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 annoys me. I am a fan of a few of his songs, but his vocal stylings have never been my cup of tea. But, he certainly can pound that ol’ guitar. I knew that today’s comic 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. This should be a heads up to those fans of that music genre that more titles from the punk movement will start appearing now. Your suggestions have been heard and I’ve got a few up my sleeve!
Four updates this week! Toon in Wednesday for more fun!
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.
I’d completely forgotten that “Monkees: Next Generation” attempt… Yeah, had fail written all over it. Like when they tried to reboot “Knight Rider” with new car and cast. UGH!
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.
Actually, they got bad mouthed a lot, but they had some GREAT 60s pop tunes. Smash Mouth covered “I’m a Believer” (which was written by Neil Diamond!) and hardly anyone knew it was originally a Monkees tune. The show was funny too for it’s time. Amused the hell out of me.
BUT… it was the Monkee-mobile that got my attention (even at age 9 I loved hot rods). Google it and be amazed at that car! This was the day before fiberglass bodies… that thing was all shaped in steel by hand! Amazing.
Ah Nesmith of the White Out money.
Yep, his mother invented “Liquid Paper” and sold the company for 48 Million in 1980. What a mom to have!
Pictures of Mike today are a gray-haired, business suit attired man. Hardly the image from the 1960s when he acted in the Monkees TV show!
My mom didn’t invent anything. She did perfect the art of nagging and if she sold it at all it was equal shares to my wife.
And all this time I thought The Monkees was just a hip reality show
LOL! Yeah, you could technically call that show a “reality” show of sorts… it was as real as any of the “shows” on today. Ugh…
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.
Born in 1975? Damn, I graduated High School that year? Man…
“Head” was a great tribute to the psychedelic era and was over-looked by everyone at the time. It was not the silly antics of the TV show and people quickly bailed on it. We were a fickle group back then…
A shiny new dime to you for getting the Producer’s name on the door! I like putting in subtle things like that into the comic and it’s even better when someone gets it! Thanks!
Hey hey, I love the Monkees! LOL!
I have three older sisters so I was inundated with the 60s teen throbs from Jan & Dean to the Beach Boys to the Beatles & Monkees. I knew them all well from the records and magazines my sisters bought.
Ooo! Just remember Bobby Sherman… gotta take him on soon…
LMAO – They were superb – lots of good tracks. Great strip dude!
Thanks Andy!
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.)
Interesting, I think the lyrics merely ask if Johnny Rotten will meet the same fate of Elvis (who died the year this song was written). It’s all in the “ear” of the beholder most times…
I had similar arguments with music directors in my day. I played an instrumental track from “Dark Side of the Moon” and was told I’m driving away all the station’s listeners. That job ended very soon after that too. What is it with station owners? The egos must be too big to handle as most stations still play crap and can’t program themselves out of a paper sack to save their lives. Chicago radio, for being like the 3rd largest market in America, so totally sucks it’s not even funny. I go to much smaller markets and immediately find 3 or 4 stations that get it right. The bigger they are the harder they fall.
You can see why I got out of broadcasting all together and am doing the comic thing on my own. I don’t abide by rules very well.
Well, since the 1990s and the Clear Channel takeover, the majorityof commercial radio stations no longer allow their DJs to make individual decisions about the playlist. Following dictates from the marketing department, DJs and “program managers” must adhere to strict rules regarding songs, artists, schedule and rotation. Independent selection and promotion remains the purview of college and Internet stations, but it’s pretty much dead on the major broadcasting stations… which is one of many reasons why popular music is more or less kaput as a force and measure of cultural change. Our old station managers may have been idiots, but at least they were idiots regarding their own opinions. These days, broadcasters don’t have that much autonomy.
Since the rise of MTV and Clear Channel, music airtime has become a commodity, governed by accountants, surveys and projections, not by taste, experience or intuition. Under this system, the radio DJ has become an offensive clown (and, more often than not, a professional footsoldier for the political right wing), not a gatekeeper to musical revolution. And we are all of us – artists and audiences – far poorer for that fact.
Corporate America has sucked this country dry of every last resource it ever had… from good healthcare to good radio, it has all been taken over by “large corporations”. And we know how large companies cater to our every need… um, not! As long as accountants run the country, we’ll never have the lifestyles, freedoms and prosperity that was so hard fought for in the World Wars. The generations that grew up in the 40s and 50s are long gone in the control of what is right and good. Corporations don’t care about if a child dies because it’s family cannot afford healthcare, they only care about the bottom line… Making billions while people suffer is the very heart of why America has decayed. Until we the people take back our country, we’ll be living in constant fear of loosing our homes and our lives. It is ridiculous and a peaceful revolution is on the horizon… if it doesn’t happen, then the masses will get ugly and we’ll see the riots of the 60s look like a playground scuffle compared to the outrage that is boiling in America today.
