Can’t stop doing Monkee math. It seems important right now.
See, my kids are being raised as anachronisms; mostly ‘cause I always wanted to be one myself. Little seventies Zoom kids, their impression of popular culture is limited to the popular culture of other decades. They watch Frank Capra movies and goofy crap like The Cat from Outer Space; their favorite tv shows are surreal spoofs of television itself: Green Acres, The Addams Family, and now, The Monkees.
We Netflixed this series on a whim, having missed it the first few times around, and now we’re wondering why, culturally, we devolved from the Monkees, rather than rising to its occasion. They were the Marx Brothers plus music and, as I understand it, mutinied against the forces that tried to sell them and their music as bimbos (“bimbo” being what, now? That’s right: any thing or body dumbed-down, duded-up and de-natured enough to fool the easily fooled).
As the story goes, these guys were hired to play a fictional band for a tv show based loosely on A Hard Day’s Night, or at least hoping to draw viewers because of that movie’s popularity. The producers owned the name, and they hired songwriters to write the songs and session players to play the music. The actors were supposed to be musicians, but weren’t allowed to play their own instruments or their own songs. So, bored on the set between takes, they plugged in their prop amps and instruments – and turned themselves into a real band. This real band monster they created eventually revolted and got Don Kirshner fired. Cool!
This might not be true; I don’t know, I wasn’t there, but as mythology, it works. What better reason to start a band than boredom? That and having a heart and a mind. And the opportunity to be a petri dish of humanity in the laboratory of the entertainment industry. As an experiment, it’s an education. This is tv, for god sake! The box in everyone’s living room, opium o’ the masses, as unpretentious as donuts. But when the Monkees play a real song, the electricity in the room changes. You can feel the difference, ‘cause just a minute ago, they played kind of a dumb song and made fun of it the whole time. It’s fascinating.
And unlike A Hard Day’s Night, the show doesn’t try to make the band look cool. In fact, the group persona is loser+ Gilligan: deeply unpretentious. This isn’t just donuts, it’s pink frosted donuts with sprinkles and yet…can you imagine a pop star not trying to look cool? Or trying not to look cool? Letting goofiness and failure enter the equation? The Monkees were told to be silly, and decided to be funny instead, in what comes off as an unrehearsed free-for-all, spoofing itself and everything else. It’s elegant: subtext and irony are beautiful, and make a hell of a statement. The mistake the producers made was hiring real humans instead of willing bimbos. They must’ve been so bummed! Bimbos are silly; they aren’t funny. To sell the Monkees as bimbos was a fabrication.
I’m wondering if, because of their bizarre situation, the Monkees weren’t the only band ever allowed into the music business who didn’t have to consider playing the “suck to succeed” game. They were handed success, so they didn’t have to dumb-down, dude-up or de-nature their voice; in fact, their goal was the opposite: to prove that they were real, that they had a voice.
• • •
I know that rock star types’ll sometimes just suck naturally, that they will be as much about ego and greed as we have come to expect from the rich and famous, even when they aren’t rich or famous, even as the music business crumbles. Without anybody else to dress them up and market them as cartoon characters they’ll dress themselves up and act like cartoon characters. Because they haven’t found their voice, they create their own fabrication.
In fact, “the blind ambitious” are as noisy as they are because they have nothing to offer. They aren’t driven to play the next song, they’re driven to Sell. And with nothing to sell, they sell themselves. Loudly. They’re all about the party; they fool the easily fooled. Some people confuse that with success. It’s not success, no matter how many people are watching.
Success in music can only be measured in impact, by the electricity shifting in a room. Whether you’re on tv, on a stage or alone in a garage, the goal is the same: passion. There is no passion in a fabrication. And passion matters. It might be hilarious, but it isn’t silly; it matters too much.
In the the days of the Carter Family, musicians drove around the country collecting traditional songs, trying to be the first to copyright them, which could get them paid bigger bucks than passing a hat. Big bucks for music, something that had always just been around. Owning it. Weird. Like trying to own a kind of apple.
Then apples weren’t enough; maybe they’d sell better with a sugar coating, etc. Eventually, chemicals entered the picture and there we were, all made of Pop Tarts and Top 40 goo, wondering what happened. Because music had become a business. The same thing happens to sex when it becomes a business: a healthy human gift is literally perverted. Dumbed-down, duded-up and de-natured.
When us humans are passionate about each other, we’re disarmingly honest. This is exciting. We become the goofy losers we are. We fling open the garage door to share the apples we picked only because we all love apples so much. It’s simple and, oddly, there’s no real reason for it. As Micky Dolenz says in the pirate episode(!), “Just consider it a Monkee treat!”
50FOOTWAVE
books
Kristin Hersh
Paradoxical Undressing
Throwing Muses
I loved/hated the Monkees. My Mum bought me The Monkees Headquarters when I was a nipper and I played the grooves off it. Boyce/Hart, Goffin/King wrote songs a 13 year old could get serious about. I wanted a wooly hat and a flat filled with guitar amps.
I hated them because at some point I felt market manipulated but I loved ‘Head’ because it was rebellious, even though I didn’t understand it.
