, it’s also the Monkees track that changed most from its original conception. Before becoming the minor pop-psych masterpiece it started out as a ragtime-ish acoustic guitar piece that sounded equal parts Blind Blake and Bert Jansch (this version can be heard on the Headquarters Sessions box set), with a bridge that didn’t make it to the final version.
To my ears, that version is even better than the finished record, but the track as heard on the album, with its lyrics about the Tao and ‘exotic’ textures, is still one of the best things Tork ever brought to the group.
The song was originally intended to have Tork singing lead, but Dolenz recorded a new (and extremely good) lead vocal at the request of Rafelson, without any objection from Tork. However, the version with Tork singing lead is available as a bonus track on all CD releases, and Tork now sings this song live.
Gravy
Side one finishes with Jones saying “And I’d like a glass of cold gravy with a hair in it please”.
Superstitious
A snippet from the 1934 Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi film The Black Cat, briefly seen on a TV in the film. This just consists of David Manners saying “Sounds like a lot of supernatural baloney to me”, with Lugosi replying “Supernatural, perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not.”
As We Go Along
Writers: Gerry Goffin and Carole King
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz
Other Monkees present: None
This gorgeous little ballad is notable for having possibly the most unnecessarily-stellar group of session guitarists ever. The wall of acoustic guitars in Jack Nitzsche’s arrangement, mostly just strumming chords, includes Neil Young, Danny Kortchmar, Ry Cooder and Carole King.
The only song in the film to feature only one Monkee, this is a delicate, yearning ballad, which Dolenz sings perfectly, despite its difficulty. The song is one of the most metrically difficult things the Monkees ever did – starting out with an extended intro in 5/4, once Dolenz’s vocal comes in we have a verse of three bars of 5/4 (in one of which the bass accentuates the wrong beat, adding to the metrical confusion – the bass seems to be implying that these fifteen beats should be broken up 6,4, 5 rather than the 5,5,5 everything else implies) one of 6/4, three of 3/4 and one of 6/4. The chorus, though, is in pretty straight sixes.
This is the kind of song with which King would later have a huge amount of solo success, but as the B-side of Porpoise Song this failed even to make the top 100 in the US. A shame, as while the song is very different from the rest of the Head material, it’s a beautiful, gentle track that deserves a wider audience.
Dandruff?
A quick reprise of Lugosi’s line, before brief snippets of three sections of the film – a factory tour in which the band are told “the tragedy of your times, my friends, is that you may get exactly what you want”, a policeman calling them weirdos, and the band being directed to act like dandruff in a commercial.
Daddy’s Song
Writer: Harry Nilsson
Lead Vocalist: Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: Michael Nesmith (guitar)
This Nilsson song was originally recorded during a Nesmith session, with Nesmith singing lead (this version is available as a bonus track on the CDs, and is much better than the released version, with Nesmith’s heavily-processed vocals working wonderfully with the muted trumpet).
The song is one of Nilsson’s more heartfelt, talking about his relationship with his father as a small child, and his sadness and confusion at his father abandoning his family when Nilsson was aged three. Unfortunately, Jones seems to have ignored the lyrical content and treated this as Cuddly Toy part two – understandably, since the songs share a bouncy tempo and 1920s musical style.
There is a longer version of the track, which features both some Nilssonesque additional scat vocals by Nesmith and a much slower rendition of the verse starting “the years have passed and so have I”, where Jones does seem to sing that part sadly – but there, he’s hamming it up to the point of schmaltz.
It’s a great song, but only an adequate performance. If you want a good version of the song, either listen to Nesmith’s subtler vocal or get hold of Nilsson’s own version (on Aerial Ballet).
Poll
A collage of spoken snippets from the film, starting with Frank Zappa’s response to Jones’ performance – “That song was pretty white”, and followed with Nesmith saying “And I’ll tell you something else too, the same goes for Christmas”, from a different section of the film, before various other lines of dialogue, sound effects, bits of the vox-pop sections and snippets of Circle Sky.
Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?
