| Author | Message | ||
     Geoff Holmes Member Username: Geoff Post Number: 223 Registered: 05-2005 |
I've just been marking bloody books again so I settled into something overtly familiar - The Monkees. Grant's favourite song was "I'm a Believer". Here are 10 of mine. What are yours? Love is only sleeping (THAT MOOG!) Words Randy Scouse Git (THOSE drums!) Daydream Believer The Girl that I knew Somewhere (THAT guitar!) For Pete's sake Porpoise song Do I have to do this all over again (groovy) Sometime in the morning (hypnotic) Pleasant valley sunday | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 1253 Registered: 03-2005 |
1. Listen to the Band 2. The Girl That I Knew Somewhere (the first song they recorded playing the instruments themselves. THAT guitar is theirs, probably Nesmith's). 3. Porpoise Song 4. Daydream Believer 5. Steam Engine 99 6. You Just May Be the One 7. For Pete's Sake 8. Take a Giant Step 9. Sweet Young Thing (-ah!) 10. Early Morning Greens & Blues Tomorrow, the list would probably be different. I'm old enough to have watched their shows when they were new and was probably pretty much their target age (10 at the beginning). No matter how much uber-cool things I got into later (and, actually, was already listening to thanks to the older brother) and how much they were the constantly-battered symbol of plastic fakey hit machine music, I loved them. I even have "Changes"! | ||
| Michael Bachman Member Username: Michael_bachman Post Number: 662 Registered: 01-2005 |
Was "Some Of Shelly's Blues" a Monkees song? The Continental Drifters did a great cover of it on their debut album. | ||
| Little Keith Member Username: Manosludge Post Number: 2040 Registered: 03-2006 |
I sign on to all the picks listed above, but also liked "Valeri", "I Want to Be Free" and howzabout that great, bitter ditty, "(I'm not your) Stepping Stone", so improbably but memorably covered by the Sex Pistols? A lotta piss and vinegar for a Monkees song. | ||
| Hugh Nimmo Member Username: Hugh_nimmo Post Number: 37 Registered: 03-2007 |
Michael, the song ( written by Michael Nesmith ) appears on 'Missing Links - Volume 2' by The Monkees ( a collection of rare, unreleased and alternate tracks recorded between 1966 and 1968 ) which was released by Rhino in the late 1980's/early 1990's. It also appears on the 'Listen To The Band' Boxset issued by Rhino in 1991. It might be credited as a Monkees song but having listened to it many times over the years ( I have a copy of the Boxset ) I am convinced that it is in fact a early solo effort by Michael Nesmith with little, if any, input from the other members of the group. Nesmith eventually released the song in 1973 on his 'Pretty Much Your Standard Ranch Stash' album. I first heard it when I picked up a copy of 'Uncle Charlie And His Dog Teddy' by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in 1970. They also recorded a version of his song 'Propinquity' on the same album. Geoff/Randy/LK, nice collection of titles and I am pleased to see mention of 'Daydream Believer' as I am a huge admirer of the songwriter. | ||
| Hugh Nimmo Member Username: Hugh_nimmo Post Number: 38 Registered: 03-2007 |
Michael, I managed to find my copy of the boxset and the following information is taken from the booklet. The song was recorded on 29 May, 1968, at R.C.A. Studios, Nashville. It was produced by Nesmith and Felton Jarvis and engineered by Bill Vandevort. The musicians included Billy Sanford ( Electric Guitar ) Bobby Dyson ( Bass ) Willie Ackerman ( Drums ) Larry Butler ( Piano ) Lloyd Green ( Steel Guitar ) and Sonny Osborn ( Banjo.) It was first released on 'Missing Links, Volume 2' in January, 1990. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 1256 Registered: 03-2005 |
"Some of Shelley's Blues" was also recorded by the Stone Ponies, Linda Ronstadt's original band who, of course, had a nice hit with Nesmith's "Different Drum." | ||
| Elizabeth Robinson Member Username: Liz_the_new_listener Post Number: 108 Registered: 10-2006 |
All right up there to this day: 'What am I Doing Hanging Round?' 'Randy Scouse Git' 'Porpoise Song' 'Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?' | ||
| Elizabeth Robinson Member Username: Liz_the_new_listener Post Number: 109 Registered: 10-2006 |
Michael Nesmith came up with the phrase, 'the Society for the Tragically Hip' in his television special, Television Parts, and that's where the Canadian group, the Tragically Hip, got their name. Gordon Downie, their lead singer, got his moves from David Byrne.... | ||
| Peter_d Member Username: Peter_d Post Number: 23 Registered: 05-2005 |
That was Then, This is Now...okay, relax, I'm joking  There's just so many, probably my top 3 would be - The Girl I Knew from Somewhere - You Just May Be the One - What am I Doing Hangin' Round Great songs ! | ||
