tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71879293273365279822024-03-18T01:22:32.697-04:00PsychobabblePsychobabble: For Groovy Ghouls, Retro Rockers, & Kooky Cultists.Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comBlogger1865125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-41530943026478211012024-03-18T01:22:00.021-04:002024-03-18T01:22:00.130-04:00Review: 'It Rose from the Tomb'<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4QsQRRJvIJBt8bwTSRCkjQqBk3hZOeSK3zwTNfp4cWLu5psWhqrqxAA6FbQC4zaIW9izEhercVNC60cGMoYqGBa1m0z2Ewcg9N2XpXfs8IcjGF3hIVj9aTm18NRldYqNIVSo7MnRoncz9x0oPWgusZRMDqTHExnuPUMM0OPPCodZH6-fmPaulgmYcvbw/s1000/812ZfKo2WzL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="773" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4QsQRRJvIJBt8bwTSRCkjQqBk3hZOeSK3zwTNfp4cWLu5psWhqrqxAA6FbQC4zaIW9izEhercVNC60cGMoYqGBa1m0z2Ewcg9N2XpXfs8IcjGF3hIVj9aTm18NRldYqNIVSo7MnRoncz9x0oPWgusZRMDqTHExnuPUMM0OPPCodZH6-fmPaulgmYcvbw/w154-h200/812ZfKo2WzL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" width="154" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">It's kind of funny that, in his new book </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">It Rose from the Tomb</i><span style="font-family: georgia;">,</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Peter Normanton expresses surprise that TwoMorrows was interested in publishing a book on the history of horror comics, considering that this would not be the first horror-centric book that comics-centric publisher has published (if you have not checked out Mark Voger's <i><a href="https://psychobabble200.blogspot.com/2015/07/review-monster-mash-creepy-kooky.html" target="_blank">Monster Mash</a></i>, you need to get it together, Daddy-O!) and that horror is so integral to comics history. It's the main reason why kids devoured funny books in the fifties and why the comics code shut them down. Marvel and DC were known to dabble in horror, and it was the life's blood of E.C. and Warren. And because even the chintziest horror comics were outlandishly visual and vivid, horror comics is the perfect theme for one of TwoMorrows' visual and vivid volumes.</span><p></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So, TwoMorrows was very open to <i>It Rose from the Tomb</i>, and Normanton's book is what you might expect if you've read any of TwoMorrow's myriad other comics histories. Its format is half book telling a fairly chronological history and half mag, with its stand-alone articles on specific artists, such as the utterly fab Bernie Wrightson, or cultural strains, such s Brazil's horror comics. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The overarching story is one that has been told before, and since Normanton is more concerned with describing artwork in purple prose than delving deeply into biographical or historical details, <i>It Rose from the Tomb</i> probably shouldn't be the first book about horror comics you should read (if you asked me, I'd steer you toward David Hadju's<i> The Ten-Cent Plague</i>, but you didn't, so I won't). As an example of TwoMorrows' visual-feastliness, <i>It Rose from the Tomb </i>can't be beat. Sure, the absence of any E.C. art is glaring but hardly surprising since copyright issues might be a factor. Otherwise, we get some spectacular images from Wrightson, Ditko, Woromay, and The Gurch, among many others. A gas!</span></p>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-67892720248436205052024-03-16T08:14:00.002-04:002024-03-16T14:39:27.251-04:00Review- Alice in Chains' 'Jar of Flies' 30th Anniversary Vinyl<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE4uq6hJAiXq1o7Yp3vESLZmusBD6kYHUCllLipZe3P30Q09GdApTSAhtrCPegwAjHJSM62Lvc2EdAI1xYxcIOUP9jeHaJFWVBE34hAI9I2bH2WS6Wb0FM_CRLTFHwcKsN7w2w29eWsOYVL5pj3une5EnkTb6dfUlvafeNgvNsGpcXrC6AsiBp2nS64M8/s1000/aic_jar.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="995" data-original-width="1000" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE4uq6hJAiXq1o7Yp3vESLZmusBD6kYHUCllLipZe3P30Q09GdApTSAhtrCPegwAjHJSM62Lvc2EdAI1xYxcIOUP9jeHaJFWVBE34hAI9I2bH2WS6Wb0FM_CRLTFHwcKsN7w2w29eWsOYVL5pj3une5EnkTb6dfUlvafeNgvNsGpcXrC6AsiBp2nS64M8/w200-h199/aic_jar.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Grunge took over the early-nineties rock scene more on the strength of its refreshingly unvarnished sound and relatably sullen attitude than because its purveyors wrote great songs. There were a few exceptions. Kurt Cobain is the obvious numero uno, but Mark Lanegan was a great writer too. <p></p><p>The Alice in Chains guys took a little longer to achieve the right balance between their sound and songs, but they were dropping some pretty strong ones by the time they put out <i>Dirt</i> in late 1992. However, it was 1994's groundbreaking <i>Jar of Flies</i> EP on which Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell's writing fully matured. As a lyricist, Staley had already been laser focused, specifically on the heroin addiction that was wracking his body and mind, but the subtler approach to his problem he took on <i>Jar of Flies</i> served his songs particularly well. <span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p>In terms of melody and arrangements, <i>Jar of Flies</i> was a massive leap forward too, and the guys were not only sold enough units to have the first EP to go to number one in the United States but also a couple of the very best singles of one of rock's very best years. Not everything on <i>Flies</i> matches those standards -- "Don't Follow" is bit pedestrian and the swing-jazz lark undermines the album's most poignant lyric with goofy music-- but you wouldn't want to be without the perfectly crafted pop hit "No Excuses" or the brooding and elegant "I Stay Away" (which was also at the center of what may be the finest music video ever made, for what it's worth). Cantrell's eerie instrumental "Whale & Wasp" is excellent too.</p><p>For its 30th anniversary, <i>Jar of Flies</i> is receiving its first ever vinyl release in the U.S. The album has been remastered for the occasion, and though I found it to be a bit on the mid-rangey side and just the slightest touch sibilant, the sound stage is pretty deep and the low end is sufficiently full. The vinyl was a bit crackly out of the shrink wrap, although it's possible that a deep cleaning might ameliorate that. It is perfectly flat with a well-centered spindle hole</p><p><br /></p>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-31278509347575733742024-03-09T15:26:00.000-05:002024-03-09T15:26:49.622-05:00Review: Vinyl Reissues of Nico's 'The Marble Index' and 'Desertshore'<p>Nico had little control over the beginning of her music career, when she sang a couple of pop songs for Andrew Oldham's Immediate label. Another Andy gave her a shotgun marriage to The Velvet Underground, with which she had nearly no creative input despite being the comely commercial face of the band. Nevertheless, her unforgettable turns on the few songs she got to sing were definitely steps in a more natural direction for Nico and her avant garde sensibilities. </p><p>When she got to make her first solo LP a few months after <i>The Velvet Underground & Nico</i> was released, members of the VU (as well as future MOR superstar Jackson Browne, of all people) still provided most of the songs and instrumentation, and she ultimately expressed a distaste for the prettiness of it all. The one song Nico co-wrote on <i>Chelsea Girl,</i> "It was a Pleasure Then", gave a taste of her true ambitions: uncompromisingly dark, borderline queasy music seemingly designed to give her listeners a severe case of the heebie jeebies. Plus, harmonium. Lots and lots of harmonium.</p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVph95ltrPzN9DDZdv4josO6zn6Axg9Kc0Zwdfd2oTh_vErcOeRfWjOIMO_RhCHj36BunTBCwh82yf1pempoz_Ev2hCCJxG5MffZopLVuiZMydrQ10Or3EVoM34YsBmm7R1D6WPwyWl2o4YCBICo9uZNSu8pyntT-ELgXW2O_2_zR-ekJdHG6JchIlri8/s430/Screen%20Shot%202024-03-06%20at%206.28.52%20PM.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="352" data-original-width="430" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVph95ltrPzN9DDZdv4josO6zn6Axg9Kc0Zwdfd2oTh_vErcOeRfWjOIMO_RhCHj36BunTBCwh82yf1pempoz_Ev2hCCJxG5MffZopLVuiZMydrQ10Or3EVoM34YsBmm7R1D6WPwyWl2o4YCBICo9uZNSu8pyntT-ELgXW2O_2_zR-ekJdHG6JchIlri8/w200-h164/Screen%20Shot%202024-03-06%20at%206.28.52%20PM.png" width="200" /></a></div>Nico finally got the chance to fully express herself and her harmonium on <i>The Marble Index</i>. Frazier Mohawk, who co-produced the album with former-Velvet John Cale, reportedly said that he made sure it didn't push too far beyond the thirty-minute mark because he was afraid that listeners would start killing themselves if subjected to any more of her ghoulish dissonance. <div><br /></div><div>If that doesn't sound like an endorsement to you, you should probably give <i>The Marble Index </i>a wide berth. Indeed, it is the most nightmarish, anxiety-inducing, suffocatingly gloomy thirty-minutes-and-forty-one seconds of music I've ever heard. It's also one of the most haunting and, yes, beautiful records, too, and if you think that grey skies are infinitely more pleasant than blue ones and that Max Schreck was actually kind of dashing in his Nosferatu makeup, then<i> The Marble Index </i>is the record for you. <p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMGOplen5a8O9p9eJ0tI42LAnohbr7Gn8WlUOFthalivLiLyKLUfuy0E-t8jqr30aHqxtzO04WXxewvhBXsaWKSE3i41dgYrR4ZLICHLK_ZWjDUj8ifagj1RQE69c47FsoPZg5zoWuWQ800HtnZ-FZAXGxs53vNIAuYrDeGAheltznA3e4YW0RRhQ3ak8/s1200/Nico_Desertshore_LP_mock.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMGOplen5a8O9p9eJ0tI42LAnohbr7Gn8WlUOFthalivLiLyKLUfuy0E-t8jqr30aHqxtzO04WXxewvhBXsaWKSE3i41dgYrR4ZLICHLK_ZWjDUj8ifagj1RQE69c47FsoPZg5zoWuWQ800HtnZ-FZAXGxs53vNIAuYrDeGAheltznA3e4YW0RRhQ3ak8/w200-h200/Nico_Desertshore_LP_mock.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>Nico lightened up a tad for her next album, although only in patches. If <i>The Marble Index </i>is like an unrelentingly overcast February evening, then the economically arranged <i>Desert Shore</i> is more like a cloudy yet breezy morning in March. Black masses like "The Falconer" and "Mütterlein" sweep along to allow sunnier sounds like "My Only Child" and "Afraid", which could pass for a mainstream pop ballad, to intermittently shine through. </div><div><br /></div><div>That means <i>Desertshore</i> feels slightly disjointed, and that disjointedness is more pronounced when comparing it to an album as dedicated to a singular mood as <i>The Marble Index</i> is, but "Janitor of Lunancy" (an ode to her terrible ex-boyfriend Brian Jones), "Abschied", and "Mütterlein" are among Nico's best songs. All are certainly worthy of <i>Index</i> at its darkest, although none are as cacophonous as <i>Index</i> is at its harshest. "All That Is My Own" might be a bit too jaunty to get a place on the earlier record, but it's pretty excellent too.<p></p><p>Long out of print on vinyl, <i>The Marble Index </i>and <i>Desert Shore </i>are now returning thanks to the Domino Recording Company. Both albums have been remastered from the original tapes. Played against my Sundazed Records copy of <i>The Marble Index </i>from 2004, Domino's new master is much louder, more open, and more detailed. There is a low background thumping on "Julius Caesar" that is nearly inaudible on the Sundazed disc and quite clear on Domino's. </p><p>With Domino's fuller volume comes a slight tendency for groove distortion to invade the peaks, although this is mostly only noticeable through headphones. Most of the distortion and sibilance audible on Domino's<i> Marble Index</i> is baked into the tapes and audible on the various vinyl and CD versions I've heard (I'd only previously heard <i>Desertshore</i> as part of the <i>Frozen Bordeline</i> CD-set, and its own distortions and sibilance are on there too). And whereas Sundazed's vinyl edition of <i>The Marble Index</i> has quite a bit of surface noise and is pressed off center, both pieces of Domino vinyl are very quiet and and well centered. They're perfectly flat too and include nice fold-out inserts with rare photos and extensive liner notes by Peter Doggett.</p></div>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-56324320093000350612024-03-01T07:42:00.001-05:002024-03-01T11:33:13.689-05:00Review: The Rolling Stones' 'Live at the Wiltern'<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-KllReteIjw_QjpxTjiuNmnRWHMLYWMPh7Tq6CnQ6UYMoPWzQYgiyXBOvcPXyMgICDjrUKkguIuuu6KPK1pyDpQhqDHMCxjYM6RbKOR_Z273LNA0kiyQQL9ghpzMvuJmOD7GbSUw2bomsYhoMNrdNazhorXLFCyPIZotmQn9wPtWyKna3eFZH1ni_79w/s1000/61TfF5gj6hL._UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="991" data-original-width="1000" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-KllReteIjw_QjpxTjiuNmnRWHMLYWMPh7Tq6CnQ6UYMoPWzQYgiyXBOvcPXyMgICDjrUKkguIuuu6KPK1pyDpQhqDHMCxjYM6RbKOR_Z273LNA0kiyQQL9ghpzMvuJmOD7GbSUw2bomsYhoMNrdNazhorXLFCyPIZotmQn9wPtWyKna3eFZH1ni_79w/w200-h198/61TfF5gj6hL._UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">2003 was a big year for The Rolling Stones. That was when the group turned forty, released their very first career-spanning greatest hits album, and went on an international tour that became the second most profitable one in history at the time (The most profitable? Their own Voodoo Lounge tour of eight years earlier). <span><a name='more'></a></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Although the <i>Forty Licks</i> comp stuck strictly to the most obvious hits, the Licks tour was defined by the eclectic nature of its deep-cut diving set lists. For the Stones' November 4, 2002, visit to the Wiltern Theatre in LA, they dusted off such chestnuts as "Hand of Fate", the best rocker from the mediocre <i>Black and Blue</i>; "Thru and Thru", the best track from the uneven <i>Voodoo Lounge </i>and one of my <a href="https://psychobabble200.blogspot.com/2018/01/psychobabbles-100-favorite-songs-of.html" target="_blank">personal faves of the nineties</a>; and "You Don't Have to Mean It", one of the few great tracks from the mostly-awful <i>Bridges to Babylon</i>. They reached further back for the <i>Beggars Banquet </i>classics "Stray Cat Blues" and "No Expectations" and further still for the early R&B covers "That's How Strong My Love Is" and "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love", the latter featuring a guest appearance by the man who originated the song and opened for the Stones on this particular date, Solomon Burke. They also played "Jumpin' Jack Flash", "Honky Tonk Women", "Start Me Up", "Brown Sugar", and "Tumbling Dice" for the billionth time so that less dedicated fans wouldn't feel too confused or disappointed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Twenty years later, the entire Wiltern show is making its way to triple-vinyl. It may be twenty years old, but <i>Live at the Wiltern</i> still documents the Stones when they were pretty long in the tooth, so no one is going to argue that this is as vital a live album as <i>Get Yer Ya Ya's Out</i>, but the "tunes that they seldom do," as Mick describes them, make this a valuable album, especially for anyone who just wants versions of the best songs from some of the Stones' least essential albums. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">The band sounds very strong and engaged throughout, especially when jamming, and you would have to be a bit of a curmudgeon to not give yourself over to the grooves of "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" and "Dance, Pt. 1". I'm a lot of a curmudgeon, and they got to me. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The sound is a bit thin and slightly distorted in the high end, but the bass is sufficiently full, though not exceptionally punchy. All three pieces of vinyl are perfectly quiet and flat.</span></p>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-87746287861841640402024-02-26T01:26:00.096-05:002024-02-26T01:26:00.237-05:00Review: 'Teenage Wasteland: The Who at Winterland, 1968 and 1976'<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_CQ9EsinUYAIssfO6ZYyQ9AcuEEQ-p_7o7S9T0G6dMMcZREc7MDt0pns0wBW-rXT496nWOX0eiUfsTEPilCPjStWkQwAiiqLS6I1HRmZl8fjVNT5uNQ520BmIy9N1SfUIWy3c_S-4T-XaVMgJbc8hN3sVBbWsuxcFvL9DrwIfmp-OiFjXHNfENAnAvMc/s1024/unnamed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="802" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_CQ9EsinUYAIssfO6ZYyQ9AcuEEQ-p_7o7S9T0G6dMMcZREc7MDt0pns0wBW-rXT496nWOX0eiUfsTEPilCPjStWkQwAiiqLS6I1HRmZl8fjVNT5uNQ520BmIy9N1SfUIWy3c_S-4T-XaVMgJbc8hN3sVBbWsuxcFvL9DrwIfmp-OiFjXHNfENAnAvMc/w157-h200/unnamed.jpg" width="157" /></a></div>There have been so many books about The Who that it only makes sense that, sixty years after the band's formation, a new entry in their library would be almost unbelievably specific. The very title of Edoardo Genzolini's <i>Teenage Wasteland: The Who at Winterland, 1968 and 1976</i> announces its specificity. That is not a mistyped conjunction; this book does not track the years 1968 <i>through</i> 1976, when The Who were pretty much the greatest live band in the world. Genzolini's only covers two years in The Who's history, and not conspicuously auspicious ones either. 1968 was the first year The Who did not release an LP since their beginning, and the few singles they managed to squeak out in '68 are often dismissed as novelties made by an out-of-touch band desperate for fresh material (I'm not one of those dismissers though, largely because the zany "Dogs" is one of my faves). In 1976, they were touring their most troubled album, the virtual suicide-note <i>The Who By Numbers</i>, with rapidly deteriorating intraband relationships and a rapidly deteriorating drummer with just two years left in the world.<span><a name='more'></a></span><p></p><p>But! But! 1968 was also the year The Who performed relentlessly, honing their stagecraft, while working behind-the-scenes to slowly craft the rock opera that would solidify their stardom. And the drama of '76 that nearly broke the band arguably made for some electrifying performances. </p><p>But why San Francisco's Winterland? Well, The Who apparently had a very tight relationship with the hippiest town in the U.S.A., which is ironic considering that they're the major classic rock band that was most reluctant to buy into that's era's hippie idealism. </p><p>Plus, their dates at Winterland produced oodles of photos, which is probably what got<i> Teenage Wasteland</i> green-lit. But Genzolini does not allow his book to simply coast on its photos, which are as exciting as one would expect photos of one of the most visually striking rock bands as they leap, flail, swing, smash, and disappear into an action-pact blur (and, in one remarkable instance, hanging out with Ronnie Spector backstage) to be. The writer takes his topic seriously, providing ample background about the band, the venue, the San Francisco rock scene, and the specific shows on which his book mainly focuses (though he does include extended riffs on other key years, such as 1967 and 1969). </p><p>Genzolini also relays many memories of those who were in attendance, goes into depth about such side-road topics as Pete's relationship with Meher Baba or San Fran-locals Blue Cheer or Jefferson Airplane, and discharges convincing insights into the band's image, legacy, and goals. As far as a book that was likely sold as coffee table book about one of rock's most widely covered bands goes, <i>Teenage Wasteland </i>is refreshingly smart and surprisingly essential.</p><p>P.S.-Be sure to head over to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@edoardogenzoliniauthor7802/featured" target="_blank">Edoardo Genzolini's YouTube page</a>, where he has posted some unbelievably rare recordings of The Who performing such nuggets as "Run Run Run" and "Don't Look Away", as well as about five seconds of "I Can See for Miles", in 1968. </p>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-63106686435900609262024-02-22T12:39:00.005-05:002024-03-13T14:00:49.909-04:00Review: 'The Rolling Stones Singles 1966 - 1971'<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">*It's been twenty months since the release of <i><a href="https://psychobabble200.blogspot.com/2022/06/review-rolling-stones-singles-1963-1966.html" target="_blank">The Rolling Stones Singles 1963 - 1966</a></i>, and though that set's press release promised the inevitable sequel would arrive in 2023, <a href="https://psychobabble200.blogspot.com/2023/07/when-rolling-stones-sixties-album-made.html" target="_blank">vinyl reissues of the Stones' U.S. LPs </a>were apparently ABKCO's main concern that year. In 2024, the label has wasted little time in finally making good on that 2022 promise. </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPGlK6xscfDAD1uRq9QC6Kua4r1wsXaZdaEBCEcLPDfhvgdutswC-ONhrhjEcxqWWIFjwjUi8F2uSwvBccmECInQwoU67tn47Fa-zK9zI7CV4ELu_m_VNFmRFf4E9TYADredDSitLfyvyHq7rDdr58wVcanf63-R6EyyfZylbYI4Tc-a99_MzourNjRwI/s1500/spread-2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="817" data-original-width="1500" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPGlK6xscfDAD1uRq9QC6Kua4r1wsXaZdaEBCEcLPDfhvgdutswC-ONhrhjEcxqWWIFjwjUi8F2uSwvBccmECInQwoU67tn47Fa-zK9zI7CV4ELu_m_VNFmRFf4E9TYADredDSitLfyvyHq7rDdr58wVcanf63-R6EyyfZylbYI4Tc-a99_MzourNjRwI/s320/spread-2.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><br /></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: georgia;">So, now <i>The Rolling Stones Singles 1966 - 1971</i> has finally arrived to compile eighteen singles representing the time period that I, for one, insist was the Stones' most creatively fertile. While they are usually lauded for sticking to their rudimentary rock and blues guns, I will forever insist that they were at their most exciting and vibrant when grooving with sitars, Mellotrons, dulcimers, synthesizers, John Paul Jones, and John and Paul. </span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>The Stones produced their finest albums between '66 and '71, but their singles were no less extraordinary, and for our European friends, owning many of those seven-inch pieces of plastic was downright essential. After all, "Paint It Black" was nowhere to be found on their edition of </span><i>Aftermath</i><span>, nor were "Ruby Tuesday" or "Let's Spend the Night Together" between their buttons. Several of the Stones' singles of the period included remarkable songs </span><span face=""Google Sans", Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124;">— </span><span>the freaky blues "Who's Driving Your Plane?", the cosmic rocker "Child of the Moon", the double-sided psych gem "We Love You" b/w "Dandelion"</span><span face=""Google Sans", Roboto, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #202124;">—</span><span> that were unavailable on LP on either side of the Atlantic.</span></span></div><div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Of course, all of these tracks would eventually find homes on one compilation or another, so </span><i>The Rolling Stones Singles 1966 - 1971</i><span> is no longer as essential as it might have been had it been released half-a-century ago, but it is essential for anyone with fond memories of playing home-DJ and spinning singles pulled from eye-catching little sleeves. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Indeed, this set reproduces those sleeves pretty accurately, as it does the music within. There are some relatively recent remixes of "Sympathy for the Devil" on a dedicated single, but the classic mix is still on the B-side of a reproduction of 1976's stereo edition of "Honky Tonk Women". Yes, the 1969 mono edition of that song is here too, and all of the discs originally released in mono do appear that way on </span><i>1966 - 1971. </i><span>There is also a rare stereo appearance by "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" on a 33 1/3 EP starring "Street Fighting Man" that was originally released in the UK in 1971.</span><i> </i><span>While this new version maintains that number of revolutions per minute, it smartly replaces the fake-stereo mix of "Surprise Surprise" with the true mono mix.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span>As the inclusion of that number from 1964 suggests,</span><i> 1966 - 1971</i> boogies beyond the limited timeline of its title from time to time. It includes the two singles pulled from the 1975 compilation <i>Metamorphosis. </i></span><span>That means there are a few songs in this set that actually aren't proper Stones recordings, since the <i>Metamorphosis</i> singles include the demo "Try a Little Harder" (another remnant from '64) and the version of "Out of Time" Mick Jagger cut for Chris Farlowe, both of which feature studio musicians instead of Charlie, Bill, and Brian. </span><span>There's also the Stones-adjacent but awesome "Memo From Turner", Mick Jagger's solo side he sang in his debut starring role in Donald Cammell's </span><i>Performance</i><span>. T</span><span>he totally Stones-less "Natural Magic" by Ry Cooder is on the flip; its very much like an instrumental version of the A-side, which also features Cooder's inimitable slide work. We also get the rare "In Another Land" single credited to Bill Wyman, though that one is a legit Stones recording through and through. So are "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses", but since their original B-sides don't fall under the ABKCO umbrella, these two A-sides are slapped on either side of the same record for this new box set.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Each disc is a UK-style small-hole single, even the reproductions of U.S. records. Some of the vinyl isn't as flat as I'd like, and there is a bit of debris from the sleeves, but none of this caused any playing issues. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">As for the sound, this is by far the LOUDEST the Stones have sounded since ABKCO began dropping them back on vinyl in the twenty-first century. The label's <i><a href="https://psychobabble200.blogspot.com/2016/09/review-rolling-stones-in-mono.html" target="_blank">Rolling Stones in Mono</a></i> box set from 2016 was certainly cut sufficiently loud, but these singles are way louder... and way, way louder than the more recent LP reissues, which tend to be on the quiet side. I played the new 45s against my original London ones, and they can go toe-to-toe in volume. Charlie's bass drum on "Honky Tonk Women" is a sonic boom.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Comparative sound quality is tougher to judge, since my old singles are pretty well worn. The new ones are certainly smoother than those, but they can distort a bit during volume peaks if you don't have a mono switch on your system. With my mono switch activated, most of the mono singles in </span><i>1966 - 1971</i><span> sound wonderfully smooth (I use a </span><span>custom</span><span> one I purchased </span><a href="https://sweetfootpedals-com.3dcartstores.com/Stereo-to-Mono-RCA-Switch--HANDMADE-IN-THE-USA_p_516.html" target="_blank">here</a><span> for an absurdly low $31.50...if you love mono vinyl and don't have a mono switch on your amplifier, you really should invest in a dedicated one. It's a life changer). </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>The Rolling Stones Singles 1966 - 1971</i> also includes a booklet with essay by Nigel Williamson, track notes, and photos; a fold-out poster; and a bonus packet of photo postcards. Most of the images on the cards, as well as the one on the poster, depict the Mick Taylor line up, although there's one wonderfully atmospheric shot from '67 that includes Brian Jones, the guy responsible for most of the weird sounds that make this music the Stones' best. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">*This review was updated on March 13, 2024.</span></p></div>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-58457923998995553682024-02-08T13:28:00.001-05:002024-02-08T13:28:57.459-05:00Review: Wings' 'Band on the Run' 50th Anniversary Set<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFaiyJ52W3R0ur5ZeiCR2dQwMlRigZ4JpuG6II0MIkC7O-eCZc12g2JMTy5IXYiNNjtchqaIYQsYRE4vrimrKIdrec2C25YSr3lkVUm6-rh7VlWCquDuyWFPXYtpW22dEhEJzgFgtfqI8yTjFeWx6W7kRpqS2thoTwpe-BCKpB99pMANCBvn2W1R6IUFE/s293/Screen%20Shot%202024-01-24%20at%209.23.56%20AM.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="238" data-original-width="293" height="162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFaiyJ52W3R0ur5ZeiCR2dQwMlRigZ4JpuG6II0MIkC7O-eCZc12g2JMTy5IXYiNNjtchqaIYQsYRE4vrimrKIdrec2C25YSr3lkVUm6-rh7VlWCquDuyWFPXYtpW22dEhEJzgFgtfqI8yTjFeWx6W7kRpqS2thoTwpe-BCKpB99pMANCBvn2W1R6IUFE/w200-h162/Screen%20Shot%202024-01-24%20at%209.23.56%20AM.png" width="200" /></a></div>If there's a word that sums up Paul McCartney's work-approach with The Beatles, that word could be "perfectionism." That was certainly one of the things that drove his band-mates up a tree when he insisted on take after take of things like "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" and "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", although the cutesiness of those songs surely rubbed John, George, and Ringo the wrong way too. So it was a shock when McCartney began his solo career by bucking that perfectionism, if not the cutesiness. <i>McCartney</i> was a homemade, one-man-band record full of non-songs and only intermittent flashes of his perfect song craft, "Maybe I'm Amazed" being the most obvious example. If <i>RAM</i> suggested that the perfect old Paul was back, then Macca continued to confound with an album of jams with a new band called Wings, which he then followed with a Whitman's sampler of nutrient-free confectionary experiments he titled <i>Red Rose Speedway</i>.<span><a name='more'></a></span><p></p><p>The critics were not kind, even when McCartney put out something as superb as <i>RAM</i>. John Lennon was even less so. But that old perfectionist was seemingly still there all along, even as McCartney chased his every whim now that he was freed from the band whose every move had been scrutinized, analyzed, and canonized for eight intense years. <i>Band on the Run</i> proved that.</p><p>The irony of McCartney's third and indisputably greatest album with Wings is that it is nearly as much of a one-man-band experiment as his first post-Beatles record was. McCartney supplies the bass, drums, and most of the guitars, keyboards, percussion, and vocals you hear on <i>Band on the Run</i>. Aside from the occasional session-man string or horn arrangement, the only others players along for the ride are Linda McCartney and the stalwart (and, sadly, recently departed) Denny Laine, who make their presences most felt with their velvety vocal reinforcements.</p><p>However, <i>Band on the Run</i> hardly sounds like the work of mostly one man. While <i>McCartney</i> had a very demo-like feel, especially when Paul was awkwardly jamming with himself on things like "Mama Miss America" and "Hot As Sun", by the time he did <i>Band on the Run</i>, he was seasoned enough to fashion a true band-vibe throughout the record. Most importantly, he supplied a solid run of songs, with a few downright classics. The smash title track, the super-charged "Jet", and the Lennon-olive branch "Let Me Roll It" can sit alongside his best work with The Beatles. If the record wasn't quite as wonderfully weird and colorful as <i>RAM</i>, it was proof that Paul still had <i>it</i> and could seemingly deploy <i>it</i> without breaking a sweat. Not that his support team didn't make crucial contributions. Denny even gets his first co-writing credit on a Wings record with the lovely and underrated "No Words".</p><p>The critics responded in kind. Even John did. So for its slightly belated 50th Anniversary, <i>Band on the Run</i> is getting slightly more special treatment than the half-speed mastered vinyl reissues of McCartney's previous albums. This one arrives as a double record set with a bonus LP of "underdubbed" mixes, which means they lack the proper album's string and horn arrangements, as well as certain guitar and vocal parts. Although hearing "Jet" stripped down to a simple hard-rock arrangement with prominent piano is kind of cool, the underdubbing mostly leaves the tracks just sounding a bit empty, particularly in the title track's transition out of the "If I ever get out of here"section; the end of "Mamunia", which is missing the proper mix's complex layers of counterpoint vocals; and the entirety of a totally lead vocal-free "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five". The tracks are in a different running order as well, still beginning with "Band on the Run" but ending with "Let Me Roll It" instead of "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five." All in all, the underdubbed LP is a bit novel but probably won't fall into heavy rotation since <i>Band on the Run</i> has never really been criticized as over-produced.</p><p>The half-speed remaster of the proper album has a little less punch than my 1973 Winchester pressing (or the underdubbed disc), but it is cleaner, and not just because my oldie is pretty beat up. Everything sounds crisp, although there is a touch of pleasing grunge around the electric guitars. Bass is full, and there are none of the inner groove distortion issues that marred the editions of <i>Wild Life</i> and <i>Red Rose Speedway </i>in this half-speed series. Between tracks you will hear silence and nothing but silence. The reproduction of the poster from the original release and an alternate version of that Polaroid-festooned poster included in the Underdubbed sleeve are nice bonuses too.