Mike Nesmith's Ten Greatest Monkees Songs

Say what you will about The Monkees (no one has ever pulled any punches before), but even the most blinkered, calloused critics admit one thing about the group they deride as “the Pre-Fab Four”: Mike Nesmith is a great, great songwriter. In celebration of ol’ Wool Hat’s 70^th birthday today, I’ve put together a selection of his ten best. Or, more truthfully, my ten favorites.

Another 'Who FAQ' Poll! Vote for the Most Underrated Who Songs!

Once again I am reaching out to my fellow Whooligans for some input as I busily toil away on The Who FAQ. Last month I picked your purple-heart riddled brains about your favorite solo albums (that poll is still open, by the way). Now I'd like to know what you think are The Who's most underrated songs. I'm looking for songs that weren't hits, songs you won't find on The Ultimate Collection, songs that have never been used as a "CSI" theme, songs that if you shouted requests for them at a Who show, Roger would be like, "Huh?" and Pete would hit you with his guitar.

So choose up to five of your favorite odds and sods, and I'll profile the biggest winners in The Who FAQ. Hit me with your selections in the comments section below. Have at it...

Review: 'Movie Monsters in Scale'

Mark C. Glassy has a Ph.D in biochemistry. In 1982, he invented the first human antibody used to treat cancer. So what the hell is he doing making models of monsters? Having fun, of course, and fun is the real purpose of his new book, Movie Monsters in Scale. Sure, he offers plenty of pointers that may help you assemble, paint, and decorate your own models and dioramas, but as someone who never acquired that hobby, I still really enjoyed his book because gawking at his model collection is a lot of monstery fun. The problem is that his contributions to these packaged kits are largely down to his paintjobs, and most of these photos are in black and white. So Glassy spends a lot of time describing paint jobs we can’t really appreciate. There are 24 color pages to give a taste of his talents, but this book really should have received the full-color treatment

Review: 'Roger Daltrey: The Biography'

Poor Rog. There are several fairly thick biographies of both Pete Townshend and Keith Moon. John Entwistle was the subject of a feature-length documentary. What does Roger Daltrey get? A leaflet-sized biography that fails to mention his songwriting efforts, reduces his entire solo career to a couple of paragraphs, and zips through everything that happened to him after the sixties in fewer than 100 pages. Writers Tim Ewbank and Stafford Hildred’s reliance on old interviews with Who manager Kit Lambert makes for some entertaining reading but the raconteur rarely instills confidence that his stories are accurate. Neither does the writers’ tendency to make sloppy mistakes, as when they refer to the “three” albums of original material The Who released in the eighties. The only chapter that is sufficiently thorough and unique is the one covering Roger’s acting career. Otherwise, Roger Daltrey: The Biography offers little information about the singer that can’t be gleaned from most Who biographies.

Who FAQ Poll! Best Solo Albums...

In my quest to ensure The Who FAQ doesn't merely rest on my own subjective opinions about the World's Greatest Rock & Roll Band, I'm relying on you Who fans to help decide the contents of my upcoming book.

First up, I'd like to know about your favorite solo albums by each band member. With only one solo LP to his name, Keith needs no mention, but what do you think is Pete's greatest record? How about Rog and John? Sound off in the comments section below, and I'll feature the best loved discs in The Who FAQ!

Review: Bo Diddley's 'Diddley Daddy: The Collection'

For those who don’t know, an anthology of 52 classics from Bo Diddley may seem like an overdose of “shave-and-a-haircut” beats. Devotees of the Boss Man know he was a lot more eclectic than that. Yes, there are plenty of chances to get hypnotized by Bo’s trademark rhythm (and hear him sing his own praises by name), but he also bashes out some hard Chicago-style blues on “I’m a Man” (proving that white Rockers didn’t have a monopoly on ripping off Muddy Waters), blasts off some fast boogie on “Diddley Daddy”, and lays down a heavy Rock & Roll riff on “Roadrunner”. Elsewhere, Bo knows John Lee Hooker-style blues (“She’s Fine, She’s Mine”), surfy instrumentals (“Aztec”), hilarious novelties (“Say Man”) doo-wop (“I’m Sorry”), Latin swirl (“Dearest Darling”), Buddy Holly-esque pop (“Crackin' Up”), folk standards (“Sixteen Tons”), and proto-psychedelia (the disorienting “Down Home Special”). Indeed, the breadth of artists who’ve covered songs on Diddley Daddy: The Collection speaks to its eclectic nature:  The Rolling Stones, Captain Beefheart, The Who, The Velvet Underground, The Pretty Things, New York Dolls, The Kinks, Elvis Presley, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and on and on. One thing all these tracks have in common is eerie, celestial production, and of course, Bo’s unfathomably mesmeric soul. A consistently transfixing listening experience.