Mike Nesmith redeemed himself because the First National Band wrote real songs.
But, The Monkees were entry level rock and I discovered Woodstock, Cream, Led Zeppelin, as well marketed as The Monkees, but hypocritical enough to obscure it.
The Monkees were well produced pop music and stands the test of time, in my opinion.
Don
a good radio series on how oral tradition->radio-> went in fast forward up north – sterams here in 4 parts called Dancing with the Northern Lights:
http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/archives_ITM.html
It’s funny how things go in circles. I was digging through the attic found my old Sony Betamax Hi-Fi system and a bunch of Beta tapes. I always pick the wrong (but better) technology. I hooked it up and me and the grandkids were watching 80′s videos I taped back when MTV played music videos. They get a kick out of Boy George, and Cindi Lauper. Little Dylan does not like The Cure at all. Even had a bunch of Pee Wee’s Playhouse on tape. They love it. I told them that Lawrence Fishburn (now on CSI) was Cowboy Curtis… they don’t believe me.
always loved the monkees, always will.
on the comparison to the carter family…are you reading the book?
(ps. great work on the new site tine!)
I really like this comparison, I like it a lot… apples to music. If music had only stayed candy-coated apples, I think music now would suck a lot less. The problem is, music has become candy-coated candy. Having a tasty coating is OK if at its core… it’s still good for you. Music these days is just piles of sugar.
Thank you for always staying apples. You’re the green kind too… what are they? Grannie Smith? Those are the best.
That ‘Kirshner Hits’ is an anagram of ‘Kristin Hersh’ is, well… you’re the one doing the math.
The vinyl’s been polished and it grooves:
http://twitpic.com/2xacf
@Darrell: The Cure may dawn on Dylan, in time. i was given a free ticket to see The Cure at the Oakland Coliseum during the Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me tour; i went; what the heck, right? watched them come onstage, listened to the crowd roaring its approval, heard them play the first song and walked out. i had given them all the benefit of the doubt i was capable of giving (in those days i was much less adept at benefit than i was at doubt) and had issued my verdict: big-hair + makeup + Robert Smith’s apparently hyperemotional vocal style = superficial fakers. not many years went by before Andy Dufresne was calling The Warden on his error: “how can you be so obtuse?!” the ability to see beyond appearances is an acquired trait.
except for one mostly mystifying encounter with Head, i haven’t seen The Monkees since their original run on television. darn: the iTunes store doesn’t have the show. i’ll have to track it down some other way and see what i make of them today. i do know Mike Nesmith was my childhood hero, hands-down…
Your last paragraph is an acurate description of my behaviour when you were in Sydney this year. A “goofy loser”, indeed.
Mike Nesmith was already a good country rock/pop songwriter, and Peter Tork was a decent studio musician. Can you imagine being told you can’t play or write songs for your band because we have these people over here in the shadows? They did have the last laugh tho’ because they toured many, many times right up into the late ’90′s in various line-ups, and they released several good albums. Plus, imagine. . . Hendrix opened for them on one tour at a time when you could have these disparate genres in one rock show.
One thing I noticed that I kinda take issue with is the ‘Marx Brothers with music’ line. The Marx Brothers had tons of music in their movies, and much of it was subversive in its use against the establishment. Check out Groucho’s song from “Duck Soup” which is an absurdist anti war movie released in 1935. That movie has the least amount of music, but a lot of scathing commentary about the state of the world at the time. The first seven films are all worth checking out, and most of the later ones are just bad.
Oh, and I love, love the Cure since High School. Their music got me through a great deal of crap, pain and suffering, and they play for 3 to 3 1/2 hours in most shows because you can barely peel Robert Smith off of the Stage. He almost always breaks curfew too which incurs serious fines that he pays with a smile. I love that.
@guitarmutt: Thanks for all this…and good point about the Marx Brothers.
@guitarmutt: As I recall, Jimi Hendrix didn’t enjoy the experience. One of the few times he was booed by the audience. You average Monkee fan didn’t get their head around his music.
Don: I did not know that about the booing. Sad. I should’ve known; somethings don’t change.
On the other hand, guitarmutt, it may have been a bit of fiction by Jimi’s ‘people’ to distance him from the controversy regarding The Monkees’ ‘legitimacy.’
According to Wiki – Chas Chandler admitted that Jimi’s firing from The Monkee’s tour was engineered as a publicity stunt. Apparently, it suited the edgy, bad boy image they wanted to create.
It does go on to say, however, that The Monkees’s fans, mostly early teens, didn’t warm to him.
It reminds me of the time Hole left the Marilyn Manson tour after Manson fans gave Courtney a hard time. On the other hand, the Courtster was running a serious risk of being her own caricature (what with flopping her norks out – as if anyone could be bothered with them anymore)
Don
I remember when Sonic Youth opened for Neil Young. Neil Young’s fans had no idea what to make of this crazy group of young’uns. They booed pretty heartily, and when NIN opened for Bowie: my friend said a lot of seats were empty for NIN. Then a lot of the people who watched the opening set sort of drifted out apparently during Bowie’s set. I wish I could’ve gone; I would’ve loved both sets.
