Friday, May 5, 2023

The Perfect Pop Group Dept.


Imagine, if you can, a world where Richard Dean Anderson suddenly decides he's MacGyver in real life and becomes a problem-solving secret agent risking life and limb on dangerous missions. Or Jane Seymour says, heavens to Betsy, the heck with this, I'm a real doctor! and begins treating people on the set of Doctor Quinn. Or - you get the point.

The genesis of The Monkees, far from making them a show-biz plastic cash cow, is what makes them uniquely authentic. Hired as a bunch of kids to act as pop musicians in a T.V. show [The Monkees - Ed.], they became a real group, performing their own songs, going out live, and selling more records than anybody - least of all their management - expected. All the while making massively popular weekly T.V. shows. Nobody, but nobody, worked harder or showed more commitment.

It wouldn't have happened without Michael Nesmith's dogged, argumentative insistence. Nor would they have made it without Davy Jones' teeny-bopper appeal. Or Micky Dolenz's slapstick energy. Or Peter Tork's ... uh ... Peter Tork? But mostly it wouldn't have happened without a shitstorm tsunami of talent.

Of course they used L.A. session musicians. Everybody did, but only The Monkees got slapped around for it. Not by their millions of fans, and not by the L.A. hipsters and scenemakers, who knew exactly what was happening and gave them credit for it. No, the band's critics were sour, joyless types - resentful guys out of their teens - who assumed their prejudice was authority. Beatles fans, mostly, who believed that The Monkees were nothing but the fakest of fake Fabs. Of course the Beatles were the original inspiration for the T.V. series, and of course a couple or three Monkees songs, out of the hundreds they recorded, sound like Beatles knock-offs. But they overwhelmingly don't. They sound like Monkees songs. The group had its own identity, locked in from the first album, but it was Headquarters that made the statement overt.

The original cover is okay. But not okay enough. It uses a rough crop from one of their countless grinning-for-the-camera shoots. The cover remix [above - Ed.] shows them as the independent individuals they were, with Nesmith not taking any of your shit. The deliverable is, appropriately, the wonderful-sounding 2022 remix, with the essential B-side A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You making up the perfect pop album from the perfect pop group. Want your heartstrings stretched to snapping point? Shades Of Gray. Want bonkers rock n' roll fun? Randy Scouse Git. Want filler? Zilch. Wanna dance? For Pete's Sake, dance!





This post funded in part by Lawyers On The Lam®, a non-profit organisation and IoF© in-joke.

27 comments:

  1. Deliverable:

    https://workupload.com/file/dCAxg8vgSsg

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  2. Leeds me to ponder our current AI conundrum. You create a toy to mimic a thing, suddenly it exclaims 'I wanna be a REAL thing!' A good outcome or the end of humanity? Love The Beatles. Love The Monkees too. I dunno.

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    1. The application of AI to warfare and weaponry will bring interesting times, but Pandora's box has been opened, and the cat is out of the bag before the stable door could be bolted, or the chickens hatched. It seems to me that AI is now at the stage that applied electricity was at when Edison pretended to invent the lightbulb. Nobody back then could have foreseen the evolution of communication that led to the internet, and nobody now can foresee the evolution of AI. It could destroy or save the human race, but all bets are off.

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    2. This just in:

      https://petapixel.com/2023/05/03/scientists-use-ai-to-read-mouses-brain-and-reconstruct-movie-clip-its-watching/

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    3. My thoughts on the Petapixel item is:-
      Tra, la, la, la-la, la, la
      Tra, la, la, la-la, la, la
      Tra, la, la, la-la, la, la
      Tra, la, la, la-la, la, la
      One banana, two banana, three banana, four
      Four bananas make a bunch and so do many more
      Over hill and highway the banana buggies go
      Coming on to bring you the Banana Splits show
      Making up a mess of fun
      Making up a mess of fun
      Lots of fun for everyone
      Tra, la, la, la-la, la, la
      Tra, la, la, la-la, la, la
      Tra, la, la, la-la, la, la
      Tra, la, la, la-la, la, la
      Four banana, three banana, two banana, one
      All bananas playing in the bright warm sun
      Flipping like a pancake, popping like a cork
      Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snork
      Tra, la, la, la-la, la, la
      Tra, la, la, la-la, la, la
      Tra, la, la, la-la, la, la
      Tra, la, la, la-la, la, la
      Tra, la, la, la-la, la, la
      Tra, la, la, la-la, la, la

      Sorry for taking up so much page room, but I felt it had to be said.