</p>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-74567675815243786582024-01-29T05:35:00.196-05:002024-01-30T08:49:40.823-05:00Psychobabble's Favorite (and Not So Favorite) Monkees Songs...161 of Them Ranked!<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A list of The Monkees' best-loved songs will inevitably be a cartload of the obvious topped with the usual suspects. "Daydream Believer". "I'm a Believer". "Last Train to Believer". Etcetera. That is not what follows. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Monkees were the first band I fell in love with, but it was not the big hits that caught my attention. It was the group's pervasive weirdness, which tends to get steamrolled in discussions of how cute, sweet, bubblegum, and ersatz they were. If The Monkees were the unadventurous, pre-fab, teeny-bopper bait they'd been accused of being for much of their career, I would never have paid them much mind. But that image is bullshit, although it does seemingly hold true for some of the songs that appear down at the bottom of this list, which is limited to their first-phase work (I refuse to ever listen to <i>Pool It</i>, if only out of respect for the band). </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjchfWNusngaGumZ4UmEJEMEX-Mt5cjwYOpUCLZr0OwzOc1AZnv9o48jPb0aEaa0D4zTtwKilIcaSlnPU6DK4qJ-OtIv6silIEwRtWQjYFffjHmR1fKIAptd_PXwyAbLPiLdtUEkebXF3zdksrSc6Pe7cpdRKt6aO2AaES2NEVd1nd2089u6zncFojC_Hc/s339/Screen%20Shot%202024-01-24%20at%201.10.05%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="114" data-original-width="339" height="108" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjchfWNusngaGumZ4UmEJEMEX-Mt5cjwYOpUCLZr0OwzOc1AZnv9o48jPb0aEaa0D4zTtwKilIcaSlnPU6DK4qJ-OtIv6silIEwRtWQjYFffjHmR1fKIAptd_PXwyAbLPiLdtUEkebXF3zdksrSc6Pe7cpdRKt6aO2AaES2NEVd1nd2089u6zncFojC_Hc/s320/Screen%20Shot%202024-01-24%20at%201.10.05%20PM.png" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />These are very personal choices, hence the title of this post, and I'll do my best to express my reasoning, which will likely cause Believers to smash a piano with a sledgehammer while Nes, dressed as Zappa, conducts. </span><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here they come...<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>161. </span><b>The Day We Fall in Love</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Thirteen years ago, I flirted with a series called "Tales from the Psychobabble Search Engine Terms," in which I analyzed a couple of weird terms readers used to find a Psychobabble post on the Internet before completely losing interest in the idea. One of these terms was "<a href="https://psychobabble200.blogspot.com/2011/01/tales-from-psychobabble-search-engine_7566.html" target="_blank">the worst monkees song</a>." My choice back then remains the same as it does today, so I'll just laze out at the top of this very looooong list by quoting myself from 2011: </span></p><div class="separator" style="background-color: white; clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">'The worst Monkees tracks were the ones that most played into the group’s status as teeny bop idols. Yes, sometimes the guys went too far in the opposite direction, indulging in bizarre, very teen-unfriendly experiments. But I’d still much rather listen to Micky sing the praises of his cat and lament his fame in keening falsetto on 'Shorty Blackwell' or Mike caterwaul over a turgid pipe organ on 'Writing Wrongs' than hear about how Davy’s gonna look in my eyes and wait for my prize. Regardless of its awfulness, there’s no mystery regarding why music director Don Kirshner selected this composition by Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell (who wrote the genuinely wonderful “A Lover’s Concerto” for The Toys, as well as The Monkees’ very good “I’ll Be Back Up On My Feet”) for The Monkees’ second album. The idea of Davy Jones, that ultimate idol of the sexually latent set, reciting a litany of vapid romantic declarations in the first person to his legions of little fans must have ignited Tex Avery-style dollar signs in Kirshner’s eyes. Chances are the guy who chose cartoon characters for his next protégés after The Monkees fired him wasn’t going to recognize the cynical horridness of 'The Day We Fall In Love'." Hear, hear.</span></div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">160. <b>Ladies Aid Society</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>In the same old post I referenced above, I also discussed the second worst Monkees song, and I think that selection holds up as well as the song in question most definitely does not. Said I 2011: "</span><span>Culled from sessions for </span><i>More of the Monkees</i><span>, this piece of bubblegum trash nearly sinks an album of relatively sophisticated music. Late in their career, the guys fully developed and honed their musical personalities: Mike Nesmith, with his assertive country-rock, Micky Dolenz, with his affinity for lounge jazz and avant weirdness, and even Davy Jones, whose adult-contemporary pop confections were finally truly fit for adult consumption. </span><span>Sadly, none of these musical directions resembled The Monkees’ sound from when they were actually selling records, so The Powers That Be at Colgems records performed an archival dig that resulted in the worst song tacked onto </span><i>Present</i><span>: the truly awful 'Ladies Aid Society', as flaccid a protest against officious moralizers as you’re likely to hear."</span><span> I should have also mentioned the vile chorus of sub-Monty Python fake "little old ladies" that screech the chorus. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">159. <b>We Were Made for Each Other</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Side A of <i>The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees</i> is the most subversively programmed run of songs in the Monkees' discography. Cute Davy songs are shuffled with Mike's weirdest experiments. However, only one of Davy's songs is outright bad, the simpering "We Were Made for Each Other". The string arrangement is the most cloying on any Monkees recording and the chorus is the worst kind of relentless. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Chip Douglas, who produced The Monkees' two best albums with tremendous taste, produced a backing track for </span><span>"We Were Made for Each Other"</span><span> in the established, jangly Monkees style that is surely preferable to the overproduced version that was officially released in '68, but I doubt that anything truly exceptional could be made of Carole Bayer and George Fischoff's sappy, sappy song. The blow of having to hear this on </span><i>Birds, Bees</i><span> is somewhat cushioned by the fabulous Nes-songs that sandwich it.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">158. <b>All Alone in the Dark</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">During their original phase, The Monkees went out with that sound you hear when you let the last few gasps of air out of a balloon or eat too much Taco Bell. Despite a few good songs and a couple of very good ones, the Mike-and-Peter-free <i>Changes</i> is a bad album, and its worst crime finds the amazingly versatile Micky Dolenz using the least appealing voice in his seemingly bottomless bag of voices. He skitters up into an eardrum-piercing falsetto for a cornball song that brings to mind soap bubbles floating over the set of <i>The</i> <i>Lawrence Welk Show</i>. Producer Jeff Barry's decision to include a kazoo solo is proof that he hates you.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">157. <b>Teeny Tiny Gnome (actually, "Skipping Stones")</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The definitive Monkees songsmiths, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, had a pretty sweet deal selecting and producing songs for the first Monkees album, but according to legend, they got shit-canned after coaxing Davy and Micky into singing garbage like their own "Ladies Aid Society" and "Skipping Stones". </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">I've already discussed the former, so let's never think about it again. The latter is a floppy attempt to aim as young as possible for the Monkees' potential audience. "Skipping Stones" is an unbearably cute pop nursery rhyme for drooling toddlers too young for Pink Floyd or Tomorrow's superior songs about wee mythical creatures. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Fans in the sixties were graciously spared this crap, but it was included on the first Monkees outtakes comp, <i>Missing Links</i>,<i> </i>in 1987 as "Teeny Tiny Gnome", a horridly twee title that at least gives you a hint of the awfulness awaiting you. You really don't know what you're getting with something called "Skipping Stones".</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">156. <b>I Never Thought It Peculiar</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Somehow the final song on <i>Changes</i> has developed a sort of cult appeal over the years, and it even found a place on the <i>Music Box</i> box set in 2001. Don't be fooled by cloudy-headed revisionism. "I Never Thought It Peculiar" is hippity-hoppity, cutesy-pie garbage, although like "Teeny Tiny Gnome", it does have a semi-cool distorted guitar solo, which only makes me wish it wasn't wasted on such hopelessly corny fare. Christ, this song is so corny.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">155. <b>I Didn't Know You Had It In You, Sally, You're a Real Ball of Fire</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'd been aware of this song title ever since I saw it listed in the sessionography of Ed Finn and T. Bone's <i>The Monkees Scrapbook</i> in 1986. Yet, it never found a place on any of the <i>Missing Links</i> comps, deluxe box sets, or expanded CDs released in the twentieth century. What gives? I'll tell you what gives...it stinks. When "</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">I Didn't Know You Had It In You, Sally, You're a Real Ball of Fire"</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> finally appeared on an exclusive vinyl single in 2007, we were faced with the harsh reality that Denny Randell and Sandy Linzer's song is a cornball old-timey soft shoe that Micky sings in an annoyingly over-affected high register. Hey, wasn't this the songwriting team behind "The Day We Fall in Love"? Take the bench, guys!</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">154. <b>Penny Music</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">More old-timey terribleness is in store with this cheesy attempt to conjure a sort of Dickensian mood of cheerful busking. Perhaps this was an attempt to capitalize on Davy's celebrated role as the Artful Dodger in <i>Oliver</i> or a symptom of his determination to make "Broadway Rock" a term that someone other than he might use. Whatever it is, it sucks. (Sorry, folks...I swear I love The Monkees, which will become pathetically clear soon enough. But honestly, some of this stuff is just objectively awful).</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">153. <b>If I Learned to Play the Violin</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">After The Monkees won the right to record their own music in early 1967, Don Kirshner lured Davy into the studio to cut some vocals the old fashioned way with Jeff Barry producing. Was it spite? Desperation? Sure. But fetid crap like this highlighted just how out of touch Kirshner was, although it would take actually violating an agreement to oust him from The Monkees' story for good (more on that later). Really, though, it should not have taken anything more than a quick listen to this rotten bubblegum melodrama.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">152.<b> Lady Jane</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>Changes</i> should have been the last word on The Monkees' unfortunate stint as a duo. But they still owed one more single to Colgems, so in 1971, one final Monkees 45 was plopped into shops with all due fanfare, which was zero fanfare. The B-side was particularly terrible, an infuriatingly repetitious funk verse that spooled forth limply with a palpable "Can we please just get this over with already?!?!" vibe. The one interesting thing about the single is that Davy and Micky share vocals on both sides, possibly because neither guy wanted to be accused of being the lead singer on "Do It in the Name of Love" or "Lady Jane". Yuck.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">151. <b>Rosemarie</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">More funk junk. The Monkees' biggest ringer was also the least prolific member of the band. Unlike Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith, and Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz didn't seem overly interested in doing a lot of writing or producing after Chip Douglas left the fold. However, whenever he did, he always turned out something highly unusual. Unfortunately, the missing link "Rosemarie" is mostly unusual for how strained his usual velvety voice sounds and how nonsensical his lyrics are. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">150. <b>It's Got to Be Love</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Okay, we're starting to transition from terrible to merely bad. That's progress! This one from <i>Changes</i> is corny but not quite bad enough to be unlistenable... nor is it interesting enough to comment further on.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">149. <b>You Can't Tie a Mustang Down</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Powers That Be often put ballads in Davy's mouth to capitalize on his heart-throb status, but he usually sounded best when he got more upbeat material to belt. His work on this chugging, bluesy rocker was certainly preferable to what he did with "</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">If I Learned to Play the Violin", but the song simply isn't good. It has no melody, the lyrics don't scan well, and Davy seems unsure of how to deliver Jeff Barry's terrible "Hey, baby, you gotta let me be me!" lyrics. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">148. <b>You're So Good</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is another rocker that never finds a groove. Micky seems as unsure of how to sing Robert Stone's dumb metaphors as Davy was when voicing Jeff Barry's. Cut during sessions for <i>The Monkees Present</i>, "You're So Good" was mercifully left off that album...although it still would have been a better inclusion than "Ladies Aid Society".</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">147. <b>Storybook of You</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Following a great orchestrated introduction that may have been Boyce and Hart's answer to "California Girls", "Storybook of You" settles into its destiny as a mediocre outtake with a wavering vocal from Davy and an overproduced finale that stomps the elegance of the song's intro into the dirt.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">146. <b>War Games</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Marching beats and rock and roll are not a good match. This serious contender for the <i>Head</i> soundtrack ("serious" in the sense that the song takes itself really, really seriously and not because it was seriously considered for inclusion among The Monkees' most consistently excellent assortment of songs) is arthritic, with lyrical good intentions that would have benefitted a lot from a healthy dose of subtlety. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">145. <b>I Wanna Be Free</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Controversial choice number one! "I Wanna Be Free" is a stone classic that was selected for many a Monkees greatest hits-type collection. It's Davy in intimate "I'm gonna whisper in your ear, girl" mode. It's one of those unabashed "Yesterday" inspired arrangements of guitar and strings, like "As Tears Go By". The weepy vocals and derivative arrangement do no favors to Boyce and Hart's song, which had enough potential to appear in a totally different arrangement good enough to make this the only song that appears on this list twice. This version is sappiness and wimpiness incarnate.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">144. <b>It's Nice to Be with You</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Another sappy Davy vocal, another sappy lyric, but this B-side at least has a few interesting semi-tone chord changes that give it a somewhat disorienting flavor during the bridge. That's really the only reason it isn't sitting right next to the very similar "We Were Made for Each Other" at the nether regions of this list.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>143. </span><b>Do You Feel It Too?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Too peppy to be a ballad, too wimpy to be a rocker, "Do You Feel It Too?" is neither fish nor fowl, but it's harmlessly hooky enough to sit on the sunny side of foul. I guess that's something?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">142. <b>Do It In the Name of Love</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The A-side of The Monkees' final contractual obligation single was certainly better than its inchoate B-side, but this is not how fans want to remember The Monkees. This is how Jann Wenner, and everyone else who thought they were super-cool for hating The Monkees, wants to remember The Monkees. "Do It In the Name of Love" sounds like it should play out while werewolf-mask-wearing Mr. Witherspoon chases Scooby Doo. Micky and Davy were the guys who gave the world "Porpoise Song", damn it! Have some respect and bury this crap in a landfill.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">141. <b>Band 6</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This snippet of Mike Nesmith attempting to play the Looney Tunes theme on pedal steel and failing ridiculously marks another transition in this list. All of the songs leading to this point are songs I'd like to hear less than this 41 seconds of non-music. Now things are going to go from bad to "meh." More progress!</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">140. <b>Changes</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Like "War Games", "Changes" was likely intended for the <i>Head</i> film, which was originally supposed to be called <i>Changes</i>. Like "War Games", this song is unworthy of Bob Rafelson's venomous avant garde musical eulogizing the <i>Monkees</i> phenomenon, but at least it has a groove that Davy manages to find his way into. Not audaciously bad, just utterly generic.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">139. <b>Acapulco Sun</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This dopey "south of the border" jaunt is too mindless to be good, and the keening "la la las" are like a syrup suppository, but "Acapulco Sun" is catchy enough, and its cod-Latin feel is a unique vibe in The Monkee's catalog. It earns a C-.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">138. <b>I'll Be True to You</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A potentially appalling Davy Jones ballad see-saws between the bad and the okay, mostly without tumbling too far into either territory. It reminds me a bit of The Beatles' version of "Till There Was You", a track I never cared for. I actually like this Monkees song better. It has a touch of the Mersey Beat sound, possibly a vestige of the original version by The Hollies. The bit where Davy starts talking <i>a la </i>Elvis in "Are You Lonesome Tonight" goes too far though.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">137. <b>The Poster</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Davy listens to The Beatles' nightmarish trip to the fairground on <i>Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band</i> and writes his own circus song. "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" this is not. It's a cheeseball organ and a mindless lyric aimed at little kiddies as assuredly as "Teeny Tiny Gnome" was, but at least "The Poster" has a fairly engaging groove and some nice bass/drums interplay. It's also mercifully brief, and as we've already seen, there is a far worse crime on <i>The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees</i> than this one.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">136. <b>Ditty Diego</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Like "Band 6", this isn't quite a song. It's a rancid remake of the original "(Theme From) The Monkees" that takes a cold, cynical gaze at all of the nasty barbs aimed at The Monkees during their first three years and absorbs them like a monster that feeds on bad vibes. Big surprise that Jack Nicholson wrote it! It's not enjoyable music, but "Ditty Diego" is an important item of Monkees lore. By the way, "diego" is Spanish for "supplanter" or "interloper." Nicholson left no cynical stone unturned.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">135. <b>Hollywood</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mike Nesmith finally makes his first appearance, mostly because I think he's awesome and he rarely put a wrong foot forward while in The Monkees as far as I'm concerned. And his Monkees-era version of "Hollywood" is not bad, it just suffers in comparison to the far weirder version he recorded for his first album with his post-Monkees First National Band. Like "War Games", this first pass suffers from a marching drum beat that has no place in rock and roll and not much of a place in country music. This is a generic recording that will be bettered after a good hard rethink.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">134. <b>(Theme From) The Monkees</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Generally speaking, TV theme songs are not good. They may spark nostalgia and happy memories of watching <i>Gilligan's Island</i> or <i>I Dream of Jeannie</i> or some other garbage, but they're usually more like advertising jingles than actual music. That's the problem with one of The Monkees' most recognizable songs. The theme from their television show is catchier and harder rocking than the average TV theme, but listening to it in the context of a record instead of an episode of their sitcom is still a bit too much like putting "The Ballad of Gilligan's Island" or "Byyyyyy Mennen" on the turntable. Next! </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">133. <b>Shake 'Em Up</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Micky's production of Leiber and Stoller's "Shake 'Em Up" was probably an attempt to catch a bit of the bottled lightening he'd caught when doing the dynamic duo's "D.W. Washburn" for Lester Sill, head of Colgems Records, a week earlier. Okay, a lot of people hate The Monkees' final top-twenty song, but I dig it (more on that a lot further up this list). This recording has some chutzpah, but it doesn't work as well as the hit because Micky sounds like he's struggling with the vocal and Mr. Henry Diltz sounds like he's having similar difficulties on clarinet. Don't quit your day job as the most celebrated rock photographer of the sixties, Henry!</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">132. <b>Alvin</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A silly yet charming little <i>a capella</i> ditty about an errant alligator written by Peter Tork's brother Nick might have found a place on <i>The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees </i>had Pete not pissed off the Powers That Be by spending so much time and bread on "Lady's Baby" (more on that to come). "Alvin" was in the album's original track lineup, and would have taken up precious little space on the record, but it had to wait until <i>Birds, Bees </i>was expanded with bonus cuts in the nineties to see release. It's nicer to listen to than "Peter Percival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky," which I totally forgot to include on this list.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">131. <b>Gonna Buy Me a Dog</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Apparently, the idea was to record a fairly straight-faced version of "Gonna Buy Me a Dog", but Micky couldn't do it that way because the song is stupid. Mike even cut a fairly rocking backing track for it that went unused. What we're left with is hardly great music, but it is the stuff than an installment of Dr. Demento's show is made of. Micky and Davy's jokes are merely groan-worthy, but their sincere fits of hysterics over the shtick are sincerely infectious. Plus, my son loved this song when he was eight. At ten, he's grown out of it, for which I am grateful.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">130. <b>Look Down</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is another of those faintly generic rock songs Davy got to sing, like "Changes" or "You Can't Tie a Mustang Down", although this one is a bit breezier and catchier than those stumbles. "Look Down" was rightfully left as an outtake, but it's still one of the better things on the mostly barrel-scraping <i>Missing Links Volume Three</i>.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">129. <b>Don't Listen to Linda</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And here's another one of those fairly generic, fairly sappy ballads Davy got to sing, but this outclasses the ones further down this list because the singer actually gets to belt it a bit. It's also the rare Davy number that sounds better in slower ballad mode than it did as the faster pop song Boyce and Hart cut in late 1966.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">128. <b>Apples, Peaches, Bananas, and Pears</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">With the jangly guitars of "Last Train to Clarksville" and an instrumental break straight out of (Theme From) The Monkees", "Apples, Peaches, Bananas, and Pears" plays like a half-assed retread of Boyce and Hart's stock tropes with the bonus of an absolutely idiotic lyric about giving the gift of fruit. The guitar sound is sunny though, and the track doesn't drag along the weight of being a TV-theme, so I guess it's better than "(Theme From) The Monkees"? I don't know. Adjust the order as you see fit.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">127. <b>I Can't Get Her off of My Mind</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">When The Monkees fought for and won the right to record their own music, they'd executed a true rock and roll revolution. Take that, Jefferson Airplane! The guys were smart enough to record songs that were uniformly better and more adventurous than the ones on their first two albums but stuck close enough to the established Monkees sound to not totally alienate their legions of new young fans. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The results, <i>Headquarters</i>, is one of The Monkees' very best albums, and it only suffers one taste lapse. This vaudevillian rerecording of "I Can't Get Her Off My Mind" is better than Boyce and Hart's more expressly bubblegummy first production of it, but it isn't much less cheesy. It's cool that The Monkees—a real band playing real instruments—play this, but it's the one very skippable track on <i>Headquarters</i>. Fortunately it comes at the end of the first side, so doing so is really easy!</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">126. <b>Ticket on a Ferry Ride</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This relatively lengthy, slow burn from <i>Changes</i> has a cool groove, but the harmonies are too syrupy by several vats, which is a real pervasive problem with The Monkees' final album of their first phase. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>125. </span><b>Laurel and Hardy</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Even though The Monkees were very tuned into the experimental aura of their time, they didn't jump on some of the biggest and most enticing bandwagons of the psychedelic age. They didn't use the Mellotron and only used sitar twice, once when Peter recorded the millionth version of "Prithee" for the terrible<i> 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee</i> TV special (I didn't include any of the songs from that show on this list, which is for the best) and once for this <i>Birds, Bees</i> outtake. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Laurel and Hardy" is a real mixed bag. It has that psychedelic sitar and fuzz guitar, a lyric about the venerable comedy duo, and one of those tunes that has me overusing the word "corny." It certainly isn't catchy, but the strange production touches of "Laurel and Hardy"—the sitar and fuzz guitar, the odd stops, the plodding half-time outro—make it more interesting than most of Davy's bubblegum outtakes.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">124. <b>You're So Good to Me</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now we go from "meh" to "pretty decent." Davy gets a tidier piece of music to contend with and comports himself well. Jeff Barry's song is another mediocrity that will make you forget he's the guy who co-wrote the divine "Be My Baby", but the performance has gumption. Pretty decent!</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">123. <b>Tell Me Love</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Another <i>Changes</i> number, this one of the pleading soul variety. Micky commits to another merely passable Barry toss-off and elevates it a bit, particularly on the chorus when the pace picks up.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">122. <b>Me Without You</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Boyce and Hart completely rip off one of The Beatles' lamest songs. After listening to how out of place the old timey "Your Mother Should Know" sounds on the freaky <i>Magical Mystery Tour</i>, they changed its lyrics but didn't bother to change the backing vocal arrangement. With its calliope intro and punctuating tuba burps, "Me Without You" is unbridled cheese for sure, but a grungy guitar solo comes out of nowhere to slap the track with awesome for half a minute.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">121. <b>Your Auntie Grizelda</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Not a nice tune. In fact, to many ears, "Your Auntie Grizelda" is nothing short of grating. Jack Keller and Diane Hildebrand wrote it as their answer to the Stones' "19th Nervous Breakdown", and Keller said he was taken aback when Jeff Barry gave Keller's fuzz-guitar laden backing track to Peter Tork instead of Micky Dolenz. Tork proceeded to layer on a bizarre array of quacking and sloshing sounds. Keller was not pleased, feeling his song deserved the respect a righteous protest song deserves, ignoring the fact that his lyrics are stupid. Dr. Demento, however, found yet another standard for his radio show. Good or bad, "Grizelda" became Peter's concert piece for years to come. That gnarly guitar sound is something else.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">120. <b>Hard to Believe</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">After The Monkees made <i>Headquarters</i> as a dedicated unit, most of them couldn't bear the idea of making another record in the same way, with Micky doing take after take to get an error-free drum track down and Davy banging his palms raw on a tambourine. So for The Monkees' fourth album, they agreed to water down the purity a little and welcome in session drummer Fast Eddie Hoh to play on most of the tracks. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Peter was not pleased that his dreams of being in a normal band were dashed, but the music benefitted greatly from Hoh's tighter, more dynamic drumming and the musical intrepidness that came with recording in a post-<i>Sgt. Pepper's</i> world. </span><span>Consequently, </span><i>Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, LTD.</i><span> ended up as the very best Monkees album. It would be near perfect, too, if not for one track. Davy's "Hard to Believe" isn't quite the proverbial turd in the punch bowl. It's catchy enough, not quite sappy enough, and has a pretty neat light bossa nova beat. But it sticks out like a smashed thumb amongst the rest of the record's psychedelic country rock. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>It also sticks out because it doesn't feel like a proper Monkees recording, mostly because it isn't. Mike, Peter, and Micky were not involved in its recording at all, co-writer Kim Capli overdubbing all of the non-orchestral instruments himself. Had this been left off </span><i>Pisces</i><span> in favor of "Goin' Down", The Monkees' best album would have been much better.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">119. <b>When Love Comes Knocking (At Your Door)</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This Neil Sedaka trifle is no better than "Hard to Believe". It doesn't have that other song's novel rhythm and its lyric is much cutesier. However, coming on <i>More of the Monkees</i>, it has somewhat less stellar surroundings to sabotage and its all over in well under two minutes. advantage Sedaka.