Last weekend, I made a judgment call that might come back to bite me in the ass. Indeed, it already has, to a certain extent. What was it?
I bought the Monkees' greatest hits on CD.
Call it folly, call it whimsy, call it ironic detachment from a cultural lodestone with associations with the bizarrely kitsch experience of nostalgia for an era that I never experienced, or call it simply being reminded, via Davy Jones' recent death, that the "made for TV" band actually had some good songs, whatever it was that compelled me to make this purchase faded almost as soon as I popped the CD in my car, not even having exited the parking lot of the record store where I went, and realized with growing horror that in addition to the five or six songs I wanted, there were twenty-plus on the CD that I did not.
And before you lump me in with the people who only buy CDs for the one or two songs they like (you know, the whipping-boys of late-nite "Hits of the Seventies" CD collections courtesy of Time-Life), allow me to say this: I am not one of those people, generally. That's why we have iTunes now (thank you, disembodied voice of Steve Jobs!). But I felt a little weird about buying "Daydream Believer" without hearing "Last Train to Clarksville," "I'm a Believer," or "Pleasant Valley Sunday." Say what you will about the obvious artificiality of the group (any TV band that strives to be more "authentic" need only look at the songs on the CD not credited to professional songwriters to realize that sometimes creative control can be a bad thing), they made four or five instant classics, and I discovered as I let the CD play on that a few more non-hit "hits" could almost make up for the treacle that dominated the playlist.
Really, honestly, do yourself a favor and scan some of the songs on iTunes at your convenience. They're either bad Beatles knock-offs or hippie-era platitudes that sound hilarious in our more cynical age.
Most of the good songs, contrary to what the obits said at the time of Jones' passing, were in fact sung by Mickey Dolenz, the "drummer" (they didn't actually play on the first couple of albums, because that would've been commercial suicide). The CD booklet from Rhino tries to make an argument that the group really flowered when they got to write their own material, but I'm skeptical. Sometimes people who want artistic control get it because they deserve it; sometimes they squander it because, let's face it, they weren't the creative force behind the scenes anyway.
But I have the CD, and I have listened to it now enough to not be as worried what other passing motorists might think (most of the time their systems are booming so much they couldn't hear it anyway), and while I'm tempted to maybe offer it up for free to the party or parties most interested in listening to it, I might as well keep it a while. Hell, it might grow on me (note: it will not grow on me, I was being polite). Generally, you get what you pay for with "greatest hits" packages, from the sublime transcendence of Al Green and the Kinks to...well, whatever it is that happens when you listen to the Monkees songs that aren't well-known, and for good reason.
Such is life...
I listen to The Monkees a great deal, especially during the spring. My mom was a huge (and by huge I mean three-ring binders full of magazine clippings and posters of the band on her bedroom walls huge) fan of The Monkees when she was a teenager. As is usually the case, I grew up listening to The Monkees as a kid along with all of the "Golden Oldies" of the 50s, 60s, and 70s.
ReplyDeleteI firmly believe, even though the band was largely contrived, that as a unit they were actually a very talented group dealt a bad hand. The album Headquarters is actually a really good collection of music and their first real (while still woefully limited) venture as songwriters and musicians, which only grew over the rest of their musical career.
Anyway, to make a long comment short (too late, I know) I can in no way fault you for your recent purchase. I have all of their albums, so I have nothing to say.
Jonathan, you ignorant slut...;-)
ReplyDeleteI have to say, my initial hyperbolic reaction has tempered somewhat because I can pick or choose the songs that I want on my iPod (I didn't burn the whole thing to my iTunes, just the tracks that I liked plus some that showed promise in the "I will learn to like this" category), and I do think their hits outnumber their misses, for the most part. I also have no issue with the manufactured nature of their being a band (after all, it's a staple of reality TV programming now, so they were more ahead of their time than, say, the Velvet Underground or even the Beatles in that regard). I do not love the Monkees, but I don't hate them, either.
My hate is reserved solely for Train...:-p