Okay, raise your hands, who really remembers the Monkees? That’s what I thought…
Ooo! A plot twist! They’re to ACT as rockers… now what? More this week!
In many ways, Neil Young voice annoys me. I am a fan of a few of his songs as his vocal stylings have never been my cup of tea. But, he certainly can grind out some gritty riffs from that ol’ guitar. I knew that today’s song title had the now famous line of “it’s better to burn out than to fade away” but I was not aware that Young had written it in 1977 while doing a film on Punk rock.
Discussion (59) ¬
I didn’t see the Monkees in their first run, but I did happen to see them in the 80s when their episodes were in syndication……… and just before they tried to rekindle the magic with a 2nd generation of Monkees….. which failed.
Hey hey, they’re The Monkees! The Prefab Four! Mike, Mickey, Davey, and Peter; I watched ’em when they first came out .. great stuff. And the music wasn’t half-bad either.
Ah Nesmith of the White Out money.
And all this time I thought The Monkees was just a hip reality show
Man I absolutely loved the Monkees, of course being born in ’75 I only saw them in syndication in the 80’s, but I had a ton of their records and tapes, and even when they released “Pool It” in 1987, I was one of the first to the record store to by it. “Head” was one of my favorite movies growing up, very psychedelic at times.
Dig the name of the Producer, very cool shout out there as well.
Hey hey, I love the Monkees! LOL!
LMAO – They were superb – lots of good tracks. Great strip dude!
I always wondered if Young knew he’d eulogized the wrong Sex Pistol (it’s Sid vicious who is “gone but not forgotten”; Johnny Rotton is still alive) back when he recorded “Into the Black.” In any case, I’d have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Johnny first heard the song… and wonder if he’s ever addressed the subject with Young.
Funny note: Back when I got into Punk in the early 1980s, Young was one of the very few “classic rockers” who held any credibility with the Punks. The others (in my circle , at least) were the Velvet Underground, The Doors and The Kinks. Bands like The Who were right out (even though Pete’s boys were doing the Punk thing a decade before The Ramones hit Britain), and I got into a screaming fight with my then-station manager at WVCW for playing Janis Joplin on the air. “You’re not playing any old shit on my station!” he’d yelled. “Just because it’s new, doesn’t mean it’s good!” I shouted back. “Well, I say it is, and in my station, what I say goes!” he replied. So I’d quit until he’d left the following year. The irony? He was wearing a U2 shirt at the time. (Hey, it was 1984, and Joshua Tree was still years in the future.)
Man I remember watching them. Hell, I do that funky walk thing with my kids. Its scary thinking one will be driving next year and the other is about to step into teendom.
“Hey Hey My My” is perhaps my favorite rock song of all time. My wife named our cat Neil Young. Despite this, I can appreciate that some folks don’t care for his voice–maybe it’s an acquired taste, and some people have acquired it. For those who don’t know, the career retrospective albums Young has been putting out are fantastic.
It was always painful to watch a band lip sync its own songs. I remember Mick Jagger rolling his eyes during a song because it was so strange.
I’ve always appreciated Neil Young because he’s always looking ahead and to something different…he’s a true artist. Haven’t always liked his music or his sound, but there’s no denying that he’s always stretching himself and won’t just tour the world on songs he wrote 40 years ago. There’s a lot to be said for that.
As for the Monkeys, I remember them vaguely as I had older brothers who’d watch, by my classic rock brother Bill sneered at them with derision, so I did too. 🙂 (Although, the Neil Diamond-penned “Clarksville” is a great tune, dammit.) I worked as a stagehand/roadie in college in the 80s, and I got to run spotlight for the big Monkees reunion tour…these guys sold out the 18,000 seat Activity Center at Arizona State for three shows. Geez. Fun concert, though…met Mickey backstage and he was really nice, and his daughters very hot. 🙂
Trivia time…didja know that Mickey Dolenz was the original voice of Scooby-Doo?
Hmmm…heart and soul versus hardened soul? Some choice. I wonder what Bud’s gonna decide. I’ll stay tooned!
Neil Young did a “live” soundtrack for the quirky movie “Dead Man” (S’got Johnny Depp innit), watching the movie on monitors and improvising on instruments set up in a circle around him as he watched. Like you said, not my cup of tea vocals wise, nor lyrics wise most of the time, but he is an astounding musician.