Writers: Peter Tork
Lead Vocalist: Peter Tork
Other Monkees present: Davy Jones (backing vocals)
This song was actually intended to have an even longer title, as Tork introduced it in a rare solo gig in the 1970s as “Long Title, colon, Do I Have To Do This All Over Again, question mark, Or , comma, The Karma Blues”
An enjoyable rocker with some extraordinarily mobile bass playing by Tork, this song’s lyrics (“Do I have to do this all over again?/Didn’t I do it right the first time?”) do seem to sum up some ideas about karma (as does the music’s brief drop into waltz time, like a turning wheel always getting back to the same place) but were written about Tork’s frustration with being in the Monkees.
Another hard-rock song in the same style as Circle Sky, this is obviously from the heart, and Tork is almost screaming with frustration by the end. It also, though, makes a perfect end point for the film, which ends at the same point at which it starts.
Swami–Plus Strings, Etc.
Abraham Sofaer, the actor who played the head Genie in I Dream Of Jeannie recites some warmed-over Timothy Leary (with a bit of Thomas Kuhn thrown in, and a touch of Buddhism) as a Maharishi-esque character, while various other bits of the film are heard under him, before we get a chunk of the Porpoise Song and a sprightly Mozart-esque string instrumental by Ken Thorne from the film soundtrack.
The key part of this – and one of the messages of the film – is “Where there is clarity, there is no choice, and where there is choice there is misery.”
Bonus Tracks:
Happy Birthday
Writers: Mildred and Patty Hill
Lead Vocalist: Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Davy Jones
Other Monkees present: None
Some sepulchral (and very effective) block harmonies over a spooky church organ lead into an off-key rendition of Happy Birthday To You sung to Nesmith in the film.
California, Here It Comes
Writers: Buddy DeSylva, Al Jolson and Joseph Meyer
Lead Vocalist: Peter Tork
Other Monkees present: None
A snippet from the end of the 33 1/3 Revolutions per Monkee special, this track consists of a heartbeat, TV producer Jack Good repeating “the end”, and a busked banjo-and-trombone run-through of the old musical number for a few seconds. The lyric change to ‘it comes’ from ‘I come’ was apparently meant to imply an earthquake that will supposedly destroy California.
This is the only track from 33 1/3 Revolutions per Monkee to have been released on CD in any form, as most of the master tapes for that special are missing (and also it wasn’t very good, musically), but it’s fitting, as this really was ‘the end’ of the Monkees, at least as a four-piece band.
Al Jardine: A Postcard From California
This isn’t a Proper Blog Post as such – I know I now owe people two Batman and two Doctor Who posts for next week. However, Manchester University’s computer science website is down, which means I can’t get any of my (due in on Monday) coursework done. So to try to overcome the horrible panic and tension I’m now feeling, I thought I’d pick up Al Jardine’s solo album, A Postcard From California, released a couple of days ago, and thankfully not (as originally stated in the press release) ‘iTunes exclusive’. I thought I’d ‘liveblog’ my first listen.
A bit of background first. For those who don’t know, Al Jardine is ‘the quiet one’ in the Beach Boys. The only one of the five ‘classic’ members not to be a blood relation, he played rhythm guitar and sang harmony vocals, and was the lead vocalist on Help Me, Rhonda, but not on many of the band’s other US hits (he did however sing lead on the UK hits Breakaway (joint lead with Carl Wilson), Then I Kissed Her, Cottonfields and Lady Lynda, the latter of which he also wrote).
Until now, he was the only member of the band not to have released a solo record – a shame, because while he was never the most talented of songwriters, he has a strong voice (he’s far and away the best singer of the surviving Beach Boys) and has an interesting musical sensibility – he is far more influenced by folk and country than the rest of the band (he was the one who suggested the folk songs Sloop John B and Cottonfields be added to the band’s repertoire). However, he’s a slow worker – this album was started not long after he was sacked from the band (after Carl Wilson’s death in 1998 the Beach Boys broke up, and Mike Love licensed the name to tour along with Bruce Johnston and most of their backing band, but without Jardine), and contains songs which he started working on in the late 1970s.
It’s also not very ‘solo’ – it has a huge range of guests including all the surviving other Beach Boys (and the late Carl Wilson, who recorded parts of one song in sessions in the 1980s), Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Steve Miller, David Crosby, Neil Young, and Alec Baldwin. That Jardine managed to get such a bizarre-but-stellar lineup of guest stars is testament to the fundamental niceness of the man (someone I’ve rarely heard a bad word spoken about).
