As posted by Mr Partridge on Twitter – his contribution to the Monkees’ new album. Recognisably Partridge, predictably wonderful.
Andy Partridge’s Mokess tune
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
That would be Monkees… bloody dyslexic fingers…
Thanks Jim. I’m feeling better about my Midnight Oli heading for my post now.
Glad to be of service JW!
No need to apologise Jim and Junior. Your typos have brightened my day on the Afterwad. A bizarre, alternative rock universe.
Coming up soon: Steely Din, Dire Struts and Berry Jaffatea.
Nice tune.
Love this pop for pops sake and exactly the right feel for a Monkees tune. Dolenz just has a wonderfully unique tone to his voice that was made for singing songs like this. It makes me very, very happy.
Pure lush. He sounds like Gilbert O’Sullivan and that’s no bad thing ❤️
So Andy when are you going to give Colin and Dave a call and get that band together in the studio again?
So – that’s two fab pop hits that everybody loves out of two so far. This is an absolute treat – love the Monkeetron and the psychedelic tag. Nice lyric idea, too.
But can they “rock”?
“They” don’t exist.
Good point.
I got it wrong previously when I said I didn’t need any more Monkees music, the two I’ve heard so far mean I can’t wait for the rest.
99% XTC 1% Monkees. Sounds about right.
Still, nice song
Sounds better than it really is, if you ask me.
Good to see the Monkees still relying on others to supply them with decent material. It’s like 1966 all over again.
You still … just … don’t … get it, do you?
The Monkees weren’t a real group. They were actors. They acted being a pop group. Okay so far? Reading from the same page? Let’s move on. Because of the quality of the material (great songs and performances by a bunch of talented people) Monkees records became great big pop hits. I know this is a difficult concept, Johnny, but do try to get a grip on it, no matter how sketchy. They were great records. With the Monkees name on them. So – Monkees records. Okay? What muddies the water a little – and I can see how you might find this confusing – is that at some point they actually became a real group. They took control in the studio and started to contribute according to their abilities, which in Davy Jones’ case was limited to vocals, cuteness, and tambourine-bothering. He was primarily a show-biz juvenile lead actor, not without charm, and he never developed from there. No big deal. Almost the same as Circus Boy Dolenz, although he had a truly great pop voice, and still does, in his freakin’ seventies! Aaaaand … he wrote some good songs. Tork had some coffee-house folky musical abilities, wrote a few interesting tunes. Nesmith … well, he’s a major talent. Certainly too big a talent to describe in a blog comment. But together, with a whole bunch of other people, they made Monkees records. Records. You may remember hearing records on the radio, thinking “wow! that’s a good record!” At least, I hope you were thinking that and not judging it on who really played what and when. Because if you were, you’ll throw out a lot of great records that weren’t really real.
So back to this record. It’s absolutely a Monkees record. A great Monkees record. Made by a whole bunch of talented people, exactly as they always were.
It’s like 1966 all over again? Just a little bit, perhaps. Enough to make some of us – if not you, alas – very happy.
Oh it’s a good record right enough. But I wonder how much of it is down to these “Monkees” of which you speak.
Probably more than was the case with their really early output.
Enough for their name to go on it.
Johnny, I’m reading your comment here – “Oh it’s a good record right enough. But I wonder how much of it is down to these “Monkees” of which you speak” twice. That’s two times more than you read mine, because the answer is there.
You’re just a little bit touchy about your fave pop band aren’t you HP?
Not at all. Just a little frustrated by my inability to get across some – to me – very basic points about pop music records. And I don’t have a favourite band.
I long for the day when a “new group” (or “artist”) appears who don’t write their own songs, but record brilliant songs by brilliant songwriters. Like – er, The Monkees, or The Hollies (yeah they wrote a few of their own) and all the other groups and singers of that golden age in the 60s before anyone discovered self-expression and the publishing business.
Where are the Dustys and Lulus and Toms and Engleberts these days who can sing the fuck out of a great song?
Have you read the writing credits to Beyoncé’s latest opus? She is feeding the five thousand.
Classy stuff!
A top Partridge choon with tints of mid-’60s popadelica.
. . . . and a slight tint of Carrie Anne by The Hollies.
