ROCK Sex: The Monkees

Showing posts with label The Monkees. Show all posts

Sunday, January 1, 2017

BEST MUSIC: 2016, with Music Players!

Weyes Blood

Nevermind those suburban-angst
"Best Music" lists that taste like paste!

These tunes will unhook your outlook
and hijack your sacroiliac!

Shortcut to Music Players:
BEST ALBUMS: 2016
COOL SONGS: 2016
BEST REISSUES: 2016

Savages
(photo by Colin Lane)
B E S T
N E W
A L B U M S : 2 0 1 6
This is a Spotify player. Join up for free here.BEST ALBUMS 2016

This music player has songs from the following albums, in the same order.

-Hannah Williams And The Affirmations, "Late Nights And Heartbreak"

-The Claypool Lennon Delirium, "Monolith Of Phobos"

-Stereo Total, "Les Hormones"

-Electrocute, "Double Diamond"

-Charles Bradley, "Changes"

-Sonny & The Sunsets, "Moods Baby Moods"

-Sharon Jones And The Dap-Kings, "Miss Sharon Jones!" (soundtrack)

-L7, "Wireless (Radio Session)"

-Bacao Rhythm And Steel Band, "55"

-The Monkees, "Good Times!"

-The Coathangers, "Nosebleed Weekend"

-Heron Oblivion, "Heron Oblivion"

-Ramin Djawadi, "Westworld: Season 1" (Soundtrack)

-David Bowie, "Blackstar"

-Iggy Pop, "Post Pop Depression"

-Weyes Blood, "Front Row Seat To Earth"

-Lee Fields And The Expressions, "Special Night"

-White Denim, "Stiff"

-PJ Harvey, "The Hope Six Demolition Project"

-Ultimate Painting, "Dusk"

-Pixies, "Head Carrier"

-Lake Street Drive, "Side Pony"

-Deerhoof, "The Magic"

-Childish Gambino, "Awaken, My Love!"

-Angel Olsen, "My Woman"

-Savages, "Adore Life"

-The Jayhawks, "Paging Mr. Proust"

-Thao And The Get Down Stay Down, "A Man Alive"

-William Bell, "This Is Where I Live"

-Pretenders, "Alone"

-Fantastic Negrito, "The Last Days Of Oakland"

-Kate Tempest, "Let Them Eat Chaos"

-La Femme, "Mystere"

-Esperanza Spalding, "Emily's D+Evolution"

-The Mystery Lights, "The Mystery Lights"

-Marta Ren And The Groovelvets, "Stop Look Listen"

-The Julie Ruin, "Hit Reset"

-Adrian Younge & Ali Rasheed Muhammad, "Luke Cage: Season 1" (Soundtrack)

-The Shelters, "The Shelters"

-The Kills, "Ash & Ice"

-Guerilla Toss, "Eraser Stargazer"

-Death Valley Girls, "Glow In The Dark"

-Xiu Xiu, "Plays The Music Of TWIN PEAKS"

-Barrence Witfield And The Savages, "On Audiotree Live"

C O O L
S O N G S :
2 0 1 6*

Rockabilly! Funk! Psychedelic!
Soul! Spaghetti Western! PostPunk!
Electro! Riot Grrrl! Dementia!
This is a Spotify player. Join up for free here.COOL SONGS 2016

*(The Player is limited to the first 200 songs.
Hear the unlimited Playlist here.)

Cody Chesnutt; Pussy Riot;
Kate Tempest; Thao And The Get Down Stay Down

11 hours of mind-whomping, booty-stomping music, featuring:

Bleached, Goat, Le Tigre, Baaba Maal, Radiohead, Calibro 35, Afro-Haitian Experimental Orchestra, Melvins, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Santigold, The New Mastersounds, Neil Young, Lush, Deep Street Soul, and The Real Gone Tones!

B E S T
R E I S S U E S :
2 0 1 6

Quality is timeless.

This is a Spotify player. Join up for free here.BEST REISSUES 2016

This music player has songs from the following albums, in the same order.