The songs aren’t exactly ‘solo’ either – there are remakes of three old Beach Boys tracks here, Help Me, Rhonda, California Saga (one of Jardine’s few solo songwriting credits), and Honkin’ Down The Highway (a Brian Wilson song with Jardine lead from the underrated Beach Boys Love You album), along with California Feelin’ (a Brian Wilson/Steve Kalinich song originally recorded by the Beach Boys but never released by them, and eventually released as a Brian Wilson solo track a few years back).
Now I’ve said that (and my wife said she likes this bit, where I’m not playing the music…), my thoughts as I listen for the first time:
A Postcard From California
Melodically, the verse is quite similar to Brian Wilson’s unreleased Christmas Time, and quite pleasant, with acoustic guitars. But the chorus is far less good – the melody is *absolutely* stolen from some big 70s AOR hit. I can’t think of which one, because I keep thinking City Of New Orleans, which is similar but not the one he’s stolen from. (My wife says it’s “The Eagles or some shit like that”, and I agree it’s something *LIKE* them, but not actually them).
A duet with Glen Campbell, who used to be in the Beach Boys for six months and played as a session musician on many of their records, Campbell unfortunately shows his age here – when you think of what a great vocalist he used to be, and realise that he and Jardine are about the same age, it’s shocking, because Jardine here sounds half his age.
The verses are pleasant, but the chorus is Jimmy Buffet hell.
California Feelin’
I’ve never rated this song very much (more because of Steve Kalinich’s not-very-good lyrics than anything else), but of the three versions I’ve heard of the song, this is by far the best, Jardine sounding like he means the song (unlike Carl Wilson) and staying in tune (unlike Brian Wilson). There’s some lounge-singerism (sounds like a Bruce Johnston production) , but this is actually quite nice.
Looking Down The Coast
This is a song that was originally a much-bootlegged late-70s Beach Boys track. I believe it was co-written with Brian Wilson (I don’t have access to the liner notes, having only bought this as MP3s) who sang co-lead on the original version, who used some musical elements from it in his 1988 song Baby Let Your Hair Grow Long.
The production on this one is nowhere near as good as the Beach Boys version – in general this album sounds like it’s about 20 years old, with far too much 80s guitar and reverb – but the song itself, an epic with many different sections, even though only 3:46 long, is the most musically-interesting thing Jardine ever did, much like his and Love’s California Saga from the Holland album, but tightened up and more thought-through.
Jardine’s vocals so far have been uniformly excellent. It’s a shame he didn’t have a really good producer to work with him.
Don’t Fight The Sea
This will be the draw for many people buying this album, as it’s almost certainly the last-ever Beach Boys track. Originally intended for the same late-1970s album as Looking Down The Coast (a concept album about the environment and California, much like this one has turned out to be), Carl Wilson and Bruce Johnston recorded vocals for it in the 1980s, with Brian Wilson and Mike Love adding vocals more recently (Love apparently recorded his bass vocal part on a minidisc in his hotel room while on tour).
This would have been a highlight of the last two Beach Boys albums, but that says more about those albums than about this – this would have fit all too well on those albums, with its horrible 80s production. But still, hearing Brian, Mike, Carl, Al and Bruce all together, however artificially, will make any Beach Boys fan happy.
This song, incidentally, was a co-write with Terry Jacks, which says it all…
Tide Pool Interlude
This is weird – Jardine has taken the piano part from the unreleased 4/4 version of Mike Love’s song Big Sur and turned it into an instrumental track, over which Alec Baldwin is reciting a poem by Steve Kalinich, about California.
Kalinich is very friendly with a lot of my friends, so I won’t say anything *too* bad about him, but if he learned rhyming and scansion he *would* make a great Hallmark card writer…
Campfire Scene
This is just a brief introduction to the new song – Crosby, Stills, Jardine and Young singing the chorus over a banjo backing. Actually gorgeous, but only a few seconds and not really a separate track.