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">118. <b>If You Have the Time</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Davy is once again in full bubblegum surroundings with one of those over-emphasized 2/4 beats that can be hard to stomach, but "If You Have the Time" has a pretty good melody and the synthesizer solo adds novelty. On <i>Missing Links</i>, it sits better than it surely would have if it had landed on a proper Monkees LP.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">117. <b>Zilch</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Monkees surely had a lot of fun while making their first album as a proper band, and the utter nonsense of "Zilch" attests to that. Each Monkee spews a line of found babble at increasing tempos before cacophonously overlapping and (probably deliberately) losing the plot completely. This is even less of a song than "Ditty Diego" or "Alvin", but it's more fun than the former and cooler than the latter.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">116. <b>I Love You Better</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Perhaps the most flattering words one could use to describe <i>Changes</i> are "catchy" and "dumb." The B-side of the record's only single captures those two not-unrelated sides of the final Monkees record pretty well. The lyrics, a litany of the ex-girlfriends the singer does not like quite as much as his current one, are very stupid. The sing-along chorus, the tough and funky rhythm, and Micky's committed and soulful vocal, which this song definitely does not deserve, are </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">definitely </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">catchy.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">115. <b>Party</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">As we've seen, Davy sang on a few fairly generic pop-rockers during his time, but they weren't all so interchangeably featureless. "Party" derives a fair share of personality from a chaotic, contrapuntal arrangement that sees funky guitar lines bouncing off of brass bursts and percussion flair ups. The song is slight, and Davy does not turn in one of his most committed vocals, but the rhythmic quality is very nifty, especially in the fade out.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">114. <b>The Crippled Lion</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In 1968, Mike Nesmith traveled to Tennessee to recorded a clutch of his countriest songs with an ace crew of Nashville cats. The problem is that there wasn't much to differentiate a lot of the songs he took with him. A lot tended to slot into "generic country ballad" or "generic up-tempo country song", and he did many of them better with the First National Band after he'd bought himself out of his Monkees contract. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">One of those is "The Crippled Lion", which he recorded with an arrangement that makes it tough to distinguish from "Some of Shelly's Blues", "Propinquity", or a lot of the other things he cut in Nashville. On the First National Band's <i>Magnetic South</i>, "The Crippled Lion" picks up a snappy shuffle rhythm and the marvelous picking of pedal steel wizard Red Rhodes. Nice tune no matter the version, and that line where he refers to "something called the moon" is so endearingly goofy.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">113. <b>Propinquity (I've Just Begun to Care)</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">So, here we are with another one of those interchangeable Nes country ballads cut in Nashville. Another nice tune and a recording that compares less unfavorably with its First National remake than "The Crippled Lion" does. Plus calling a song "Propinquity" is such a Mike Nesmith thing to do. Maybe it's a love song to his dictionary.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>112. </span><b>Come On In</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">After Chip Douglas expertly produced <i>Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones</i>, The Monkees got a bit big headed and decided to let him go so they could helm their own sessions. This brought a swift end to any notions that the four guys would continue recording as a unit, and it became the Wild West in terms of their own sessions. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">While Nesmith was gallivanting off to Nashville to recorded a thousand of his own compositions, Peter was running up the studio hours on four or five songs. One was this cover of folkie Jo Mapes's "Come On In", which she debuted on her 1964 album <i>And You Were on My Mind.</i> The Association did it on <i>Birthday</i> the same year Peter cut multiple versions of of this pleasant if slight tune. His rendition earns a lot of appeal from its double-time bridge, which The Association miss out on by doing the whole song as if they're trying to win a foot race.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>111. </span><b>She'll Be There</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Another folkie vision, this one written by Sharon Sheeley, who'd hit pay-dirt by penning Ricky Nelson's "Poor Little Fool" and Eddie Cochran's proto-thrash metal "Somethin' Else". There is no thrashing to be heard on "She'll Be There", just the gossamer harmonies of Micky Dolenz and his sister, Coco, as they lay down a simple guitar and voice demo of Sheeley's tune during the <i>Headquarters</i> sessions. Nothing earth shattering, but it is rather pretty.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">110. <b>Merry Go Round</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Eerie and slightly off-putting, Peter recorded another of his own songs during his not-super-productive '68 sessions. He wrote this protest song with Diane Hildebrand, and its echoey, almost all-keyboard arrangement makes it haunting. Peter was a great keyboardist. His pitchy singing spoils the recording a bit.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">109. <b>Zor and Zam</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Another eerie, slightly off-putting protest song from the prodigious <i>Birds, Bees, & Monkees</i> sessions, this one not only ended up on the album but it also became something of a hits compilation standard. Go figure. Micky does his best Grace Slick as he sneers about two little kings who can't get any soldiers to show up for the big war they'd planned. A thoughtful lyric and a somewhat ugly sounding arrangement make for an atypical Monkees "classic" indeed.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">108. <b>Michigan Blackhawk (actually, "Down the Highway")</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A year after his famous Nashville session, Mike was still very committed to the sounds of the south and cut a rollicking rendition of a song by the not-very-country east and west coasters Carole King and Toni Stern. Here Mike is getting closer to the effervescent sound of his First National Band, and when he recorded "Down the Highway" in the summer of '69, he was on his last legs as a Monkee. Someone mis-titled it as "Michigan Blackhawk" when it was finally released on <i>Missing Links Volume Two </i>in 1990.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">107. <b>Little Red Rider</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Another rocking Nesmith country number that he also recorded with own band, "Little Red Rider" is appealing whether in its driving Monkees-days arrangement or its funkier First National one. This one's more about the feel than the song, which isn't one of Nesmith's sharpest, but the feel is a groove.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">106. <b>Shorty Blackwell</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">As I wrote much earlier in this list, Micky Dolenz didn't compose a lot, but when he did, he always produced a doozy. His biggest doozy was "Shorty Blackwell", an opus he claimed was inspired by <i>Sgt. Pepper's</i>. Nothing The Beatles or anyone else did ever sounded like this. It's more like a jazz-adjacent show tune, and it's one about Micky's own growing disdain for show business, no less. "Shorty Blackwell" is outlandishly ambitious, with its grand Shorty Rogers arrangement and restlessly shifting movements (incidentally, Rogers is not the Shorty of title, which refers to Micky's cat, who also features prominently in the lyrics). </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">I was horrified when I first heard this song on the <i>Hit Factory</i> compilation; my twelve-year-old brain simply was not wired to comprehend Micky's wacky helium introduction or the cacophony and chaos that followed. I still cannot say whether "Shorty Blackwell" is good music or merely a misguided and pretentious mess, and if I'm being honest, I kind of think it's probably the latter. But I absolutely love the fact that those bubblegum whipping-boys put something so outrageous on one of their albums, though it isn't nearly as terrifying or outright subversive as an experiment that appears about forty paces up this list.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">105. <b>Just a Game</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>As overblown as "Shorty Blackwell" is, "Just a Game" is </span><span>almost </span><span>minimalistic to a fault. A song Micky first demoed around the time of </span><i>Headquarters</i><span> as "There's a Way"</span><span>, "Just a Game" is basically just a series of verses, which allow the jazzy arrangement to build to an orchestral crescendo that ends up sounding as huge as "Shorty Blackwell" without all of that track's complications. "Just a Game" is not much of a song, but it is certainly more immediately attractive than "Shorty Blackwell" and further evidence of Micky's refusal to travel any traditional compositional routes.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">104. <b>Looking for the Good Times</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The individuals that comprise The Monkees spent their post-Chip Douglas years furiously recording, and there was certainly a wealth of terrific recent stuff that could have been used for their final album as a trio. Colder feet prevailed, and one grotesque song intended to pander to the worst notions about the band and one carbon copy of their most recent big hit were pulled from the archives. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">We've already gone over how lousy "Ladies Aid Society" is. (Sorry! I know I promised I would not speak of it again, but like certain idiot ex-presidents, it refuses to just go the fuck away). "Looking for the Good Times" is not bad, although it is pretty superfluous in light of its similarities to "Valleri". It has a similarly tough beat and similarly spectacular guitar fills from session whiz Louie Shelton. It's perfectly fine and perfectly redundant and "Steam Engine" or "Down the Highway" or "Angel Band" or "Time and Time Again" should have been on <i>The Monkees Present</i> instead. "Ladies Aid Society" should have been burned (Sorry!).</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>103. </span><b>The Girl I Left Behind Me</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This Neil Sedaka song has more personality than "When Love Comes Knocking", and as a Davy ballad, its sap coating is a bit thinner than usual. A superior backing track was made during the <i>Birds, Bees</i> sessions, but that one, which has appeared on several expanded releases, does feel less polished than the one that ended up on <i>Instant Replay</i>. For the most part, "<span>The Girl I Left Behind Me" i</span>s sincerely pretty without being too cornball.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">102. <b>Don't Call on Me</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Like "Hard to Believe", "Don't Call on Me" is an odd-man-out ballad on the best Monkees disc. In fact, it may not even be as likable as Davy's song. It's straight-up lounge lizard muzak, complete with faux cocktail chatter. Mike sings it in an unrecognizable parody of Bill Murray as Nick the Lounge Singer a decade before Bill Murray first played Nick the Lounge Singer. Yet, almost despite Mike's efforts to drown this song in smarmy caricature, it still manages to be pretty (confession: I'm a sucker for a major 7th chord), and unlike Davy's track, it benefits from genuine Monkees contributions on keyboards and guitar. Plus there's a bonus piano performance from <i>Monkees</i> TV-show co-creator Bob Rafelson in those cocktail lounge bits that bookend the song! Cheeky!</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">101. <b>Mommy and Daddy</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Another strange Micky track. Let's hold off on the lyric for a moment. Musically, it starts as a muted faux-Native American chant with lots of piano and thumpy drums, the kind of thing you might hear in a seventies cartoon that has not aged very sensitively. Than it builds into a full-on German oompah with many layers of contrapuntal Mickys. Okay then.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Lyrically, "Mommy and Daddy" is the most confrontational thing The Monkees ever released. Micky directly addresses his listeners, working on the assumption that they are still mainly a pre-pubescent crowd. He implores the kids to demand answers about the internment of Native Americans, the immoral and directionless violence in North Vietnam, and pill poppers from their parents. "Daydream Believer" this is not. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The original lyric was even more extreme, with lines about JFK assassination conspiracy theories and scenarios in which the parents must imagine their questioning toddlers bleeding to death on the kitchen floor. Even in its bowdlerized, love-championing released form, "Mommy and Daddy" is another piece of Micky music that makes you question whether or not you're listening to something that suits any metric of "good" pop music and another song that you can't help but be impressed made it onto a Monkees record.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">100. <b>Oh My My</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The A-side of the single from <i>Changes</i> is pretty similar to its B-side in that it is catchy and dumb. But "Oh My My" bests "I Love You Better" because it sounds more finished. There's a genuine guitar riff, played rudimentally on acoustic. Micky's vocal is almost uncomfortably sexy. "Oh My My" has a sort of acoustic soul feel that's pretty novel, and though it's no classic, it is a stand out on <i>Changes</i>, easily clearing an admittedly low bar.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>99. </span><b>Tear Drop City</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Had "Tear Drop City" been the first Monkees single, I think we'd all remember it more fondly. It has a lot of familiar elements from early Boyce and Hart classics. The melody is a near twin for that of "Last Train to Clarksville", and it jangles and name-drops cities similarly. It revives the rolling tom toms of "Steppin' Stone". Finally finding release more than two years after those hits, "Tear Drop City" ends up as another cynical attempt to capitalize on past successes when something like its own B-side, "A Man Without a Dream" or </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Through the Glass Glass"</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">, would have better represented The Monkees' sound at this stage of their career. Consequently, The Monkees were rewarded with their second single to miss <i>Billboard</i>'s top fifty.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">98. <b>Nine Times Blue</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Although it is often rated as an unreleased Monkees classic, I find "Nine Times Blue" a bit slight, even in its released First National Band form. There's no chorus and not much of an arrangement. Like so many country songs, it's sung from the perspective of a total jerk, and the fact that he's an apologetic jerk doesn't make it much better because you know he's going to be a jerk again now that he's made his lady friend crawl back to him. It is fairly pretty, though, Mike's voice sounds great, and the recording is short enough to not overstay its welcome.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">97. <b>Cuddly Toy</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The jerk of "Nine Times Blue" is a rank amateur compared to the monster narrator of this song. Harry Nilsson said this acidic piece of work was inspired by the Hell's Angels scumbag motorcycle gang. I always figured he'd written it after reading Hunter S. Thompson's sobering book on the topic, in which Gonzo the Great explained that sexual assault was a staple of the Angels' diet. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mike Nesmith says that aspect of this song totally went over his head when he fell in love with the vaudevillian jauntiness of Nilsson's demo. The Monkees certainly play "Cuddly Toy" without a trace of irony, and it has become an honorary greatest hit. It is arranged well and hooky as all get out, but knowing the song's actual inspiration will either give it some edgy cache or repel, depending on your tolerance for bubblegum toe-tappers about gang rape.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">96. <b>If I Knew</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now we're comfortably in good territory with a song that might not seem like a good one on paper. A very soft backing track, Davy whispering assurances of romantic rescue and doing a big breathy sigh...is this "The Day We Fall in Love" part two? Somehow, it is not. "If I Knew" is genuinely lovely, a mature pop love song with those jazzy tinges that are all over <i>The Monkees Present</i>.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">95. <b>Don't Wait for Me</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here's another genuinely pretty song, though one that hardly delivers messages of romantic fidelity. Nes liked to make good on all of country music's promises, including its chief role as the preferred music of bounders and no-goodniks. Don't wait for him, because the guys that sing country music are the least dependable guys in the world, but they sure sound nice making promises of fickleness against a smooth backdrop of acoustic guitars, pedal steel, and banjo.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">94. <b>Bye Bye Baby Bye Bye</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Bridging the gaps between country, jazz, and blues, Micky turns in an atypically straight-forward song with another of those big contrapuntally overdubbed finales and a spit-fire vocal before it. Even more prominent banjo on this one, and prominent banjo is always a good thing.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">93. <b>I'll Spend My Life With You</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Monkees did a lot of pretty country songs, especially after Mike got the keys to the studio. This is the first. A Boyce and Hart marriage proposal, "I'll Spend My Life With You" had the potential to be a touch cornball, as evidenced by a poppier first pass cut during the <i>More of the Monkees</i> sessions. By scaling the arrangement to airy basics (acoustic guitars, celeste, tambourine, pedal steel, and bass), The Monkees deliver this tune with such humble sincerity that it works well on <i>Headquarters</i>.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">92. <b>I'm a Believer</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And so we reach the breaking point, that decisive moment at which you must decide if you're with "Psychobabble's Favorite (and Not So Favorite) Monkees Songs" or against "Psychobabble's Favorite (and Not So Favorite) Monkees Songs." Because any ranking of Monkees songs worth its salt is going to put their most deathless and ubiquitous hit in the top-five, right? To not do so is to be nothing more than mindlessly, infuriatingly contrarian, correct? </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Perhaps, but ever since I got my Monkees wings at the dewy age of twelve, I have been almost completely indifferent toward "I'm a Believer". Neil Diamond expertly crafted an immediately attractive pop song. Micky sings it with his uncanny knack for drama, pitch perfection, and completely unselfconscious soulfulness. The arrangement is iconic, with its instantly recognizable roller rink organ lick and rubbery guitar riff. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">That instant recognition may be why "I'm a Believer" leaves me so cold. With familiarity comes contempt, or at least, indifference. It's a fine pop song. It's good. I'll cop to that. But "I'm a Believer" represents absolutely none of what draws me to The Monkees: the jangle, the oddness, the atmosphere, the poignancy, the imagination. It is the height of pop competence, and just typing those words bores me to tears.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">91. <b>Daydream Believer</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Insult to injury, but I'm indifferent toward the other believer for all the reasons I am toward the one I discussed above. However, for a long time I actively disliked "Daydream Believer" for its cutesiness and soft-rock bona fides. I once dated a woman who deeply offended me by comparing my beloved Monkees with my most loathed group, The Carpenters. Then I realized she'd probably never heard "Circle Sky" but probably had heard "Daydream Believer", which made the comparison a lot fairer. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In fairness to The Monkees, The Carpenters never exuded an iota of the moxy The Monkees do on "Daydream Believer", and I can now comfortably recognize its sing-along magnetism, the strength of Davy's vocal, the always noteworthy fact that all of The Monkees perform on it, and that wistful flugelhorn solo that brings the song to a wistful end. Fair play, "Daydream Believer" is good, but as with "I'm a Believer", I can live a long and satisfied life without ever hearing it again.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">90. <b>Forget That Girl</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This tuneful Davy ballad probably isn't as good as the somewhat similar sounding "Daydream Believer", but you already know my stance on familiarity. Its relative obscurity makes "Forget That Girl" relatively fresh, as does its melancholic edge, and Peter's Vince Guaraldi-esque electric piano lick is a solid hook. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">89. <b>Lady's Baby</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">As we've already noted, after releasing <i>Pisces, Aquarius</i>, The Monkees let producer Chip Douglas go and all sense of order went out the door with him. The Monkees started producing their own sessions as four solo artists without anyone to rein them in. The most extravagant of them was surely Peter, who invited his hippie friends into the studio to hang out and get stoned while he recorded innumerable takes of the few songs he had on hand. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The grandest offender was his ode to girlfriend Karen Harvey Hammer and her child, whose babbling and gurgling noises are captured on the final version of "Lady's Baby". Despite the simplicity of this warm homage to mother, child, and Pete's fave group, Buffalo Springfield, the amount of studio hours he squandered on its recording ran up a bill that only NASA could calculate. Legend has it that "Lady's Baby" cost more than "Good Vibrations" to record, though I'd take that one with a sizable grain of salt. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In any event, the song didn't make it onto<i> The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees</i>, allegedly because Colgems' Lester Sill (and the "Les" in Phil Spector's defunct Philles label) resented Peter's spendiness. It's certainly a more pleasing piece of music than the unctuous "We Were Made for Each Other" or the sepulchral "Writing Wrongs".</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">88. <b>Daddy's Song</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here's a Harry Nilsson number with a very similar vibe to that of "Cuddly Toy" without the icky baggage. Not that it's totally baggage-free. Nilsson's tells a tale of how his father abandoned him, a sad cycle Harry would play out with his own child. The version Harry </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Nilsson </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">recorded for his </span><i><span style="font-family: georgia;">Harry </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Nilsson</span></i><span style="font-family: georgia;"> LP betrays the poignancy of the situation. The version Davy sang on the <i>Head</i> soundtrack album doesn't really, although the live <i>a capella</i> break he takes in the film does. Extra points for appearing in a brilliantly shot black on white and white on black dance sequence costarring Toni Basil.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">87. <b>A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">After "I'm a Believer" sold and broke records, another Neil Diamond number was a veritable shoe-in for the next Monkees single. So while Don Kirshner and Jeff Barry had Davy sequestered in the studio, and the other guys were standing their ground in their fight to record their own music, the Kirshner-crew recorded this rewrite of Diamond's 1966 smash "Cherry Cherry". "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" did even better on the charts, though it failed to capture the top spot as "Last Train to Clarksville" and "I'm a Believer" had, possibly because it received less exposure on the TV series than its two predecessors did. In any event, it's a retread, but a retread with a purposeful acoustic lick, some zesty twelve-string that really punctuates that riff, and a solid Davy vocal.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">86. <b>Pillow Time</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Micky was playing with fire when he decided to record his first full-on kiddie song since the travesty known as "Teeny Tiny Gnome". But this time he did it through a much more adult musical lens. I guess it helps to be in control of your own music and to record something you have a genuine personal stake in. You see, "Pillow Time" was co-written by Janelle Scott, aka: Micky's mom. Like many of Micky's <i>Present</i>-era productions, there is a deliberate jazz flavor here, and he makes great use of Louie Shelton's brilliance. Even with the nursery-zone lyrics, it's a lovely track.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">85. <b>Oklahoma Backroom Dancer</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mike Nesmith skitters away from pure country for an energetic if slightly generic boogie rocker penned by Michael Murphey, making his second and last showing on Monkees wax after waxing "What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round?" a couple of years earlier. "Oklahoma Backroom Dancer" isn't as good as that stone-cold <i>Pisces</i> classic, but it's full of fun frolic. I challenge you to not grin when Mike off-mics, "Somebody get the piano player a drink of water!"</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">84. <b>If I Ever Get to Saginaw Again</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Jack Keller and Bob Russell melt all of The Monkees' stock jerk characters into one country-singin' Frankenstein monster. He's the bounder of "Don't Wait for Me", the terrible father of "Daddy's Song", and the underage violator of "Cuddly Toy" all rolled into one. Yet, like the very best country artists, Mike makes this creep sound like the victim, with an unbelievably poignant vocal layered onto a poignantly delicate backing track. You'll feel like a heel for feeling for this heel.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">83. <b>Time and Time Again</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">How this nice ballad got left off of <i>Changes</i> in favor of dreck like "All Alone in the Dark" and "I Never Thought It Peculiar" boggles the brains. "Time and Time Again" establishes a quiet, borderline mysterious mood that is endlessly more appealing than the bubblegum barrel-scraping that dominates the final Monkees album.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">82. <b>Some of Shelly's Blues</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Instead of ducking out on the woman who loves him, Country-Time Mike puts the moccasin on the other foot and begs his girlfriend not to go. It's all a tad undignified, but "Some of Shelly's Blues" has a potency that some of Mike's other pure country recordings don't, possibly because he really belts this one. Mike's buddy and fellow belter Linda Ronstadt made hay with "Shelly's" on her third album with The Stone Poneys (who'd already broken out with their hit version of Mike's "Different Drum"). The Poneys do it way too fast though.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">81. <b>This Just Doesn't Seem to Be My Day</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Here's our first bit of evidence that The Monkees were already bucking bubblegum cliché</span>s on their very first album. Portions of "This Just Doesn't Seem to Be My Day" are as chirpily, chipperly cheesy as "I Never Thought It Peculiar", but then it lapses into a fuzzed-out riff of "Paint It Black" Turkish rock, then it's off to the chamber for some harpsichord and strings elegance. "This Just Doesn't Seem to Be My Day" is terrific because it refuses to remain any one thing.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">80. <b>All the Kings Horses</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Remember what I'd said about how marching beats have no place in rock or country music? Here's the exception to that rule, mostly because "All the Kings Horses" only suffers from the briefest marchy passages. The rest of it is garage-rock country with nothing but momentum. This one was good enough to feature on a couple of episodes of the TV series, although it had to wait for 1990's <i>Missing Links Volume Two</i> compilation to see official release. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">79. <b>Laugh</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Placing this one as high as it is on this list might prove just as controversial as placing the "Believers" so low, but I've never quite understood all the hate Monkees fans and critics shower on this song by the guys behind The Tokens. It has been criticized for its dumb lyrics, although I think the "When life gets weird or shitty or confusing, try to have a sense of humor" message is solid advice. I also like the plodding beat, crunchy harpsichord, and robotic "ho-ho-ing" vocals. I find them pleasingly odd, and I'd way rather listen to this song than hits-comp-interloper "I Wanna Be Free". "Laugh" is the song that made me want to buy <i>More of The Monkees</i>, a purchase I do not regret. Lighten up, Francis, and cut "Laugh" some slack.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">78. <b>Never Tell a Woman Yes</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mike's oddest number on his last LP with The Monkees is another one that gets its share of guff, but I think it's a mildly brilliant homage to prohibition-era jazz with a feisty arrangement, reasonably engaging storytelling, and an expertly dramatic/comedic reading from Mike. And Hal Blaine's brief yet complex drum solo and Joe Osborn's brief yet super-simple bass solo toward the end of the track knock me out.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">77. <b>Angel Band</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">If there's one thing that irks me more than shoddy country guys, it's gospel evangelizing. But, as was his way, Mike makes the unpalatable palatable. William Bradbury's 19th century hymn takes on a goofy, shambling, charmingly humble mien in Mike's arrangement featuring wheezy harmonium and keening choir. I think "Angel Band" is more moving than "Let It Be" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water" rolled into one.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">76. <b>99 Pounds</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Davy the rocker tended to get short shrift during Monkees sessions, but whenever the short one ("I am standing!") whipped out his panther yowl, he seemed way more at home than he was when he was simpering about the day he fell in love. The toughest thing Davy, Jeff Barry, and Don Kirshner cut during their infamous counterrevolutionary sessions finally found a home on <i>Changes</i>, and it's no surprise that this razor-sharp pre-fab "Twist and Shout" slays the vast majority of recent recordings on that album.