 

Farewell, Chris Stamp

Unfortunate news has reached my desk this morning by way of Matt Kent's Naked Eye News. Chris Stamp died yesterday at Mt. Sinai Hospital where he'd spent the last two weeks. He was 70.

Brother of actor Terence, Chris achieved fame when he and his show-biz partner Kit Lambert went seeking stars for a film that would have tracked the rise of a young, English pop band. Stamp and Lambert settled on a Mod group called The High Numbers that Lambert had seen pumping out a set of Maximum R&B at the Railway Hotel on July 14, 1964. The partners decided to take the group under their managerial wings, first convincing them to revert to their previous name: The Who. 

Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert led The Who through their first ten years, a decade in which they released much of their greatest music on Stamp and Lambert's Track Records, which also put out Jimi Hendrix's recordings in the UK. While Bill Curbishley took over management in the mid-seventies, Stamp remained a close associate of the band, and continued singing their praises in the 2007 documentary Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who.

Expect a more thorough tribute to Chris Stamp and his life's work in The Who FAQ, coming in 2014.

Review: 'Del Shannon: The Essential Collection 1961-1991'

 
Though Del Shannon only managed two top ten hits in his home country, he scored a far more impressive eight in the UK. So it is appropriate that Britain’s Music Club Deluxe Records has put together one of the most comprehensive anthologies of his decades-spanning body of work. The transcendent “Runaway” naturally gets things underway, and is immediately followed by the excellent “Hats Off to Larry,” which is his second best known record in the States. For we Americans, much of the remainder of The Essential Collection 1961-1991 is a trove of treasures screaming to be heard for the first time.

Disc one, which houses all of the US and UK hits, is actually somewhat hit-and-miss. When Shannon had great material, such as the aforementioned hits or lesser-known wonders such as his non-hit his version of his own composition “I Go to Pieces” (a big hit for Pete and Gordon), he could do no wrong. But some of this stuff is middling doo-wop that highlights the limitations of his voice in the days before he became a consistently confident singer. On disc two, he stretches beyond the falsetto and musitron (the eerie keyboard showcased on “Runaway”) formula of his early hits to embrace garage rock, baroque pop, psychedelia, and country pop. Although these recordings aren’t always amazing —his covers of “Under My Thumb” and The Box Tops’ “The Letter” stick too close to the originals to be much more than redundant—they are consistently good. Much of this, such as the four recordings culled from 1967 sessions produced by Andrew Oldham (including a baroque-pop remake of “Runaway”) and the two tracks pulled from his vastly underrated psychedelic opus The Further Adventures of Charles Westover, are superb. Shannon had a lot more than “Runaway” in his arsenal. The Essential Collection 1961-1991 is positive proof of that.

Review: 'Alien: The Illustrated Story'

Considering how adult Alien is—not just in terms of violence and profanity, but also in pacing and artistry—it’s surprising how Ridley Scott’s film was marketed back in 1979. Twentieth Century Fox not-too-subtly pitched the film at kids by licensing an Alien action figure and an Alien comic book. As written by Archie Goodwin and illustrated by Walter Simonson, the book did not pull any punches in terms of blood, “fucks,” “shits,” and sex talk, although at 60-pages, the pace was certainly brisker. This all makes for a wonderfully seedy read: a slow and brooding film transformed into a Heavy Metal comic (quite literally, as Heavy Metal was the original publisher). Simonson’s art captured the actors’ likenesses well, and Goodwin’s text embellished on the script just enough to get all the film’s beats in at the skimpy designated page count. Titan Books has just reprinted Alien: The Illustrated Story for the first time in thirty-three years. It would have been nice if this bare-bones reprint had a few extras, some commentary on its publication or artists perhaps, but as it stands, it’s still a groovy artifact.

Review: 'Angel: After the Fall' (slipcase edition)

“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” receives the vast majority of geek love, but I personally preferred its spin-off. “Angel” was more adult, less cutesy pie (no talk of “smoochies” or “scoobies” to offend the ear). Although the title character—Buffy’s brooding, befanged ex-beau—was a bit of a drip, the supporting players were almost uniformly fab. And while “Buffy” certainly declined in quality over time, “Angel” hit its stride in season five when he and his gang took over an evil law firm (I know, I know, they’re all evil. Hardy har).