Song of the Day: Orange Juice – What Presence?!
It’s tempting to say that “What Presence?!” is just as fresh as when it was first squeezed in 1984, but Orange Juice was a band before it’s time. If anything, they were simply too fresh for their own good: less like juice and more like soup that tastes better on the third day. Coals to Newcastle, a box set of their complete remastered catalog with several bonuses, including a DVD, is now available. It’s amazing and well overdue. I have yet to absorb it all, but more posts will certainly be forthcoming … For now I’m stuck on their fourth album, The Orange Juice. It feels like 1994 all over again, the year I first got into this band and, coincidentally, the year OJ Simpson dealt orange juice its biggest PR blow since Anita Bryant’s anti-gay agenda inspired a boycott in 1977.
Considering his simian features, it should come as no surprise that Justin Timberlake owes his career to the trail blazed by a Monkee. There is no shame in this evolutionary path as the Monkee in question, Michael Nesmith, is a genius and a Renaissance Man. A true pioneer. Justin Timberlake may think he got to the top of the Hollywood mountain all by himself, but he is nothing without Michael Nesmith. Beginning one’s career in a manufactured pop band was once considered a vocational dead end, but thanks to the efforts of Nesmith, formerly exploited youth like Timberlake and Marky Mark Wahlberg can make it in Hollywood without the stigma of their past standing in their way.
It should be mentioned that the Monkees are probably the greatest manufactured pop band of all time. They kick NSYNC’s scrawny ass up and down Sunset Blvd. Naturally, having reached such heady heights of fame, people wanted to see the Monkees fail, but Nesmith set the template for how a fabricated pop star can go on to dominate Hollywood on his own terms. First, he parlayed his experience with the Monkees and used it to completely redefine the music industry by creating “Pop Clips,” the first show on television to feature music videos. He sold the show to Nickelodeon, who developed Nesmith’s vision into MTV, where Justin Timberlake now merely performs as a trained seal … Michael Nesmith wrote “Different Drum” which Linda Ronstadt would turn into an international smash hit. Justin Timberlake deftly countered by tearing Janet Jackson’s clothes off on national television, turning a generation of children into sexual abusers … Nesmith also ruled on the big screen, not only playing a taxi driver in “Burglar” with Whoopi Goldberg, but also executive producing Repo Man. Justin Timberlake, well, he actually did a fine job on The Social Network … Oh sure, Timberlake is a slick dresser, although he has certainly never come up with a look as iconic as the chops and wool cap combo sported by Nesmith with the Monkees. Proving that fashion forward move was no accident, the vision of Nesmith in a Nudie suit is simply awesome. Timberlake couldn’t pull that off, no way. The cowboy hat would inevitably fall down over that pinhead’s eyes. Nonetheless, Timberlake gets credit for his perseverance. It is my understanding that Justin has created a fashion line whose goal is to create “clothes that Elvis Presley would wear if he were alive today,” which I suspect is a sneaky way of selling bedazzled bolts of cotton. What a wonderful world we live in that – thanks to Michael Nesmith – Justin Timberlake can pursue such misguided notions. I doubt Timberlake ever even thinks of the Monkee that broke the glass ceiling for him, but he should be bowing down to the altar of Michael Nesmith every day. Without him, Timberlake is living in a trailer with Britney and doing Mickey Mouse Club reunions to pay the rent.
Here’s Nesmith in country rock mode. This tune was recorded in 197o. He’s traveling down the same road as the Great Gram Parsons, forging the foundations of a genre. Once again, he’s ahead of his time, waiting for the world to catch up. Meanwhile, sure, Justin Timberlake is a talented young man, but sadly he is merely of his time, playing down to the lowest common denominator of a dying culture. Michael Nesmith is the future.
Michael Nesmith and the First National Band – Silver Moon MP3
Oh sure, Timberlake has made some clever videos with the production help of the professionals at SNL. Can he improv, though? Nesmith meets Frank Zappa (or vice versa?)
The Stub Project: Red Hot Chili Peppers at The Vic and Jonathan Richman at Lounge Ax – 10.6.1989
like much from 1989, the ink, too, has faded
In my memory, this show was on my 21st birthday, but really it was the day after I turned twenty-two. That makes me wonder if Anthony Kiedis really danced on the table in front of me with just a sock on his cock. In 1989, I thought the Chili Peppers’ sock on a cock days were through, so last year, a PR attempt to sell their lame Abbey Road EP. But, it seems that the desperately exhibitionist ploy that had gotten them noticed had become part of their schtick. Nonetheless, I remember how lucky we felt to witness the spectacle of their sock-covered cocks. What did Chicago do to deserve such an extravaganza? Had the band felt challenged by the ubiquity of Polish sausage?
