Old Woolhat's Tin Ear Dept. - Part Uno

Look, I love Michael Nesmith. In a wholesome, outdoorsy way. I have a dozen-plus albums of his that I consider lifelong friends that never get old. But that doesn't mean I kick all my critical faculties to the curb when listening to his music (unlike *FX HARP GLISSANDO* the godlike Brian Wilson, before whose feet I abase myself, a slobbering baby man-fan). Nesmith has made a few eccentric moves in his long career - part of his charm - but I've gathered you here today to talk about his weird proclivity (steady at the back there) for fucking up his old albums.

Frank Zappa, another control freak, did this repeatedly, most notoriously with Cruising With Reuben And The Jets and We're Only In It For The Money, which he basically wrecked with his spiteful and hypocritical vandalism at the mixing desk. Nesmith's folly isn't as great; the albums he remixed aren't as important* as Zappa's, and could be seen as lesser examples of his own work. But still. Both The Prison (incoming, as Part Deux) and The Wichita Train Whistle Sings were fine albums as they stood. Certainly as good as they are going to get, and Nesmith should have been Saran-wrapped in the trunk of a Crown Vic with straws up his nose rather than allowed to get his fingers back on the faders.

The story of The Wichita Train Whistle Sings is well-known. If not by you, then look it up. I ain't here to copy-paste shit from the internet. d0 yUr oWn resErch. Oh okay. Basically he gave his song charts to fifty of L.A.'s finest, got them drunk and rolled the tapes, as a tax write-off. It's a shitload of pure fun, and I'll take it over The Garden any day. Maybe the balance is a little off-center sometimes, but so was that of the musicians. It's more polished, cleverly arranged, and entertaining than you might imagine, certainly no waste of anyone's time, yet Nes saw fit to remix it for a 2008 reissue program. It remains harder to find, happily, than the original.

Our Allmusic hack gets it, predictably, catastrophically wrong, loftily opining that it "sounds better than all previous incarnations." He clearly hasn't heard any previous incarnations, probably hasn't listened to this one, and is regurgitating Nesmith's own self-justifying liner notes. He sez, "the sequence has been altered to reflect his initial intent". Bullshit. It was Nesmith's own project from ground up, and the original sequencing was his original intent - how could it be otherwise?

The remix sounds like Old Woolhat played the tapes through a walkie-talkie in an empty swimming pool, recording it onto a dictaphone wrapped in a wet towel. It is that bad. So here it is, along with the original, which, for all its minor imperfections, remains a crystal-clear transcription of a crazyhappy day spent screwing the I.R.S.

Go, as the Lord Buddha said, figure.

*Early Zappa albums are social history documents, even if you don't like him/them.