Despite the Orange Elephant in the Room 2019 - It Was A Very Good Year

Despite the Orange Elephant in the Room;

2019 – It Was a Very Good Year

Introduction;

When they recorded this in 1965, The Turtles were only 18 years old, reminiscing about ‘When I was 21” – I still love this – especially the harpsichord.

As usual, joyful silliness from Spike Jones and his boys.

          This year I was remiss in my duties as a blogger. There were LOTS of missed occasions for writing …

Part One

          My alter ego Bob Kronlage (what a preposterous pen name!) published ‘his’ first book, “KOZMOLOGY: The Complete ‘KOZMO OF THE COSMOS’” on Amazon.com on January 21^st. It’s still available! It’s 230 8 ½ by 11 pages, contains around 660 comic strips, and it’s only $15!

Part Two

          It was a great year for concerts. I saw perhaps my favorite singer / songwriter Loudon Wainwright III, in concert for the third time. He opened for eclectic folk rockers The David Bromberg Band, who I saw for the second time.

          Loudon has been writing painfully honest songs for over 50 years now. As I mentioned in an earlier piece on this blog, his songs expertly contrast the comic and the tragic to constantly varying degrees. From laugh out loud trenchant satire to eye moistening confessionals about his failure at personal relationships, the guy really puts you through the emotional ringer in his live appearances. He also happens to be a great singer and guitarist. After the power of his acoustic solo performance it was actually hard to imagine that David Bromberg, even with the advantage of a whole band and rock ‘n’ roll instruments would not be a disappointment by comparison.

Both were equally great, though.

          David Bromberg has been on the folk scene since 1962. He has a wonderfully distinctive singing voice and is a proficient multi-instrumentalist. He particularly shines as a blues guitarist. The David Bromberg Band combine rock, blues in all its forms, honky-tonk country, old time fiddle tunes, pop music classics and bluegrass, all performed with truly awesome virtuosity from all its band members, on both acoustic and electric instruments. Their acapella rendition of (of all things) Carol King’s “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” was an especially pleasant surprise.   

Part Three

          I saw three bucket list concerts.

          The Monkees’ Mike Nesmith was my favorite rock star when I was in kindergarten and he remains one of my favorite musicians to this day. (While it’s nebulous to claim that anyone in music was truly the first person to do something, it’s unarguable that Nesmith is a pop culture pioneer. His songs introduced The Beatles-era audience to country-rock songwriting as early as the Monkees 1966 debut album. His uncompromising demand for artistic control in his career has established him as a roll model for musical entrepreneurs and auteurs.  He invented the music video as we know it today -- as an artform and a promotional tool. Okay, so, the double-breasted stocking cap never caught on as a fashion statement – hey, you can’t win ‘em all.) For decades, while the others toured the oldies circuit as The Monkees, Nesmith preferred to not dwell on the subject of his former band, and he almost never gave live performances as a solo artist. In my early twenties I became resigned to the fact that I would never get to see him in concert.

          A few years ago, following the death of Davy Jones, Nes did a brief tour with Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork, but I wasn’t able to catch any of those shows. In 2018, with Tork too ill to appear, the tour was “The Monkees present The Mike & Micky Show”. Maddeningly, again, the logistics were wrong for me to get to any of the shows. It had to be cancelled mid-tour, when Nesmith became ill and needed quadruple bypass surgery.

         In March of this year, I finally got to see “The Mike and Micky Show” at the Mystic Lake Casino near Minneapolis Minnesota. Nesmith was resplendent in basic black, with black, silver sequined slippers. He read his lyrics off an I-pad connected to his mic, but that was fine. Even though his songs are founded in basic country music, his lyrics can be incredibly complex;

“Startled eyes that sometimes see
Phantasmagoric splendor
Pirouette down palsied paths
With pennies for the vendor”

--Daily Nightly

          The show was two hours long, with each guy doing half the songs. Micky, who originally sang most of The Monkees hits, sang all their hits in this concert, and lots of other favorites. During The Monkees’ career, Micky sang lead on several Nesmith compositions, and I think he did all of them in this show: ie: “Mary, Mary”, “The Girl I Knew Somewhere”. Mike did all his best-known songs, as well as what the young hipsters call ‘deep cuts’. He also reveled in a long, sumptuous rendition of his solo hit “Joanne”, complete with the falsetto vocal hooks, delivered impeccably.