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">75. <b>No Time</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">From pre-fab rocker to simply fab rocker, "No Time" is The Monkees' own stab at a retro-barn shaker and an energetic highlight of <i>Headquarters</i>. The song is essentially "Long Tall Sally" with the guys' stoned piecemeal lyrics full of contemporary references to Ringo Starr, Andy Warhol, grass-smoking hippies, hippie-busting cops, and Bill Cosby, back when we could all laugh at his silly voices and not worry about his reprehensible proclivities. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">While the song is no expertly crafted gem, the performance is outrageous fun, as Peter fumbles his way through his piano solos, Micky shouts his brains out, and the whole gang guffaw their way through the call-and-response. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">74. <b>Last Train to Clarksville</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Although "Last Train to Clarksville" is not as polished a composition as "I'm a" or "Daydream Believer", it wins the day because it hasn't been as overexposed. In fact, I'd never even heard it until I started watching the TV show. Yet, it was a great big number one hit despite its lack of a chorus. Or maybe it lacks a verse? I don't know, but Boyce and Hart forgot something when they decided to turn the fade-out of "Paperback Writer" into a dedicated song. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">What "Clarksville" lacks in structure, it makes up for with what many have surmised to be a subtly anti-war lyric (the singer is rumored to be saying goodbye to his gal because he's being shipped off to boot camp) and jangle, lots and lots of jangle. When Martians land and demand our leader explain "jangle" to them, the president of Earth should just play "Last Train to Clarksville" for them.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">73. <b>The Kind of Girl I Could Love</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mike arrived in The Monkees enterprise with a fully formed musical personality. His style was completely unique; no other rock musician of his era was so dedicated to melding the melodies and harmonies of country music with the bump-and-shake of Latin rhythms. His one vocal on <i>More of The Monkees</i> is the bumpingest example of Nes's Tex-Mex style, and it's about damn time he gets full credit for inventing a sub-genre that pretty much belonged to him and him alone. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">72. <b>Hold on Girl</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here's another little-loved track from <i>More of The Monkees</i> that I'd take over "I'm a Believer" any day of the week. Boyce and Hart's first production of "Hold on Girl" was unbearably prim, but Jack Keller and Jeff Barry's remake speeds the tempo and hammers on a four-bangs-to-the bar beat that propelled this baroque-pop nugget onto The Monkees' second album. The way the track see-saws between the primness of the harpsichord riff and that slamming beat is pretty righteous.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">71. <b>My Share of the Sidewalk</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Between his Tex-Mex pop and straight-Tex-country phases, Mike Nesmith went a bit bonkers. This is the era that brought us such oddities as "Daily Nightly", "Tapioca Tundra", "Magnolia Simms", and "Writing Wrongs". Left on the outtakes pile was "My Share of the Sidewalk", which is unlike any of those other songs and anything else this side of Sondheim. It's a time-signature shifting show tune with full brass and gibberish lyrics about chocolate ice cream and pedestrian passageways. The version with Davy's vocal that ended up as a CD-exclusive bonus track on <i>Missing Links</i> was apparently unfinished, but it sounds like one of Mike's most complete and audacious productions to me. "My Share of the Sidewalk" sounds nothing like The Monkees, and placing it on a proper Monkees record would have been just as radical as placing "Shorty Blackwell" on one and a whole lot more listenable.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">70. <b>So Goes Love</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"My Share of the Sidewalk" is an unusual collaboration between producer Mike Nesmith and singer Davy Jones, but not an unprecedented one. Mike loved Davy's voice and put it to nice use on this bitter ballad by Goffin and King. This airy Latin-jazz rendition is way more affecting than The Turtles' overbearing melodrama, which they recorded shortly before bassist Chip Douglas briefly joined the group. One might assume that if he was on board for their session, Chip might have applied some of the tastefulness he brought to his own sessions for The Monkees.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">69. <b>Good Clean Fun</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">When a publisher told Mike that he wasn't going to have a hit if he couldn't whip up a bit of good clean fun, Mike responded in a very Mike way by writing a jaunty country rocker called "Good Clean Fun" without the words "good clean fun" anywhere to be found among its lyrics...always a good recipe for confusing top-40 radio listeners. Nevertheless, this chorus-free romp was released as a single and </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">predictably </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">tanked just as Mike's boot heel was disappearing around the Monkees' door jamb. He went out with a production and vocal bursting with vitality. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">68. <b>Let's Dance On</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Boyce and Hart structured <i>The Monkees </i>as a Beatles-echo, with its own Ringo-style novelty ("Gonna Buy Me a Dog"), George-style second-banana tracks (Mike's tracks), and Paul-style ballad ("I Wanna Be Free"). "Let's Dance On" was their John-style rocker in the mode of "Twist and Shout". Its shouts of dance moves are positively old-fashioned, Chubby Checker-style stuff, but the riff cooks and the track is a fast-moving, hip-shaking monster that makes novel use of baritone guitar, which was next used on several sixties sci-fi soundtracks and the theme song from <i>Twin Peaks</i>.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">67. <b>Listen to the Band</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This is another borderline non-song that benefits immeasurably from a power-packed performance. "Listen to the Band" is the definition of repetitiveness. It's just the same verse sung over and over with nary a chorus nor bridge to break it up (although there is a brief interlude for church organ). The lyric is Dick-and-Jane simple. Yet "Listen to the Band" became an easy Monkees classic and their only non-hit single to be regularly anthologized because it so handily serves as <i>the</i> anthem for a bunch of guys who were never given credit for being the real band they'd been ever since they started playing live way, way back in 1966. The weight of that history swells this heavy country rocker with poignancy. Its title is a frustrated demand from an artist who had every right to make frustrated demands.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">66. <b>She Hangs Out</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Jeff Barry and Elle Greenwich's spew of warnings for a patriarchal older brother is another number intricately tied up with Monkees history. Don Kirshner placed Barry's fatigued production, recorded during <i>that</i> session, on the B-side of "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You". Problem was, the agreement to appease Mike and Peter's artistic ambitions stipulated that they were entitled to record the B-side for the next Monkees single as a proper band. Although </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">"A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" b/w "She Hangs Out" was only briefly released in Canada, his arrogant move cost Kirshner his job.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Monkees weren't done with this song yet, though. Never ones to let a good bit of tin-pan-alley debris go to waste, they recut it with Chip Douglas, giving the track a heavy beat, a groovy organ line, and a horn arrangement that nudges the enterprise into Tom Jones territory. </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">That other Jones gives it his all, snarling, yowling, and screaming the lyric, settling the Rocker Davy vs. Ballad Davy bout once and for all. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"She Hangs Out" is the song that got me to seek out my first and favorite proper Monkees album, which my grandma agreed to buy for me if I could find it at Record World while we waited for my mom to finally emerge from whatever store she'd gotten lost in at the Sunrise Mall.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">65. <b>Calico Girlfriend Samba</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>The song that launched Mike Nesmith and the First National Band lost a key part of its title when it made the transition from <i>Present</i>-era demo to <i>Magnetic South</i> finished recording. Any sane individual would assume it was the first word, since it implies some sort of interspecies tryst between man and feline. But Mike Nesmith titles have never been aimed at the sane. Rather, his title lost its "Samba," and though a mere "Calico Girlfriend" still makes for an energized opener on <i>Magnetic South</i>, it loses something along the way. Call it a vibe. Call it a rhythm. Call it that special something one only encounters among the enchanting fruit-topped dancers of Rhode Island. Rhode Island, </span>Rhode Island, Rhode Island, Rhode Island.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">64. <b>How Insensitive</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Antônio Carlos Jobim surely didn't envision his "Insensatez" as a harrowing country ballad when he gave it to João Gilberto for cocktail bossa nova treatment in 1961. Ever the forward thinker, Mike tinkered with the song and imbued it fully with the misery inherent in Vinícius de Moraes's lyric. This one falls back on the shit-heel regret of so many of Mike's country songs, but this time Mike really, really sounds regretful and, perhaps, a few steps away from leaping off the nearest bridge. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">63. <b>While I Cry</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In the midst of his totally weird late '67/early '68 phase, the guy behind "Writing Wrongs" and "My Share of the Sidewalk" did the nearly unthinkable: he wrote and recorded a totally normal pop ballad. And as he would with "How Insensitive", Mike let Sad Mike take over. "While I Cry" is a simple song with a simple arrangement and one of the saddest vocals on record. It was too sad and normal for <i>The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees</i> or <i>Head</i>, but it finally found a spot on the <i>Instant Replay</i> hodgepodge a year after its creation.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">62. <b>Writing Wrongs</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Remember when I referred to a "</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">terrifying," "outright subversive" experiment that bested "Shorty Blackwell" for sheer horror value? I was talking about "Writing Wrongs". Where to begin with this song? Mike's wailing corpse from beyond the grave vocal? The disturbing lyrics about yellow water and a guy falling from a window? That piano-plonking, nightmare middle-section that sounds like the bad trip that sent Syd Barrett over the edge? </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Like "Shorty Blackwell", the most insane thing ever to appear on a Monkees record is impossible for me to rate as good or bad because I don't think such judgments apply to it. Chances are, after hearing "Writing Wrongs" for the first and last time, most Monkees fans knew they needed to lift the needle as soon as "Daydream Believer" came to an end. That's what I always did when I was twelve. "Writing Wrongs" really shook me up, kind of like the first time I heard The Pixies several years later. And just as I came to become obsessed with The Pixies, "Writing Wrongs" fascinated me and eventually won me over in a profound way. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>"Writing Wrongs"</span><span> also </span><span>gave me a taste for the more outré side of psychedelia. Sure I like sweet </span><i>Sgt. Pepper's</i><span>, but I prefer scary</span><i> Satanic Majesties Request</i><span>, an album my guitar teacher told me about after I played "Writing Wrongs" for him because I wanted him to tell me if it was bad music or music I was simply too young to understand yet. My teacher deemed it as bad as </span><i>Satanic Majesties</i><span>, a record he promptly loaned to me and I promptly fell in love with. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Yet, I do believe it was </span><i>Sgt. Pepper's</i><span>, specifically "A Day in the Life", inspired "Writing Wrongs." The songs share a reportage conceit (Lennon discusses events he read about in the newspaper; Nes discusses events he writes about in a letter), a cacophonous mid-section with severe tempo changes, a slowly striding rhythm, prominent piano, and an overall spectral ambiance. And if you'll indulge a more hypothetical connection, Nesmith was present at the orchestral overdub session for "A Day in the Life", so he may have felt a personal kinship with the Beatles' song for that reason. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">One thing is for sure: "A Day in the Life" is better than "Writing Wrongs", and "Writing Wrongs" is not what anyone expects to hear, and few want to hear, on a Monkees album. But that's what's exciting about it. I'll always contend that placing it immediately after "Daydream Believer" on <i>The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees </i>is the most subversive programming move in the history of record programming. Good? Bad? Whatever. I dig me some "Writing Wrongs".</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>61. </span><b>Dream World</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">While Lester Sill cut Peter out of <i>The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees </i>with extreme prejudice, he really handed Davy the keys to the Cadillac, allowing the <i>Tiger Beat</i> cover boy to place more vocals on an LP than he had since his pre-Monkees solo days. Some of the selections highlighted the worst of Davy's tendencies: his cutesiness ("The Poster") and his sappiness ("We Were Made for <i>blaaaaagh</i>"). Elsewhere, Davy got to show off his abilities as an ace-in-the-hole hit-maker ("Daydream" and "Valleri") and a really good songwriter, which he did with this Steve Pitt co-creation. "Dream World" is a highly tuneful pop song with momentum to spare and an ace arrangement of classic Monkees elements: harpsichord, punchy bass, snappy drums, and soaring orchestrations. Davy's voice seems to be changing a bit here too, as he demonstrates the hard quaver evident in most of his recordings going forward.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>60. </span><b>I Wanna Be Free (Fast Version)</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Monkees often recorded multiple and radically different versions of the same songs at different stages of their career. Rarely was the discarded version superior to the one that ended up on a proper, non-<i>Missing Links </i>record. Compilers be damned, "I Wanna Be Free" is an exception. The honorary greatest hit is a humorless ballad on which Davy whispers so spinelessly he hardly sounds committed to the freedom he demands. This alternate, which shared space with the other version in the pilot episode of <i>The Monkees</i>, is completely different. Dylan's period style was clearly the inspiration, as Michel Rubini squeals out an Al Kooper-esque organ line and Billy Lewis slams the kit like Bobby Gregg. With the accelerated tempo and breezier tone, Davy and co-conspirator Micky sound a whole lot freer and make me wish Boyce and Hart did a little less pandering when programming <i>The Monkees</i>.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">59. <b>Midnight Train</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Here's another song I first heard on an early episode of <i>The Monkees</i>, although it was a while before I realized the syndicated rerun of "The Chaperone" used a redubbed soundtrack from after the release of <i>Changes</i>. When Rhino reissued <i>Changes</i>, along with all of the good Monkees albums, I was able to get my hands on that rapid-fire, Johnny Cash-like ramble I'd first heard while the guys were decorating their pad for that big party in "The Chaperone". </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">For this late-era recording of a song he first demoed during the <i>Headquarters</i> sessions, Micky pulls out the stops. There's his blinding "Goin' Down" litany. There're his sweet harmonies with sister Coco. There's the ever-invigorating support of Louie Shelton. "Midnight Train" is the one great new recording on a bad record.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">58. <b>Seeger's Theme</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>With much of the same runaway rhythm of "Midnight Train" and a runtime of just 45 seconds, Peter's rendition of </span><span style="background-color: white;">“Goofing Off Suite”, </span>an instrumental by his hero Pete Seeger, may seem too slight to slot so high up on this list. But if you listen to it, you will understand. Peter was a fabulous and fabulously underrated multi-instrumentalist, and his chief axe may have been the banjo. He rips the shit out of his five strings while future Band of Gypsys drummer Buddy Miles rolls and tumbles so wildly he may have gone off the cliff completely had "Seeger's Theme" lasted another second. After listening to this, how could you not conclude that Lester Sill only excluded Peter from <i>Birds, Bees</i> out of spite?</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">57. <b>Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Sure <i>The Monkees</i> is largely the work of studio pros, but you can't deny that this rare colla</span>boration between Tommy Boyce and Steve Venet kicks with the vigor of a homegrown garage band. The slashing opening guitar and quivering tremolo-counterpoint provide a load of personality to a somewhat undistinguished blues rock song. I like it better than the similar "Clarksville". </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">56. <b>Of You</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Joy radiates out of every beat of this <i>Monkees</i> outtake, one of Mike's first recordings to utilize the magical harmonies of himself and Micky. He also seemingly utilizes every piece of percussion lying around Western Recorders studio. At under two minutes, "Of You" is exceedingly short, but it still accomplishes everything you want from a pop song, and it will have you walking on air well after it ends. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">55. <b>St. Matthew</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mike fashions another completely uplifting recording, but this time he's working in weirder waters with surreal lyrics inspired by or directed at Bob Dylan. Don't ask me what that means. Is Dylan the girl they call St. Matthew? Since when is Dylan a saint? Is he even a girl? I don't know. I think I have a bit of a handle on the meanings of "Tapioca Tundra", "Auntie's Municipal Court", and "Writing Wrongs", but I must admit defeat when it comes to this psychedelic country tidal wave. The power of the arrangement and Mike's vocal say all that need be said.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">54. <b>French Song</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Monkee pal and "Zor and Zam" co-composer Bill Chadwick was so taken with the soundtrack of Carlo Ponti's <i>The 10th Victim</i>, a sort of arthouse precursor to <i>Death Race 2000</i>, that he was inspired to write a song in a similar vein. No matter that the music Piero Piccioni composed for that film was much jauntier than Chadwick's moody tune. No matter that the film was Italian. "French Song" radiates Frenchness with its rainswept atmosphere; its jazzy vibraphone, flute, and organ arrangement; and an elliptical lyric that sounds like it was poorly translated into English, kind of like what Elvis Costello would later do with his Serge Gainsbourg pastiche "Love Field". The song itself is slight, but the atmosphere is sumptuous and mysterious and Davy's vocal is spot on.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">53. <b>Love to Love</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The best product of Davy, Don, and Jeff's rule-breaking recording session is this Neil Diamond number that is a lot moodier than "I'm a Believer" or "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You". Just as the latter follows the "Cherry Cherry" template, "Love to Love" follows in the sullen slippers of Diamond's "Solitary Man", but it's better. Davy turns in one of his best vocals, and I'm sure that it is only its untoward recording circumstances that caused "Love to Love" to sit on the shelf until it emerged on a few compilations in the early eighties. Then in 2016 it finally got to sit on a proper Monkees album when Micky and Peter dubbed on harmonies for inclusion on <i>Good Times!</i></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">52. <b>Tear the Top Right Off My Head</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Peter got to sing all on his very own when he recorded this psychedelic country folk stroll he debuted in brief as an impromptu duet with Micky in the "Hitting the High Seas" episode of their TV series. As a proper recording, "</span>Tear the Top Right Off My Head" exists both with a lead vocal by Peter and with a lead by Micky. I must say I vastly prefer Peter's version despite Micky's obvious superiority as a singer. The song is so endearingly odd that it sounds wrong sung by a vocalist of Micky's caliber. Imagine if Paul had sung "With a Little Help from My Friends" instead of Ringo. Peter catches the perfect tone with his eccentric voice on an eccentric song. If The Grateful Dead were good, they'd sound like this.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">51. <b>A Man Without a Dream</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Boyce and Hart may have placed the most songs on Monkees vinyl, but Gerry Goffin and Carole King were hands down The Monkees' best non-Monkee composers. Their songs never pandered to the teeny boppers. Goffin and King always seemed to take The Monkees seriously, and their songs were mature, sometimes odd, and uniformly excellent. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Perhaps their most underrated contribution to the group was their last to make it onto a Monkees record. The Monkees were not first to get dibs on "A Man Without a Dream". The Righteous Brothers cut it for the B-side of their flop single "On This Side of Goodbye" in 1966. Their version is arranged identically to the one Bones Howe produced for Davy in early 1969, but it's way too slow, and with Bill Medley's deep voice, it sounds like the <i>Instant Replay</i> version playing at the wrong speed. Bones Howe picks up the pace considerably, and Davy's potent vocal is an invigorating antidote to the Righteous Bros' soporific original. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">50. <b>Little Girl</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Micky establishes the jazzy tone of <i>The Monkees Present</i> right from the get go with this light yet hasty original. Who could keep pace with "Little Girl"? Louie Shelton can, of course, and once again he swings in to whip off his patented fleet-fingered fretting. Fresh as an icy breeze and the best track on The Monkees' last record as a trio.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">49. <b>(I Prithee) Do Not Ask for Love Again</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The first of three Michael Murphey songs The Monkees recorded was the one they played during their earliest live shows. "Prithee" was also a featured number in <i>33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee</i>, but it had to wait until 1990's <i>Missing Links Volume Two</i> for a proper release. There was a lot to choose from, as The Monkees' serially recorded this strange and bitter ballad Murphey composed in forced medieval dialect (lots of "thees" and "thous"). Davy, Micky, and Peter all took a shot at singing it. Mike produced the <i>Missing Links </i>version<i> </i>in a style similar to that of "So Goes Love". Aside from the pitchy Peter versions, all the attempts are good, although Bill Inglot and Andrew Sandoval (whose <i>The Monkees: The Day-By-Day Story of the '60s TV Pop Sensation</i> never left my side as I wrote this post) probably made the right call in choosing Micky's solo vocal version. The chorus packs a total punch. Nobody pounded on the maracas and tambourine like percussionists under the direction of Papa Nes. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">48. <b>Riu Chiu</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>From </span>ancient English to ancient Spanish, this seasonal hymn was a little number Chip Douglas toted over from his days with The Modern Folk Quartet. He taught The Monkees his old group's arrangement, and they sang it with astonishing simplicity, skill, and beauty live on camera as the capper for the "Monkees Christmas Show" episode of their series. For the version belatedly included on <i>Missing Links Two</i>, Douglas takes Davy's place behind the mic. No matter the version, "Riu Chiu" is breathtakingly lovely, and Micky sounds like he'd been speaking Catalan his whole life. Now blow out that candle, Mick.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">47. <b>(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now blow it up! If the proto heavy metal of "Saturday's Child" wasn't enough to halt accusations that The Monkees were lightweight before their career had really begun, than this garage punk assault from their second single and second album should have been. Even the group's biggest detractors had to admit that this track was molten. I won't even bore you with how The Sex Pistols deemed it cover-able, because they were boring and given to acts of boring irony. I will aver that The Monkees' version blows the original by Paul Revere and the Raiders—no slouches themselves in the garage-punk department—out of the agua.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>46. </span><b>Steam Engine</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Late in The Monkees' career, the guys were drifting further and further away from the sounds of their best records, and though taking risks with things like "Mommy and Daddy", "French Song", and "Never Tell a Woman Yes" yielded rewards, the return of Chip Douglas was still a welcome one. Yet, his one late-career contribution to the band languished in the vaults for a decade, only sneaking out in a couple of redubbed reruns of <i>The Monkees</i>. This was shoddy treatment for the guy who contributed so much to The Monkees' sound and the best song of their waning years. "Steam Engine" is a straight boogie with hints of CCR, a fiery Micky vocal, and a bizarre solo that is either a terminally distorted guitar or a terminally distorted saxophone. I actually don't really want to know which one it is. How did this get left off <i>Present</i> and <i>Changes</i>? Perhaps it simply rocked too hard for the former and wasn't shitty enough for the latter. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">45. <b>I'll Be Back Up On My Feet</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This was another song relegated to TV show only, although it didn't have to wait as long as "Steam Engine" for a proper release. The first version of Linzer and Randell's ode to resilience sounds a bit unfinished, so it's good that it was left to simmer for a bit instead of landing on <i>More of The Monkees</i>. The rerecording on <i>Birds, Bees </i>is polished to perfection and arranged imaginatively with a tasteful horn section and Brazilian cuica, which fools the ear into believing The Monkees invented beat-boxing well ahead of The Fat Boys. The biggest improvement is the addition of a suspenseful minor chord that passes through the chorus. The original version sounds bland without it. "</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">I'll Be Back Up On My Feet" would have made a great single!</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">44. <b>Magnolia Simms</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">In his <i>The Monkees Tale</i>, the premier biography of the band, Eric Lefcowitz described "Magnolia Simms" as "half-baked" and "unlistenable." Eric must have been fully baked when he wrote those comments. This is one of Mike's most thoughtfully arranged and executed creations, a 1920s jazz pastiche so authentic that Mike baked 78rpm pops and skips right into the mix. Not only is this a terrific song that could have been yodeled by Arthur Fields forty years earlier, but the guitar, horns, and slapstick shtick is perfect. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">43. <b>Someday Man</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The more adult-oriented Davy of 1969 got his ultimate pop anthem from Paul Williams, his fellow diminutive dynamo who gave the world "The Rainbow Connection" and The Penguin's voice. Davy thought Bones Howe's arrangement of Williams's whimsy was too busy, but I don't see how it could have been bettered. The zooping bass line grounds it, the French horns flutter above breezily, and the acoustic guitars drive it along. If Mike's "Listen to the Band" is the ultimate anthem for The Monkees as a unit, then its flip side is the ultimate one for the guys as individuals going their own ways.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">42. <b>Through the Looking Glass</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Boyce and Hart took inspiration from Lewis Carroll, but their original production of "Through the Looking Glass" was a bubblegum bounce light years removed from the spooky psych of "White Rabbit" or "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". The superior remake they produced a year later is hardly spooky, but it is much more imaginatively realized. Losing its cornball beat, "Through the Looking Glass" gains a humorously grand piano introduction, a striding rhythm, and strings that soar, weep, and snicker. This was originally in the running for <i>The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees</i>, but it was held back until it ended up as the opening number of <i>Instant Replay</i>, where it could stand as one of that record's very best tracks.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">41. <b>Words</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">While Boyce and Hart's "Through the Looking Glass" had the potential to get psychedelic, they actually delivered the goods with "Words" when they cut it in mysterioso mode at the <i>More of The Monkees </i>sessions. Sensual wind chimes, a snake charmer's flute, even a squirming flash of <i>Revolver</i>-style backwards tape sets the tone. But that version didn't get further than an airing on the TV show. Shortly after that, The Monkees rerecorded it for the B-side of "Pleasant Valley Sunday". Gone were the flute and arbitrary backwards thingy. The wind chimes stayed, as did the smart decision to have foreboding Micky and wailing Peter trade lines in the verses. It was good enough to be the only Monkees B-side to nearly tip into <i>Billboard</i>'s top ten, although as far as I'm concerned, it was their first B-side that wasn't better than its A-side.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">40. <b>Star Collector</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">Trivia Nugget 1: A well-traveled nugget of Monkees-lore is that Micky Dolenz was only the third person to own the recently invented Moog synthesizer. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">Trivia Nugget 2: The first owner was allegedly Paul Beaver, and the second owner, strangely enough, was country legend Buck "Act Naturally" Owens. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">Trivia Nugget 3: Herb Deutsch, who helped Robert Moog develop his instrument, was one of my college music professors! </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">Trivia Nugget 4: It's pronounced "Moag", rhymes with "vogue," not "Moooog."</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">Now back to our regularly scheduled program.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">While Micky handled the complicated contraption of keys, dials, inputs, and needles himself on a track a couple of spots up this list, he shared duties with Beaver, who actually knew how to play it, on Goffin and King's tart anti-groupie diatribe that closes <i>Pisces, Aquarius </i>with sci-fi cacophony. This is one of The Monkees' nastiest numbers, but the arrangement is full of speed-freak humor, with its loping riff, Chip Douglas's hopped-up bass line, Peter's organ stabs, and Eddie Hoh's machine-gun snare fills. Davy shouts above the din. Micky says "bye, bye." Would've made a great single... on Neptune!