| Wolfgang Steinhardt Member Username: Berbatov Post Number: 81 Registered: 09-2006 |
Carnival 1967 in Cologne where they throw stuff like candies and flowers at the carnival procession and my uncle used to catch a promo single from a record shop with loads of hits of the season, every song played just about 30 second before the fade out (like i-tunes) and my favourite on that compilation was Last Train to Clarksville. Lost the cover with the tracklisting immediately and for years I thought it was the Beatles. Took me a long time to see the fab four weren't that good... | ||
| spence Member Username: Spence Post Number: 1587 Registered: 05-2005 |
I think I like best What am I doing hanging round? Pleasant Valley Sunday Peter Percival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky Last train to Clarkesville J'adore Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. | ||
| Kurt Stephan Member Username: Slothbert Post Number: 1429 Registered: 04-2005 |
(Donning my flameproof suit...) There's something very weird about a board where one can safely post favorite Monkees songs without fear of getting bashed, but mention the Beatles, and the haters come out in droves. This isn't a putdown of the Monkees, just an observation of our collective perspective on original vs. ersatz. | ||
| Jerry Clark Member Username: Jerry Post Number: 664 Registered: 08-2004 |
Aah well. The Monkees are the thinking man's Beatles. | ||
| spence Member Username: Spence Post Number: 1588 Registered: 05-2005 |
Micky was better than Ringo - there!!!!!! | ||
| Kurt Stephan Member Username: Slothbert Post Number: 1430 Registered: 04-2005 |
You know, I was always more of a Grungies guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaVvo-11K Xw | ||
| Little Keith Member Username: Manosludge Post Number: 2045 Registered: 03-2006 |
Sure. The Beatles were a world-changing phenomenon, a once in a millenium gathering of personalities and talents, with a substantial catalog of indelible pop tunes that, basically, the world is still singing, and will continue to sing long after we're gone. Vs. a cute little obscurity, a quartet manafactured for a comedy show designed to appeal to pre-pubescents (factoid: Stephen Stills tried out, but didn't make it. The point being it was totally a manafactured group - it didn't spring from anything organic), one that most people would be hard-pressed to name a single song by? Sure, the Monkees were much better. And, if you buy that, I have a cubic zirconium I'd like to trade you for your diamond! | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 1260 Registered: 03-2005 |
Welcome back Spence! What "droves" of haters have there been for the Beatles? Kevin doesn't like them and I'm just burned out on them due to their extreme overexposure (I have everything they did except for the proto-corporate "Abbey Road"). Who else? Are two people a drove? What makes the Monkees cool for me is that the "totally [] manufactured group" took on a life of its own, kind of like HAL in "2001: Space Odyssey," and then made a number of honestly good (and occasionally great) records. Kirshner's Frankenstein escaped from the lab. | ||
| Michael Bachman Member Username: Michael_bachman Post Number: 667 Registered: 01-2005 |
I'll give The Monkees cudos for some great poppy songs, but they weren't very good live were they? I certainly wouldn't put them up there with The Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield, Love, etc as being one of the great US bands during the 60's. | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 694 Registered: 08-2006 |
Kurt, your post cracked me up. I gotta admit, the only Monkees tunes I ever heard I heard on the TV show when I was a kid. Maybe I'm just not into ersatz (although I share Randy's view of the Beatles). | ||
| Kurt Stephan Member Username: Slothbert Post Number: 1437 Registered: 04-2005 |
I wish we had a polling feature on this board. I bet if we did a poll about "do you like the Beatles?" there'd be more "no" answers than "yes." If I weren't so lazy, I'd use the search feature to find examples of how many people here have bashed the Beatles in the past. Which is fine, of course--it's not hard to get sick of them from overexposure. Somehow, I'm immune to that personally. I don't recall ever hearing RF or GM speak about the Beatles in interviews, but both have proclaimed themselves Monkees fans. I do wonder if they (like many) found the Beatles unlikeable "overdogs," pretentious, or whatever, preferring the more "pure pop" approach of the Monkees. But on the other hand, they can't have been blind to the similarity of their songwriting relationship to John's and Paul's. | ||
| Wolfgang Steinhardt Member Username: Berbatov Post Number: 84 Registered: 09-2006 |
Hahahaha: HAL! Not only girls dig metaphores, Randy! What a pity the Partridge Family never made it good enough to be compared to Alien... | ||