Nesmith, the “I’m not Spockian” of the Monkees, and writer of what is possibly the most annoying pop song of all time (and I include “Hey Mickey” *and* “Chripy Chirpy Cheep Cheep” in that category I might add) “Driving to Rio”.
Synopsis: Three minutes whatever of “I’m gonna drive down to Rio” set to insipid music of the elevator-filler variety, followed in the last two lines by “I probably WON’T drive down to Rio, but then again I just might”, prompting an “Argh!” of disgust from your scribe.
Fave songs by The Monkees – “Daydream Believer”, the nicest earworm on the radio. “Pleasant Valley Sunday”. The Graduate was required viewing for all songwriters of the day I imagine.
I see what you did with the glass there. But did you know that Les Guise do Cabaret?
heh.
i just mentioned the dead man soundtrack to byron earlier today.
great stuff. great movie too, though not for everyone since it moves so slowly. beautifully shot tho. and crispin glover’s part is … well … epic and disturbing. which is the way crispin glover is meant to be viewed. 😀
showing someone that film is a great test to see whether they:
a) honestly dig art films. really dig them.
b) have a.d.d. or a.d.h.d.
i’m a big fan of the nesmith’s “silent” executive productions … “repo man” is one of my all-time favourite films. ever. you can tell who’s cool and who’s not at a party by quoting it and seeing who responds. the whole film is practically quotable. genius. elephant parts and tapeheads also ruled. good stuff.
the monkeemobile pops up in the ODDEST places…
–dee!
What a strange world – I hate arthouse cinema in general with a screaming passion and Dead Man in particular with an even more screaming passion, but Repo Man is one of my all-time favourite films! Go figure! Plate of shrimp, plate of shrimp…
Steve — that whole song is parody. Look at the music video he did to it on ELEPHANT PARTS.
Yep, I got that. I was playing Pun Pong with Byron to see if he could volley my reference back to me.
Oh, sorry, you meant Nesmith’s “Rio”. It doesn’t matter what the original intent of the song was. Once it was released to radio play it lost that context and became a merely annoying (with a capital ann) gumwad of Muzak that would stick to your radio if you weren’t careful to avoid it.
If you want songs that are parodies of the whole music biz, you can’t do better than 10cc’s seminal (geddit) early 70s album “Sheet Music”. The whole damned thing is a complex attack on singers, groups, management, lyricists and melody writers. They even admit that they’re crap in the second track on side one. Ironically, they weren’t crap at all. They really could play your ears off, and had written and worked on many hit songs so they understood how to write a hit.
Seconded re Sheet Music! ‘It’s one thing to know it and another to admit, we’re the worst band in the world but we don’t give a…’
OOohhhh lord. we are in for some interesting theater.
The Monkees is one of my fave groups of all time!! While most folks were having crushes on Davy Jones I got my crush on Mickey Dolenz (and was too shy to say a danged thing when I met him back stage after a concert years back. But hey… I have their autographs so it’s all good).
The only one I haven’t met is Mike Nesmith cuz he refused to tour with the rest in their last tour. 😛
To be fair, the Monkees not only disliked lip-synching, they did, in fact, fight back and destroy the producer who was constantly trying to undercut their attempts to become artistically legitimate.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was when they discovered that they had a new album by way of walking by a record store and seeing it in the window. He’d thrown together some hits with unfinished studio stuff they’d been doing and put it out as an album – in clear violation of the contract they’d finally managed to fight for, giving them control over their own careers. He was fired and, frustrated with underlings that could rebel against his marketing-based mass-production approach to art, he created a new band made up of animated characters who couldn’t rebel: The Archies.
And you know what the saddest part of all this is? I learned this stuff in a graduate-level English course.
The Monkees and the Banana Splits were my two favorite “bands” at the time.
I’m having fun watching how the devil is handling Plan 9. Can’t wait to see how the rest of the group reacts.
While I didn’t find the comic funny, swell job at drawing Nez!
Young’s musicianship is fantastic, and the Dead Man soundtrack is really cool and sort of mesmerizing. When I started playing guitar I wanted to be like Clapton, but quickly changed to Neil Young as my guitarist of choice. The funny thing is that Young’s playing has very little to do with technique, and everything to do with feel. Needless to say, after twenty years of guitar playing I’ve never reached the benchmark of playing guitar like him.
HEY! I LIKE the Monkees!