</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">39. <b>Sometime in the Morning</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">A much warmer Goffin and King number, but perhaps no less focused on below-the-belt doings. Even as an innocent twelve-year old I suspected that "Sometime in the Morning" was a veiled ode to "the morning after" (i.e.: the morning after doing it!). After all, this is the songwriting team behind "Will You Love Me Tomorrow". Gerry and Carole knew what's what. It's possible The Monkees didn't, though. After all, they supposedly thought "Cuddly Toy" was about a teddy bear or something. But Micky certainly sounds like he's tapping into the song's erotic potential with his breathy vocal. The swirl of guitars and organ shimmer like sun rays slipping past the bedroom curtains and falling onto the sheets... where sex had just happened!</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">38. <b>Daily Nightly</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;">I love Mike's slightly hoarse twang, but he was not precious about it. He had no reservations about handing one of his songs over to a fellow Monkee, and if he hadn't done so with "Daily Nightly", Micky would have had a mere two lead vocals</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">—both amply shared with bandmates—on <i>Pisces, Aquarius</i>. That would have been pretty jarring after he dominated the past few albums and most of The Monkees' singles. I'm not sure if Mike would have been able to belt the high notes on "Daily Nightly" as effortlessly as Micky does anyway. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">What Micky is belting is a </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">surreal yet oddly journalistic report on the Sunset Strip curfew riots between hippies and cops that went down during the summer of ’66 (a topic Micky addressed with such directness during one of the TV show's interview segments that I'm surprised NBC aired it). The Beav sits this one out, leaving Micky to twiddle the dials on his own Moog, and the squalls and squacks he elicits from the machine make "Daily Nightly" one of The Monkees' most darkly and fully psychedelic tracks. The razor-edged bass line makes it seven kinds of sinister awesome.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">37. <b>Valleri</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Like "I'll Be Back Up On My Feet", "Valleri" was a <i>More of The Monkees </i>outtake that leaked onto the first season of the TV series before getting a much-improved remake for <i>The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees</i>. Davy's voice and the backing vocals are much more assured, the horn arrangement punches it up, and Louie Shelton's second pass at his digit-tangling, Flamenco-like guitar solo is even more phenomenal than his first. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The demo-like original version was good enough to get some radio play in mid-1967, so "Valleri" was a natural choice for a single a year later, and it became The Monkees' final entry in the top-five. I always liked to believe that Boyce and Hart wrote it for Valerie Kairys, the pretty extra who pops in a bunch of Monkees episode and plays Toby in "Monkees <span style="background-color: white;">à</span> la Mode". I also like to believe they stole the fuzzy riff from "Satisfaction". This was my first favorite Monkees song when I was a kid, though it didn't retain that honor for long once I started buying their albums.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">36. <b>Mr. Webster</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And here we are with yet another Boyce and Hart song recorded for and rejected from <i>More of The Monkees</i>. While the differences between the first and second versions of "I'll Be Back Up On My Feet" and "Valleri" are mostly down to polish, the <i>MoTM</i> and <i>Headquarters</i> versions of "Mr. Webster" are practically different songs. The first is a ponderously orchestrated melodrama. The second is an airy and eerie folk-pop gem, much better than a lot of the Simon & Garfunkel songs it seemingly imitates. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The tidy story-lyric is easy enough to follow—sweet old bank teller skips his retirement party so he can skip off with everything in the vault— but I think Boyce and Hart overestimate the ease of stealing all the money from a bank. Micky never raises his voice above a whisper. Peter's piano starts and stops and starts. Mike's pedal steel rains question marks all over the place. Magic.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">35. <b>She</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Let's keep this Boyce and Hart party going with what may be The Monkees' most celebrated album cut without the words "Hey Hey." Eric Lefcowitz described "She" as a "headbanger," a description I like much more than that time he called "Magnolia Simms" unlistenable. Remember that time? </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The studio guys do, indeed, bang out this basher like a garage band that will one day devolve into a metal group, <i>a la</i> Spinal Tap. Micky commits to the role of a guy who misses the girl who broke his heart completely. He always did his best acting in a recording studio, and that includes when he voiced Arthur on <i>The Tick</i>. That was awesome.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">34. <b>I Don't Think You Know Me</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Goffin and King's "I Don't Think You Know Me", which does for stuck-up models what "Star Collector" would do for groupies, is another song Mike produced early in the Monkees saga. Peter tried singing it. Micky tried too. I'd find it hard to believe that Davy didn't give it a shot at some point too. But the very best version features the producer's voice and eventually landed on <i>Missing Links</i> despite being much better than nearly everything on <i>The Monkees</i>. Mike really came out of the gates with a great production sound.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">33. <b>Take a Giant Step</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Monkees' first B-side is way better than their first A-side. Flip "Clarksville" and find a melancholy yet hopeful Goffin and King rumination on isolation and connection. The mention of "mind" gives "Take a Giant Step" a lysergic angle, and The Monkees go full psych for the very first time with a mid-section that slops on rattling harpsichord, snake-charming oboe, and booming drums until it all ruptures in a mushroom cloud of echo. Wistful, trippy, and accessibly poppy, "Take a Giant Step" is utterly fab. Taj Mahal's Rising Sons did a nice version of this one, too, but The Monkees' is inarguably definitive.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">32. <b>You Just May Be the One</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">Mike Nesmith didn't just fight for musical control because he was a genuine artist who hated having to pretend to be one on TV. He knew there was much money to be made by getting more of his songs on Monkees wax, and even though he liked to confound with wacked-out concoctions like "Writing Wrongs", he also knew how to play the game. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">His commercial instincts were especially sharp when he penned the ridiculously catchy “You Just May Be the One”. With its cautiously romantic lyric and jittery bass hook, the track was spot-on even before The Monkees recorded it as a real band for <i>Headquarters</i>. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">Mike cut a version with studio musicians during a 1966 session, which ended up on the TV show, and frankly, sounds damn near perfect to me. In comparison, the spare arrangement on <i>Headquarters </i>reverses the usual remake results. The LP version of "You Just May Be the One" sounds unfinished compared to the dense and electrifying TV version, on which the singer breathlessly spat out the title instead of drawing it out as he does on the <i>HQ</i> version. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">Despite my preference for the first take of "You Just May Be the One", it's a neat pop song no matter the version, and the <i>Headquarters</i> one is important because it shows off what a great bass player Peter was. His sweat-free execution of the tricky riff is so impressive that he barely needed to play his TV instrument on the rest of the record, leaving the bass in the very capable hands of fifth-Monkee Chip Douglas. While this song never achieved its true calling as the single it should have been, it has been included on all Monkees hits compilations worth their salt.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">31. <b>Early Morning Blues and Greens</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">One of the most underrated tracks on <i>Headquarters</i>, Keller and Hildebrand's melancholic "Early Morning Blues and Greens" enchanted Peter, who wanted to sing the lead. He had to settle for the harmony lines he layers over Davy's hushed lead, but he should not have felt jilted because the superimposition of Davy's resigned sweetness and Peter's saddened stringency strikes the perfect balance. Plus Peter really got to shine with his rippling electric piano arpeggios. His Devo-like organ outbursts, coupled with some slapping percussion, sound a good twenty years ahead of their time. This is a way better eighties Monkees song than "That Was Then This Is Now". </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">30. <b>Papa Gene's Blues</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">That The Monkees were not taken seriously during their own time is infuriating, especially since they started innovating as soon as Mike got the run of the studio during sessions for the first album. Nothing in 1966 sounded like his exhilarating Tex-Mex jambalaya “Papa Gene’s Blues”. With its ragtime chord progression and simplistically joyful chorus, it remains one of Nes’s freshest compositions. With its tangle of percussion and twangy guitars, it is one of his most enthralling productions, and you'd be a grade-A butthead to complain about the group's session-man-dependent origins after listening to guitarist James Burton's rippling, twanging leads. And if there's a better showcase for the vibraslap, I've yet to hear it. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">29. <b>Carlisle Wheeling</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;">Mike Nesmith wasn't happy with “Carlisle Wheeling”, which may account for its failure to appear on a Monkees album in its own time. The lyric about a ripening relationship is wordy and heavy handedly poetic, yet the simple folk melody is hauntingly lovely. Mike tried rerecording the song several times before realizing its issues laid in the lyric and not the arrangement. He even tried changing the name from his poet <i>nom de plume</i> to “Conversations” when he remade it for the second First National Band </span><span style="background-color: white;">album. The best version is still unquestionably the first, with its spare ensemble of acoustic guitar, drums, percussion, banjo, and organ… and it simply </span><i style="background-color: white;">must</i><span style="background-color: white;"> be heard with the ominous percussive introduction only included on </span><i style="background-color: white;">Missing Links</i><span style="background-color: white;">.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">28. <b>D.W. Washburn</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>If I lost most of you when I got "I'm a Believer" and "Daydream Believer" out of the way before I was even halfway through this list, I'll probably lose the rest of you now. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Even though it was the final Monkees song to go top-twenty, "D.W. Washburn" is not fondly remembered. Andrew Sandoval seemingly disliked the hit enough to not make space for it among the fifty tracks on <i>The</i> <i>Monkees Anthology</i>. Mike refused to play it at his final shows with Micky. Fans all across the internet profess a distaste for Leiber and Stoller's ragtime tale of a drunk who's perfectly happy wallowing in his own gutter barf. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Yes, Micky's singing is a bit overly mannered and self-consciously comical. This certainly doesn't sound like The Monkees of radio fame and was an utterly bizarre choice for a single. Lester Sill claims his selection of it was sincere, but it's hard to believe he wasn't trying to do his part in bringing a swift end to the whole Monkees thing. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Nevertheless, I've always loved this song. It's offbeat, funny, engagingly structured, and beautifully arranged. The way </span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">"D.W. Washburn" </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">slots into The Monkees' chronology makes it feel like they were deliberately using it to enter a weird new phase. Like "Shorty Blackwell" and "Writing Wrongs", it's one of those songs I dig because it highlights the strangeness of The Monkees phenomenon, but in contrast to my ambivalence regarding the inherent quality of those songs, I genuinely think "D.W. Washburn" is good.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>27. </span><b>Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Okay, here's one we can all agree is terrific. "I'm a Believer" and "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" may have gotten 45RPM pride of place, but "Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)" is by far my favorite song Neil Diamond donated to The Monkees. It bucks no </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">bubblegum </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">stereotypes, from its Did-You-Ever-Have-to-Make-Up-Your-Mind lyric to the wheezy cartoon organ taking a victory lap after its previous appearance on "I'm a Believer" to the fact that Davy sings it. But he sings it with unbridled gusto, and the chorus bursts so boisterously from the barely contained verses that it's hard to not get swept up in the "Hey, kids, are you ready for some goddamn FUN!!!" of it all. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">26. <b>You and I</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">You ready for some more fun with that lovable teen heartthrob David Jones?!? Tough shit! Because Davy is sick of the whole fucking thing. When he sings about how "you and I" have reached the bitter end of your relationship, millions of teen hearts must have rended (well, thousands...this was on <i>Instant Replay</i>, after all). But it sure seems like he was addressing his fellow Monkees. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">For his one real stab at acid rock, Davy pulled no punches. "You and I" shreds and withers, he shouts the lyric with no venom spared, and the king of corroded guitars, Neil Young, tortures his axe to shriek along with the cute one. Davy later reused this title for some twee jive on <i>Justus</i>, but that thing could not expunge the rusted memory of the real "You and I".</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">25. <b>P.O. Box 9847</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">When Chip Douglas went his own way, Boyce and Hart finally had an in to slip back into the producers' chairs. Only problem was that The Monkees were now to be the nominal producers on all future recordings. So Tommy and Bobby only got credit for writing "P.O. Box 9847". That must have stung, especially considering that this is their best arrangement. The song, with its personal's ad conceit, is good enough, but it's the psychedelic shotgun marriage of horror-movie strings, slidey bass, pulsing tabla, and shivering marxophone (last heard on The Doors' fab version of "Alabama Song") that makes this one of the stand-outs on <i>The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees</i>.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">24. <b>Salesman</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>The story goes that NBC didn't want to air what many folks consider to be the best episode of The Monkees because it featured a song they insisted was about a drug dealer. Mike insisted it was just about any old salesman. Supposedly,</span></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> NBC's real problem with "The Devil and Peter Tork" was its multiple references to how the network wouldn't allow anyone to say the word "Hell". </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span>That all of this could be true just speaks to how out-there The Monkees were. Yes, they delighted in saying "Hell" over and over (</span></span><span>bleeped with a censorious cuckoo sound effect, of course</span><span>) and ribbing the conservative network in the episode. Yes, they also sang "Salesman" against a kick-line of sexy go-go dancers with horns and tails. Yes, the title character of Craig Smith's song is a pot dealer. Sure, Smith makes it clear that the pots in question are of the copper and tin varieties, but even the NBC suits weren't so clueless that they were unaware of the existence of double entendres. </span><span>No excuses necessary, though. All this stuff is just feathers in the cap of the countrified funk that opens </span><i>Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, LTD</i><span>., with one of Chip's best bopping bass lines, Eddie's gasser of a drum solo, and a hip bloodshot wink. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">23. <b>Randy Scouse Git</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Micky's eyes were certainly red when he wrote his first song. He was flying so high after hanging out with Paul McCartney and meeting his gorgeous future wife, Samantha Juste, during a trip to Swinging London that he threw caution to the wind and pop songwriting rules in the dust bin and poured out this surreal account of his trip. Samantha is "wondergirl." The Beatles are "the four kings of EMI." The title is a racy insult discharged by racist Alf Garnett on the BBC's <i>Till Death Us Do Part</i>. The "talcum powder" is probably drugs. The chorus is what moms and dads always say to the kids who just want to let their freak flags fly, <i>maaaaaan</i>.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>"Randy Scouse Git" is as musically off-the-wall as it is lyrically off-the-wall. The tympani swells. Peter's ragtime piano. Micky's scat solo. The shouty noise rock refrain. The way it all overlaps in the ninth inning. "Randy Scouse Git" set the stage for a songwriting career that included such choice oddities as "Just a Game", "Shorty Blackwell", and "Mommy and Daddy", but Micky never bested his first effort, which nearly topped the charts in the UK. Micky answered the demand that the UK single be given an alternate title by titling it "Alternate Title", because Brits understand that "randy scouse git" means "horny Liverpudlian moron."</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>22. </span><b>Saturday's Child</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Released just ahead of the first Monkees album, The Monkees' first single laid some clues that Network TV's first rock and roll sitcom was not going to avoid the realities of hip youngsters, what with the possible anti-war sentiments of its A-side and possible acid-dropping references of its B-side. The album didn't waste much time before confirming The Monkees' hipness either. After getting that naff theme song out of the way, producers Boyce and Hart drop a bomb of heavy metal guitars that annihilate David Gates's silly ditty about girls who can be arranged according to the days of the week. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>Gates, the guy whose seventies reign of terror found him fronting Bread, must have messed himself but good when he heard how monstrous his song sounded. He later claimed it was considered for the first Monkees single, but its just too muddy, too grungy, and that instrumental break, in which the wall of guitars battles it out until Billy Lewis shovels the lot up with a 'roid-rage drum fill, was not fit for the top 40. "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadows?" hadn't even been released yet!</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>21. </span><b>Sweet Young Thing</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mike was none too pleased when he was bum-rushed into collaborating with seasoned pros Gerry Goffin and Carole King. He didn't enjoy the experience, and according to legend, he made Carole cry by mocking her songs. You'd never think the experience was so disharmonious after hearing the shakingest, quakingest track on <i>The Monkees</i>. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">This stomping ho-down, with its tyrannosaurus fuzz guitars and screeching pterosaur fiddles, is simple, infectious, and totally mesmerizing. I love the video for it on <i>The Monkees</i>. Peter's hypnotized expression during the instrumental break shows just what "Sweet Young Thing" is capable of doing. I love it so much I refuse to engage with the fact that it's one of those creepy valentines to an underaged girl. See, I didn't even mention that!</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">20. <b>The Girl I Knew Somewhere</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;">All Mike wanted was to place his song on the B-side of a hit Monkees single so he could sup upon the royalty rewards. But Don Kirshner had to go ahead and do that thing he did with "She Hangs Out". The rest history I've already covered. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;">The next step was to reissue "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" with the song that should have been on its flip in the first place, and if we're being totally sober, the song that should have been on the A-side, because Mike's breezy epistle to a girl he may or may not have previously encountered is immeasurably superior to </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">"A Little Bit Me." </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">Mike was a smart enough cookie to infuse "</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Girl I Knew Somewhere"</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"> with all the trappings of a Monkees hit. After singing the demo version himself, he stepped aside to allow Micky to sing it. He slashed out a simple guitar lick as immediately ingratiating as the one that kicks off "Last Train to Clarksville". He quietly rolls the organ of "I'm a Believer" out of the room and sits Peter behind the more dignified harpsichord. A modest pop masterpiece is born, and one that probably could have been a big hit if it got the promo its A-side did. It still sneaked into the top forty on its own merits. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;">But this still isn't the full story of the first single with a true Monkees recording on it. Sit tight for a few more entries and we'll get to it...</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">19. <b>For Pete's Sake</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i style="background-color: white;">Headquarters</i><span style="background-color: white;"> is a wonderful showcase for The Monkees as both musicians and songwriters. Nesmith, Dolenz, and Peter Tork all make major contributions to the record, but only Pete’s was deemed suitable to take a particularly prestigious position as the closing theme of season two of </span><i style="background-color: white;">The Monkees</i><span style="background-color: white;">. His roommate, Joey Richards, contributed a few lines, but “For Pete’s Sake” is mainly its namesake’s work. Peter roots his charmingly naïve hippie love-and-peace lyrics with a deliciously bluesy guitar figure and gives Micky plenty of room to stretch out with his ad-libbed vocal acrobatics. It's fired-up and full of color.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">18. <b>Mary Mary</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span><span style="background-color: white;">Mike made his name as a Monkee, but he'd already been doing his thing for a while as a folk singer masquerading under the twee moniker Michael Blessing. He was also a song hawker in his pre-Monkees days, and he successfully hawked this bluesy funk to </span></span><span style="background-color: white;">The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, who released “Mary Mary” concurrently with "Last Train to Clarksville" and well before its appearance on <i>More of The Monkees</i></span><i style="background-color: white;">. </i><span style="background-color: white;">Their version is slow and lurching, with overcooked white-guy blues belting. The Monkees' version smokes it with Hal Blaine's slapping drum hook,</span><span style="background-color: white;"> Glen Campbell’s gut-twisting blues riff, and Micky’s cooked-to-perfection white-guy blues shouting. So cool that Run DMC made it a hit two decades later. So stop your damn buggin', already!</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">17. <b>All of Your Toys</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">When we last left our hundredth retelling of how Don Kirshner was ousted from The Monkees enterprise, "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" was finally released as the B-side of "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" and the guys were poised to barrel ahead into the <i>Headquarters</i> sessions. But there's still a missing piece of this puzzle, and that is "All of Your Toys". Because The Monkees didn't just envision having a B-side bone tossed their way. They wanted it all, and the plan was to place </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">Bill Martin's</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"> moody lament on the A-side. Problem was Colgems' house publisher was Screen Gems-Columbia Music, and Martin was signed to Tickson Music, who refused to grant Colgems the right to release the song. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">I doubt Colgems would have given an "All of Your Toys" b/w "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" single the green light anyway, certainly not when Don Kirshner was still running the show and milking Neil Diamond's portfolio for all it was worth. "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" did sound more like a potential hit. Hell, it <i>had</i> been a hit when it was called "Cherry Cherry"! "All of Your Toys" is too downbeat, too structurally ambiguous, with a chorus that never manages to show up. Perhaps it's too dependent on Peter's elegant harpsichord when that pop-rock staple, the guitar, is mostly used for arpeggiated color. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">But what lavish color! What elegance! This is a lovely recording that made <i>Missing Links </i>worth the wait. You can hear how each individual Monkee makes a powerful contribution, and that includes Chip Douglas, whose pulsing bass drives the track along. And be sure to only listen to the <i>Missing Links</i> mix on which Micky releases all his vocal fireworks in the fade and not the less explosive mixes that tend to appear on other releases. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">And though it's a shame "All of Your Toys" failed to make the grade as a single, this story still has a happy ending, and not just because The Monkees got to spend the rest of 1967 recording as a proper band. When Bill Martin dropped his officious publisher to sign with Screen-Gems in the hopes of finally scoring some of that sweet, sweet Monkees money, he sold them a song that appears way, way up this list.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">16. <b>Can You Dig It?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;">If you've made it this far through "Psychobabble's Favorite (and Not So Favorite) Monkees Songs," you know that I think it was unfair that none of Peter's songs made it onto <i>The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees</i>. You're probably also shouting, "Hey, Goober, haven't you ever heard of a little album called <i>Head</i>?!?" Well, there's a reason you've only read about one of the album's songs (and one of the album's non-songs) so far. It's because I can't be arsed to write about things like "Supplicio" and "Dandruff", and because the album's actual songs are so damn good that most of them are sitting pretty at the top of this list. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;">So let's get started with one of Pete's, because one of the many cool things about <i>Head</i> is that it corrected the biggest wrong of <i>Birds, Bees </i>(aside from "We Were Made for Each Other", which we've already established is a piece of crap) by allotting a full 33 1/3 percent of the song-space to Mr. Peter Tork. Considering that there are only six actual songs on <i>Head</i>, that means Peter only placed two on the album, but that's still pretty impressive and the songs are both amazing.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;">First up is a track that takes the pseudo-Turkish vibe of "This Just Doesn't Seem to Be My Day" and fully commits without any hippity-hop bubblegum bullshit. The atmosphere is all incense, mystic philosophizing, and bellydancing, which gets full and sexy realization in <i>Head</i>. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">The sloganeering refrain is dated, to say the least, but the mesh of whirling-dervish guitars, hard-hitting drums, and fluttering bass are timeless excitement. Can I dig it? Yes, I can dig it.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">15. <b>Shades of Gray</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;">Though an exceptional musician, Peter Tork tended to fall a bit flat as a singer. With three more accomplished singers at The Monkees’ disposal, he was rarely elected to sing. </span><span style="background-color: white;">But what he lacked in technical skill, he more than made up for in commitment, as can be heard in his indispensable supporting roles on "Words" and "Early Morning Blues and Greens". Had Davy been left alone to sing Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill’s world-weary expression of uncertainty by himself, "Shades of Grey" might have been more saccharine than somber. But by counterpointing Jones’s inherent sweetness with Peter's shaky yet sincere pipes, "Shades of Grey" emerges as a movingly grave duet. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;">The incessant piano line Peter crafted underpins the track beautifully, and bonus points to him for notating the cello part and Wagnerian French horn melody Mike devised. It all adds up to The Monkees' most mature ballad yet, and it deservedly became the honorary single from <i>Headquarters</i> and a hits-comp-regular for years to come.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">14. <b>You Told Me</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;">The Monkees had worked as a live band almost from the very beginning of the TV/recording/ marketing project bearing their name. So when it came time to make <i>Headquarters</i>, they had already developed a decent playing rapport. The sessions weren’t easy, and the resulting album required innumerable edits for it to pass muster, but the highlights were plentiful. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;">One of the most dazzling occurs just ten seconds into the disc. The guys goof through a parody of the count-in to The Beatles’ “Taxman”, Mike picks a few rudimentary arpeggios on his guitar. Amateur hour? Hardly. Peter’s fleet-fingered banjo shudders into the mix. Suddenly the track whirls, and when Chip Douglas’s bass drops in and Micky slams into his four-on-the-floor beat, we’re knee deep in a country-rock funk no “pre-fab</span><span style="background-color: white;">”</span><span style="background-color: white;"> band could ever pull off.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">13. <b>What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Listen to the Band" and "Good Clean Fun" were singles, but what is likely Mike's most popular vocal spotlight is the song that kicks side two of <i>Pisces</i> into gear (that is, after we've all skipped "Hard to Believe"). </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">"What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round" was so good it was seemingly used in every other episode of the show's second season. Jangling guitars and electric banjo mesh so tightly it's impossible to tell which is which, as Chip Douglas zooms his bass hither and yon and Mike joyously shouts about being a bit of a dick to a Mexican woman who may or may not understand that he's about to slip town. This time an irresistible chorus and arrangement make it entirely possible to completely ignore the jerkiness of the song's narrator. Apparently there were rumors that The Byrds backed Mike on this track, but if I can be totally honest, and speaking as a big Byrds fan, they weren't this good.