A California Saga
This is a remake of Jardine’s California Saga (On My Way To Sunny Cal-I-Fornia) from the Beach Boys’ 1973 album Holland. Featuring Crosby, Stills and Young, and with a joint lead vocal by Young, this is *REALLY GOOD*. It’s a very close remake of the original (down to flying in a sampled Brian Wilson vocal on the first line, which he sang on the original), but out of the context of that album, where it wasn’t an especially standout track, it’s apparent just what a well-written song this is – if Neil Young had tried to write California Girls, this is what he would have come up with.
Even the last verse now works. Originally, this verse sounded like a past-it band trying and failing to be hip, singing about Country Joe and festivals, but now the track is a gathering of old men singing together, and the lyric is put into the past tense, it just sounds warmly nostalgic.
The best track by far of the album so far.
Help Me, Rhonda
Everyone knows this song, but this version (featuring Steve Miller and members of the Steve Miller Band, plus Flea on bass) is quite a fun version of the track, turning the song into a harmonica-led bar-band blues. However, it does show again how badly Jardine’s contemporaries’ voices have aged – so far Neil Young’s the only one whose vocal has stood up in comparison. Jardine was always the clean-living one of the Beach Boys, but listening to this goes to show just how well his voice has aged.
This sounds like it was fun to play, but I didn’t really need another version of this song to be honest (I could put together a full CD of versions of this I’ve got already).
San Simeon
This is the fsecond ‘new’ song on the album (for a definition of ‘new’ which includes ‘playing the intro to Don’t Worry Baby and having that be the intro to your song). A quite pleasant Latin-flavoured track, which features guest vocalists who (by a process of elimination given the list of people on the album) must be two of the band America, it sounds like a 70s soft pop track, and is easily-forgotten, but pleasant enough.
Drivin’
A duet with Brian Wilson, and again featuring the members of America on backing vocals, this is a swing-time track that sounds like an obvious attempt to write tracks like Little Deuce Coupe, but again with a very 80s-sounding production, but some quite interesting bluesy touches in the arrangement. It could have done without the obvious references to America songs in the lyrics though. And the line about BP thrown in at the end must have been a real last-minute change.
Honkin’ Down The Highway
Featuring Brian Wilson on backing vocals, this is quite close to the original arrangement from The Beach Boys Love You (and almost identical to the way the Beach Boys played it live). I’ve always loved that song, and while this is an inferior remake, it’s still fun. Some nice baritone sax honking from Richie Canata, as well.
And I just heard the ending – the line “way with girls”, my favourite part of the melody, suddenly turned into a vast a capella choir and then the song stopping dead. Not sure if I like it or not, but certainly interesting.
And I Always Will
This is an MOR ballad with a tiny bit of a touch of Gershwin and a bit of Jimmy Webb to it, and a relatively restrained (for this kind of thing) orchestral arrangement.
So that’s finished.
Some googling later, I find that the *verse* to A Postcard From California is, of course, a total rip-off from Rhinestone Cowboy (hence, presumably, Glan Campbell’s appearance), even more than it’s like the Brian Wilson track I mentioned (which is obviously equally ‘influenced’ by the same song, now I think about it). I’m still trying to figure out where he got the melody for the chorus though – it’s not City Of New Orleans, Hotel California or Dance The Night Away (by the Mavericks), but it *is* another song of that type.
So after listening to this once, my overall impression?
It’s actually pretty good.
It’s not great, far from it, but I’d put it as an above-average Beach Boys solo album. Nowhere near as good as Smile or That Lucky Old Sun but infinitely preferable to Imagination or Mike or Carl’s solo albums. None of the new songs are especially interesting – and, as you may have gathered, they’re very far from original – but there’s not a single *bad* song on there, and the overall effect is quite pleasant.
It’s a more cohesive album than you might expect given the long recording time and diverse sources as well. It’s essentially a Californian travelogue, a celebration of the beauty of California’s nature, with secondary themes of worry about the environment and enjoying driving around.
It’s an album I’ll probably play half-a-dozen times over the next month, then occasionally stumble over when a track comes on shuffle when I’m playing MP3s and think “Oh yeah, I liked that!”. Which, given the low expectations one goes into when someone of Jardine’s generation records new music, is quite high praise.
