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RIP Mike Nesmith
Today Michael Nesmith passed away, leaving Micky Dolenz as the last surviving Monkee.
Nesmith was a talented and prolific songwriter, and pushed hard to get his compositions included on Monkees albums despite resistance from the corporate folks who just wanted the boys to sing and look pretty.
This is one of my favorite Nesmith tunes. It’s like an early Beatles song with a country flavor:
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10 Replies
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Perhaps he’ll look in on the kids in Club 27. This sounds really nice. I have never heard it before. Didn’t he do some solo stuff post Monkees?
JP
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Yes, he recorded about a dozen solo albums, the first few of which are now widely considered to be pioneering work in the country rock genre. But the only two songs that made a dent in the charts at the time were “Joanne” and “Silver Moon”.
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Very sad!! RIP Michael. I am usually very optimistic, however, most of the 60’s Bands, Entertainers, Musicians are all getting older. God bless them all tonight!
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That’s sad to hear. The music world loses one of it’s shining stars. No one can deny they were one of the best!
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Nesmith had an almost McCartney-like ability to pull simple but beautiful melodies out of the ether. This is one of his prettiest, and it wasn’t even officially released on record until 1987:
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Very sad David. There was once a TV series by the Monkees. It was broadcast in our country around 1967. At that age I was more interested in Mother’s milk than in music. What was this series about exactly, was there a frame story or was it more slapstick, like “A hard day’s night”?
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Juergen, the Monkees TV series was basically an attempt to serialize A Hard Day’s Night. It was about a hard-luck rock-and-roll group who lived together and were always trying to find a gig so that they could pay the rent. It involved a lot of slapstick, as you surmised, and usually culminated in a “romp” in which a new song was played in the background as the boys clowned around while being chased by the bad guys.
I have vague memories of seeing the show in reruns when I was very young, but I really got to know it when MTV broadcast it for several months in 1986.
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Thanks, David. Sounds a little bit like “Big Bang Theory” with music. I’ll have a look for it.
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Two episodes of the show that I can highly recommend are “The Picture Frame” (season 1) and “The Monkee’s Paw” (season 2).
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God Bless Nez! Thanks David he was a good song writer and did Different Drum for Linda Rhonstant . He was very talented and yes fought hard to get his music played. Mickey is the only one left god bless him and the Monkee music will live on
Bill
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