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>12. </span><b>Goin' Down</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">How good can The Monkees be? This good. Peter brings the band an arrangement for Mose Allison's "Parchman Farm" that a friend of his cooked up, and they decide recording covers is stupid and enlist Diane Hildebrand to write an original lyric. What's it about? A guy who tries to kill himself but comes to regret it as the river he'd leaped into conveniently delivers him to New Orleans, where he finds that hopping and bopping are better than pining for his ex-girlfriend or filling his lungs with polluted river water. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The most audacious thing about "Goin' Down" is Micky's "Sit down, kids, cause I'm gonna do some showing off" vocal. Remember those Micro Machines commercials with that guy who talked really fast? Big deal. It's not like he was singing. Micky jazzes out Hildebrand's wordy words a mile a minute, speeding up until it just becomes a blur of sound in the fourth verse. But that's not all! He then breaks into his best James Brown impression to scat his way to the Land of Hope and Glory. <br /></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Micky's tour de force is so tour de forcey that it's easy to ignore the other guys' contributions, but you'd be a chump to do that. Mike, who usually settled for simply strumming or arpeggiating chords, bends off some groovy blues licks cool enough to impress Peter, who was a way better musician. There seems to be some confusion regarding who plays the magnetic walking bass line that serves as the song's main riff, but whether it was Pete or Chip, it is fantastic and the reason I decided to learn that instrument after watching that weird video in which some guy in black gloves mimes the bass part unconvincingly. Seeing that made me think, "I could do that!" and that kind of arrogant self-delusion has served me well now for decades.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">11. <b>As We Go Along</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">If Micky hasn't wowed you yet, you're a dum-dum and don't deserve any more convincing. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Okay, damn it, here's some more proof. The polar opposite of his performance on "Goin' Down", Micky has slowed down to hit his most melodic and melancholic tone for Carole King and Toni Stern's luxurious love song that graces <i>Head</i> and the B-side of that album's single. His performance is emotion-and-pitch perfect, rising and falling as the mood swells and settles. But it's almost as show-offy as "Goin' Down" because he does what he does in complicated 5/4 time. Singing "As We Go Along" was a challenge, even for a pro like Mick, but it was well worth the hassle. Neil Young is back for a more sedate performance than the searing, electrified one he supplied to "You and I", but his woozy, romantic acoustic pickings are just as integral and memorable. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>10. </span><b>I Won't Be the Same Without Her</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">You think "As We Go Along" is pretty? Well, you're right, it is! But so is this wallow in the inability to get over a failed relationship. Mike sings it against a deep rhythm section of innumerable guitars and percussions, but its those Association-like fluttering vocals by some anonymous studio singers that really grab my heart by its heart-throat and give it the ol' coronary throttle. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mike's loveliest production of one of Goffin and King's loveliest songs couldn't be included on <i>The Monkees</i> because then there wouldn't have been space for sap-ola ballads like "I Wanna Be Free" or "I'll Be True to You" or stupidity like "Gonna Buy Me a Dog". Can't have that! Fortunately "I Won't Be the Same Without Her" was rescued for <i>Instant Replay</i>, where it could stand out as the best song on the album even though it totally would have done that very same thing had it been included on <i>The Monkees.</i></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">9. <b>Sunny Girlfriend</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Mike wrote “Sunny Girlfriend” as a simple tune the guys could reproduce on stage with a minimum of fuss. It worked, and the song was a set-list mainstay for The Monkees’ famed 1967 tour. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">On <i>Headquarters</i>, it was just as effective. Borrowing the guitar riff from The Rolling Stones’ version of “It’s All Over Now” and the standard boogie bass line, The Monkees had themselves a delectably jangly countrified rocker with a strangely sinister bridge. It all sounds uniquely like The Monkees in a way that session concoctions like "Last Train to Clarksville" and "I'm a Believer" never could. Mike and Micky harmonize like no one else.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">8. <b>Pleasant Valley Sunday</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Monkees got some massive hits with their first few singles, but as if you couldn't tell, I don't think any of the A-sides were that great. All that changed for single number four. Gerry Goffin and Carole King's </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">“Pleasant Valley Sunday”</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"> was more sophisticated than any non-group composition The Monkees had recorded up to this point. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">The topic, a light jab at the generic suburban communities popping up all over the U.S., was more interesting than the usual “I love you, you love me, la la la” material Kirshner foisted on the band. The guitar riff Chip Douglas worked out under the thrall of George Harrison’s “I Want to Tell You” and taught to Mike was both intricate and entirely captivating. The performance was incredibly dynamic, with Mike fingering that riff flawlessly, Eddie Hoh discharging machine gun drum fills, Chip supplying the thrillingly upfront bass line, Peter laying down an equally exciting and involved piano part, and all four Monkees contributing to the invigorating weave of harmonies. All of the attention the "Believers" received should be passed along to "Pleasant Valley Sunday", the hit single that actually deserves it.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">7. <b>Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;">Peter had a reputation as The Monkees' resident flower-powering peacenik. He's the guy who posited that "love is understanding," after all. In reality, he could be ornery and once decked Davy Jones (although he insists that Davy nutted him first). </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;">Punk Peter is the one we hear on his most electrifying song. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">Speedy and aggressive, spiced with tortured guitar bends, thrashingly fast bass, and a heart-stopping shift to waltz time in the bridge, "<span>Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?</span><b>"</b> is a masterpiece of composition and ensemble playing. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">Anyone who thinks Peter Tork was nothing more than a pre-fab sitcom star should shut up and try to cover this. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAY30wBLyC4" target="_blank">I did</a>, and you know what? It was hard as hell. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;">Peter also turns in his best vocal, sounding not unlike Jim Morrison.</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"> </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;">Cut from the running of </span><i style="background-color: white;">The Birds, The Bees</i><span style="background-color: white;"> at the last minute, “Long Title” (do I have to type that whole title all over again?) ended up on the </span><i style="background-color: white;">Head</i><span style="background-color: white;"> soundtrack, taking its rightful place among the most uniformly superb songs on any Monkees LP.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">6. <b>Tapioca Tundra</b></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;">As we've noted, Mike wrote his weirdest songs for </span><i style="background-color: white;">The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees</i><span style="background-color: white;">, from</span><span style="background-color: white;"> the consciously old-fashioned “Magnolia Simms” to the futuristic psychedelic horror show “Writing Wrongs.” It’s hard to feature these two songs springing from the pen of the same man before you hear “Tapioca Tundra”. This poetic rumination on the passage of a song from writer to audience bridges those other two curiosities: a jazz-age romp to be crooned through a megaphone at one end of the spectrum; a freak-out with bizarre echo effects and a disturbing climax that suggests Nes plunging to his death at the other. With its frenetic percussion and jolly melody, “Tapioca Tundra” is also a slight return to the Tex-Mex pop Mike contributed to the first two Monkees records. </span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white;">As the charting B-side of “Valleri”, “Tapioca Tundra” is surely one of the strangest songs to ever creep into the top forty, but it also brims with melodic and rhythmic punch and an inventive structure that begins with a whistling stroll before slamming into the song proper and finally toppling off that cliff. I like Pop Mike, and I like Country Mike, but Weird Mike is my favorite Mike.</span></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span>5. </span><b>Auntie's Municipal Court</b></span></p><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Pop Mike, Country Mike, and Weird Mike all meld together for what many (such as me!) consider to be the stand-out track on <i>Birds, Bees</i>. With assistance from Keith Allison of the Raiders, Mike wrote a song in the folk-traditional that sounds like it should have been sung around campfires during frontier times. The surreal lyric about bureaucratic dehumanization is hardly so old-fashioned, nor is the outlandishly trippy presentation, which features a jangling mass of the trebliest guitars in the west, </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">an insistent percussion track,</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> Rick Dey bouncing through a bass line that is more fun to play than Yahtzee, and more echo than Carlsbad Cavern. Micky and Mike's voices meld into a single, perfect alien entity.</span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">4. <b>Love Is Only Sleeping</b></span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></b><span style="font-family: georgia;">The Monkees’ place in light-pop history was etched in bubblegum when they scored with “Daydream Believer”, but the original plan was to release Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil’s weirdly philosophical, psychedelic love song in 7/4 time. Further complicated by the relatively uncommercial vocals of Mike Nesmith, “Love Is Only Sleeping” probably would not have been the #1 monster “Daydream Believer” turned out to be if that song was left on the B-side, which it was until a manufacturing delay led to a rethink. But hits aren't everything. “Love Is Only Sleeping” is not just cooler than "Daydream", it's cool enough that Bob "St. Matthew" Dylan played it during an episode of his radio show on the topic of "sleep." What do you think of your hero now, Wenner? </span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">That sleep aspect is rumored to be another reason that toppled "Love Is Only Sleeping" from its A-side role. Colgems supposedly worried that the title was too suggestive for radio and teenyboppers, the implication apparently being that “sleeping” is code for “fucking” (clearly, these people were doing it wrong). According to another and likelier rumor, the Powers That Be just didn't think Mike's voice was the stuff of bubblegum hits. </span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Whatever the case, it's hard to believe that "Love Is Only Sleeping" ever stood a chance as a single, but one cannot help but wonder what might have been if it had ended up in that role just as The Monkees' popularity was peaking. Would this have been the record to ruin them commercially, as Lester Sill allegedly feared? Would it be the one to finally force the hipsters to recognize that The Monkees were groovier than them, what with that irresistible wiry guitar riff, proggy time signature, psychedelic clicks and clacks, and dirty lyrics (for those who enjoy misinterpreting fairly easy-to-grasp songs). We'll never know, as "Love Is Only Sleeping" was left to fulfill its destiny as yet another track that makes <i>Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones</i> the best Monkees album.</span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">3. <b>Circle Sky</b></span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></b><span style="font-family: georgia;">Like "Sunny Girlfriend", “Circle Sky” is a song Mike composed for The Monkees' stage show. It's a another simple one with a simple progression to be played with energy fierce enough to make everyone in the audience momentarily forget how much they wanted to jump Davy's bones. It also makes disorienting use of the chromatic scale, which gave several of Mike's songs ("Mary Mary", "Good Clean Fun", "Listen to the Band") their unique flavor—John Enwistle is the only other rock songwriter I can think of who made the chromatic scale such a personal signature. When Bob Rafelson wanted to include a live performance in <i>Head</i> to prove that The Monkees were no phonies, "Circle Sky" was a great choice.</span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">And most commentators will go down insisting that the film's live version is the definitive one. That's not the song way up at number 3 on my list, though. Frankly, I think the studio version that was allegedly included on the album "accidentally" blows the live one out of the water. On that version, Mike's vocal is too up front, the arrangement is too sparse, and Micky keeps tripping up what should be a straight, galvanic beat, with his incessant drum fills.</span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">The studio version is an altogether different beast, with its shakers, wood blocks, organs, and army of skidding Bo Diddley guitars (must be about half a dozen). Without a solo in sight, "Circle Sky" may be the greatest rhythm guitar track ever recorded. It's all so overwhelming that Mike Nesmith can only shout out nearly inaudibly from the eye of the maelstrom. The other Monkees were bummed he didn’t include their live version on the <i>Head</i> soundtrack album, but the studio version is the magnificent one.</span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">2. <b>Porpoise Song</b></span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></b><span style="font-family: georgia;">For The Monkees' one and only feature film, director Bob Rafelson and writer Jack Nicholson came up with something totally unexpected: a withering avant garde romp that relentlessly drives home the message that The Monkees were prisoners of their unfair ersatz image. </span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">I hope at this point I've driven home the message that when The Monkees were free to create the way they wanted to, which they very often were, they were anything but ersatz. Proof is in the theme song of <i>Head</i>. There's nary a trace of bubblegum, teeny-bop pandering, or awkward artistry in this dreamy psychedelic dirge from the perfect pens of Gerry Goffin and Carole King. </span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Gerry's production is perfect too, as yawning cellos dance with droning organ, tip-toeing bass, warped Moog, clarion tubular bells, and elephantine drums. Micky and Davy breathe surreal lines that conjure images stretching from Micky's child-star days as TV's <i>Circus Boy</i> to his current ones as the trapped-in-a-black-box TV pop star whose overdubbed vocals are refused the chance to rejoice. </span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Why a porpoise? Well, it's much more intelligent than most people realize. It's often forced to perform in silly shows for slack-jawed doofuses. Imprisoned in a tank when it should be free to do as it pleases. Does that remind you of anyone?</span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">"Porpoise Song" is sad and personal and powerful. Then it slams to a halt, takes a breath, and slams back in as the cellos break out of their binds, the drums hammer a torrent of brimstone, the tubular bells clang midnight, and the Moog shrieks in mimicry of the title sea creature. It fades, and all you can do is try to catch your breath. </span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Hearing "Porpoise Song" for the first time on <i>Hit Factory </i>was<i> </i>like putting my musical tastes through a maturity accelerator. In an instant, things like "Valleri" and "Daydream Believer" were no longer good enough. I'd tasted how good music could be. I shit you not: "Porpoise Song" is as good as almost anything the critically revered Beatles ever recorded. But there's one Monkees track I love even more...</span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">1.<b> The Door Into Summer</b></span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></b><span style="font-family: georgia;">If you'll scroll back up to my entry on "She Hangs Out", you'll recall my story about how I got my first proper Monkees album because I liked Davy's pop rocker from the TV show. While listening to <i>Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, LTD.</i>, in its entirety for the first time, I was thrilled to discover how many of its other songs I knew from the show too, but none thrilled me as much as hearing a song I'd previously assumed was called "Penny Whistle Band" or "Gypsy Caravan" or something. </span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">It wasn't. It was Bill Martin's "The Door Into Summer", a song The Monkees would not have been able to do had Martin not jumped ship from his old publisher after the whole "All of Your Toys" debacle. Thankfully he did, because his latest song was even better than that scrapped single. Inspired by Robert Heinlein's time travel novel of the same name (which is way better than <i>Stranger In a Strange Land</i>, FYI), Martin wrote a wistful song of regret delivered with sensitivity, power, and creativity by a real band. </span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">There's stalwart and uncelebrated sideman Chip Douglas fingering the tricky nylon-string guitar interludes and the propulsive bass line. There's Peter spinning off shimmering, music-box piano runs and a gnarly Clavinet growl. There's Davy dutifully banging his tambourine. There's Micky gracing the upper atmosphere with his heavenly harmonies, and quite likely laying down a driving backbeat on the drums to go along with Eddie Hoh's rolling and tumbling one. And there's Mike Nesmith singing the lead with his mature, pensive, not-remotely-bubblegum sigh. </span></div><div style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">Eric Lefcowitz called "The Door Into Summer" "transcendent." I cannot improve on that, and you'd have a tough time finding a song that improves on "The Door Into Summer". It is perfect and as real as real gets, as The Monkees tended to be when they were free to be themselves.</span></div>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-62823252162639996292024-01-28T07:58:00.000-05:002024-01-28T07:58:18.530-05:00Review: 'The Terror'/'The Little Shop of Horrors' Blu-ray<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #141414;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCfcEtbF6b_0a75kKlDw4qu4bd0AJDOQaFh4P_vxxmU6Rxed8DFxG23NVzV-lwgJmKWURsybaZvbSQ45SgTebqs1ybGAal-OR5O2kd_67zcaIm8bbovhlrhW5dO1mr3VTfWuUMopK7x6qpNg7kVDUCy-tkvoekEWMJ4zRrylK14YZ15l3lY9RoYkECJMg/s1000/917PcheK3EL._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="789" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCfcEtbF6b_0a75kKlDw4qu4bd0AJDOQaFh4P_vxxmU6Rxed8DFxG23NVzV-lwgJmKWURsybaZvbSQ45SgTebqs1ybGAal-OR5O2kd_67zcaIm8bbovhlrhW5dO1mr3VTfWuUMopK7x6qpNg7kVDUCy-tkvoekEWMJ4zRrylK14YZ15l3lY9RoYkECJMg/w158-h200/917PcheK3EL._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg" width="158" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Jack Nicholson is a lieutenant in Napoleon’s army who tracks ghostly Sandra Knight to Boris Karloff’s decrepit castle. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #141414;">It took two writers to compose a script that clearly just instructed, “Jack walks down hall and opens door” for pages and pages on end. Roger Corman commissioned that script for no other reason than to get his every penny’s worth from the sets he used for </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #141414;">The Raven</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #141414;"> and take advantage of the three extra days Karloff agreed to make himself available. <span></span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #141414;">No wonder Corman wanted to keep shooting on the castle sets: they’re magnificent. Consequently, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #141414;">The Terror</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #141414;"> looks great, and that cast— which also includes Dick Miller, Jonathan Haze, and Dorothy Neumann— is impressive too. However, the desperation of this production, with its patchy story further confused by four different directors (including Nicholson, co-screenwriter Jack Hill, Monte Hellman, and Francis Ford Coppola) tacking additional scenes willy nilly onto Corman’s footage, is impossible to ignore. Of that cast, only Neumann rises above the perfunctory to give an enjoyably camp performance as an old witch. </span></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #141414;">The Terror</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #141414;"> is not as bad as its infamous reputation suggests, but the only scene that makes good on its terrifying title is the one in which Haze gets his eyes pecked out by a hawk…well, that is unless you think the image of Sandra Knight with honey on her face is particularly terrifying.</span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; color: #141414;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now, if you want to see a Corman picture without a single perfunctory performance, check out the rightfully celebrated <i>Little Shop of Horrors</i>. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #141414; font-family: georgia;">The story goes that he shot it i</span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #141414; font-family: georgia;">n just two days (not including reshoots) in order to beat new film industry rules giving actors more equitable contracts and pay— a sleazy motive, but one that allowed him to make his films on minuscule schedules and budgets. </span></span></p><div class="gmail-page" style="background-color: white; color: #141414;" title="Page 89"><div class="gmail-section"><div class="gmail-section"><div class="gmail-layoutArea"><div class="gmail-column"><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Whatever the reality of its production, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Little Shop of Horrors </span>is a brilliant specimen of B-movie making with man-eating Venus flytrap Audrey Junior growing to massive proportions on a diet of local folks. Charles B. Griffith, the writer responsible for some of Corman’s best horror/comedies, whipped up a script rippling with absurd situations and priceless shtick. The movie’s most famous performance is that of young Nicholson as an enthusiastically masochistic dental patient, but Jonathan Haze as Audrey’s keeper/slave, Jackie Joseph as his girlfriend, Mel Welles as his boss, and Corman-fave Dick Miller as a flower-munching customer are just as memorable. Still very funny with some charming craft-shop special effects, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Little Shop of Horrors </span>is wonderfully entertaining and wonderful inspiration for fledgling filmmakers. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Considering its superiority to <i>The Terror</i>, and the cachet of its musical theater and cinematic remakes, <i>The Little Shop of Horrors</i> really should have been the A-feature of Film Masters' new double-feature Blu-ray set. Maybe they thought a more prominent role for superstar Nicholson and the similar marquee power of Karloff might make <i>The Terror</i> the more marketable movie, but I guess it doesn't matter which movie gets top billing, just as long as they're both included.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Perhaps it was also the superior restoration of <i>The Terror </i>that put it on the cover. This is a film cobbled together from various sources, and the stock footage doesn't look good, but the dedicated shots look fabulous, with natural grain, vibrant color, and unenhanced sharpness. <i>The Little Shop of Horrors </i>looks overly grainy and insufficiently contrasty in comparison, but considering the way it was shot, it actually looks better than it usually does in Film Masters' widescreen presentation. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Both discs include a nice selection of bonuses. On the <i>Terror</i> disc, there's a commentary from film historians Steve Haberman and C. Courtney Joyner (who also supplies a text essay that focuses more on Karloff's past in Poe movies than this set's lackluster feature film), a neat 44-minute visual essay on Corman as filmmaker with a main focus on <i>The Terror</i>, and a trailer. On the <i>Little Shop</i> disc, there's a commentary with Jonathan Haze and writer Justin Humphreys, a 17 minute documentary on Corman's Filmgroup production company, and a trailer. Overall, it's a juicy package, though it's the inclusion of <i>Little Shop of Horrors</i> that makes it essential.</span></p></div></div></div></div></div>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-55585053636420983552024-01-23T08:10:00.003-05:002024-01-23T08:10:53.391-05:00Review: 'Atlas Artist Edition No. 1, Featuring Joe Maneely'<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhANRCjwu5MQSpr_JLZsN6wN_krXjpwN-6G9zOFeajeKB27MT0BAEJOxnsaHM_4nLghVUEtlNhpgerUNYrYvixqy0gqD4lzuqwcdqQFtKl2-8CMvYSdn-pnTknTrylRvMMAspxzxFrZxHTtbc6HgJDOuC8glNp-SLIlkdZMdw2aZV6He3qMh72qWMK_tR4/s500/51C1iZiFYLL.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="374" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhANRCjwu5MQSpr_JLZsN6wN_krXjpwN-6G9zOFeajeKB27MT0BAEJOxnsaHM_4nLghVUEtlNhpgerUNYrYvixqy0gqD4lzuqwcdqQFtKl2-8CMvYSdn-pnTknTrylRvMMAspxzxFrZxHTtbc6HgJDOuC8glNp-SLIlkdZMdw2aZV6He3qMh72qWMK_tR4/w149-h200/51C1iZiFYLL.jpg" width="149" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Joe Maneely is not as well known as, say, Steve Ditko or Jack Davis among comics connoisseurs. He didn't get a chance to be. After ten years of work with Atlas Comics, Maneely died in an accident on a train at the age of 32. </span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">One cannot help but ponder what might have been when viewing one of the roughly 3,500 pages of artwork he produced in his brief career. 215 of them are anthologized in <i>Atlas Artist Edition No. 1, Featuring Joe Maneely</i>. He was apparently game for any assignment, working on sci-fi, horror, medieval, old-west, war, humor, romance, and (aging least successfully, of course) "yellow-peril" stories (<i>a-hem</i>).<span><a name='more'></a></span> </span></div><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">His style remained consistent regardless of subject matter: lots of detail, hatched shadows, etched faces. There's a hint of the underground comix to come a decade after his death in his style, although its unlikely that an old-fashioned worker like him would have found a place in that grass-perfumed nook of comics-dom.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What-might-have-beens aside, what is may not always be A+ storytelling—there's a reason titles like <i>Haunted!</i> and <i>Adventures in Terror</i> are not as well-remembered as <i>Tales from the Crypt</i>,<i> </i>and a <i>Seven Year Itch </i>parody from comedy-comic <i>Riot</i> is anything but a riot and barely comedy—but Maneely's artwork is always top-notch. This volume captures it with incredible respect. <i>Atlas Artist Edition No. 1 </i>is an over-sized hardcover with beautiful reproductions of 38 stories and a gallery of Maneely's covers. The coloring is wonderfully authentic—none of that garishly-digital recoloring that has absolutely ruined many an EC-anthology. This is the way classic comics reprints should be done.</span></p></div>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-5718802666404284682024-01-22T08:06:00.005-05:002024-01-22T08:11:59.865-05:0012 Monkees Covers<p><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9)" face="-apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhROpLC_rrlTdgIu-euZt5RNJAYBcQ8kQz5_oFRGE-ucBVwZ1WSyJut90TyL1kZX8GcEWEOU7lWtGMv44vv4sKNBKfkwoCV6qjwkblz4ppRPv9bVfMJnkrYV44CxCT-paBiuhLPgffykZVnJDGX8k3ENLA5Mo5SKEM9T85QKqoy-frfienPIfDXcI0jVUo/s584/Screen%20Shot%202024-01-22%20at%208.05.45%20AM.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="584" data-original-width="446" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhROpLC_rrlTdgIu-euZt5RNJAYBcQ8kQz5_oFRGE-ucBVwZ1WSyJut90TyL1kZX8GcEWEOU7lWtGMv44vv4sKNBKfkwoCV6qjwkblz4ppRPv9bVfMJnkrYV44CxCT-paBiuhLPgffykZVnJDGX8k3ENLA5Mo5SKEM9T85QKqoy-frfienPIfDXcI0jVUo/w153-h200/Screen%20Shot%202024-01-22%20at%208.05.45%20AM.png" width="153" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span><div><span style="font-family: georgia;">I have a music project called The Space and spent the last couple of weeks recording a dozen Monkees covers. </span><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9)" face="-apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white;">I posted them on YouTube </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBAO5ExQiLwD9mUrkJ47I12O-rjL4nO8h" target="_blank">here</a><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9)" face="-apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white;">, or you can check out individual tracks with the following links:</span></span></p><p><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9)" face="-apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px;"><span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9)" face="-apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9)" face="-apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxVs_NY36-w&list=PLBAO5ExQiLwD9mUrkJ47I12O-rjL4nO8h&index=1" target="_blank">Laugh</a></span></p><p><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9)" face="-apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgljQ4_sbbU&list=PLBAO5ExQiLwD9mUrkJ47I12O-rjL4nO8h&index=2" target="_blank">Auntie's Municipal Court</a></span></p><p><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9)" face="-apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIR3jErhBds&list=PLBAO5ExQiLwD9mUrkJ47I12O-rjL4nO8h&index=3" target="_blank">Circle Sky</a></span></p><p><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9)" face="-apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqBDaymWbnA&list=PLBAO5ExQiLwD9mUrkJ47I12O-rjL4nO8h&index=4" target="_blank">Daily Nightly</a></span></p><p><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9)" face="-apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN_wlUJs3oE&list=PLBAO5ExQiLwD9mUrkJ47I12O-rjL4nO8h&index=5" target="_blank">Writing Wrongs</a></span></p><p><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9)" face="-apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gM_ZlS2mEw&list=PLBAO5ExQiLwD9mUrkJ47I12O-rjL4nO8h&index=6" target="_blank">The Girl I Knew Somewhere</a></span></p><p><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9)" face="-apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAY30wBLyC4&list=PLBAO5ExQiLwD9mUrkJ47I12O-rjL4nO8h&index=7" target="_blank">Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?