Still, when the Peppers emerged with only socks to cover themselves for their encore, it was somewhat hard to believe that it was happening, especially when Anthony Kiedis waded through the crowd and ended up on top of the table right in front of us, shaking his sock like Snufalufagus’s snout.
Somehow, it seems like a dream.
Whether fact or fiction, all I know for sure is that I hadn’t had a cock waved in my face like that since my cousin Jimmy made me blow him when I was 9. Could it have been that I was so drunk I was having a flashback? Or is my remembrance merely wishful thinking? After all, it’s not like you have to be gay to think Anthony Kiedis is a good-looking guy.
In accordance with the unfortunate theme that has developed here, as I look for video of the Peppers from that era, it’s hard to find one that’s not cringe-inducing. No wonder they had to go (almost) full frontal. While it would be somewhat unfair to say that the Red Hot Chili Peppers of the late 80s singlehandedly embarrassed the entire genre of rap and desecrated the catalogs of Jimi Hendrix and James Brown with their ill-conceived covers, it is undoubtedly true that were they to perform covered in Velveeta, it would be redundant.
Despite not having a stub to document it, I do know that right after this show, we – and I’m not exactly sure who we were, although I’m pretty sure it included my friend Nick – went to Lounge Ax to see Jonathan Richman. We were a little late to the show and Jonathan was already into his set. Lounge Ax was a long, narrow room and we were stuck in the back by the bar and people were talking, which did not please Jonathan at all. He chastised the audience, but the talkers kept at it. Why people pay to see a show and then babble through it, I’ll never quite understand in much the same way that I’d have difficulty comprehending anyone’s objections to this extraordinary video:
The Stub Project – The Cure – Red Rocks – 7.20.1987
The Cure: Where the Persecuted become Persecutors
The crowd was dressed in black, every last one of them. That is, except for me and my girlfriend. We were wearing tie-dyes (but my memory is apparently in black and white). The helpful goths behind us informed us that we were at the wrong show. Whispers of “nice shirt,” “wrong decade, dude,” and “do I smell patchouli?” followed us all night.
Only now do I realize the irony. We stuck out like they usually did; the tables had turned. These outcasts in their black uniforms and pale skin and mascara waiting to smear at the site of their idol Robert Smith, these broken kids who had spent their lives scattered on the edges … they were all together now. They had been isolated for so long in their bedrooms, in the cafeteria, in their awful suburbs where no one understood – and now they were one, a rolling black tide ready to obliterate everything in their path.
We had stumbled into a convention of misfits and they didn’t have to take it anymore. Collectively they had become the football team and we were the losers who needed to conform. Thankfully, instead of sticking our heads in the toilet, they attacked us with their withering wit. “Fucking hippies,” they said, as if they had a monopoly on the dark side. I wanted to say that I knew a thing or two about wanting to die. I loved going to graveyards. I’d read The Stranger, too. I got it … but my t-shirt erased the possibility that we would ever get along. Instead of replying, we pretended we didn’t hear them and danced.
I actually enjoyed the show – dancing has that effect. When the band played, the sad, disgruntled murmurs of the crowd disappeared. And The Cure sounded wonderful in what is perhaps the most beautiful outdoor venue in the country.
As we drove back to Boulder with the Dead as our soundtrack, we could hardly wait, in less than a month we would be back to Red Rocks to see our favorite band play a three night stand. You’d always see a few stray goths at Dead shows back them – perhaps they had been tricked to attend by the band’s name? – and after this night I always made a point of giving them a extra-wide smile, further perplexing them to no end.
Going Down the Road Feeling Bad – MP3
The Cure, two years later:
Song of the Day – Iron and Wine – Monkeys Uptown
Any song on Iron & Wine’s brilliant new album “Kiss Each Other Clean” would qualify for “song of the day,” so I’m hesitant to pick a single one out. It’s simply another beautiful collection from Sam Beam, one of the greatest songwriters working. I don’t think I’d want to live in a world where this music doesn’t speak to me. Buy it. See them live. Shower them with roses ….
Here’s “Monkeys Uptown” which I’m finding particularly infectious this afternoon.
Iron and Wine – Monkeys Uptown – MP3
Incredibly, they play the whole album here for WNYC:
lonesomebeehive 