Great pop, as befits a Monkees record. All they (or those genuinely talented people gathered around them) did was pop and very good pop too. There simply isn’t enough good pop music in the world. I, for one, welcome it. XTC are much, much better, though. I’d far rather a new XTC record.
Unfortunately, there is absolutely no chance of a new XTC record. Andy will not bring the name back if he believes that the material is not up to the standard he deems necessary, and Colin is simply not interested in being part of the music business anymore. The two of them have little or no contact these days.
“I’ll bring the chips and the dips and the root beer.”
No, sorry, this just all seems so superfluous. Decent tune that’s a mild variation of millions of tunes we’ve heard before, and that would be better suited to Andy P’s vocal tones. Sounds like an OU exercise in pastiche.
Since when was pop music not (ewwwww! get you!) “superfluous”? Since when did pop have to be more than “a decent tune that’s a mild variation of millions of tunes we’ve heard before”?
The song ticks many of the right boxes for catchy, jangly, pop. But it doesn’t shout at me with any urgency, authority or grace. It has no understated power and leaves little impression. It’s like a mildly diverting copy of Yachting Monthly in the dentist’s waiting room. It has to be more than just a decent tune for me to like it and buy it.
I’m fond of the Monkees, and Woolhat (thanks to you), but this just doesn’t grab me.
It’s a pop song for fuck’s sake not an urgent authoritative graceful work of art.
I was asked for my opinion. I gave it. Isn’t that the point on here?
Yes! Hooray for us. And here. Long may we and it flourish.
Absolutely delightful. Good pop writing is such a deceptively hard skill. Far easier to wank the fret board and knock off yet enough hackneyed solo or blues riff. Bringing tunes, smiles, sunshine and love into someone’s universe, if only for a brief few minutes, now that is magic.
Until it’s time to nuke the fascist moss.
The Tardigrade community are rush-releasing a charity record:
We are the smallest creatures you’ve ever seen
But our hearts are as big as the sun
We love our lands so lush and green
As we raise our voices as one
Just because we’re small
Doesn’t mean we don’t matter at all
You don’t give a toss
About our home in the moss
Your driveway may be clean and tidy
But down here it’s genocidey
That’s beautiful.
*snurfle*
If Rob C could just hear their tiny voices … so childlike … so innocent … squealing in pain as they die a flaming chemical death as their homeland is razed …
Perhaps someone should give Bob and Midge a ring and start scouting out some potential venues in Somerset for this year’s Tardigr-AID.
Got me a new heavy duty jet power wash arriving early next week…..
SHOWTIME !
To the Tardigrades:
‘Ask not what my driveway can do for you, ask what you can do for my driveway.
Yep – FUCK OFF or get JET BLASTED with PESTICIDES’
When the moss has gone
And the tar degrades
What is left
Of what we made?
An oil stain on the broken drive
A child’s voice, the sound, the fear
A driver from a plastic car
And an empty bottle, marked ‘Path Clear’.
Tardigrade poetry is my third favourite sub-genre.
Martin … I think I have something* in my eye …
*poss. a tardigrade. I’ve opened my personal borders to the tardigrade refugees fleeing Rob C’s Driveway Of Death.
NEWS JUST IN: Just been doing some hardcore weeding as I put some bleach mix down yesterday. Seems to have worked well. The moss is all brown, shrivelled and drying in the sun. A full on blast purge next week should be all that’s necessary now……
Until this:
http://i.imgur.com/fHH3R1k.jpg
MOON WEASEL COMMAND says….
Bring It ON !!!!!!!
http://i1302.photobucket.com/albums/ag126/astralcat379/download%2089_zps7eeksfrd.jpg
Nuke ’em with love dude.
I like this – played it today – Saturday morning, on a sunny day (so I’m already thinking back to watching the Monkees re-runs in the early 80s) – sounded great. Very obviously an Andy Partridge composition, but somehow that’s a perfect fit for the Monkees and the instrumentation is appropriate to the song without being ersatz and knowingly Retro/Mark Ronson faux authentic.
Mickey Dolenz in fine voice and I think Tork chimes in, and pretty sure you hear Nesmith hoving into view on the coda around 2:26 –
A similar feel to XTC’s Dear Madam Barnum from ‘Nonsuch’ I think:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0jyu6pAnUg