</a></span></p><p><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9)" face="-apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIGT4binSC4&list=PLBAO5ExQiLwD9mUrkJ47I12O-rjL4nO8h&index=8" target="_blank">I Won't Be the Same Without Her</a></span></p><p><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9)" face="-apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsXtcrlzkdU&list=PLBAO5ExQiLwD9mUrkJ47I12O-rjL4nO8h&index=9" target="_blank">Salesman</a></span></p><p><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9)" face="-apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TQw4ydF7PU&list=PLBAO5ExQiLwD9mUrkJ47I12O-rjL4nO8h&index=10" target="_blank">Acapulco Sun</a></span></p><p><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9)" face="-apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qkmubsr6XM&list=PLBAO5ExQiLwD9mUrkJ47I12O-rjL4nO8h&index=11" target="_blank">Porpoise Song</a></span></p><p><span color="rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.9)" face="-apple-system, system-ui, "system-ui", "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Fira Sans", Ubuntu, Oxygen, "Oxygen Sans", Cantarell, "Droid Sans", "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Lucida Grande", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG74I-WrWjY&list=PLBAO5ExQiLwD9mUrkJ47I12O-rjL4nO8h&index=12" target="_blank">The Door Into Summer</a></span></p></div>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-22420984658395822852024-01-01T02:30:00.016-05:002024-01-01T02:30:00.141-05:00Review: 'The Devil's Partner'/'Creature from the Haunted Sea' Blu-ray<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMaxH1n75FSMVK9jKiT-xRPRtHZGWl84ddsB-71RIq7FDr3WbPHkm01Slp7k7nUEBDp3LEai2pAv-TSMy_jANyB2N-UMT886K6LiigG9W12kH0-fMKOjR2QJ7VTeV_k4QgDMgfdyVp2mZih_z3tQrCavZdqVz7cB36PEnYeWD7syTJMG046SLQXBXQhYc/s1500/81n9SGHWjIL._SL1500_-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1183" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMaxH1n75FSMVK9jKiT-xRPRtHZGWl84ddsB-71RIq7FDr3WbPHkm01Slp7k7nUEBDp3LEai2pAv-TSMy_jANyB2N-UMT886K6LiigG9W12kH0-fMKOjR2QJ7VTeV_k4QgDMgfdyVp2mZih_z3tQrCavZdqVz7cB36PEnYeWD7syTJMG046SLQXBXQhYc/w158-h200/81n9SGHWjIL._SL1500_-1.jpg" width="158" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">In 1958, director Charles R. Rondeau followed up his first feature, <i>The Littlest Hobo</i>, with a low-budget horror/mystery picture in which a strange young man, who apparently can't sweat, drifts into a small town after his grubby Satanist uncle croaks. Soon various animals begin killing the locals while the nephew gets himself a sweet deal working at a gas station. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">No rational person would include <i>The Devil's Partner</i> on a list of classic horror movies, but it's reasonably well made with an effectively creepy lead performance from Ed Nelson (who most might remember from his regular role on <i>Peyton Place</i>, but those more likely to dig this flick will recall from the "Valley of the Shadow" episode of <i>Twilight Zone</i>), a tight little script, a fair dose of originality, and one genuinely creepily shot scene in which a horse stomps a rummy. <span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Roger Corman liked <i>The Devil's Partner</i> well enough to scoop it up for his Filmgroup distribution company and slap it on a double-bill with his own <i>Creature from the Haunted Sea</i> in 1961. Loopier, trashier, and overflowing with anarchic attitude, <i>Haunted Sea</i> is definitely the more memorable picture, with its wacky Cuban counterrevolutionaries and cue-ball-eyed monster made of Brillo pads. However, <i>The Devil's Partner</i> is the picture that leads the Film Masters' new 4K-restored blu-ray double-bill. That's probably because <i>Partner</i> looks way better, nearly flawless, in fact, in a blemish-free presentation with natural grain and no irritating enhancements. <i>Haunted Sea</i> comes from rougher stock, but a restoration-comparison video included as an extra shows just how far the image came from the scratched, blurry 35mm print used for this very pleasing if imperfect restoration. I doubt you'll see the movie looking better, under the circumstances.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Both films are included in both their 16:9 theatrical and 4:3 TV aspect ratios, and both films gained a lot more information at the top and bottom of their respective pictures on the boob tube.<i> Creature from the Haunted Sea</i> also gains a whopping fifteen minutes of extra footage in its TV form. There are also audio commentaries (a silly one by some podcast guys for the main feature and a more impressive roster of Corman, location manager Kinta Zertuche, film historian Tom Weaver, and contemporary B-movie director Larry Blamire for <i>Haunted Sea</i>), two-Corman centric featurettes, and even a couple of booklet essays, making for a very nice package.</span></p>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-9510293078707114282023-12-19T12:02:00.002-05:002023-12-19T12:03:27.030-05:00Review: 'Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas: Beyond Halloween Town'<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHRsxm0MSyoZXZVpPj8XoN-CYGZWZl_aTgfrTwjomHnG3Bt1-hXgI_3ujwcrAev8_8YSL9XAbSQfm82MlK2ObLhRYtkubt0bmqnlWAKBHbe-Aq9OXV2uA71gsLSw2tW_jJGiTXjrIw9KOZvjL2WD8Enc5ENrI9xeH9G0mtrMadCSXtOAv4x2kSB8N4ZNw/s356/Screen%20Shot%202023-12-19%20at%2011.57.55%20AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="356" data-original-width="280" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHRsxm0MSyoZXZVpPj8XoN-CYGZWZl_aTgfrTwjomHnG3Bt1-hXgI_3ujwcrAev8_8YSL9XAbSQfm82MlK2ObLhRYtkubt0bmqnlWAKBHbe-Aq9OXV2uA71gsLSw2tW_jJGiTXjrIw9KOZvjL2WD8Enc5ENrI9xeH9G0mtrMadCSXtOAv4x2kSB8N4ZNw/w158-h200/Screen%20Shot%202023-12-19%20at%2011.57.55%20AM.png" width="158" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Unlike a lot of Generation X'ers with similar sensibilities to my own, I was never overly enthralled with <i>Nightmare Before Christmas</i> because I don't think there's much of a story there. Jack Skellington's biggest problem is he's sick of Halloween? Sorry, but I cannot relate.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">However, I think that a lot of the members of the massive <i>Nightmare Before Christmas </i>cult are mostly enthralled by the movie's images, and that is something to which I can relate. It's a friggin' great-looking movie, with delightful character designs brought to life with marvelously organic stop-motion animation. While I tend to zone out half-way through the movie (which I rewatch more than I would if I didn't have a kid), it's impossible to be a total <i>Nightmare Scrooge </i>because of its style, visuals, and technique.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">While Emily Zemler's new book <i>Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas: Beyond Halloween Town </i>obviously can't convey the technique, it abounds with style and visuals and should scratch the itch for anyone like me who enjoys taking in the look of the film but doesn't really need to spend the full eighty minutes with it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">For the many who do need that, this book will be even more appealing as it relates the tale of how the phenomenon started as a series of Burton's poems before Caroline Thompson developed them into a script and Danny Elfman developed it into a musical and the finished product developed a cult which then developed into the holiday-mega-merchandizing bonanza it is today. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Because there are only 150 pages of content in this book, and text isn't its raison dêtre, I'd hesitate to call Zemler's book<i> </i>the definitive story of the making of <i>Nightmare Before Christmas</i>, but with its captivating images of concept art, behind the scenes puppetry, fan contributions, and merch that do, in their own way, tell the real story behind this film's deathless popularity, one could reasonably argue that <i>Beyond Halloween Town</i> is the definitive <i>Nightmare</i> book after all.</span></p>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-55498535052601098012023-12-12T06:21:00.034-05:002023-12-19T12:05:08.192-05:00Review: 'Collecting The Simpsons'<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnByieGs3hyphenhypheneAKoRJOaqYFE3hZMYEm3XY4BFubV5ratoFwu-oAF6l8YwoRoUCWO1uo9DJcEUhD0jf08uZPh5CygqdNgG5MPbOfKhDkyM2xrujZ8fKegQgXJR54wqks-7mLSAgMP8AXJTZY9rp9UiVdU2LS-1gjvPF2tBi9AsPNZqIoR_P8CwEdwz4h4zU/s500/51OMTC1mHRL.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="350" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnByieGs3hyphenhypheneAKoRJOaqYFE3hZMYEm3XY4BFubV5ratoFwu-oAF6l8YwoRoUCWO1uo9DJcEUhD0jf08uZPh5CygqdNgG5MPbOfKhDkyM2xrujZ8fKegQgXJR54wqks-7mLSAgMP8AXJTZY9rp9UiVdU2LS-1gjvPF2tBi9AsPNZqIoR_P8CwEdwz4h4zU/w140-h200/51OMTC1mHRL.jpg" width="140" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><div><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div>As soon as <i>The Simpsons</i> went from being the thing that made people watch <i>The Tracy Ullman Show</i> to its own weekly entity in early 1990, the merchandising began. After all, no one new how long the bugged-eyed, yellow-faced dysfunctional family would last, so might as well strike while the inanimate carbon rod was still aglow. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Five billion years later, <i>The Simpsons </i>is still on television, running half-assed Disco Stu cameos into the ground for the remaining cockroaches and a landfill full of plastic Bart Simpsons. <span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But I'm getting ahead of myself. In the year 2023, we are merely on the series thirty-fifth season, and there are probably still a few humans watching the current crop of half-assed Disco Stu cameos. Not too much to get excited about there. But for those of us who remember when you could tune in one Thursday night and watch a spot-on Beatles parody called "Homer's Barbershop Quartet", and on the following one, take in Sideshow Bob stepping on rake after rake in "Cape Feare", and just seven days later see a bee bite Homer's bottom and make his bottom big in "Homer Goes to College", and do it all while snuggling a Bart Simpson doll, it seemed as though <i>The Simpsons</i> could pump out sheer comic brilliance <i>and</i> colorful, bug-eyed merchandise forever.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">While the first part of that statement is wrong, the second one is right, although by Warren Evans's estimate in <i>Collecting The Simpsons</i>, "50 percent of the <i>Simpsons</i> merchandise that is still in circulation today was created and released within [the series'] first three years" of the series existence. That's just one of the fascinating factoids his and James and Lydia Hicks's book coughs up. Want to know why so much early Bart Simpson merch depicted the kid who only owns orange shirts in blue ones? It's in here. Want to know whatever happened to that life-sized Simpsons house that actually got built in Nevada in 1997? It's in here. Want to know Matt Groening's feelings about African-American appropriation of Bart Simpson as a cultural icon? It's in here. Want to know who really wrote "Do the Bartman"? It's in here. Want to know where you can get an actually-edible, <i>Simpsons</i>-accurate donuts the size of a small-child's head? It's in here.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">That<i> Collecting The Simpsons</i> is more than just brilliantly colorful images of brilliantly colorful toys, banned T-shirts, fast-food premiums, Doritos bags, theme-park rides, kitchenware, bath products, games, books, comics, CDs, and clocks really justifies its existence, but those full-color pictures are what makes it an absolute joy. The writers' enthusiasm for and sense of humor about all this stuff doesn't hurt either. It's been 25 years since I've seen a new <i>Simpsons</i> episode that was really worth getting excited over, but <i>Collecting The Simpsons</i> definitely is. </span></p>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-26332729904527933902023-12-11T08:21:00.000-05:002023-12-11T08:21:34.141-05:00Review: 'Hardcore: The Cinematic World of Pulp'<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMOptkswC-aYEycPOFLVW50Z6WSZFvghr2-9tb-O4Fp_9hheiGYWVP4IShdKjU0ObWBxHXNVVotsowWIV9InoEX1nqkWChlwBxnIbHEnrx1JXG1s-dXtJvqwW5PFUlM3NBlwJRaKFk6CvWb7qkHSQL1g-PRJnid37V4jZX0EdONb510Z01GAUuR5M7lFM/s1000/91Al6iFDgvL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="819" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMOptkswC-aYEycPOFLVW50Z6WSZFvghr2-9tb-O4Fp_9hheiGYWVP4IShdKjU0ObWBxHXNVVotsowWIV9InoEX1nqkWChlwBxnIbHEnrx1JXG1s-dXtJvqwW5PFUlM3NBlwJRaKFk6CvWb7qkHSQL1g-PRJnid37V4jZX0EdONb510Z01GAUuR5M7lFM/w164-h200/91Al6iFDgvL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" width="164" /></a></div>Pulp had been at it for close to two decades when they finally joined the upper echelon of contemporary British pop with <i>Different Class</i> in 1995. For a band as erudite and self-aware, that kind of success doesn't go down easily, and their next album was an expression of that hard comedown.<span><a name='more'></a></span><p></p><p>Bleary and weary, <i>This Is Hardcore</i> is a weird centerpiece for a book like Paul Burgess and Louise Colbourne's colorful coffee table-ish <i>Hardcore: The Cinematic World of Pulp</i>. However, the album's artistic bona-fides make the choice less odd. The record spawned four lush music videos, inspired collages and paintings, and had one of the decade's most recognizable (and infamous) jackets, though Burgess and Colbourne mostly steer clear of exploiting that arguably exploitative image of model Ksenia Sobchak prone and in the buff. There is a completely hilarious image of the censored Malaysian version of that cover with an ugly gold sweater photoshopped onto Sobchak.</p><p>There are also lots of behind-the-scenes shots and stills from the "Party Hard", "Help the Aged", "A Little Soul", and "This Is Hardcore" music videos; a storyboard for "Party Hard"; examples of Pulpy artwork (most notably Sergei Sviatchenko's disturbing collages); and shots of the band on stage at the release party. </p><p>The authors and several guests supply essays on the times, and director Garth Jennings conducts a very, very brief and unilluminating interview with band leader Jarvis Cocker that is almost comically split into two installments. Without question the most substantial piece of text in <i>Hardcore</i> is a 14-page interview with keyboardist Candida Doyle, who is unabashedly unenthusiastic about both the album and the era this book celebrates. However, her weariness over that period captures the temper of <i>This Is Hardcore</i> more honestly than most of the rest of this rather candy-coated book does. An essay by Pulp-documentarian Florian Habicht is also a must-read for the most horrifying interview-mishap tale ever told... that he was brave enough to recollect it in this book for posterior posterity is way more hardcore than anything on <i>This Is Hardcore</i>.</p>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-18061745389710701112023-12-10T10:06:00.000-05:002023-12-10T10:06:16.197-05:00Review: Vinyl Reissue of Tommy Flanagan's 'The Cats'<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEZU1O_jbTDVH-XsT5mTKWExIEUudMZhkd2tB9QuaRU9I3EEofx1hYqWbo31z9SQYOEJduFvT6INID1aNNMTMk4oh3Lf-ny210ajugXN5pKMFu9RWSrehPV0mx0fHU9n4u-3Hp8pabWu1O9hcyx1R6O6elrD7lZsc4eqHcrrROlqNAlKzkRqtcfcpxkKo/s218/Screen%20Shot%202023-12-09%20at%205.27.46%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="164" data-original-width="218" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEZU1O_jbTDVH-XsT5mTKWExIEUudMZhkd2tB9QuaRU9I3EEofx1hYqWbo31z9SQYOEJduFvT6INID1aNNMTMk4oh3Lf-ny210ajugXN5pKMFu9RWSrehPV0mx0fHU9n4u-3Hp8pabWu1O9hcyx1R6O6elrD7lZsc4eqHcrrROlqNAlKzkRqtcfcpxkKo/w200-h150/Screen%20Shot%202023-12-09%20at%205.27.46%20PM.png" width="200" /></a></div>With a quartet or his own simple, appealing tunes and one Gershwin classic propped on his piano, Tommy Flanagan led the session that produced his second album on April 18, 1957. However, he ceded credit to the one-off ensemble he put together for the occasion, which is probably what ones does when playing with such luminaries as Kenny Burrell and John Coltrane. Yet <i>The Cats</i> often is very much Flanagan's show. His searching, autumnal keys receive soft support from drummer Louis Hayes and bassist Doug Watkins on Gershwin's "How Long Has This Been Going On" while the rest sit it out. When the whole band joins in, which they do for the rest of these sides, they most definitely play as a very organized ensemble, Coltrane's melodic, tonally complex harmonies with trumpeter Idrees Sulieman providing much of the tangy flavor. <span><a name='more'></a></span><p></p><p>The rhythmic variations among the numbers is what keeps <i>The Cats</i> eclectic and interesting, as the combo barrels through the Mingus-like "Minor Mishap", draws back everything for "How Long Has This Been Going On", gets rhythmically playful with "Eclypso", eases into "Solacium", and alternately skates and lurches through "Tommy's Tune", on which Burrell gets off some of his slickest licks. </p><p>Originally released in late 1959, long after its recording date, <i>The Cats </i>has gotten several re-releases throughout the years, but I don't doubt that you'd be hard-pressed to hunt down a tastier one than the AAA-mastered edition that is now joining Craft Recordings' "Original Jazz Classics" series. The series has a pretty powerful track recorded of excellence, and this beautifully detailed, incredibly present piece of audio on perfectly flat, perfectly silent 180-gram vinyl maintains that record impeccably.</p>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-57275498572249453702023-12-08T00:26:00.144-05:002024-01-05T16:14:39.908-05:00Review: Nirvana's 'In Utero' 30th Anniversary Box Set<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4a9uZCIifw-f1dQP-iuQRsztaZ5M8yOP9uKZrKBM4knT2si4zjUJ7t3lXJAmfamdaXwOoftIVsBOeCWzLemw_5H7-ulkZN97kYLp22bkHqysy6vpzb8VhCa3bFRZVBWUYbTbev2dtxU_p0wTifn5c-A3iIspWDlUYc4qNCcNkn2jXy4HvlOXfT8KOE9s/s407/Screen%20Shot%202023-12-07%20at%201.19.25%20PM.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="244" data-original-width="407" height="120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4a9uZCIifw-f1dQP-iuQRsztaZ5M8yOP9uKZrKBM4knT2si4zjUJ7t3lXJAmfamdaXwOoftIVsBOeCWzLemw_5H7-ulkZN97kYLp22bkHqysy6vpzb8VhCa3bFRZVBWUYbTbev2dtxU_p0wTifn5c-A3iIspWDlUYc4qNCcNkn2jXy4HvlOXfT8KOE9s/w200-h120/Screen%20Shot%202023-12-07%20at%201.19.25%20PM.png" width="200" /></a></div>After what seemed like an interminable wait, Nirvana finally released their follow up to <i>Nevermind</i>--the album that almost single-handedly plopped the pre-fab term "Alternative Rock" into the mainstream--in autumn of 1993. The band's purported goal was to shake off all the meat-heady fans they'd acquired since putting out a slick disc of metal-ish sounding drums and guitars and big sing-along choruses. Did it work? Well, although<i> In Utero </i>only sold half of <i>Nevermind</i>'s figures, that's still pretty damn good, especially for an album so challenging and, despite some mixed notices, rewarding. <i>Nevermind</i> is a great record, but it lacks the personal atmosphere and unsanitized urgency of the record released just six months before the band's main voice took his own life. And that isn't just romanticizing a tragedy. Even before Kurt Cobain died, <i>In Utero</i> stood out for its perfect mix of classic melodiousness ("All Apologies", "Heart Shaped Box", "Scentless Aprrentice", "Dumb") and terrifying abrasiveness ("Scentless Apprentice", "Milk It", "Tourettes"), Steve Albini's massive and filthily organic production, and the tendrils of sadness twining through Cobain's grisly surrealism. <span><a name='more'></a></span><p></p><p>That's a heavy legacy for an album being given the jolly 30th anniversary treatment, and it may account for why there is an almost total lack of text in this nine-pound-plus vinyl box set. The only reading on offer in the set's 48-page hardback book is a photo of Albini's letter to the band stating his working methods and expectations of the group. The rest is photos, graphics, and a few vellum pages. </p><p>That leaves most of the talking to the music, of which there is eight-LPs worth. Leading the set is a new remaster of the core album, and compared to the Back to Black edition that has been the most common and affordable vinyl option for the past 15 years (and, frankly, the only copy I have for comparison purposes), I found this new remaster by Bob Weston (Albini's assistant engineer during the original sessions) to be much more dynamic, with better defined guitars, punchier bass and drums, and a deeper sound stage. It's also louder without being fatiguing on the ears.</p><p>Sitting in the other pocket of the main LP's gatefold is a disc with B-sides and compilation tracks on one side and a selection of live cuts from different sources on the other. The B-sides are an excellent assortment with such gems as Dave Grohl's menacing ballad "Marigold", the unbelievably catchy "Sappy" from the <i>No Alternative </i>comp, and the grinding "I Hate Myself and Want to Die" from the soundtrack of that Beavis and Butthead movie. The live cuts are mostly culled from a Rome show that was one of Nirvana's final concerts, but there's also a performance of "Milk It" recorded in Springfield, MA, and "Tourettes" from NY, both from '93. Despite some AI tinkering to exaggerate the separation between Cobain's and Pat Smear's guitars, the dinkiness of Grohl's usually elephantine drums, and the unsettling effect of having the audience's cheers almost completely muted, the Rome stuff sounds pretty good, as does that version of "Milk It" with extra-mumbly vocals from Kurt. "Tourettes", however, sounds like a low-grade MP3, quite possibly because of that AI business.</p><p>Which brings us to the next six-LPs in the set. There's a full set recorded at LA's Great Western Forum on December 30, 1993 and a nearly identical one from Seattle's Center Arena on January 7, 1993, both presented as triple-LP sets. While these recordings don't sound as gnarly as "Tourettes", they aren't ideal fidelity either. Of the two sets, the one from Seattle is less compressed with fewer artifacts. All in all, the sooner this current fascination with AI's ability to put people out of work and make old recordings sound weird comes to an end, the better. Nevertheless, the performances are terrific in spite of Nirvana's reputation for being an erratic live band during their troubled final year.</p><p>For the most part the vinyl is quiet, flat, and well-centered. Only the main album's bonus disc has a bit of a warp in the set I received, though it does not affect the sound. </p><p>The packaging is certainly lavish, with that hardcover book, a clear acrylic panel featuring a print of the organ-exposing angel from the album cover, and a packet of goodies Krist Novoselic likened to the extras included with The Who's <i>Live at Leeds</i>. There are repros of concert tickets, posters, ads, fliers, and backstage passes. I was most impressed with the two live albums' triple-pocket jackets, the likes of which I'd never seen. Finally, a non-frustrating, non-chintzy way to store triple albums. Now there's something to celebrate.</p><p><br /></p>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-91083201161454127952023-11-22T12:20:00.002-05:002023-12-08T10:05:34.084-05:00Review: 'A Disturbance in the Force: How and Why the Star Wars Holiday Special Happened'<p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghDcEi2nqVOPK8cBOh-324t42s_YnFn0fKETaxiivRtt8Jg9lcdCznvFB2ASHbQQdmwPpdAtFHdV5b4PXjX9boy3CyUjb4Zemhx_w_wxypZWD6aN2i_vMqfj9AWHwImbTTmOSxS4neiaDS5XxYGKbdECxmG1M_7sP7fIZ8PVtw2ftKnUCHARHSGra8Hx4/s1000/81w+UIKl9kL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="667" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghDcEi2nqVOPK8cBOh-324t42s_YnFn0fKETaxiivRtt8Jg9lcdCznvFB2ASHbQQdmwPpdAtFHdV5b4PXjX9boy3CyUjb4Zemhx_w_wxypZWD6aN2i_vMqfj9AWHwImbTTmOSxS4neiaDS5XxYGKbdECxmG1M_7sP7fIZ8PVtw2ftKnUCHARHSGra8Hx4/w133-h200/81w+UIKl9kL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" width="133" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">For years, it seemed like some sort of weird dream. Yet I could remember every detail of staying up late at the age of four at my grandmother's house to watch the first piece of <i>Star Wars </i>visual entertainment since <i>Star Wars</i>. I could remember sitting right in front of the screen in a wood paneled den and the names of every member of Chewbacca's family and their UFO-shaped house in the trees and dozing off while struggling to remain awake and the creepy sensation of listening to Princess Leia sing that gross song. If my grandma and I hadn't spent the next few years laughing over the names "Lumpy" and "Itchy," I might have concluded that none of it had really happened, because there was no Internet to remind us that <i>The Star Wars Holiday Special </i>really did air on November 17, 1978, on CBS. George Lucas certainly wasn't going to remind us. <span><a name='more'></a></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Now remembered as the most heinous mistake ever made in the name of <i>Star Wars</i>, the infamous <i>Holiday Special </i>eventually slipped past Lucas's embargo to surface on bootleg VHS tapes, and it can now be enjoyed by anyone with YouTube access. Who would have thought that it would one day be easier to watch the H<i>oliday Special </i>than the theatrical version of<i> Star Wars </i>that caused millions to fall in love with the franchise? What a world we live in.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And, really, why would anyone but the most humorless basement dweller want to live in a world without <i>The Star Wars Holiday Special</i>? Where else can you see Boba Fett's debut as a duplicitous cartoon character? Where else can you see Mark Hamill with a year's supply of free Mary Kay samples caked on his face? Where else can you see Bea Arthur do an arhythmic two-step with Walrus Man? Where else can you see Chewbacca's dad get off to proto-Internet porn? Where else can you see the worst of seventies variety TV collide with the best of seventies blockbuster entertainment? Honestly, if you can't find any pleasure in at least knowing this travesty exists, you might not be worth knowing. And I'd rather watch <i>The Star Wars Holiday Special</i> than <i>The Phantom Menace</i> any day.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Would Steve Kozak? Considering that the network-television veteran both made a documentary and wrote a book about this topic, I'd like to think he would. He certainly affords it unprecedented attention in <i>A Disturbance in the Force: How and Why the Star Wars Holiday Special Happened</i>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Kozak also wastes no time in defining the thing that he believes motivated Lucas to plunge his precious space baby in the tacky waters of seventies variety TV: spite. That shouldn't be too much of a revelation since Lucas has always seemed to consume heaping bowlfuls of spite as if they were the breakfast of champions. It's certainly why we're not allowed to legally watch a high-quality copy of the theatrical version of <i>Star Wars</i> anymore. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The ins and outs of this spite tale are fascinating. The object of Lucas's ire was a Warner Bros executive who not only demanded that the director's first film, <i>THX-1138</i>, be edited drastically but also attempted to get Lucas to agree to a rerelease of that film in the midst of <i>Star Wars</i>' success by arguing that the current phenomenon would fade from the public's consciousness as quickly as it took command. Lucas believed that the <i>Holiday Special </i>would prolong interest in <i>Star Wars</i> and prove that guy from WB wrong. Whoops!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">There are also a lot of non-theoretical genuine revelations in <i>A Disturbance in the Force</i>, because Kozak leaves no asteroid unturned while exploring what you might assume to be a limited topic. It ain't! This is not only the story of how one guy's grudge begat a deathless nugget of televisual poop. It's also a tale of hazardous video shoots, drug-related chaos, unfettered merchandising, unstable leadership, stormtroopers suffering panic attacks, and--almost-- human/wookiee interspecies marriage. We learn everything there is to know about the unveiling of Boba Fett, what Bea Arthur and Jim Morrison have in common, why Hamill is so excessively made up, and why Grace Slick was a no-show during Jefferson Starship's horrid performance (drugs!), her reaction to that performance after Kozak asks her to watch it (bad!), and the role for which she was originally considered (proto-Internet porn!). A photo of Darth Vader choking the author of "White Rabbit" makes <i>A Disturbance in the Force </i>a true must-read for hardcore fans of <i>Star Wars</i> and Grace Slick. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Speaking as such a fan, I'm as grateful that a book as entertaining, thorough, and weird as <i>A Disturbance in the Force </i>exists as I am that </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">The Star Wars Holiday Special </i><span style="font-family: georgia;">does</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">. I'd much rather read it than the novelization of </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">The Phantom Menace</i><span style="font-family: georgia;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">[Disclosure: <i>A Disturbance in the Force</i> was published by Rowman & Littlefield, which is also the publisher of my books <i>The Who FAQ</i> and <i>33 1/3 Revolutions Per Minute</i>.]</span></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-46512339484188074372023-11-16T10:24:00.000-05:002023-11-16T10:24:15.069-05:00Review: Guided by Voices' 'Live from Austin, TX'<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6rTJddjqqK6U56pOZzKy9mLWDP09mVsp3kKc5WmNbBlQJu-jKWuLzpm-Yfe3fT9JBvk8c3cI9ScQTOjuuKjGuQ-lHghLpWywPba6qyGYHlzi9IdM3nCJtTdncnYCxvIowGbJl99x4J4bzdJ7_zhZS0gRqRD7XKapm5D8rhEignQU5dbBd2lKxvRY9nP4/s394/Screen%20Shot%202023-11-16%20at%2010.05.58%20AM.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="392" data-original-width="394" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6rTJddjqqK6U56pOZzKy9mLWDP09mVsp3kKc5WmNbBlQJu-jKWuLzpm-Yfe3fT9JBvk8c3cI9ScQTOjuuKjGuQ-lHghLpWywPba6qyGYHlzi9IdM3nCJtTdncnYCxvIowGbJl99x4J4bzdJ7_zhZS0gRqRD7XKapm5D8rhEignQU5dbBd2lKxvRY9nP4/w200-h199/Screen%20Shot%202023-11-16%20at%2010.05.58%20AM.png" width="200" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">Although I'd seen Guided by Voices live a number of times, and knew their routine pretty well, I was still shocked to see their performance on the concert series <i>Austin City Limits</i> in 2005. Well-known for lubricating his performances with buckets of Rolling Rock, Robert Pollard held nothing back for his public television debut. His slurring and capering and hilariously inebriated rants were not the kinds of things you usually saw on PBS. <span><a name='more'></a></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">But it wouldn't have been a GBV show without the beer, and since Pollard had already announced his band's eminent breakup during a show at NYC's Bowery Ballroom (I was there!), he must have realized that he had nothing to lose. Or maybe he just had a serious drinking problem.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">In any event, the <i>Austin City Limits </i>performance offered as much unpredictability, energy, sloppiness, and charm as any Guided by Voices performance. Hearing the full performance on New West Records' <i>Live from Austin, TX</i>, nearly twenty years later, I'm actually surprised that it holds up so wonderfully as a listening experience. The band's line up in 2004, when the performance was recorded, was not their most celebrated, but it was certainly one of their most professional. Not indulging nearly as much as their frontman, stalwart guitarist Doug Gillard and drummer Kevin March held everything together even as Pollard has increasing trouble enunciating and bassist Chris Slusarenko and rhythm guitarist Nate Farley start sliding off course a bit. The setlist was terrific, favoring their latest (<i>Half Smiles of the Decomposed</i>) and most beloved (<i>Bee Thousand</i>) albums but sprinkling in choice selections from most of their dozen other LPs, as well as delicious obscurities like "Dayton Ohio-19 Something and 5", "Do the Earth", and the glorious "My Impression Now". By the time Pollard introduces Gillard as "Duh Gillar" before launching into an epic rendition of "Secret Star", you know he's more than three sheets to the wind, but he's still able to hit most of those high notes in "Pendulum", carry the melody of "Tractor Rape Chain", pull off the melismas of "Buzzards and Dreadful Crows", and remember most of the words to "Fair Touching". In his own sloshy way, Bob was a pro too. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">What's less surprising is how much the fun of seeing the band live during those days floods back when listening to <i>Live from Austin, TX</i> today. It's also valuable as the only official live GBV album on vinyl (I would sell my old ticket stubs to get a reissue of the <i>Live from the Wheelchair Races </i>compilation on vinyl). Originally released on black vinyl in 2017, </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">Live from Austin, TX </i><span style="font-family: georgia;">is about to get a special Record Store Day release on red splatter vinyl. However, the review copy I received is the previously issued black vinyl, which </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">sounds really good on flat, well-centered vinyl. My copy was a bit crackly from inner-sleeve residue, but that washes away. </span></p>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-26970519849476726162023-11-14T11:42:00.011-05:002023-12-20T11:21:07.521-05:00Review: New Editions of The Beatles' '1962-1966' and '1967-1970'<p><span style="font-family: georgia;">After the <a href="https://psychobabble200.blogspot.com/2022/10/review-beatles-revolver-special-edition.html" target="_blank">super deluxe edition of <i>Revolver</i> </a>was released this time last year, many Beatlemaniacs believed that the next big holiday release would be a similar set devoted to <i>Rubber Soul</i>. Surprise! Instead we're getting new editions of the two essential Beatles compilations, <i>1962-1966</i> and 1<i>967-1970</i>, both of which are celebrating their fiftieth anniversary this year. An odd choice, you may think, but this release is mainly serving one very specific purpose, a job that it wouldn't make sense for a deluxe edition of <i>Rubber Soul </i>to do. </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4pI8Mj-VgQIUCaWabZc0VsXyPunMz7gBpFmTL49CAF2jtLq2ihJyd2tObspx2PY5ZwPMmT98_bIJiV5c6R1wuradvFNRATPtBokCn_9jwQ3_ywnn64MbyG_6lvvIoZwa03TRPDKYUErpBW3275gSEoJYBAy2P3eCca1lKrw-c9oXtmeNX7QAQlSpYKCU/s1132/334scr_b14ed506cca77b6.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1132" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4pI8Mj-VgQIUCaWabZc0VsXyPunMz7gBpFmTL49CAF2jtLq2ihJyd2tObspx2PY5ZwPMmT98_bIJiV5c6R1wuradvFNRATPtBokCn_9jwQ3_ywnn64MbyG_6lvvIoZwa03TRPDKYUErpBW3275gSEoJYBAy2P3eCca1lKrw-c9oXtmeNX7QAQlSpYKCU/w320-h226/334scr_b14ed506cca77b6.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">You see, back in the mid-nineties, when Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were mining rough John Lennon demos for material to spruce up and overdub for release on the <i>Anthology</i> compilations, they began work on a third track in addition to "Free As a Bird" and "Real Love". Then George apparently soured on "Now and Then" and didn't want to complete it. As the story goes, the Quiet One dismissed it as "rubbish." While that assessment may have been a tad harsh, the song didn't exactly scream to be heard. Like the two tracks that were completed and released, "Now and Then" is a down-tempo, down-mood song. It's more melodic than the dreary "Free As a Bird" but less appealing than the pretty and genuinely moving "Real Love". <span></span>Had John written it during the days when he was coming up with ingenious stuff like "Rain", "Strawberry Fields Forever", and "Happiness Is a Warm Gun", "Now and Then" would never have found a home on a Beatles record... but it might have been worthy of a <i>Double Fantasy</i> or at least a <i>Milk and Honey</i>. </span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Some three decades later, Paul decided to pick up work on "Now and Then" and coaxed Ringo along to add a new drum track for what the guys promise will be the final song "The Beatles" ever release. It's definitely a technologically impressive achievement, with John's voice sounding infinitely more natural and up front than nineties tech was able to make it sound on "Free As a Bird" and "Real Love". Giles Martin's production and Paul and Ringo's newly recorded backing are modest in keeping with a very modest composition.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So, "Now and Then" is now seeing release as a single, but it also needs a long-playing home, which is why we're getting updates of <i>1962-1966</i> and 1<i>967-1970. </i>Since the new song has no relationship to <i>Rubber Soul</i> or any other proper Beatles album, the compilations are relatively sensible vessels for its release (although a fourth <i>Anthology</i>, with still-unreleased things like the band version of George's "All Things Must Pass", "Mad Man", and "Watching Rainbows", would have been the dandiest). And for this occasion, the so-called "Red" and "Blue" albums are being issued in versions quite different from the 1973 ones. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Most notable for re-mix aficionados is that none of the included tracks appear in their original mixes from the sixties. Thirty-five of the mixes are all-new. The process involved the MAL (Machine Assisted Learning) software Giles Martin used to separate instruments clumped together on a single track when he remixed <i>Revolver</i>. This means that for the first time ever, the original recordings of "Love Me Do" and "She Loves You" are being released in stereo, although "She Loves You" is muddier than the original mono and hearing a "Love Me Do" in which Paul's bass occupies the left speaker nearly alone for most of the song while the guitar and drums are panned pretty hard to the right is more interesting on a technological level than a listening one. Mixing 101: You gotta center the rhythm section or risk losing all your power. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Fortunately most of the new mixes on <i>1962-1966 </i>pass that particular test, and though The Beatles' arrangements tended to be pretty simple during this era, there are interesting things to discover among the remixes. "I Feel Fine", "Ticket to Ride", and "Drive My Car" feature drums both centered and spotlighted in channels, which is an unusually wide spectrum for Ringo's contribution. "A Hard Day's Night" now emphasizes some interestingly staccato rhythm guitar in the left channel. A big cymbal crash kicks "Eight Days a Week" into gear. The strings of "Yesterday" are divided between channels while Paul's voice and guitar are centered. This particular remix is superb, and really, most of the the newly remixed tracks on </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">1962-1966</i><span style="font-family: georgia;"> have never sounded better in stereo</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">. All of the 1966 tracks had already been</span><span style="font-family: georgia;"> remixed for last year's special edition of </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">Revolver</i><span style="font-family: georgia;">, which was a mixed bag of successful and not-so-successful remixes, though most of what's included here is well done</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><i>1967-1970</i> relies much more heavily on previously released remixes, since we've already gotten deluxe editions of all the proper albums The Beatles released from 1967 to 1970. A half dozen other numbers had been remixed way back in 2015 for the <a href="https://psychobabble200.blogspot.com/2015/11/review-beatles-1.html" target="_blank"><i>1+</i> compilation</a> and </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">are making their vinyl debuts here</span><span style="font-family: georgia;">. The only newly remixed tracks hail from </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">Magical Mystery Tour</i><span style="font-family: georgia;">, </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">Yellow Submarine</i><span style="font-family: georgia;">, and a couple of B-sides. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Of these, the most audaciously different is "I Am the Walrus", which really slathers on the noises that consume the end of the track. Although this remix is already stirring controversy among fans, I'm much more open to radically different remixes on a compilation like this than on a proper album, so I enjoy the novelty of it even as I continue to question the decision to nudge the rhythm section off to the left channel instead of centering it. It makes even less sense to fully shove it off to the side for something as ass-kicking as "Revolution". Lennon dismissed the original stereo mix as "ice cream" because of its wide, weakening separation, and this remix is only slightly less hard-panned. "Magical Mystery Tour", however, rocks harder with a lot of emphasis on George's previously buried Chuck Berry-esque guitar and heavier drums, though Ringo still isn't centered for some reason. Bass and drums are centered on "Hey Bulldog", which they hadn't been on the acclaimed 1999 remix on the </span><i style="font-family: georgia;">Yellow Submarine Songtrack</i><span style="font-family: georgia;">, so this is a nice improvement. I also dig the novelty of having "A Day in the Life" and "Dear Prudence" with clean intros for the first time on vinyl. The placement of instruments in "Old Brown Shoe" sounds similar to those of the original mix, though errors are introduced when George's slide guitar is clipped off a couple of times in the second verse. Whoops!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">As you may have already sussed from some of the songs I've referenced above, the other big deal with these new versions of <i>1962-1966</i> and<i> 1967-1970</i> is that the original track line ups have been expanded with additional songs. The originals actually did a good job of compiling the most popular Beatles originals (no covers were included), but there were some notable omissions. Even when I bought those records at the extremely unripe age of 13, I was surprised by the absence of certain songs with which I was very familiar from the radio. Where were "Do You Want to Know a Secret" (a number-two hit in the U.S.), "P.S. I Love You" (a top-ten hit here), "I Should Have Known Better", "She's a Woman" (top-five), "I'm a Loser", "No Reply", "I'll Follow the Sun", and "Rain" (top-25)? At least some of these could have been included since <i>1962-1966</i> was so notoriously skimpy, with just fourteen or fifteen minutes of music on each of its first three sides. The decision to place seven tracks on sides One and Three but only six on sides Two and Four always seemed like a blatant waste of valuable space. Aside from the absence of "When I'm 64", <i>1967-1970</i> didn't really have any glaring omissions, and its sides were pretty jam-packed anyway.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">So, when rumors that <i>1962-1966</i> and <i>1967-1970 </i>would each be expanded to 3-LP sets hit the Internet, speculation went wild. I doubt anyone correctly predicted the extra tracks we ended up with. With the exception of "You Really Got a Hold on Me", the dozen songs added to <i>1962-1966</i> are fairly logical selections. "Twist and Shout", "I Saw Her Standing There", "Taxman", "Here, There, and Everywhere", "Get to Get You Into My Life", and "Tomorrow Never Knows" are widely considered to be classics, and the abundance of <i>Revolver</i> additions makes up for the short shrift The Beatles' best album received on the original <i>62-66</i>. John's "I'm Only Sleeping" is a less well-known track from that record but important for its pioneering use of backward guitar and a necessary reminder that <i>Revolver</i> wasn't mainly Paul's show. "This Boy" has long been admired as a grand showcase for the guys' harmonies. "You Can't Do That" made <i>Billboard</i>'s Top-50 on the flip-side of "Can't Buy Me Love". "Roll Over Beethoven" was a radio-staple in the U.S. and a smash single in several markets (it even went to number one in Australia), and it gives George Harrison a bit more representation on a compilation that once completely lacked his lead vocals. His singing and writing also get a bit more attention with the addition of "If I Needed Someone", though <i>Rubber Soul </i>was the one album that was really overrepresented on the original. However, none of the songs I'd mentioned in the previous paragraph were added. The compilers also doubled down on the original record's skimpiness by placing only six songs per side on this set's bonus LP. Huh.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">If <i>62-66</i> seems like a bit of a missed opportunity in terms of bonus tracks, then <i>67-70</i> is downright baffling. On this set, only half of the selections make some sort of sense. "Blackbird" and "Oh! Darling" are two of The Beatles' most streamed cuts, so their presence on the new <i>67-70</i> makes commercial sense. The exclusive tracks on <i>Yellow Submarine</i> were not represented at all on the original compilation, so the inclusion of fan-fave "Hey Bulldog" feels right. As for better representing the formerly underrepresented "White Album", "Dear Prudence" seems like a natural choice, but the only reason I can come up with for why the obscure "Glass Onion" was chosen is that a popular movie shares its title, which would be a dumb reason to select it for a greatest hits-type album in lieu of more celebrated tracks like "Helter Skelter" or "Happiness Is a Warm Gun". </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">The decision to include other oddities like "Within You, Without You", "I Want You (She's So Heavy)", and "I Me Mine" only makes sense if we assume that the Lennon and Harrison estates were deeply involved in the track selection and really like these particular numbers. I can't feature any other explanation for why they were included since they lack the familiarity and immediacy of the hits or the obvious rewards of milestones like "Tomorrow Never Knows" or "A Day in the Life". If "Revolution 9" had been added, I wouldn't be that much more mystified.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I completely understand that there was a desire to include more Harrisongs, since George was underrepresented on the original records, but there were certainly more sensible choices. To capture his sitar phase, "The Inner Light" would have been the ideal choice: it's a lovely, sprightly, concise track that, unlike "Within You, Without You", Giles has yet to remix. "For You Blue" was technically a number-one hit in the U.S. since the "Long and Winding Road" single was released right after <i>Billboard</i> discontinued its policy of issuing discrete chart positions for B-sides. It's certainly zingier than the dour "I Me Mine". And because "I Want You" and "Within You" are so very, very long, there are only a scant eight oldies on the bonus LP of <i>1967-1970, </i>although<i> </i>that record is still short enough that a couple of other songs could have been included without any reduction in audio quality. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">For the CD iterations of these new compilations, the extra tracks are chronologically incorporated into</span> <span style="font-family: georgia;">the original running order. For the vinyl versions, they appear on bonus LPs appended to each set. This makes the oddity of the song choices stand out more, although getting a little creative with the order in which you play each side improves the flow a lot. (I recommend playing the first side of the bonus LP of <i>62-66</i> after side One of the original album and ending the set with the second side of the bonus. As for <i>67-70</i>, play the first side of the bonus after side Two—skipping "Now and Then", which you may not need to hear more than once anyway, and "Within You, Without You", which really doesn't belong on a hits compilation— and play the second side of the bonus after side Three of the original album. Do as you please with "I Want You" and "I Me Mine".)</span></p><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">Instead of packaging the vinyl in the triple-fold-out covers Apple used for <i>Mono Masters</i> and the <i>Anthology</i> sets, <i>1962-1966</i> and<i> 1967-1970</i> are each housed in reproductions of the original gatefolds, with one LP stored in one side and two in the other. While some may not like storing records in the same pocket, I definitely prefer this approach to the triple-fold covers, which make accessing the middle LP cumbersome. The pockets in the new gatefold are wide enough that the fit isn't too tight. The only new additions are inserts with liner notes for each set and new lyric inner sleeves for the bonus discs that match the styles of the original ones. There's also a slipcase if you opt for the complete package containing both sets.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The vinyl is uniformly flat and quiet with well-centered spindle holes. Bass is a bit overbearing on a lot of the newly remixed cuts on <i>1962-1966</i>, as well as the first two <i>Sgt. Pepper's</i> </span><span style="font-family: georgia;">tracks, "Glass Onion", and "Hey Bulldog" on <i>1967-1970</i></span><span style="font-family: georgia;">, and you may want to adjust the tone controls on your sound system to tame it. Non-fill spots at the end of "Can't Buy Me Love" and in a few spots throughout "Yesterday" cause a touch of unwanted noise, but I only noticed this issue after listening through headphones. On <i>1962-1966</i>, a bit of inner groove distortion also mars "Can't Buy Me Love", even with side One's conservative amount of music. On <i>1967-1970</i>, IGD is excessive on "All You Need Is Love" on side One, but less so on sides Three and Four. "Revolution" and "I Want You" are so naturally distorted that if there's any unintended distortion at the ends of sides Two and Six, it is completely unnoticeable (actually, John's voice sounds clean on the former, so I assume there isn't any on side Two). </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">And so, with this curve-ball in the release schedule, I'm reluctant to predict what we can expect from The Beatles' camp next year, but based on the nice way the remixed <i>Rubber Soul</i> tracks sound on this latest release, it might be good to follow through with the set a lot of fans expected to get this year. We shall see in 2024.</span></div><p><b><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br /></span></b></p><p><br /></p>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-68243255794713734722023-11-13T16:02:00.001-05:002023-11-14T11:14:26.362-05:00Review: 'B-Side'<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilnxhZdEMKWP4qRDCe-zBSANZNie_b1znRvOeAlMsyftGdo0B_SslPpAWjQ0hy6953XBJdxX3DirUzyItowEmwQnNkhJWZZwN7ZaLaiksUCIVczx6ZlbfyQPuAuyY80bhAWf7cQ05gTFcsyCoNhFOvh_ytNs_UQVurQsb58ltdl2OZ-tdu9ITDjz15KrE/s1000/713U1qQzfaL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="650" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilnxhZdEMKWP4qRDCe-zBSANZNie_b1znRvOeAlMsyftGdo0B_SslPpAWjQ0hy6953XBJdxX3DirUzyItowEmwQnNkhJWZZwN7ZaLaiksUCIVczx6ZlbfyQPuAuyY80bhAWf7cQ05gTFcsyCoNhFOvh_ytNs_UQVurQsb58ltdl2OZ-tdu9ITDjz15KrE/w130-h200/713U1qQzfaL._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" width="130" /></a></div><span style="font-family: georgia;">For every hit that makes it onto the radio or <i>Billboard</i>'s Hot 100, there's something more obscure happening on the other side. It might be a piece of tossed off trash, but it might also be of exceptional quality ("Rain"), a chance to throw a less prolific band member some royalty cash ("The Inner Light"), or an excuse to get inspiredly loony ("You Know My Name [Look Up the Number]"). Some B-sides are even better than their smash A-sides... at least that's my stance on all those Beatles flip sides I referenced in the previous sentence. <span><a name='more'></a></span></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Andy Cowan pays long overdue homage to flips in his new book <i>B-Side</i>. He runs through more than 500 of them, each chronicled with a brief paragraph on the particular song's history and appeal. Since he only discusses one B-side per artist, he casts a very wide net. I'm not sure if any music listener is eclectic/devoid-of-personal-taste enough to want a book that discusses The Who, Engelbert Humperdinck, Artie Shaw, Can, Frankie Avalon, The Sex Pistols, Shania Twain, N.W.A., Vangelis, The Pixies, Adele, Perry Como, PJ Harvey, Moby, Miles Davis, Sammy Davis Jr., Human League, Megadeth, Vanilla Ice, and Echo and the Bunnymen, but if such a person exists, this is the book for them (kudos, though, for including Zacherley!). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">Since most readers probably won't qualify and will want to zip to their favorite eras or artists, Cowan's decision to organize his book alphabetically by song title might prove a bit frustrating. But the concept is still nifty, and he does discuss such Psychobabble approved gems as The Stones' "Child of the Moon", Prince's "Erotic City", The Who's "Heaven and Hell", R.E.M.'s "Ages of You", XTC's "Dear God", Hendrix's "51st Anniversary", Sly Stone's "Everybody Is a Star", Small Faces' "Just Passing", and The Beach Boys' "Don't Worry Baby". I also like that he digs deep for some groovy oddities, such as The Syn's "14 Hour Technicolor Dream", The Creation's "Through My Eyes", and Tintern Abbey's "Vacuum CLeaner".</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">I did learn a few things, such as the apparent fact that the screaming at the beginning of "Child of the Moon" is that of producer Jimmy Miller and not Mick Jagger and that a certain naughty word I always assumed I was mishearing in Syd Barrett's "Candy and a Currant Bun" is, indeed, the naughty word in question. But without question this book's biggest revelation is the parade of A-Sides that started life as B-Sides, such as Gene Vincent's "Be-Bop-a-Lula", Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock", The Doobie Brothers' "Black Water", Bill Withers's "Ain't No Sunshine", Dionne Warwick's "Alfie", and Brenda Lee's "I'm Sorry". Who knew? Sometimes, though, these matters are down to the fact that Cowan is English, and A's and B's sometimes flipped across the pond, so for him, The Kink's "Who'll Be the Next in Line" is a B-side.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: georgia;">And since I'm sure you're wondering, the Beatles B-side Cowan selected is "Revolution".</span></p>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-76678080666497523712023-11-13T01:35:00.017-05:002023-11-13T01:35:00.134-05:00Review: 'Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live At The Hollywood Bowl: August 18, 1967'<p>Two months to the day after The Jimi Hendrix Experience became an overnight stateside phenomenon at the Monterey Pop Festival, the group freaked out California a little further south at the Hollywood Bowl. The band was simply white hot at this point, still flying from rearranging brains en masse at the beginning of the summer and still so fresh that they hadn't even put out a sophomore LP yet. This material must have still been new enough that Jimi hadn't quite gotten it all down yet, as he kept forgetting to sing lines in "The Wind Cries Mary". But such gaffs are part of the charm of hearing a vintage, unadulterated performance, as you can on the new live disc, <i>Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live At The Hollywood Bowl: August 18, 1967</i>. The power of the band at this stage in their career is what makes it electrifying. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8XhUcU4jb1JiL13isxH-xrRYa-B9bXDBpsKrQviHtCCYjEfXx4Qj9KzuxTrw5A1Z3nVDbwMZw2zJiJmU20rJTB8r8At6dzlYv-iEzF3AX0M8cV-hxfXojQgE59epfBC7y2KPbkngoO7j9ELwvxXCgcEIzuSVO2Sn5kW4e7SHOmWMQT_Xggck2tXPXHsY/s1000/81cBhuFkiFL._UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="604" data-original-width="1000" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8XhUcU4jb1JiL13isxH-xrRYa-B9bXDBpsKrQviHtCCYjEfXx4Qj9KzuxTrw5A1Z3nVDbwMZw2zJiJmU20rJTB8r8At6dzlYv-iEzF3AX0M8cV-hxfXojQgE59epfBC7y2KPbkngoO7j9ELwvxXCgcEIzuSVO2Sn5kW4e7SHOmWMQT_Xggck2tXPXHsY/s320/81cBhuFkiFL._UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span><a name='more'></a></span>Much of the set mirrors the one the band used at Monterey pretty closely, with covers of Howling Wolf, Dylan, and Troggs sprinkled amongst the Experience essentials "Purple Haze", "The Wind Cries Mary" "Foxey Lady", and "Fire". The major addition is a raging rendition of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", which so knocked McCartney for a loop when he heard the Experience play it just days after The Beatles released the original. <p></p><p>Hearing The Jimi Hendrix Experience at this juncture when they were just starting to blow so any minds makes <i>Live At The Hollywood Bowl </i>very historically significant, which goes some way toward balancing out its audio shortcomings. The vocals were captured significantly louder than the instruments and everything is a bit fuzzy. But as a document of a phenomenal live band at their playing peak before live recording tech has had a chance to catch up, you couldn't do much better.</p><p><br /></p>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-1089255891098739022023-11-11T21:09:00.005-05:002023-11-11T21:09:43.746-05:00Review: 'The Wicker Man: The Official Story of the Film'<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc7ciZC5C6fqoTAqZCwfit94nnAAZan5v1aW35LH_17cLEbBffl39dfS1vLM_172LYI3-YKwdld80Gc0R9QkvgkoluV88eU-9Om2SVF9UPWWHacMib5-OnXaQtgBXQNINR3Vj89FLRgwsx42VALtO_nLeHG4KkNRGU735IloQ_9nWu00QDFy3zZP3ARsw/s1000/81nw7Hpz24L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="781" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc7ciZC5C6fqoTAqZCwfit94nnAAZan5v1aW35LH_17cLEbBffl39dfS1vLM_172LYI3-YKwdld80Gc0R9QkvgkoluV88eU-9Om2SVF9UPWWHacMib5-OnXaQtgBXQNINR3Vj89FLRgwsx42VALtO_nLeHG4KkNRGU735IloQ_9nWu00QDFy3zZP3ARsw/w156-h200/81nw7Hpz24L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg" width="156" /></a></div>Like most true cult films, <i>The Wicker Man</i> has certain trappings of a particular genre (horror), but it's actually pretty hard to categorize. For most of its run time, it would be better classified as a police procedural or mystery. Midway through production, director Robin Hardy declared it was a musical. Indeed, <i>The Wicker Man</i> is all these things, which is just one reason it is such a unique viewing experience. However, it can also be frustrating since it exists in so many forms due to a less than respectful release that saw it get chopped to pieces to play second-fiddle to Nic Roeg's <i>Don't Look Now</i>, with which it joined forces for an admittedly excellent double feature in 1973. Complicating the story further, there are questions as to how much it was influenced by David Pinner's novel <i>Ritual</i>, how much it was auteured by Hardy (whom many of the folks involved in the film describe as barely competent), and how miserable the cold, combative, and stressfully compressed shoot was.<span><a name='more'></a></span><p></p><p>Indeed, making <i>The Wicker Man</i> doesn't seem like it was that much fun for the people who made <i>The Wicker Man</i>, but that also makes the story of its making juicy with drama. That's a boon for writer John Walsh and his new book, <i>The Wicker Man: The Official Story of the Film</i>. He gets into the film's literary genesis, the historical accuracy of its pagan depictions, its music, and its troubled making, so full of animosity (Britt Ekland vs. Ingrid Pitt; Christopher Lee vs. Michael Deeley; Robin Hardy vs. everyone). He makes attempts to solve myths associated with the film, such as the notion that Deeley deliberately botched the film's release and that Rod Stewart made an attempt to buy every print of the film because he didn't approve of girlfriend Ekland showing so much skin in the flick, although there's so much bad blood and opportunities to be self-serving among the <i>Wicker Man</i> gang that the reliability of the sources may sometimes be questionable. </p><p>But who cares? What matters is that the telling is delicious and the book is full of fascinating tidbits (I hadn't known that Christopher Lee held some sway over the script's rewrites) and images that include shots of the construction of the title man, original sheet music for its wonderful songs, actors in the studio recording those songs, some fabulous fan art, stills of deleted scenes that have not been included in any cut of the film, and a handy chart for differentiating the film's various edits. Now if only the longest and best edit could somehow get properly restored...</p>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-18982914323977051632023-11-09T09:50:00.000-05:002023-11-09T09:50:38.134-05:00Review: 'Written in Their Soul – The Hits: The Stax Songwriter Demos'<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsyvyWfup7ArQqmOFa3Qsm7F-WQ4d6AHNT9VRdzFzkO_ZzLU5HNPOQ9wm9utl0RpmwgrfrSJ6TRlnWnkaKoM0z06s8256Wvi9eyoxY0HF8syM14XrAOkLp_rOr6Vt_pBqwy2ZKmrRB8c4IW93ixeBZlUnIy1KhGchkW15qVAYKjQPKK4VrsY7nD-hcGHY/s339/Screen%20Shot%202023-11-01%20at%209.14.45%20AM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="244" data-original-width="339" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsyvyWfup7ArQqmOFa3Qsm7F-WQ4d6AHNT9VRdzFzkO_ZzLU5HNPOQ9wm9utl0RpmwgrfrSJ6TRlnWnkaKoM0z06s8256Wvi9eyoxY0HF8syM14XrAOkLp_rOr6Vt_pBqwy2ZKmrRB8c4IW93ixeBZlUnIy1KhGchkW15qVAYKjQPKK4VrsY7nD-hcGHY/w200-h144/Screen%20Shot%202023-11-01%20at%209.14.45%20AM.png" width="200" /></a></div>A Stax record is instantly recognizable by a distinctive voice like Otis's or Carla's and the raw but thick backing from house bands Booker T. & The MG's and The Mar-Keys. Of course, a record doesn't begin with what you hear on the radio or vinyl. It usually starts off as lyrics and chords on a piece of paper and then first achieves sound on a rough demo to give producers and artists a clearer taste of the song. <span><a name='more'></a></span><p></p><p>Hearing a Stax hit that doesn't quite sound like a Stax record is a bit jarring and more than a little fascinating, and that's what you can expect from <i>Written in Their Soul – The Hits: The Stax Songwriter Demos</i>. A familiar item such as The Staple Singers' "Respect Yourself" is nearly unrecognizable in co-composer Mack Rice's minimalistic, distorted, aggressive guitar and voice demo. Eddie Floyd's "I'll Always Have Faith in You", recorded by Billy Eckstine, is stripped to Floyd's haltingly and hauntingly beautiful voice and guitar that makes the finished record sound over-dramatic rand over-produced in comparison. However, Carla Thomas's "A Woman's Love" sounds nearly finished with the artist's own extraordinary voice in place and a comparatively full arrangement of piano and echoing guitar. Deanie Parker gets full band accompaniment for "I've Got No Time to Lose", which Carla Thomas ended up recording </p><p>These demos were originally included on an expansive CD set called <i>Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriter Demos</i>, but a baker's dozen of the most recognizable numbers from that collection have been distilled on the limited edition (5,000 units) orange vinyl <i>Hits</i> for Record Store Day. By nature demos aren't always hi-fi, but this is as nice of a presentation as you can get on flat, quiet vinyl.</p>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7187929327336527982.post-56732976903009504872023-11-03T05:27:00.010-04:002023-11-03T05:27:00.136-04:00Review: The Dave Brubeck Quartet's 'Jazz at Oberlin'<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhriGKXp7PyTuNx7tTt6v6xntlZ4kHbH0-czqNufj2Xu87ViTxNY2IihqKQ2Bjb7bW9dmkD9fFzn-e5HIH6t4hYVqts0mXWyeJ3J9Pdae-QVlv86yKaM-G0GXTtdt_9NQgTmWOBC3CmOK_TvlrmtAytrQ8R7UHeMdgXeF1EyxQbe3_MhR5GPfA15WCz8xA/s327/Screen%20Shot%202023-11-01%20at%206.00.48%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="319" data-original-width="327" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhriGKXp7PyTuNx7tTt6v6xntlZ4kHbH0-czqNufj2Xu87ViTxNY2IihqKQ2Bjb7bW9dmkD9fFzn-e5HIH6t4hYVqts0mXWyeJ3J9Pdae-QVlv86yKaM-G0GXTtdt_9NQgTmWOBC3CmOK_TvlrmtAytrQ8R7UHeMdgXeF1EyxQbe3_MhR5GPfA15WCz8xA/w200-h195/Screen%20Shot%202023-11-01%20at%206.00.48%20PM.png" width="200" /></a></div>For their first LP, The Dave Brubeck Quartet released a live set caught at Oberlin College in Ohio. Although the makeup of the band would change a bit over the years, the cornerstones of Brubeck's elegant yet harmonically adventurous piano and Paul Desmond's cherubic and searching alto sax are in place, although there are not yet those wonderfully imaginative original compositions like "Time Out", "Blue Rondo a La Turk", and "Bluette" that would cause the group's later albums to be widely regarded as classics. Instead the group worked with a quintet of standards such as Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust" and Morgan Lewis's "How High the Moon". Nevertheless, Brubeck and Desmond's effortless interplay is already fully formed, and the latter wastes no time in showing off his fluttering skills on set opener "These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)". The former begins the song in deceptively reserved mode before aggressively stumbling out strident chords that lay waste to his reputation as some sort of purveyor of tepid white-wine jazz. <span><a name='more'></a></span><p></p><p>From there, they're off, pumping through a sprightly "Perdido", a cooly swaying "Stardust", and hard boogying renditions of "The Way You Look Tonight" and "How High the Moon". Really, the only thing missing is those extraordinary original compositions, but if you just want to hear two of jazz's most distinctive players do their thing, you can't go wrong at <i>Jazz at Oberlin</i>.</p><p>And if you've already sampled any of the titles in the audiophile "Original Jazz Classics" series, you can probably already surmise that you won't go wrong with Craft Recording's new reissue of <i>Jazz at Oberlin</i>. Kevin Gray remastered the original master tapes using an all-analog process that is usual for the Original Jazz Classics series yet too few others. The music sounds open, full bodied, and utterly natural, as if the guys are jamming away in your living room.</p>Mike Segretto (Psychobabble)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13931443173835912241noreply@blogger.com