If you like CSNY, or late period Willie Nelson, or Jimmy Webb, then it’s probably worth checking this out. It’s nowhere near that good, but it’s that kind of thing. For Beach Boys fans, imagine California Saga stretched to an entire album.
If you just want to check out a couple of tracks, I recommend California Saga and California Feelin’.
New Spotify (And 8Tracks) Playlist – Best Of The Sixties
This playlist is rather different from my normal playlists. Normally, I try to mix up obscure tracks, new things I’ve only just discovered, and old classics. This time, however, this is (almost) on commission.
Talking by email with Plok earlier today, he said he knew a teenager who wanted to learn more about ‘sixties music’, naming a couple of tracks she liked. He told me a couple of other things about her (she’s bright and cheerful, very innocent, etc) and asked me for suggestions.
So I’ve tried to put together a playlist that covers *ALL* of ‘sixties music’, which is frankly impossible. To make it more difficult, I’ve tried to structure it like a mix tape (it’s 90 minutes to within a minute or so), and I’ve also used 8track.com , a site that allows you to create streaming playlists of MP3s, but no more than two tracks by each artist per playlist, because that (unlike Spotify) should be accessible in Canada. I wanted to *try* to get everything from folk-rock to freakbeat to Brit-Blues to psych to soul in there, but 90 minutes is not a long time… I also wanted to put in tracks that would be interesting pointers to other stuff.
I’ve tried to go for a mix of obvious hits and obscure but interesting, but with the emphasis on the former. The notes below should be taken as a guide for teenagers, rather than for people who already know this music, so apologies if it seems patronising to my normal readers. Spotify playlist here, 8track playlist here.
Side 1
Wouldn’t It Be Nice by The Beach Boys opens what many consider the best album ever, Pet Sounds. While it seems like just a simple pop song, it has layers of instruments and vocals that reward repeated listening.
You’re No Good by The Swinging Blue Jeans is included not just because it’s a great little pop record, but also for historical value. The Beatles didn’t come out of nowhere – they were part of a scene, Merseybeat, that produced dozens of successful bands in the early 60s. The Swinging Blue Jeans were the best of the other Merseybeat bands, so this gives some idea of what the competition was like for the Beatles.
Time Of The Season by The Zombies is actually musically quite similar to You’re No Good, but is from the other end of the sixties. From another contender for ‘best album ever’, Odessey And Oracle (yes, it’s spelled that way), the Zombies had already split up by the time this charted.
The Door Into Summer by The Monkees shows just how fast music was changing in the 60s. A year before this, the Monkees had been a manufactured band for a TV show, but now they were busy inventing country-rock, and not just country-rock, but psychedelic country-rock based on a Robert Heinlein science fiction novel…
Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys is pretty much undoubtedly the best single ever released. You may think you know this one from commercials or whatever, but actually *listen* to it and you’ll be astonished.
Do You Believe In Magic? by The Lovin’ Spoonful is one of the most *fun* tracks of the decade.
Days by The Kinks may be the most beautiful song ever written. Nothing more to say about that.
How Does It Feel To Feel? by The Creation is one of the most influential records of the sixties, even though it was never a hit. Listen to this and you realise that Oasis were nothing more than a tribute act to The Creation, but with slightly less talent. Seriously, this is *every* Oasis record ever, but better, and it’s from 1965.
Summer In The City by The Lovin’ Spoonful is a song pretty much everyone already knows, but is here just in case.
Tin Soldier by The Small Faces is actually very like Summer In The City, structurally, but just listen to the dynamics of this record, the way it moves between sections. And that VOICE. Steve Marriot was a short, white lad from London, but his voice here could blow away any soul or rock singer ever.
Dark End Of The Street by James Carr is the best soul ballad ever, and another incredible voice.
You Don’t Have To Walk In The Rain by The Turtles is the single from Turtle Soup, their attempt at making an album like the Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society – even getting Ray Davies of the Kinks to produce it. It’s a great pop single, and funny with it (“I look at your face/I love you anyway”)
Making Time by The Creation is a more typical 60s garage track than How Does It Feel, but powerful.
Shakin’ All Over by Johnny Kidd And The Pirates is the first great British rock record, from well before the Beatles ever recorded. Just listen to that great guitar riff, and the drum break….