I ranted… sorry, but I remember what a GREAT country this place use to be, and it can be again if people started using their heads and not their pocketbooks to think.
I utterly agree with your rant.
A few years back, a friend and co-worker, Zack, died because the company we worked for – Barnes & Noble – felt that health care costs for booksellers was too high an expense to afford. Cutting back on payroll and benefits, the store where I worked denied insurance to all but the managers and lead booksellers. Although I had worked for the company for over six years, at three different outlets, and received great reviews at all stores, I lost my coverage.
Zack contracted a respertory infection – a totally treatable thing, assuming you have either insurance, a few thousand bucks sitting around, or a desire to go into debt for half your life. He tried to tough it out, and died in the shower on his way to one of the two jobs he was working at the time.
Afterward, I protested to the district manager (whom I had worked with at another store years earlier). She came by, watched what was going on, talked to a few of us, and agreed we had a problem. “Can you think of how we might save money to put toward payroll?” she asked me. I could, and had already done so.
“Wallpapering” is a corporate policy based around overgenerous displays. Assuming that tons of product makes the store look prosperous, Barnes & Noble orders more copies of books, CDs and so forth than it knows it can sell. Piles of stock sit around on display, literally gathering dust, until the display goes down. Unsold units are sent back to the distributors and publishers for a refund… which torpedos profits for uncountable publishers, and also wastes the resources that go into printing the overordered copies. Meanwhile, there are literally tens of thousands of dollars in inventory gathering dust at every Barnes & Noble store in the country. Why? Because the suits think it’s a good marketing strategy.
After agreeing that my idea of reducing waste and freeing up money by reducing inventory was a good plan, the manager took it to Corporate. They refused to change the policy. So my friend died – and uncountable numbers of people suffer – because of some outdated, wasteful and frankly stupid policy of dubious effectiveness.
I quit when she told me their answer. A few years later, when I needed a job, I re-applied to a different B&N, was hired, then got un-hired because HR had flagged me as a troublemaker.
Did I mention that I no longer shop at B&N?
That, in a nutshell, is why the health care issue is, for me, both a deeply personal cause and a smoldering grudge against corporate America. Every time I hear some wingnut bitch about “socialism” or employ some tangent of thinly-disguised racism against our President, the claws come out. You’re damn right, Byron – corporate America literally is killing us for profit.
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.
Anyone from that era immediately knows the TV theme song the moment that first drum beat hits followed by “Here we come…” Yes, in one of my groups, the four of us did that “walk” they did crossing their legs. Actually not that easy to do with four people…
You’ll survive the teaching the kid to drive thing… just relax and have really good insurance. I only screamed once at my second son when he started to enter the Tollway near us and got confused then STOPPED as he turned into the toll lanes… Semi behind us was not thrilled… nor was I. We survived and Andrew now knows where and when to apply the brakes while driving…
“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 totally appreciate Young’s talents. He’s done a couple guest tunes on Randy Bachman solo albums and they are great songs. I think I can take Neil in smaller doses, not an entire album at one shot. But man, can he make a guitar scream. His talent is truly amazing.
I remember Jagger rolling his eyes on the Ed Sullivan show as they made him change the lyrics from “let’s spend the night together…” to “let’s spend some time together…” He’d roll his eyes at the camera every time. I don’t blame him.
I like how when faced with the same orders Jim Morrison just sang the original lyrics with extra emphasis while leaning into the camera. Threatened with never being allowed back on Sullivan again? “Hey, we just DID Sullivan!”
Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork were real musicians and HATED having to pantomime to session musicians. If you look at some of his close-ups during his “solos” on the music video bits on The Monkees you can see how much he wants to ram that guitar up the producers’ asses — and not even fingerboard first!
In my opinion, and it’s not worth much, is that Nesmith is one of those artists that has a love/hate relationship with his Monkee persona… I can almost understand how artists/actors/etc. get a popular role/song or something and just can’t stand it after a while. He needed the money when he did the Monkees pilot but he always seemed the outsider (even hating the hat he had to wear).
I call this the “John Cleese Effect” John did Monty Python, got famous then got bored with it. John then did “Fawlty Towers” made it successful and then got bored with it (after only 12 episodes). But yet, he’s doing a Python reunion, even though he’s played hard to get with the rest of them. The same can be said about Nesmith. He started one Monkee reunion tour then quit. Wants the fame, but gets bored with the idea quickly.
