The Monkees: "Head"

[Fire Walk With Me]

Anyone else a fan of this classic motion picture/soundtrack?

[Deja Q]

1. Yes. And I'm pissed no anamorphic widescreen edition has come out yet.

x(

[whistler162]

4. Of Zanadu???

[Deja Q]

34. Of 'Head'... 1.33/1 ratio is lame and 'Head' makes use of the full 1.85/1 ratio

Xanadu, in both 1999 and 2008 DVD releases, is anamorphic. The 2008 release being digitally remastered with enhanced sound, of course...

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. all things Monkees

especially Head.

[CrownPrinceBandar]

3. "Not one of your standard brands"........

the vacuum cleaner scene was the funny.

[harmonicon]

5. god, I love that movie

fantastic...

[bikebloke]

6. Is that the one Jack Nicholson directed?

Heard of it, but never saw it.

[Fire Walk With Me]

7. Nicholson co-produced.

"The film featured Victor Mature as "The Big Victor" and other cameo appearances by Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Teri Garr, Carol Doda, Annette Funicello, Frank Zappa, Sonny Liston and Ray Nitschke."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_(film)

Edit: The link gets messed up...it should look like this:

"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_ (film)"

It's worth seeing!

[Gidney N Cloyd]

8. Yep!

For some reason I've always been intrigued by all things Monkee. I think the idea that they were a manufactured concept that got away from their creators.

[silverojo]

31. Much like the Spice Girls

They were a manufactured group, but then they walked out on their manager, renamed themselves, and became hugely famous.

Gotta love stories like that!

[victoryparty]

9. Great movie

I remember seeing it as a kid in the early 1970s, quite possibly on a Friday night CBS "Late Movie."

[DainBramaged]

10. Michael Nesmith "Elephant Parts" is STILL on my top 10 list

http://www.monkees.net/default.htm


of funniest commedy video albums of all times (I originally owned it on LaserVision)..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DW41gpTGmA




http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000009OV2/flexquartemonkee

[Amerigo Vespucci]

11. It was the Monkees' prequel to Lou Reed's 1975 classic "Metal Machine Music"...

...Reed, at the height of his chemically-induced antics, scored a major hit with the concert album "Rock & Roll Animal." The follow-up studio album, "Sally Can't Dance," really wasn't a good album at all, and Reed knew it, and it ended up being one of the best-selling albums of his career.

He went on record as saying that if each subsequent album got worse and worse and worse and sold more and more an more, he could get to the point where he wasn't on the album at all and it would go gold.

And so "Metal Machine Music" was born. Reed wrote an elaborate "essay" for the liner notes, detailing the painstaking process that went into creating the music, and he made up 100% of it. It was all a lie, a joke, a raised middle finger to his record label as well as the fans who kept buying his music.

The way he actually recorded the album was to place his Stratocaster on a guitar stand in the middle of a circle of daisy-chained Marshall amps. He turned everything up to "10" and left the room. He ended up with an hour's worth of squeaks, squawks, and unrelenting modulation that he chopped up into 4 lp sides. When the record was released, RCA's customary sticker was on the copies that went to radio stations, but this one was a little different. The text read "Recommended tracks...none."

So yeah, "Head" has "Porpoise Song" and "Circle Sky" (Tork and Nesmith fought over the version that ended up on the album...Nesmith wanted the studio version, Tork wanted the concert version that had all four of them actually playing it live, Nesmith won the argument). But it was definitely the beginning of the end. "Head"...the movie and the soundtrack...was their "let's smoke a barn full of weed and do whatever we want" project, which yielded a few gems, with the emphasis on "few."

By the next album, Tork was gone. Two albums later, Nesmith was gone. The final Monkees album, "Changes," consisted of Dolenz and Jones and led one critic to write "Their next album will probably be called "The Monkee."