While Seven And Seven Is by Love invented punk and heavy metal while most bands hadn’t even got round to the whole ‘flowers in your hair’ bit yet – this is, staggeringly, from 1966.
Side 2
Even more amazingly, Alone Again Or by Love is the same band a year later.Hard to believe, isn’t it? From another of the general contenders for ‘best album ever’ – Forever Changes.
This Will Be Our Year by The Zombies is another track from Odessey And Oracle, and one of the best songs about being happy in love ever. Shame Rod Argent and Hugh Grundy can’t keep in time with each other…
Some Mother’s Son by The Kinks is one of the saddest anti-war songs ever. World War I was being reassessed in the 60s, and that time period had a huge influence on British music of the period, and you really need at least one song about it on a compilation like this.
Be My Baby by The Ronnettes bom, bom-bom BOM, bom, bom-bom BOM
Lies by The Knickerbockers isn’t by the Beatles. Honestly. It’s a group of jobbing musicians from New Jersey. HONESTLY…
Look Out, There’s A Monster Coming by The Bonzo Dog Band is hilarious.
We’ve Got To Get Out Of This Place by The Animals is the greatest of all the British R&B singles, mostly for Eric Burdon’s astonishing vocal.
I’ve Been Good To You by The Miracles was one of John Lennon’s favourites – enough so that he stole a chunk of it for Sexy Sadie from the White Album.
Keep On Running by The Spencer Davis Group is included partly because it’s one of the best singles of the 60s, and partly because Jonathan Calder would look sternly at me if I didn’t include something with a Steve Winwood vocal.
The Old Laughing Lady by Neil Young from his first album is a pointer to a style that no-one really followed up on, not even Young himself, a sort of progressive-psych-folk-country but with orchestral arrangements. The nearest things I can think of to this track later on are Dennis Wilson or some of Gram Parsons’ music…
Sure ‘Nuff ‘n’ Yes I Do by Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band is about as commercial as the good Captain ever got, and has some great slide guitar by Ry Cooder.
Hold On, I’m Coming by Sam & Dave is one of the great soul tracks.
Walk Away Renee by The Four Tops is here to kill two birds with one stone – the original of this, by The Left Banke, is a classic of baroque pop, but the Four Tops manage to make it fit their Motown style perfectly.
I Say A Little Prayer by Aretha Franklin is an obvious choice, but sometimes obvious choices are obvious for a reason.
And The Intro And The Outro by The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band sees us out…
New Spotify Playlist – XTC, Laurie Biagini, Neil Innes, Wild Man Fisher
Before I start, I’d just like to apologise for the lack of content for a week – work’s finally calmed down, but I’ve essentially spent the last week asleep as a reaction to the lifting of four months’ constant stress.
Anyway, I’ve decided that to start posting again I’m going to do another hyperpost like series, this one starting off with thoughts on authorship rather than canon. I’m going to talk about Cerebus, Smile, Wednesday Comics and Strange Adventures, Darkseid and Jack Kirby, and copyright law, among other things. I’ll also try, next week, to get more Beatles stuff posted.
But in the meantime, here’s a playlist I’ve put together…
Hand 19 by Andy Partridge And Harold Budd is from an album I only discovered existed through Spotify, a collection of somewhat new-agey jazzy stuff. I almost wondered at first if it was a different Andy Partridge, but it has his melodic fingerprints…
How Sweet To Be An Idiot by Neil Innes is probably Innes’ most famous solo song, thanks to appearing on a couple of Monty Python things (and being ripped off by Oasis for Whatever). It’s deserved though – Innes is a *shockingly* underrated songwriter, easily as major a talent as someone like Ray Davies, who gets overlooked because so much of his material is hilariously funny, so the craft (an the often very poignany emotions) underlying it gets lost.
Buttons Of Your Mind by The Scaffold is a rather lovely B-side to their novelty hit Lily The Pink. It sounds like a poor man’s Bonzo Dog Band – which is, of course, what The Scaffold essentially were – but they have their moments. (For those who don’t know, The Scaffold were a comedy group which featured the poet Roger McGough and Paul McCartney’s brother).
Stagger Lee by Mississippi John Hurt is still my favourite version of this – a completely different song to the more well-known one performed by everyone from Lloyd Price to Nick Cave, but containing many of the same lines.