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    4. It did have to be said. Too often the obvious goes unsaid, either through false assumptions or just plain cowardice. Thank you.

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    5. God but as a nipper I wanted one of those buggies they were seen driving in the titles.

      If the Monkees were what AI came up with when programmed with punch-cards from peace-sign-flashing Ringo, then the Banana Splits escaped from a Wuhan lab doing gain-of-function research on Skippy.

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    6. The Doctor will see you now, Mr. Shark. Leave your pants on the hook behind the door.

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  3. Not pondering. Playing "And You Just May Be the One" loud. -- Muzak McMusics

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  4. Much better cover than the original, where Peter Tork looks like he's about to "dry hump" Micky Dolenz's leg.

    Don Kirshner was a schmendrick.

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    1. He was a farshimmelt schmendrick.

      (Tx for your kind words re the cover. Note subtlety of tonal palette. Note classically balanced composition, adroit use of white space. I sometimes feel my graphic brilliance is wasted on the visual illiterates and colorblind slobs what wash up here. I had to do a shitload of remedial work on Tork, mainly rebuilding his British-style teeth, but also his lunar surface complexion. It's this kind of attention to detail what has made th' IoF© a byword for insane waste of time.)

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  5. Shout out to the real (authentic as they say now) monkeys gone pop stars: Lancelot Link & The Evolution Revolution

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    1. A.P.E. (the Agency to Prevent Evil) vs. C.H.U.M.P. (the Criminal Headquarters for Underworld Master Plan)

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    2. De-acronimize these, then, you're so smart:

      SMERSH, SPECTRE, ZOWIE, GALAXY.

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    3. God
      Almighty
      Loves
      All
      Xenophobic
      Yankees

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    4. Zarathustra
      Only
      Wrote
      In
      Esperanto

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    5. They're from the "Flint" movies. Groovy.

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  6. In the search for hidden drug references corrupting our youth, everyone seems to have missed "Head" quarters. I'm hip, though.

    There is also a VERY STRONG CASE to be made that the Monkees invented country-rock with "Papa Gene's Blues." That's a country-rock guitar solo if I ever heard one, repleat with rural whoops n' wee-haws, and a command to "Pick it, Luther," which is said to be reference to Johnny Cash's guitarist, Luther Perkins, (although the solo is played by James Burton).

    Yeah, Buffalo Springfield...but consider that the BS LP was recorded July 18 – September 11, 1966 and released in December.

    The Monkees was recorded July 5 – 25, 1966 and released in October. They started recording a week earlier and had the record in the shops first.

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    1. In Pasadena, CA in '67, a few blocks from Caltech, there was "Head Shop". (back then we called it a "Psychedelic Shop") called "Headquarters".

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    2. Hiya, Babs! There is an article mentioning that shop at: https://auskultu.tumblr.com/post/157545998712/fads-the-psychedelicatessen

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    3. First country rock recording...how about the Byrds' "Mr Spaceman"? Not a country guitar solo, but a very country style composition. Recorded end of April and beginning of May 1966.

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    4. No doubt that New brought SW Swing/Country into the pop world before anyone else in L.A. was signed and doing it. I listen to Monkee tracks probably as much as Fabs' tracks over the years.

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    5. Rick Nelson's Bright Lights & Country Music was released in '66, with James Burton, Clarence White, and Glenn Campbell playing. This was a major stylistic shift for him (recording albums for nearly a decade by then) and nearly always gets overlooked in the First Country Rock Record lists. He's been resident on th' IoF© since, like, forever, duh lol.

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    6. Here's a nice bluesy/jazz from 1944, some great piano, from Harry the Hipster Gibson, Who put the Benzedrine.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2WJqnK3gAY

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    7. This is fantastic. On a hunt for more!

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    8. Good submission,SteveShark. I played Mr. Spaceman, and hear a lot of bluegrass-influenced picking, so I agree this is a contender. Not quite as overt as "Papa Gene's Blues," but part of the evolution towards the country/rock fusion.

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