I love the Monkees too, it was on T.V. a heck of a lot as I was growing up & I thought it was great! I love the songs & I even like ‘Head’! Whether or not Jimi Hendrix’s exit from the tour was engineered or not, according to Mickey Dolenz, apparently when Hendrix played ‘Foxy Lady’ on that tour & it got to the point where he was singing “Foxxxxy…”, the audience would scream/sigh “Daaavvveeeyyy” in reply, which would certainly have had him looking for an out, one would imagine…
Even in their ignorance, some of the fans were kinda clever, but I wish I could have heard Jimi live – - just once. Just Once.
Jimi live? Oh my, oh my!!!. The Marquee in London, maybe, about ’67, with Pete Townsend and Eric Clapton in the audience, gobsmacked!.
I recall a clip from the film of Monterey Pop, of Mama Cass Elliot and Grace Slick with rapturous expressions as Jimi set fire to his guitar.
I was born too late and in the wrong country, methinks!
Stratocasters were way too expensive here and musicans not paid enough to trash their gear.
In NZ we had our own Jimi Hendrix in the form of Billy T K from the band, Human Extinct.
I saw him play at Victoria University around ’71 – our very own rock God! His style was very ‘Jimi Hendrix’ and he was billed as such when the Instinct went to the UK.
The album ‘Stoned Guitar’ is a collectors’ item, now, and I wish I still had a copy.
Billy T K is still alive and making music, I believe, and I think his son’s doing Hip Hop or such.
Don
Monkees are the subject on the A&E TV program Biography. Kristin must be moonlighting as program director.
Sharing culture must mean more than monetizing songs. That’s the crux of it all, I think.
I’m intrigued with the stories of people who wanted to preserve the blues or write popular songs in the 1950s and early 1960s.
An Ahmet Ertegun preserved and brought into the mainstream culture a world of artists who might otherwise have gone un-noticed due to the racism and class system in place in their time. A song-writing team like King/Goffin who wanted to earn their living writing “songs the kids want to hear”. These were in the main well-intentioned people who meant to do well. Eventually, they did well enough to change the record industry.
Yet from this “seed” of a new corporate popularization of alternative culture–some indigenous, some manufactured–arose a new way of seeing music. Music would no longer be operated as a labour of love. Music would be a unit-moving game.
Atlantic Records and other labels entered into harsh contracts with artists, and then failed to pay the royalties due under even those agreements. Although later reparative conduct mitigated this wrong, the shades of culural appropriation without compensation hunt this industry still.
Even when this pop music culture hit its high points, like Carole King’s masterful re-work of her pop tunes into “Tapestry”, the orange always had a bit too much rind to digest.
King’s later career would show that even topping the charts for years on end cannot make up for the failure to earn quick profits in subsequent releases.
The coming of the CD, and the resultant odd situation in which record labels kept prices artificially high to reap record profits while cutting their entire mid-list rosters, seems to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I’ve no trouble, really, with the notion of a reasonable copyright term, and I do not think the Pirate Bay solution is the right solution. Yet the reason I and a world of people opt for a legal, consensual sharing of the apples is that the old dynamic did not benefit the two key stakeholders–listeners and artists.
I can still appreciate the joyful aspects of corporate music culture–and I’ll always enjoy “pleasant valley sunday” and “last train to clarksville” even if they are really Boyce/Hart songs. I can appreciate also the irony of Don Kirschner, who once wanted to write great pop songs in his own right, and ended up
owning the Monkees.
Yet I want to see music handled in a different way. I want to see audiences cut out the middle-person and pay the artist directly. I want record labels to enter into more artist-friendly deals, like magnatune’s 50% gross deal. I want to see music be less of an Encyclopedia Brittanica you pay a corporation to put on your shelf, and more of a weblog post you hear and share with your friends.
For the artist the times always bewilder.
I saw Stevie Ray Vaughan open for The Call a year or so before he died. This particular Hendrix-influenced guitarist
spent most of his career playing obscure places in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, the kinds of places in which a blues guitarist finds a steady home and a little pay on a Friday night. We all know now via youtube that every city has an amazing guitarist who just doesn’t “look right” or “sing well enough” to get his “record company deal”. Stevie Ray Vaughan got tapped by Bowie to play guitar on a tour, and somehow parlayed it all into a mainstream
career.
But standing in an agricultural barn in the state fairgrounds in Little Rock, a bunch of us watched this fellow jam the blues he loved, and do the guitar heroics that justly gave him a claim to fame.
I think it’s great that a trick of circumstance brought this particular bluesman from the joints in Pleasant Grove in south Dallas to a nation-wide audience.
But imagine if we built a music culture in which the people of Dallas and Little Rock and Houston and San Antonio learned of a Stevie Ray Vaughan through direct experience, and paid him or a small label for his music.
In this world, sharing culture would mean more than big corporations figuring out how to monetize his songs. Instead,
artist and audience might have a different kind of dialogue–with a different and yet viable compensation structure.
I think that’s the future, if we all make it happen.
You really said it all, sister. Goddamn.