I thought I had short attention spans, but for that kinda money, I’d stay interested as long as the checks cleared.
Ironically enough, the hat was his. He was wearing it in his screen-test and they liked it enough to make it his signature look. Which is probably why he got to hate it after a while. It stopped being “my hat” and started being “part of my work uniform.” I agree though that he should be more appreciative of his fans, who gave him the fame, initial money, and industry cache to do what he really wanted starting in the 70s.
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?
I do remember seeing his name on the Scooby Do credits in the first season… like 1969. I didn’t truly appreciate Scooby Do until much later in the 70s when I discovered THC laced brownies. THEN Scooby Do is freakin’ hilarious…
I agree, Neil Young is an artist, always changing and experimenting. But in my “developmental years” of the ealry 70s, he had a HUGE album “Heart of Gold” and a kinda country-rock song hit and I was turned off for years because of it. I was a hard core Deep Purple/Sabbath music lover so that music turned me off to other musical styles for a long time.
I was young and stupid… still am.
The true meaning of Scooby Doo: http://makkabee.livejournal.com/62294.html
Hmmm…heart and soul versus hardened soul? Some choice. I wonder what Bud’s gonna decide. I’ll stay tooned!
Yep, the story coming to a head here pretty quickly and you’re beginning to see what Bud and the gang will have to face here soon.
Decisions, decisions…
Neil Diamond did not write “Last Train To Clarksville”. Believe that was Boyce/Hart.
Neil did write these songs of the Monkees
I’m A Believer
A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You
Love To Love
Look Out, Here Comes Tommorrow
Yes, Boyce/Hart wrote the first four songs for the Monkees first album/TV show. I love their hit “I Wonder What She’s Doing Tonight” Sha-la la-la-la! Great 60s pop, man!
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!
Repo Man is a fun film… Harry Dean Stanton’s character’s name is BUD! Didn’t remember that, but I just saw it over at IMDB…
My attention span is really short, and unless films have explosions or fun parts every 5 minutes or so, I’m bored. That’s my A.D.D. kicking in for sure. So, art films just go over my head.
Great minds work alike… so you and Roxysteve are right up there today!
Woohoo! Another vote for Repo Man! I’d never have guessed you for a fan…
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…
Well, I do not remember Nesmith’s “Rio” at all, but I just Googled it and found he had made a music video for it in 1977 (4 years before MTV) and the song went to #1 in Australia (you crazy Ozzies!). The video apparently helped it’s popularity (thus MTV!).
I did listen to it for a couple minutes then poked out my eardrums with my tablet pen/stylus. Ugh! No that is not something I’d listen to at all, but it was fun to hear him sing for a bit… until my eardrums were smashed.
Having Momma’s Liquid Paper money to fund his video production company must have been nice. I had to just borrow money to get my company started… what a schmuck I was!
I did not even know Les Guise was a real name until I Googled it. I was just going for a rhyme to “Judy In Disguise” and I came up with that. How handy it’s a real name!
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.
Wait until they get their first advance checks next week… hilarity will ensue.
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.
Mickey was the funniest of the bunch and the best actor. I like Nesmith’s look and voice, but you can’t deny the Dolenz was the real voice of the Monkees. His hits were the largest and most popular in concert. Odd how things go, ain’t it?
Thanks for reading and commenting!
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.
Yeah, it comes back to me now, Don Kirshner produced both the Archies and the Monkees. He too was the devil in disguise as we’re finding out. Artists never seem to be taken seriously and are just pawns to create a money stream that helps make the producer and record company really rich while the artists get a small portion, usually sliced down ever further by an agent (I’ve left Rocky out of the Plan 9 picture for now).
I am so glad I missed all of that mess. The unfortunate thing is the industry really hasn’t changed.
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.
Yep, the story is getting “hotter” as we move along. All types of mayhem is about to break loose!
The Banana Splits! Man, talk about writer’s snorting or smoking something while coming up with ideas! What a salute to 60s pot induced TV! All those colors, the whacky characters… totally a nod to the drug culture!
While I didn’t find the comic funny, swell job at drawing Nez!
Doing a caricature of Mike’s look from the Monkees is not to hard to do. He had the distinct flip in his bangs and of course the hat. Their dark blue shirts with double buttons made the outfits even easier to draw.
I make some folks laugh and sometimes not. Come back, I imagine something will make you chuckle!
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!