I saw Mike Nesmith on television the other night, and I was super excited because I had been thinking about him that very day. Technically, I think about Mike Nesmith every day, but that is because of the bulletin board over my desk. The week before I started this site, I bought a bulletin board and covered it with neatly organized article ideas. Unlined index cards (always with the index cards) are cut in half and labeled in Sharpie with the name of an artist, or a movie, or some other type of memory jog. These cards have been there, with very little change, for almost two years now.
At this point, they aren't even my emergency backup ideas. I think it is safe to say that 100% of them are scrapped, but I still can't bring myself to take them down. I like my tidy little rows of squares, although right now they are partially obscured by a sock and a 45 that are also tacked to the bulletin board. I could probably remove the card that says King Diamond/Mudvayne. I don't know what that means. I think I was going to discuss Mudvayne and their spray painted heads versus King Diamond and his makeup and cape. I do know that the card is so old, Mudvayne doesn't even wear paint anymore.
But one of the cards says Mike Nesmith, therefore I think of him every time I look at my shamefully neglected bulletin board. Actually, it says Grant Hart, Ace, Mike Nesmith, Danzig, Brian May. I was going to write about the singers I think are fantastic, even if they don't fit into the great singers category. These five all have a tone that is pleasing to my ear. But this particular topic is not currently interesting to me. And I don't think that Mike Nesmith should have to share article time.
That is because Mike Nesmith is an underrated genius so he doesn't have to share.
This, you see, is why I was thinking about Mike Nesmith in the first place. I was playing hypotheticals the other day, wondering if Mike Nesmith would have become famous without The Monkees. I always think to myself, "Well of course he would have," because I have great faith in the concept that talented folks will get the recognition they deserve. Then I think about how the world really works. People like Rufus Wainwright live in relative obscurity while Good Charlotte is relentlessly pounded into my skull twenty-four painful hours a day.
Anyway, I would like to think that even without being a Monkee, Mike Nesmith would have found success as a musician. But he is talented in a variety of fields, so it is possible that he might have skipped music altogether if something else had caught his fancy. Because of that, I can never decide if I should be grateful to Screen Gems for bringing Mike Nesmith to my attention, or if I should be bitter that they helped create an image so large, he has spent over thirty years trying to shake the label of Former Monkee.
I think today I will go with being grateful, because I am so glad that I have had the opportunity to be exposed to the songs of Mike Nesmith. The man is a genius. I believe that he can make a listener laugh or cry in a three-minute window like no other songwriter in the world. Mike Nesmith is so wonderful that I am going to cry right now because I am not listening to him. Then when I play a record I will laugh with glee. And then I will hear Some Of Shelly's Blues and cry. And then I will play Good Clean Fun and giggle. Then the record will be over and I will cry, and the cycle will begin again.
I don't know when my love of Mike Nesmith first appeared. I want to say that it was six or seven years ago, but it could go back over twenty years for all I know. My interest in the Monkees coincided with their mid-eighties reunion tour, because the local UHF station picked up the reruns of the show. Delightful, although I hardly ever got to see a full episode, because I had to leave for softball halfway through. That's okay though, because if you've seen one Monkees episode, you really truly have seen them all.
Even though my interest was new, the Monkees had been lurking in the background my whole life, because my mom was a fan. This is where my dad enters the picture. He scoffed at the Monkees and would often go on a diatribe about Mike Nesmith being the only worthwhile Monkee. The talented one, the one who could write songs, et cetera. When the Monkees were originally popular, my dad was into things like Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and had no use for the non-Nesmith Monkees. Now that I think about it, in addition to being the person who taught me respect for Mike Nesmith, my dad might actually be the original Rocksnob.
My dad went all Mike Nesmith snobby on me a few years ago, when my Monkees phase was in full tilt mode. I liked them okay in junior high, but in the mid to late '90s, I lost my mind. I saw the Monkees four times in a one-year period. That period was August of 1996 through August of 1997, and this includes three road trips. Not to mention the road trip for the solo Peter Tork show. But the Monkees story and the Peter Tork story are not the stories I am trying to tell today. I am trying to tell you that when I told my dad that Papa Gene's Blues was on the set list, he didn't grasp. Well, he grasped, he just didn't care for it.
Me: "They played Papa Gene's Blues!"
Dad: "Without Mike?"
Me: "Yeah."
Dad: "How does that work?"
Me: "Peter sang it."
Dad: "That's not right."
Papa Gene's Blues, of course, is the Mike Nesmith song that was included on the first Monkees LP, and, of course, is the best song on the record. Argue all you want, but I will push you down. Although I have to admit, I have a hard time picking the best song, because the whole record is excellent (thanks to the songs of Boyce and Hart plus Goffin and King and some other guy I don't know much about). I love Goffin and King. Mike Nesmith does have a song he co-wrote with Goffin and King, but as I understand it, he didn't like writing with them because they worked on a schedule.
Papa Gene's Blues was the first glimpse of what Mike Nesmith could do, and he just kept on getting better and better. When I bought the Monkees box set (Listen To The Band, not the new one) I lived in a house with a CD player, and the four Monkees discs lived in that player for a year. (Occasionally my ex-husband would grumble and remove them for a Van Halen fest. Ick.) Eventually I got tired of all of the sissy crap that Davy sang, and I would spend a few careful minutes programming the CD player so each disc would only play songs written by Mike Nesmith. To hear the talent that evolved in just a few years is nothing short of amazing.
Especially good are his songs from the later albums. You know, the albums that no one bought because Peter had left and the show had been cancelled. Mike Nesmith's stuff on those records is out of this world. It caused me to go on a post-Monkees Mike Nesmith feeding frenzy. I went scurrying off to my record store and asked Mr. E (the greatest record store guy ever) if he would file the records by The First National Band under Mike Nesmith or the Monkees or The First National Band. No sudden outburst of enthusiasm by me has ever surprised that man, so he pleasantly directed me to the N section and then sent me on my way with one or two (I forget which) First National Band albums. Man, are they good. Slice of avocado in a sandwich good. Making my eyes water because I am not listening right now good.
I also had to snap up any and all solo Mike Nesmith records, but I don't really like them as much. They are good, but some of the things from the late seventies aren't as country as I would like. But I have to respect the man for branching out and trying new things. I have to! I even ran out the day Justus was released (1996-all four Monkees together again making a record) because of Mike. Okay, I probably would have rushed right out anyway, it being the height of my Monkees phase and all, but the presence of Mike Nesmith definitely made it more exciting.
Except he only wrote two of the songs, and one was a remake of Circle Sky. Circle Sky is on the box set and on the Head soundtrack and really didn't need to be re-done. It was just fine the way it was. So without the heavy country hand of Mike Nesmith, the album wasn't that great. I tried to like it, I really did. I even tried to like that horrible ABC special they did, because Mike was back! I love him! I love his sparkly eyes and his warm voice and the slight drawl and the brilliant songs. But most of all, I love him because he is a genius. An underrated genius, yes, but a genius nonetheless.