:toast:

[Fire Walk With Me]

12. Considering that The Monkees were basically the (corporate boy band) of that generation

we're lucky that any of it at all is fun and memorable :toast:

[Deja Q]

13. Well, they were fighting against the image.

These days, members of boy bands pay for their own Vaseline as mandated by their contract owners...

[Amerigo Vespucci]

16. That's why I brought up the Lou Reed thing...

..."Rock & Roll Animal" made him a rock star, so he promptly proceeded to bite the hand that fed him and lash out at everyone who made it happen, from the record company to the fans to all points in between.

In Reed's case, it made for a fascinating turn of events. In other cases, performers have tried the same and promptly got sucked into the "Where Are They Now" black hole.

The Monkees were unique in that they auditioned to become members of a boy band and in very short order started yelling to anyone who would listen "STOP TREATING US LIKE A BOY BAND!"

:rofl:

[Fire Walk With Me]

17. Saying "Fuck You" to your audience must indeed be a tricky move...

The Sex Pistols are another who've gotten away with it.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

20. Neil Young, too...

...the "authorized" biography, "Shakey," is a real eye-opener. I put "authorized" in quotes because Jimmy McDounough was a Young insider, granted full access to everyone in the inner circle, and the book STOPS on a DIME. This is explained in the book...Young read a first draft, the truth hurt, he made a few phone calls, and now McDonough was on the outside looking in.

Young's pretty much always done exactly what he wanted to do, whether the fans or the record companies appreciate it or not, and he's always collected a paycheck. In "Shakey," there is a detailed recounting of the "Tonight's The Night" tour. The album was recorded under a regimen that included weed, buckets of tequila, shooting pool, and late-night recording sessions that went until dawn.

On the tour, Young (according to McDonogh and all of the "insiders" he interviewed) took particular pleasure in the fact that night after night after night, fans yelled out for old Neil Young & Crazy Horse favorites, and he stuck to the "Tonight's The Night" album. He did a lot of drunken stand-up between songs...much like Lou Reed did on the "Take No Prisoners" album...and put in more than a few sloppy performances.

Neil is somewhat of a hero on DU, and I do love his music...I own every note of it...but in real life, he's every bit as much of an asshole as Reed.

[Sebastian Doyle]

22. Maybe that's why the Pistols recorded "I'm Not Your Stepping Stone"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uwqXS2bf5Y

[Deja Q]

24. Didn't Neil Diamond write that back in his early days?

:D

I recall, toward 1970, people were asking why he stopped making hits like that one, "Cherry Cherry", and others - his response was that he outgrew pop music. His later works are definitely more unique and often good in the right mood, but I'll never be able to listen to "Girl, You'll be a Woman Soon" without thinking some thoughts that the nightly news covers on a near-regular basis these days (school teachers getting caught turning girls into women or boys into men...)

[johnnie]

26. Boyce and Hart wrote Steppin' Stone

[Deja Q]

41. Whoops! Thanks for the edification!

:blush:

[Sebastian Doyle]

27. Neil wrote some of the Monkees hits, but not that one.

"I'm a Believer" was one of his. Also "Look Out, Here Comes Tomorrow" and "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You". Those are the ones I remember anyway.

[Deja Q]

23. And Russell T Davies

Too many examples to cite, but in his Doctor Who story "The Parting of the Ways" (2005), he has the lead character saying half the planet is too fat, the other half too thin, how people addicted to their (televisions) are "brainless sheep". Given how sophomoric the story was, very few figured it out at the time how Uncle Russ was insulting the very people watching his scribbled soap opera tripe, not to mention being incapable of seeing the sheer irony of it all...

In later stories, he doesn't shroud his personal opinions and attacks so neatly. And the people still love it all. :rofl:

It's really no different than musicians who make songs and release them on vinyl or CD and the songs are about how bad capitalism and materialism are, even if they do have a point somewhere. (Whoops! Irony alert!! Double-irony, actually... or an irony on top of an irony... it depends on your point of view...)