1960s
-The Beatles, "Live At The Hollywood Bowl" (1964-'65)

-Various Artists, "Pebbles, Vol. 4: Africa, Part 2" (African garage rock)

-Dan Penn, "Close To Me: More Fame Recordings"

-Bob Dylan, "The Real Royal Albert Hall 1966 Concert"

-The Beach Boys, "Pet Sounds: The 50th Anniversary Edition"

-Otis Redding, "Live At The Whiskey A Go Go"

-Pink Floyd, "The Early Years: 1967-1972, Cre/ation"

-Betty Harris, "The Lost Queen Of New Orleans Soul" (late '60s compilation)

-Betty Davis, "The Columbia Years, 1968-1969" ⇧

-Led Zeppelin, "The Complete BBC Sessions" (1969-'71)

1970s
-Bruce Haack, "The Electric Lucifer" (electronic psyche)

-Yoko Ono, "Plastic Ono Band" (1970) ⇧

-Black Sabbath, "Black Sabbath", "Paranoid", "Master Of Reality" (expanded editions)

-Arthur Verocai, "Arthur Verocai" (1972 Brazilian psyche-jazz)

-David Bowie, "Bowie At The Beeb" (early '70s BBC sessions)

-Various Artists, "Venezuela 70: Cosmic Visoins Of A Latin American Earth" ('70s Venezuelan experimental rock)

-Various Artists, "Wake Up You!: The Rise And Fall Of Nigerian Rock, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (1972-1977)"

-Devo, "Hardcore" (mid-'70s art-punk)

-The Headhunters, "Survival Of The Fittest" (1975)

-David Bowie, "Who Can I Be Now? (1974-1976)" (mid'70s remasters and unreleased)

-Various Artists, "Space Oddities: Studio Ganaro (1972-1982)" (French/German electronic pop)

-Various Artists, "Cosmic Machine: The Sequel - A Voyage Across French Cosmic & Electronic Avantgarde ('70s-'80s)" (French electronic music)

1980s
-Various Artists, "Boombox: Early Independent Hip Hop, Electro, And Disco Rap (1979-1982)"

-Lizzy Mercier Descloux, "Mambo Nassau" (1981 World Funk) ⇧

-Tom Tom Club, "Tom Tom Club" (1981)

-African Head Charge, "My Life In A Hole In The Ground" (1981)

1990s
-Jeff Buckley, "You And I" (unreleased cover versions)

-Gillian Welch, "Boots No.1: The Official Revival Bootleg" (1996, expansion) ⇧

-L7, "Slap Happy" (1999)

2000s
-Connie Price And The Keystones, "Wildflowers" (2004)

-Angry Angles, "Angry Angles" (2005) ⇧

-Barrence Whitfield And The Savages, "Savage Kings" (2011)

© Tym Stevens

"A splendid time is guaranteed for all!"

Monday, October 4, 2010

LADIES FIRST: "Porpoise Song" - Carole King > The Monkees > Lola Dutronic > Django Django

LADIES FIRST spotlights classic songs that 'she did first'.

_______________

"A face, a voice, an overdub has no choice..."

"The Porpoise Song" is one of the coolest psychedelic songs ever made. Interpreted brilliantly by The Monkees under the spell of SGT. PEPPER, it has been covered many times by neo-psych, doom metal, and electro bands.

Carole King wrote the original in the last days of her storied songwriting partnership with Gerry Goffin. Here is her original demo. Note the Lennon/ hallmarks all over it in the piano march, wavy harmonies, and phased voices.

CAROLE KING -"Porpoise Song" (1968)

The song was written for the opening sequence of HEAD, the glorious career suicide film made by The Monkees. Here's the beginning of the film and the freewheeling chaos that follows.

(Hint: rent the movie.)

HEAD: "The Porpoise Song" (1968)

HEAD became a cult hit in the '80s when released on video, and the song was discovered again when included in VANILLA SKY (2001). Many artists have covered it like
BONGWATER w/ Ann Magnuson (1988),
TROUBLE (1995)
THE CHURCH (1999)
DJ NOBODY (2008)
AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF THE DEAD (2004)

Here's a typically radiant original song by Brian Wilson's touring buddies, Wondermints, which sounds like a merging of The Beach Boys' "Wonderful" with "The Porpoise Song".

WONDERMINTS -"Tracy Hyde" (1996)

Here's a lovely Electro-delic cover version by Canada's Lola Dutronic, in a fan video that homages the underwater film sequence with some twists.