| Little Keith Member Username: Manosludge Post Number: 2054 Registered: 03-2006 |
Michael, your reference to the Monkees playing live mystifies me. They didn't actually play any instruments, did they? So, how could they've played live? Did they lip sync, a la Britney? | ||
| Rob Brookman Member Username: Rob_b Post Number: 697 Registered: 08-2006 |
If you took that poll, Kurt, I'd admit to liking the Beatles, I just don't play their records because everybody else on the freakin' planet does it for me, 24/7. I'll still pull out "Revolver" and "The White Album" now and then, since those don't seem to get quite the attention some of the others do, and they have an edge some of the others don't. But even then you hit those tracks you've heard SO much. It's the same way I don't care if I ever hear the song "Moondance" again. I think it's a great song, but it's invaded my ear hole enough for one lifetime. And LK, I actually saw the Monkees live once in the '80s. Can't remember why I went, or much about the performance. Nesmith may or may not have been with them, but I tend to think not. They did have "helper" musicians onstage, I remember that, because it reinforced my opinion of them as a novelty act. | ||
| Kurt Stephan Member Username: Slothbert Post Number: 1438 Registered: 04-2005 |
I wonder how they were when they played their instruments onstage in the '60s? I mean, I know they all played instruments before the Monkees, but I bet they weren't real polished. I'm guessing they sounded like a scrappy garage band, maybe a very good one. Of course, in those days, the girls in the crowd screamed so much that it didn't really matter how well a band actually played onstage. | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 1262 Registered: 03-2005 |
Tork and Nesmith were LA musos, period. Just like Steve Stills. In Tork's case, he could play guitar, bass and keys. Nesmith played guitar in the usual singer/songwriter sense, i.e., don't ask him to do solos. Davy Jones was a musical stage actor/singer. He played nada. Dolenz, surprisingly, was an amateur guitar player--almost certainly as competent as me (which isn't saying much)--but he had to teach himself drums. He wasn't great on them, but he plays on ALL of "Headquarters" and off and on on later recordings (for example, I'm pretty sure he plays drums on "Pleasant Valley Sunday"--hence their clunky sound). LK's misconceptions of the Monkees is precisely what I was referring to about them being held up as the emblems of plastic, fakey hit machine music. That was indeed their genesis. But they were people and a couple of them had real musical ambitions and capabilities. Those ambitions rose to the surface after their first two albums. Indeed Nesmith made the right to produce his own songs a condition of signing on in the first place. And, whatever you think of him, Dolenz was an effective pop singer with a decidedly memorable voice. I'm not sure their chart career would have taken off without him. The only time anyone would compare the Monkees to the Beatles would be for rhetorical purposes, but they do have a residual underdog status thanks to the unfairly two-dimensional trashing they received at the hands of the Rolling Stone school of rock critics. | ||
| Little Keith Member Username: Manosludge Post Number: 2055 Registered: 03-2006 |
Hey, Davey Jones did stand around and look cute and short. Give him some credit dammit. | ||
| Little Keith Member Username: Manosludge Post Number: 2057 Registered: 03-2006 |
He added "zazz". | ||
| Randy Adams Member Username: Randy_adams Post Number: 1265 Registered: 03-2005 |
Ok, I was NOT expecting this but look . . . . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pbPSJFeM yI&mode=related&search= There are a whole bunch of songs from this 1997 show posted on youtube. I didn't know Nesmith ever went back on stage with them. No sidemen playing, btw. | ||
| Geoff Holmes Member Username: Geoff Post Number: 225 Registered: 05-2005 |
It's always funny to come back here after a few days off and find things have really developed! You know me...I'm definately no Beatle hater!!!! In fact I always get the impression that, apart from a few people, most people in Auz who didn't grow up on them could take them or leave them. In that sense, liking the Beatles when I was an impressionale youth was nearly as radical as liking anything else that didn't inhabit late 70's/early 80's radio. People thought I was WEIRD!!!!! (...they still do but that's another story..) I too have seen the Monkees - in about 89(?) in Sydney. Micky, Peter and Mike played instruments at times but Davey hadn't learnt Bass as in Randy's vid. Pretty good - can't go past those songs - perfect pop confection by some of America's greatest songwriters! | ||
| spence Member Username: Spence Post Number: 1589 Registered: 05-2005 |
