Idolator: the monkees

George Clinton Ready To Tear The Roof Off The Sucker... Country-Style

Maura Johnston — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:30:00 EST

A third season of Gone Country—the CMT show in which artists attempt to make over their careers so they can enter the hotly contended "country crossover" market—has been announced by the network, and among the stars hoping to follow in the footsteps of season-two victor Sebastian Bach are a lot of actual famous musicians, like George Clinton and Micky Dolenz and, uh, Justin Guarini. (OK, so maybe a couple of people this time out just like being on TV.) After the jump, we handicap the contestants.

Richard Grieco
What, was Peter DeLuise unavailable? 25-1

Tara Conner
The deposed Miss USA didn't have to compete in a talent competition, but her past cocaine woes will surely give her some prime tear-in-my-beer material. 10-1

Justin Guarini
He's still waiting for his moment like this. I don't think this show will have it either. 8-1

Sheila E.
Well, I guess this means The Next Great American Band isn't coming back. 7-1

Taylor Dayne
She'll have to rein in the brassiness that made "Tell It To My Heart" one of the greatest songs ever (oh, you know I'm right), but hey, with a few production tweaks here and there, "Love Will Lead You Back" could slide right onto country stations' playlists. 4-1

George Clinton
One of the favorites. The man has a doctorate in funkensteining, after all, and I'm sure the skills he acquired on the way to his degree will help his quest for country fire. 5-3

Micky Dolenz
Is there any way dude doesn't win this competition? He has great comic timing, he probably learned something about the country side of the business from spending all that time with Mike Nesmith, and he can drum and sing simultaneously. The first order of business should be reworking "PO Box 9847" as something twangier:

CMT brings back "Gone Country" [Hollywood Reporter]

Five Crucial TV Theme Songs Missing From Josh Groban's Emmy Montage

Maura Johnston — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 10:30:00 EDT

Last night's Emmy telecast was punctuated by an interlude where the Oprah-approved crooner Josh Groban ran through a medley of classic television themes; during the four-minute performance, he managed to channel Les Claypool, Will Smith during his Fresh Prince phase, and the lead singer of the dancehall act Inner Circle. Also he used a lot (a lot!) of vibrato in weird places. (I guess moms like that sort of thing?) But even more importantly, there were some curious omissions from the medley, which I've taken the liberty to list below.

5. Punky Brewster

It was a minor show on the Emmy scale of things, but this song was actually the first one I thought of when I heard Groban would be giving TV themes the medley treatment. Doesn't your heart just feel warmed by hearing the first note of this song?

4. The Monkees

Sure, I'm biased, but you have to admit that it's better than the goddamn Friends theme by a long shot.

3. Alvin & The Chipmunks

I guess now that the Chipmunks are into coprophagia, this song was ruled out for not being family-friendly enough. Rock and roll, man. Rock and roll.

2. Hawaii Five-O

Hey, if the producers thought that the Law & Order "chunk-chunk" was an appropriate representation of the theme song (NB: it isn't, and I'm sure Mike Post would agree), surely they could have had Groban mime a hula shake or two while the band wailed in the background.

1. Mr. Belvedere

At least this sounds like something Groban could sing. I mean, that Les Claypool impersonation should have been a fineable offense!

Josh Groban 60th Annual Emmy Awards [YouTube]

The Monkees Go Analog

Maura Johnston — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 17:00:00 EDT

At around 3 a.m. I found myself going on one of those YouTube binges that are necessitated by not being able to sleep and not wanting to drop $30-plus at the iTunes Store, and it was through lots of "related link" clicking that I happened upon "Daily Nightly" by the Monkees, a song that I had "dug" a lot as a terminally unhip 11-year-old and, I learned after some Googling, one that actually had something of an historic import, what with it being one of the first pop songs to employ the Moog synthesizer. According to Eric Lefcowitz's Monkees Tale, the Monkees' Micky Dolenz actually bought the third Moog to ever come off the assembly line—he was right behind Buck Owens and Wendy Carlos on the waiting list—and his full-on "hey, let's twist this knob and see what happens" experimentation with the synthesizer resulted in the Michael Nesmith-penned song breaking through its psychedelia-by-the-numbers melody.

The sneeringly rollicking groupie put-down "Star Collector" also used the Moog, although in a bit more of a conventional way:

I played a Moog once in my entire life (about 10 years ago) and it was so much fun—since I only used it that one time, I was never really sure of what I was doing and as a result my reaction could have been aptly described as "wow and flutter." I hope that I'll be able to fiddle around with one again someday; I wonder what I'd actually do with the thing now that I sort of know more about what it can do, if only from picking up hints from the recordings I've absorbed since that day all those years ago.

The Monkees - Star Collector [YouTube]
The Monkees - Daily Nightly [YouTube]
Monkees Tale [Google Book Search]

NLT: Following In (Probably Too) Many Boy-Band Traditions

Maura Johnston — Fri, 09 May 2008 08:55:00 EDT

The OneRepublic-vocalist-produced "Karma" by the new boy band NLT seems to be catching a little bit of fire, or at least has a viral-marketing team that knows about the world of pop-music blogs behind its push. The song is an early-'00s-informed bit of pop-radio playlist filler, and the group, which is apparently something of a redemptive product for B2K svengali Chris Stokes, seems to be the Mach 2008 version of the classic boy band. It's made up of four just-shy-of-20 dudes who are just cute enough and just threatening enough, and who have as one member someone named "V." Watching this video, I noted that NLT also carried on important boy-band traditions, as if to honor the boys to men who have traveled in the streaming-girl-strewn path they hope to ride an Escalade down.

• A dumb acronym for a name. "NLT," which may be one of the most innocuous names in the world (everyone knows you need vowels to stick out!), stands for "Not like them." Perhaps that means they are not like these guys:

They're actually into girls who shop at Hollister.

• An extended dance sequence in a well-lit hallway.

Although Justin Timberlake et al never had the presence of mind to sing in front of an illuminated equals sign. Mathy!

• A sequence where it seems they are crawling around the hair on someone else's head.

Let's hope that this means they'll be going the "surrealism as a way to show their disgust with the biz" route early.

NLT - Karma (Official video) [DailyMotion via Chris Picks]
LFO - Summer Girls [YouTube]
NSync - Bye, Bye, Bye [DailyMotion]
The Monkees - HEAD (Dandruff) [YouTube]

The Coulda-Shoulda-Woulda Files: Davy Jones Takes Neil Young To The Dance

mjohnston — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 15:36:05 EST

Time for another installment of the Coulda-Shoulda-Woulda Files, where we search through our record collection in search of a lost gem.

Artist: The Monkees
Album: "You And I," 1969
What happened: The Monkees' TV show was canceled and Peter Tork left before they released 1969's Instant Replay, which contained newer songs and a couple of fan-friendlier tracks from the Monkees' vaults. The Davy Jones track "You And I," one of the album's newer songs, was recorded in 1968, and the lead-guitar duties were handled by none other than Neil Young.
Why it should have been a hit: The combination of Young's guitar and Jones playing the world-weary frontman is too good to resist, and thanks in large part to Young's signature tone, "You And I" still sounds pretty modern after almost 40 years. Unfortunately, the single from Replay wound up being the "Last Train To Clarksville" retread "Tear Drop City," which peaked at No. 56 on the Billboard charts.

~~The Monkees - You And I~~ [MP3, link expired]
The Monkees Home Page [monkees.net]