Here’s the complete list of what they played;

Set 1

Good Clean Fun

Last Train to Clarksville

Sunny Girlfriend

Mary, Mary

You Told Me

For Pete's Sake

The Door Into Summer

You Just May Be the One

A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You

The Girl I Knew Somewhere

Birth of an Accidental Hipster

St. Matthew

Porpoise Song (Theme From "Head")

Circle Sky

Pleasant Valley Sunday

Till Then  (Video of the recently deceased Peter Tork playing jazz on an f-hole guitar and singing the poignant Mills Brother’s hit.)

Set 2

Papa Gene's Blues

Randy Scouse Git

Tapioca Tundra

I'll Spend My Life With You

Joanne

Me & Magdelena

Take a Giant Step

Auntie's Municipal Court

Goin' Down

Sweet Young Thing

(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone

Daydream Believer

What Am I Doin' Hangin' 'round?

Encore:

Listen to the Band

I'm a Believer

          Although he rarely speaks of his old band, Nesmith clearly performed passionately. Interestingly, he really seemed to get into singing backup on “Steppin’ Stone” and “I’m A Believer”. You could read the look on his face – “Try to tell me we didn’t have great songs!” 

          This wasn’t technically the best concert I’ve ever seen, but it IS my all-time favorite concert.

Part Four

           On the Friday morning before Labor Day, I was digging through stacks of CDs on the floor of my music room, looking for something to play on my way to work. I ran across a CD I’d compiled by Squeeze. “Squeeze. I haven’t listened to them for a while.” While driving to work I was reveling in how great Squeeze was. “I would LOVE to see them in concert!” “Why don’t they ever come to the states?” I was a little depressed ‘knowing’ I would never see them in concert. I got in about five minutes before the start of work and snuck into their web site. They were performing in my favorite theater the next night! What are the odds? I own around 6000 CDs* by hundreds of bands. Amazing I just happened to pick them out on the day I really needed to. I got a ticket in the mostly packed theater. I was able to take a road trip overnight to Chicago – perfect for the three day weekend.

          In person they were much punchier and more hard rockin’ than on their (already great) albums. It seems Glenn Tilbrook’s lead guitar playing has been suppressed on their records, but he played lots of great rockin’ solos in concert. He still has his eternally youthful voice.  Tilbrook and Chris Difford are such great songwriters they are actually sick of being called ‘the Lennon and McCartney of the 80’s’. Must be rough!

*Remember, ‘No one listens to CDs anymore’ – so don’t rob me!

Part Five

Mystery Science Theater 3000 Live

           There are more bad movies than there are stars in the heavens. I was able to hitch a ride on The S.O.L. (The Satelite of Love!) with Joel Robinson, Tom Servo and Crow, to examine one of them -- “Circus of Horrors” in all it’s excruciatingly excruciating detail,

          Joel Hodgson was the only actor from the original show performing. He was accompanied by four other performers – two women who played the mad scientists, and two men who pupeteered Tom & Crow.

         The performance was hilarious – easily as funny as the best episodes of the TV show. Thanks to MST3K’s wackily tacky, homemade approach, the stage show was a reasonable approximation of the TV program.

          ­­­­­­­Joel kicked things off playing electric guitar and leading the audience in a sing along of the show’s theme song. Stage center, there was the movie screen relatively high up, with a proscenium arch under it, where the performers acted out the between-movie-segment skits. There was a little table to the side, where Joel and the ‘bots sat to heckle the film. (They didn’t make silhouettes on the screen, but that was a very minor difference from the TV shows.) Between movie segments and skits, the movie screen showed videos of Cambot racing through the numbered doorways, just like on the TV show. They even added a little history to the proceedings –throughout the evening they showed all the different ‘doorway’ segments from the show’s history, labeled with the era in which they were used.

          I saw the show in Dubuque. A few nights before, they were in Davenport, showing a different movie. I would have loved to have seen it both nights, but after all the bullshit charges that get added on the internet by the ticket sellers, it would have cost $100 per night! Had a couple more of the original cast members been there I would have spent it. Oh well. I guess bucket list items are meant to be a once in a lifetime experience.

          Finally! Push the button Frank!