Nicely put Randy. I like that Monkees song. Where's it from? | ||
| Jerry Clark Member Username: Jerry Post Number: 665 Registered: 08-2004 |
The Byrds didn't play on most of the Mr. Tambourine Man LP. Yet they condescend to criticise The Monkees for much the same thing on So You Want To Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star. The Beach Boys were much the same throughout the '60's. Clutching at straws here, but Frankie Goes To Hollywood didn't play on the number 1 version of Relax at all. Anyone care to pitch in with more examples? Also were the Beatles ever any good live? If so why'd they retire? | ||
| spence Member Username: Spence Post Number: 1591 Registered: 05-2005 |
Wasn't it the Blockheads who played on Relax? and Two Tribes? A guy who I play with Bob played wit the Beatles twice, supporting them, and he's a top musician, very gifted, and he said they were a tremendous act, they blew everyone away with their harmonies and tightness, and genereal stage presence. | ||
| Andrew Kerr Member Username: Andrew_k Post Number: 270 Registered: 04-2005 |
The Beatles live on top of the Apple building with Billy Preston(filmed for Let It Be): stunning stuff. Especially the version of 'Get Back' after the police turn up. Do I sense a conspiracy theory in the fact that this film seems to have completely disappeared and that McCartney comes out of it pretty badly? | ||
| Little Keith Member Username: Manosludge Post Number: 2058 Registered: 03-2006 |
That is stunning stuff, Andrew. Also, I've never seen it all the way through, not even sure it's available in its entirety, but the Shea Stadium footage is incredible. It's the concert where you see them running out onto the field surrounded by a phalanx of security types. It's just as Spence's pal describes, incredibly tight, charismatic, with spot-on harmonies, even if you couldn't hear them for all the girls screaming. They, as the legend goes, cut their teeth playing for hours on end in clubs on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg. I guess keeping raucous German teddy boys and prostitutes entertained will force a band to develop a certain level of craft and can-do attitude! By the time they'd done that, it was as though they'd been through a war together. Don't know why they quit touring. It had probably devolved into too much of a circus, and Lord knows, they didn't need it to sell records. | ||
| Kurt Stephan Member Username: Slothbert Post Number: 1439 Registered: 04-2005 |
From what I've read, their decision to stop touring was a combination of fatigue, frustration over the inability to hear themselves when playing because of all the screaming, and their acknowledgment that they couldn't reproduce the music they were doing in the studio onstage, given this was before sequencers, samplers, expanded lineups, etc. And like LK says, they didn't need it to sell records or stay afloat financially. | ||
| Michael Bachman Member Username: Michael_bachman Post Number: 668 Registered: 01-2005 |
The movie Backbeat is certainly worth checking out for a look at how the Beatles "cut their teeth playing for hours on end in clubs on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg" as LK put it. They then went on to play tons of dates at The Cavern in Liverpool after that. | ||
| Peter Member Username: Peterw Post Number: 11 Registered: 02-2007 |
Last train to Clarksville - as Dylan said when introducing it on 'Theme time radio hour' - “I’ve always felt the first rule of writing a subversive song is not to tell anybody that it’s subversive.” | ||
| Stuart Wilson Member Username: Stuart Post Number: 68 Registered: 10-2006 |
Absolutely Monkeeless here, so if I want to get all that's vital by the lads, what do i got to buy? The Definitive Monkees 2cd set looks a good bet, but will I be missing out on some obscure gems elsewhere? | ||
| Elizabeth Robinson Member Username: Liz_the_new_listener Post Number: 111 Registered: 10-2006 |
Hi, Stuart: If you can get 'Headquarters', 'Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, Ltd' and the soundtrack to 'Head', those are good starters. 'More of the Monkees' also. I prefer late Monkees, actually.... | ||
| Geoff Holmes Member Username: Geoff Post Number: 231 Registered: 05-2005 |
The Definitive Monkees doesn't have "Love is only sleeping" and "Star Collector" which are ESSENTIAL to even a casual fan. These can be found on "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones Ltd". When I actually started getting my own records, there was a double album release in Australia called Monkeemaia that had the best selection of songs on it. It's a pity that this was never released on C.D. - way better than the Definitive and it had a good history of the band on it too. The Monkees have ALWAYS been part of my musical landscape and it's strange to think that some people haven't got or heard any! Good Hunting Stuart!! |