LOLA DUTRONIC -"The Porpoise Song" (2004)

And here the jingle gets jangled when wrangled by Django Django.

DJANGO DJANGO "The Porpoise Song" (2014)

"The porpoise is laughing /
goodbye, goodbye..."

Monday, September 27, 2010

ROCK Sex: "For What It's Worth": - Buffalo Springfield > Led Zeppelin > Public Enemy

"Young people speaking their minds/
Getting so much resistance from behind"

"Stop, Children, what's that sound?/ Everybody look what's going down."
ROCK Sex brings you the story of how a local youth revolt became a momentum that spans decades, continents, and generations.

_______________

By the mid-'60s, the Sunset Strip district in Los Angeles had lost its allure for the movie star crowd. A wave of Rock'n'Roll clubs brought in the disaffected young people and a new outlook in music, style, and philosophy. It was in clubs like the Whisky A Go Go, The Trip, Bido Lito's, and The Troubadour that the LA counterculture flourished, with bands like The Doors, Love, The Byrds, Spirit, Thee Midniters, The Turtles, and The Mothers Of Invention.

The sight of young people dressed like Native Americans in large crowds outside their doors made local merchants freak out. The time-honed reflex of Capitalists to anything with imagination was to call in the law. Police began harassing the youth and the youth tried to complain. Headlines blazed with "the riots on the Sunset Strip" that the kids were allegedly inciting. (Notice the never-ending narrative that recasts peaceful protesters as violent rioters, and a police state as moral balance.)

Who watches the Watchmen?

Hollywood was the source of most film and TV at the time, but there was little outlet for the youth to show their side of it. Here's Ayn Rand's posterboy, Jack Webb, chomping out another one of his bitter fear rants at a caricature of Timothy Leary.

"DRAGNET" TV show (1968)

Hollywood at the time was in its deepest decline. It was pumping out expensive musicals that everyone was skipping to watch TV. While The '60s was shaping up as one of the most dynamic sociopolitical decades in the country's history, Americans were tuning out to watch fantasy escapism like talking horses, suburban witches, and spies in Hefner fantasias. The young people dropped out of both by seeing smart foreign films in arthouse and college theaters.

This left only the exploitation movie market, which tended to turn every trend into a bombastic cartoon. Very quickly the whole thing was flipped into RIOT ON THE SUNSET STRIP (1967). These types of films were made on the cheap and usually exploited the allure of the forbidden while ultimately condemning it. But whether it was a dawning sense of empathy with the young rebels or just seeing a new audience to market, the film actually gives the kids' view a somewhat fairer shot at representation than old-guard newspapers or TV News, considering.

(Ironically, it was through the exploitation market that 'hippie radical' filmmakers revolutionized and saved Hollywood in the next few years.)

RIOT ON THE SUNSET STRIP Trailer (1967)

(Notice how the never-ending narrative casts the generation as aimless cliches "protesting, with no direction, no goal". This lazy dismissal of legitimate and articulated grievances continues in Corporate-owned News coverage today.)

The film is a favorite of Garage Rock fanatics for its great appearance by The Chocolate Watchband, as well as this performance of the title song by The Standells.

THE STANDELLS -"Riot On The Sunset Strip" (1967)

The so-called "riots" of young people protesting about being bullied by the police spawned songs by their bands. Here's Frank Zappa and his accomplices radicalizing "Louie Louie".

THE MOTHERS OF INVENTION -"Plastic People" (1967)

Tired of being called the Prefab Four, The Monkees started rejecting their TV constraints by writing and playing their own songs, going more political and experimental, and ultimately committing glorious career suicide with the amazing film, HEAD (1968).

Mickey Dolenz was the third person in the world to own a Moog synththesizer, which he used on their song inspired by the Sunset Strip rebellion.

THE MONKEES -"Daily Nightly" (1967)

But by far the most influential song triggered by the "riots" was this one by Buffalo Springfield and writer/performer Stephen Stills.

With its signature guitar intro, clear-eyed tone, and anthemic call-and-response, the song struck an immediate chord that never stopped resonating. Many folks think the song was about Vietnam or Kent State, but it preceded them. Though it was meant about the Sunset Strip, its general message became an anthem for rebels and protest movements worldwide and across time.