Season Cycle by XTC is, amazingly, from the same album as Dear God. Rather amazing that the band capable of such a terrible song about atheism could also be capable of such a wonderful song about religious awe at nature. Rather obviously ripped off from Sagittarius’ version of My World Fell Down, but none the worse for that.
Mr Guru by Laurie Biagini is a fun piece of 60s pastiche from someone who does a lot of that sort of thing. It actually sounds rather like Bananarama, but in a good way, if you can believe that.
Good Sounds by Linus Of Hollywood is one of the best pure pop tracks of the last decade – an absolutely gorgeous, fun chorus with some rather disturbing lyrics – “I was just thinking/We were both drinking/So we should fool around/Things would be much easier if you’d just stay the night”, along with a promise to ‘play your favourite record if you promise that you’ll stay’ is rather too creepy to be an effective pickup line, or at least so I hope…
Cross Hatched World by Chewy Marble is by far my favourite song from last year’s Modulations, their first album in several years, a Beach Boysy track about drawing.
Loveland by The Mello Cads is a fantastic piece of lounge music pastiche, based around Come On In by The Association (which if I remember rightly was the theme music for lead Cad David Ponak’s radio show for a few years) but with some rather incongruous Indian stylings and backwards guitar on top. The Mello Cads are one of about a million bands with Probyn Gregory and Nelson Bragg in, always a sign of excellence.
I’ve Loved Her So Long by Neil Young is from his eponymous first solo album, which I still consider the best thing he ever did. Jack Nitzsche’s arrangements, and the more melodic stuff Young was doing then, place this firmly in ‘interesting LA pop’ territory with The Monkees, Love and Jimmy Webb, rather than the hippie singer-songwriter or proto-grunge furrows he spent much of the rest of his career in.
Flaming Carrot Theme Song by Wild Man Fisher is a theme for the great surrealistic 80s indie comic.
Don’t Make Me Over by The Swinging Blue Jeans is one of the great late-Merseybeat singles, obviously no match for Dionne Warwick’s original, sung as it is by a slightly flat Scouser, but that in itself is its charm – when Ray Ennis sings “Accept me for what I am”, it’s a flawed human doing so, rather than a vocal goddess.
Killing Floor by Howlin’ Wolf is the song which Led Zeppelin… er… homaged in The Lemon Song. However, good as Led Zep are, Howlin’ Wolf is roughly ten quadrillion times better – he sounds like he could bite Robert Plant’s head off between phrases.
And Long Black Limousine by Elvis Presley is a masterpiece of resentment and nastiness. She went off and said she’d be in a fancy car – well look at her now, she’s in a limousine all right – a hearse. That’ll teach her for wanting to do something with her life, won’t it, the stuck-up bitch? She’s dead now and everyone can see her funeral. It’s a thoroughly unpleasant song, as so many of those in this playlist are, but dear god Elvis’ voice in the last verse after the key change… what a singer…
Scott Walker, The Zombies, Edgard Varese, Small Faces, Serge Gainsbourg… Spotify Playlist For This Week
This week’s playlist, which I’ve titled Misty Rosary, doesn’t have an organising theme like the other ones I’ve done recently, it’s just seventeen songs I really like right now. I hope you will too…
Misty Roses by The Zombies is a live performance from the Odessey And Oracle 40th Anniversary CD/DVD, and actually only features Colin Blunstone of the Zombies, plus touring band member Keith Airey and a string quintet, recreating the arrangement of the Tim Hardin song from Blunstone’s first solo album. One of the most gorgeous things ever in pop music, seriously.
Mr Bellamy by Paul McCartney is the best thing by a long way from his most recent solo album proper, Memory Almost Full, and the most interesting thing he’s done in a long time – it sounds like nothing so much as Sparks, but Sparks covering Love In The Open Air (the love theme from The Family Way, which McCartney wrote in 1965).