[Amerigo Vespucci]

14. They all had separate agendas and past lives and each brought something to the table

Davy Jones never "auditioned"...he did a fake audition to go through the motions but he was under contract to Columbia. They signed him first. Nesmith had a folk career as "Michael Blessing" and did it to further his own ambitions. Columbia knew that Dolenz could act from his days as a child star on "Circus Boy" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldVHgWuxCY8). Tork was a stoner folkie whose friend, Stephen Stills, was knocked out of the running because of his bad teeth, but suggested that Tork go to the interviews instead.

In later years, of course, the "corporate boy band" requirements were relaxed to the point where potential applicants needed only to meet two simple criteria:

1). They must have a penis, and

2). They must be able to follow orders.

Ironically, if you look at the screening process for our 43rd president, George W. Bush, is is remarkably similar.

:rofl:

[Fire Walk With Me]

15. Fair enough.

:rofl:

[Sebastian Doyle]

21. Except George wasn't a Monkee

He's a Chimp.

[martymar64]

36. I refer to MMM as Reed's Contractual Obligation Album

The label's contract demanded another album so out comes Metal Machine Music. Another good example of the Contractual Obligation Album is Beach Boys Party where they went into a studio, got good and fucked up and recorded whatever came out.

[mitchum]

37. In a perverse way, I actually enjoy "Sally Can't Dance"...

it is indeed a schlocky and jivey collection of boilerplate sleaze, but it also demonstrates Reed's facility. He was able (along with Katz) to just crank those songs out. The title song's line "And wore Kenneth Jay Lane...it's trash" never fails to crack me up. That Lou is a clever one.

Also, "Ride Sally Ride" possesses one of his most gorgeous melodies. It is a lovely song.

In its own way, "Sally Can't Dance" is as much a fuck you statement as "Metal Machine Music" :)

[swag]

18. Brilliant. I first saw it at the Sidwell Friends school auditorium

in Washington, DC in 1984 or so, same place I saw "Pull My Daisy" and "Towers Open Fire." Absolutely great film.

I'm so happy Barack Obama's daughters will be attending Sidwell Friends.

[hobbit709]

19. That and Elephant Parts

I have them both on DVD.

[LibertyLover]

25. Oh hell yes!

Love that movie, the group and the soundtrack. Micky Dolenz rulz!

[carlyhippy]

28. Love that movie

Loved the concert scenes, Michael Nesmith singing Circle Sky was awesome! I have been in love with Peter Tork most of my life :)

[ikojo]

29. Oh but of course....I love the Monkees

Back in the late 1980s they showed this movie on Thanksgiving at a theater in the Delmar Loop in St Louis. I was living with two roommates in Jefferson County MO (approx 25 miles south of St Louis City). They were troopers and watched it with me but they didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I did.

I have the DVD and it would be cool for a 40th anniversary edition with extras aplenty.

[Frank Cannon]

30. Nobody ever lends money to a man with a sense of humor.

That is one of my favorite movies of all time. I could spend hours talking about it.

[FedUpWithIt All]

32. I am.

:hi:

i kissed Mr. Dolenz on the cheek when i was 15. LOVED them.

[meegbear]

33. Great flick!

Keep vowing to pick up the soundtrack, but never do x(.

[dynasaw]

35. Michael Nesmith's First Job

"In 1956, Bette Nesmith Graham started the Mistake Out Company (later renamed Liquid Paper) from her North Dallas home. She turned her kitchen into a laboratory, mixing up an improved product with her electric mixer. Graham’s son, Michael Nesmith (later of The Monkees fame), and his friends filled bottles for her customers. "

[deutsey]

38. I don't know if it's true

but I heard that the Monkees and others who made Head talked about a sequal...they thought it would be hilarious to say in the intro:

"From the folks that gave you Head..."

[Alexander]

39. Yes. Frank Zappa has a brief cameo in it.

[edbermac]

40. I saw it once while tripping on LSD.

It made perfect sense. :hippie: