The Monkees - "Words" (forgotten song)

I read that Peter Tork, bassist for The Monkees, died today.  I have fond memories of coming home from primary school (maybe even middle school) and watching The Monkees TV show in syndication.  I was too young to understand that they weren't a quite a "real" band -- the music was catchy, the TV show was funny and did crazy things like break the fourth wall, which I realized was unusual even if I did not have the words to describe it.  This was pre-MTV, so seeing music on television was amazing.

Later I learned that they were the proto-boyband, assembled to mimic The Beatles and films like "Hard Days Night".  The Monkees were no longer cool.

Sometime after that, I learned that The Monkees eventually evolved into a real band, or at least pretty much a real band, songs like "Pleasant Valley Sunday" were back in rotation on the radio, Tone Deaf  covered The Sex Pistols covering "Steppin' Stone", and Michael Nesmith helped give us classics like "Repo Man" -- The Monkees were cool again.

I failed to blog about the death of Davy Jones in 2012, but I can't let Peter Tork's death go by without note.  It just so happens that my favorite song by them was 1967's "Words", the B-Side to their more famous "Pleasant Valley Sunday" (from their fourth LP "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd."), although it did have a video from their TV show.  I'm not sure I've ever heard it on the radio, but it made an impression on me as a very young viewer: the chimes, Peter Tork's echoing co-lead vocal (he was the featured vocalist on only a few of their songs), the soft-loud-soft structure -- all of that was a lot for my uninitiated brain to process.

Yes, it's tempting to dismiss The Monkees as just a pale imitation of The Beatles, but is their sound any less modish than other contemporary "serious" bands, like Jefferson Airplane?  Songs like "Words" take me back to the 5th grade or so, coming home after school, and having a portal to the craziest, most irreverent sounds and images imaginable to me at the time.   Not long afterwards I would see and hear things like "Eleanor Rigby", and nothing looks or sounds the same after that, but The Monkees, because they were regularly on TV, was as good as it got in the days before MTV.

The Monkees - "Words"

Goodie Mob - "Dirty South" (forgotten song)

Super Bowl LIII concluded yesterday, and while many might say it was a "boring" game because it was the lowest-scoring Super Bowl in history, as a Va Tech fan I've learned to appreciate defensive struggles.  The halftime show, on the other hand, well... that was pretty boring.  Not necessarily bad, but stiff and uninspired. 

It certainly had all the individual pieces: a bland, popular, corporate rock band ("we want someone like Coldplay, but not quite as edgy...") with two guest appearances by rappers with regional ties as well as underground cred, a SpongeBob interlude, a drumline, a choir, a 70s Cadillac convertible, lasers and fireworks, and lots of Adam Levine beefcake.  It's like a machine learning algorithm had processed all the previous halftime shows and then synthesized the best elements into a whole that filled the requisite 14 minutes, but lacked a unifying vision or theme.  In trying to appeal to all and offend none, the result was a sterile simulacrum of a halftime show.

The NFL had trouble lining up performers, given the ongoing situation with Colin Kaepernick.  Maroon 5 was a safe choice, and the choice of Big Boi and Travis Scott for guest spots (neither of which was particularly well-integrated with the Maroon 5 set) was the smallest possible nod to Atlanta's burgeoning music scene.

With that, I choose Goodie Mob's song "Dirty South" as this year's Super Bowl song.  "Dirty South" is from their 1995 debut LP "Soul Food", and is the first known use of the phrase "Dirty South", a sub-genre of hip hop, with Atlanta at its epicenter, that emerged in the early- to mid-90s as separate and distinct from NYC-based and LA-based hip hop.  Big Boi, then a member of Atlanta-based Outkast, guested on both "Dirty South" and last night's appearance, thereby provided the tie in to something more substantive than Maroon 5.  Goodie Mob is still active, with four members also involved in other projects, of whom Cee-Lo is the most recognizable to general audiences. 

Let's be honest: a Goodie Mob / Outkast halftime show, opening with "Dirty South", including radio hits like "Hey Ya!" and "Forget You"), with Maroon 5 as the guest artist, say with a reinterpreted, rap-crossover version of "Harder to Breathe" plus a duet with Cee-Lo on "Crazy" would have been edgy... and great.

Goodie Mob - "Dirty South"

Maroon 5,  Travis Scott, Big Boi - "Full halftime show"

Sidney Gish - Live WGBH 2017-10-19

This tip comes from friend and colleague Alexandra, whose SO manages Sidney Gish.  She's generated a good bit of buzz recently (Billboard, Fader, Pitchfork) and the best way I can think of to describe her is occupying the charming, quirky, lo-fi triangulation of Courtney Bartnett, Lisa Loeb, and Times New Viking (with an honorable mention to the fictional Corey Flood).

I need to explore her catalog further, but in the meantime this live, four song set at WGBH is a great place to start, with "Hexagons and Other Fun Materials" and "Presumably Dead Arm" the stand out songs.  Her first LP is "Ed Buys Houses", her second and most recent LP is "No Dogs Allowed", and it would not surprise me to learn that she has an unreleased demo tape called "65 songs about Joe".