BUFFALO SPRINGFIELD -"For What It's Worth" (1967)

Here's one of the first examples, where The Staple Singers make it a Gospel anthem that speaks as much to the Civil Rights Movement specifically as the counterculture in general.

THE STAPLE SINGERS -"For What It's Worth" (1967)

Here's Led Zeppeln doing it live. It almost seems like Jimmy Page wanders into it for mood, but the crowd is so responsive that (at 0:45) you can hear an audience member goad Robert Plant with "Sing it!" Clearly the song is a bonding anthem for the entire generation, a rebel yell and a communion psalm.

LED ZEPPELIN -"For What It's Worth" (live, 1970)

But a good song surpasses any borders. As many of the late-'60s/early-'70s philosophies and styles were resurrected by the counterculture's children in the late-'80s/early-'90s, the song again came around. This version retains all of Stephen Still's roots guitar licks.

OUI 3 -"For What It's Worth" (1993)

And Public Enemy retained Stephen Stills himself, who came in especially to re-sing and play his timeless parts for their remake.

PUBLIC ENEMY -"He Got Game" (1998)

Quality is timeless, but oppression is untiring. You will always have to stand together for what's right.

HALEY REINHART -"For What It's Worth" (2017)

So, vital people of now, I say this:
if you feel you live in a era when greedy Conservatives misuse the law to bully you down, where free speech is Zoned, where peaceful protests are met with batons and tear gas, where the media is run by tonedeaf pawns, where dynamic politics is ignored by people tuning out to escapist fantasy TV and overly expensive movies...

Riot in your mind and write a good song.

"There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

It's time we stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down"

© Tym Stevens

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

ROCK Sex: "I'm Not Your Steppin' Stone" - Paul Revere > The Monkees > Sex Pistols

ROCK Sex finds the kinks in the chain links.

_______________
Who first recorded "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone"?

It was Sex Pistols, of course. No, wait, you say, it was The Monkees. Nope, they were covering it, too. The missing link in the song chain was Paul Revere And The Raiders.

PAUL REVERE AND THE RAIDERS -"(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" (1966)

The song was written by hitmakers Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, who quickly thereafter recorded it with their bread-and-butter, The Monkees, whose television show was massive and was a forerunner of MTV and music videos:

THE MONKEES -"(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" (1966)

But here's the UK Garage Rock band THE FLIES doing a slower, heavier take on the standard that Black Sabbath might love:

THE FLIES -"(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" (1966)

Here's the all-female band The Pivots, who later became The Feminine Complex.

THE PIVOTS -"(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" (1966)

Then of course here's the miscreants, putting the boot in to kick some life back into everything:

SEX PISTOLS -"(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" (1976)

Now a standard, the song has been covered by countless artists including The Trashmen, Johnny Thunders, Minor Threat, The Untouchables, and Les Thugs (France).

© Tym Stevens

Sunday, January 1, 2017

BEST MUSIC: 2016, with Music Players!

Monday, October 4, 2010

LADIES FIRST: "Porpoise Song" - Carole King > The Monkees > Lola Dutronic > Django Django

Monday, September 27, 2010

ROCK Sex: "For What It's Worth": - Buffalo Springfield > Led Zeppelin > Public Enemy

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

ROCK Sex: "I'm Not Your Steppin' Stone" - Paul Revere > The Monkees > Sex Pistols

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Sunday, January 1, 2017

BEST MUSIC: 2016, with Music Players!

Monday, October 4, 2010

LADIES FIRST: "Porpoise Song" - Carole King > The Monkees > Lola Dutronic > Django Django

Monday, September 27, 2010

ROCK Sex: "For What It's Worth": - Buffalo Springfield > Led Zeppelin > Public Enemy

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

ROCK Sex: "I'm Not Your Steppin' Stone" - Paul Revere > The Monkees > Sex Pistols

What's all this?

Subscribe To

Translate

⚪ s p o t l i g h t

ANDOR, The New Revolution

m o v i e s / t v

⭕ p l a y l i s t s_𝟏

⭕ p l a y l i s t s_𝟮

⭕___h o l i d a y s

b e a t l e s

" - e s q u e"

c a n o n

c o m i c s

c u l t u r e

★ b e s t ______ m o v i e s / t v

★ b e s t ______ m u s i c

★ b e s t _______ c o m i c s

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Art, Records, Films, Comics I Love:

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