Guilty As Charged by John C Reilly is from the film Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. I was put off that film for a long time by its promotional material, which made it look like the kind of thing that Will Ferrel would be in, but in fact it’s a very sharp, funny film – a parody of rock biopics, but particularly Walk The Line. But the music’s what makes it – it has the best original soundtrack since A Mighty Wind. This one’s a spot-on Ring Of Fire Johnny Cash with a spot of Secret Agent Man thrown in. Reilly is a great vocalist – not just ‘for an actor’, he’s an astonishing singer by any standards – but what makes this soundtrack is the attention paid to production details. All the songs sound like they could have come from the time they’re set, and that’s a much harder thing to do than people realise.
Ionisation by Edgard Varese is a wonderful piece of atonal percussion music, hugely influential on everyone from Pierre Boulez to Frank Zappa. The present day composer refuses to die!
If I Could Have Her Tonight by Neil Young is from Young’s eponymous first solo album, still my favourite of all his albums. Back then, Young had quite an unusual sound, somewhere halfway between the psych-pop of Love and the country-pop of the Byrds or solo Mike Nesmith, and while much of his later stuff’s good, it’s less interesting than the music he was making then.
Tin Soldier by The Small Faces is possibly the best rock (as opposed to pop) single ever made. Everything about it – the dynamics, Steve Marriot’s vocal, those Jaws piano chords at the start, is about as perfect as it gets.
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Serge Gainsbourg is a fairly straight rendition, but from an album, Rock Around The Bunker, which was pretty much what it sounds like…
Do Nothing Til You Hear From Me by Billie Holiday is a cover of the Duke Ellington song, originally titled Concerto For Cootie.
Take Me In Your Lifeboat by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band features Del McCoury and two of his sons, making it essentially a Del McCoury Band track. Which means it’s by some of the best bluegrass musicians today.
High Coin by Harpers Bizarre is written and arranged by Van Dyke Parks, in a very similar style to his work on Song Cycle (which I must write about at some point).
You Don’t Know Me by Ray Charles is from Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music vol 1 (my copy of which, bought second-hand, was the best 50p I ever spent). One of the greatest vocal performances of all time, this is one of a very small number of songs that can reduce me to tears.
Golden Days by William Grant Still is an excerpt from The American Scene, one of Still’s last major works. For those who don’t know him, Still was ‘the black Gershwin’, going from arranging for WC Handy and playing with James P Johnson to being the first African-American to conduct a symphony orchestra. He’s a sadly underrated figure in American music, and fans of Gershwin, Ives, Copeland et al could do worse than check out his stuff.
Another Time by Curt Boettcher is a lovely gentle soft-pop song. In the mid-60s a sort of informal collective of people centred round Boettcher and Gary Usher recorded about six albums worth of soft-pop stuff which mostly remained unreleased til the 90s, and has since been released on several different labels under several different names – the same tracks can be found as by Curt Boettcher and/or the Ballroom and/or The Millennium and/or Sandy Salisbury and/or Sagittarius, depending on the reissue. These are all worth getting, but the stuff released as by Boettcher or Salisbury solo tends to be the best.
Oh Bondage, Up Yours by X-Ray Specs is here for three reasons – firstly that there are too many slow songs in this list, secondly that there aren’t many women, and thirdly because it’s fucking great. “Some people think that little girls should be seen and not heard, but I say… OH BONDAGE, UP YOURS!”
Lyke-Wake Dirge by Pentangle is actually only my second-favourite version of this old song (after that by The Young Tradition), which is surprising because Pentangle were one of the most interesting bands of the late 60s, fusing traditional folk and modern jazz. It’s an old Yorkshire song to be sung at wakes, and the lyrics (which can be found here) talk about ordeals of purgatory, saying that after you’re dead you have to go through various trials, and will only have to protect you the things you gave to the poor in this life – you have to walk over thorns and can only wear shoes if you gave shoes to the poor, and so on. Quite an inspiring, hopeful but earthy take on things, as tends to be the way with Yorkshire religion.
You Set The Scene by Love is an alternative mix of the track from Forever Changes. The amount of invention in this song – the number of different melodies, and the strength of them – is astoundng. Just listen to the section starting ‘this is the time in life that I am living’ without shivers going down your spine. I DARE you.
And Rosary by Scott Walker is from Tilt, his ‘comeback’ album, and (along with his more recent The Drift and …And Who Shall Go To The Ball? And Who Shall Go To The Ball?) possibly the strangest records ever made by a major figure.
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