San Diego Serenade: Hey Hey, It's Michael Nesmith!!

Michael Nesmith

If you ask me what the first concert I ever went to was, the answer you will get is Green Day, Dookie Tour '94. I have the t shirt. But it's not entirely true. Before that I attended a Billy Joel/Elton John extravaganza with my parents, (yes, they played Piano Man) and WAY before that I saw The Monkees at Wolf Trap when I was like in second grade. Yes, The Monkees for some reason played a big part in my childhood, and nothing makes me happier than to see that members of The Monkees are still kind of revered non-ironically in our modern society.

This Wired interview with Michael Nesmith (the one with the hat) popped up in my Gmail news feeds today, and is very interesting. Nesmith is famously the Monkee who objected the most to the role the band was forced into by the nameless, faceless executives of either television or the music biz. He wanted the band to take advantage of their popularity and write their own songs and play their own music on the records. Post-Monkees, he has gone on to produce one of the greatest movies of all time, "Repo Man", and generally kick back and savor his reputation as The Monkee Who Kept It Real.

Nesmith's desire to inject authenticity into the Monkees in my mind makes him sort of a tragic figure. One can't help but listen to him sing "Listen To The Band" and hear a voice that truly yearned to and deserved to be heard. The plea of the song, (a song that evidently meant enough to Nesmith to name one of his Greatest Hits compilations after it), takes on added significance, at least to yours truly, when heard inthe context of Nesmith's conflicted position as a talented musician in a band universally accepted as a joke. Videos of the band interacting with Johnny Cash and Frank Zappa as well as projects such as the Monkees bizarre psychedelic movie Head , wherein the band plays one scene as flakes of dandruffs in someones head, also serve to show the promise the group truly had that for the most part, remained unseized.

Nesmith evidently remains active in the music and arts scene. I will review his new album, "Rays" as soon as I can. Until then, check out the Monkees MP3s and videos I have below. The videos are of "What Am I Doin' Hangin' Round," Nesmith's hat wearin', heart rendin' country ballad, and "Goin' Down," my dad's favorite Monkees song, that is sung by Mickey Dolenz, builds like "Keep The Customer Satisfied" and has a video that trully must be seen to be believed. After that, download the MP3 of "Goin' Down" so you can show your friends how much ass the Monkees indeed kicked, and finally, the MP3 of "Listen to the Band", for you to put on repeat as you finish your last three beers of the evening.

What Am I Doin' Hangin' Round