POP-A-LOOZA: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! T. Rex, "20th Century Boy"

 

Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives, Recognizing the truth that an infinite number of tracks can each be THE greatest record ever made (as long as they take turn), this latest shared post turns the GREM! spotlight on "20th Century Boy" by T. Rex.

This T. Rex piece was prepared for inclusion in my long-threatened book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1), but is not a part of that book's current plan. The chapter mentions an oddball 2-LP various-artists collection called Heavy Metal, which I picked up in the '70s and wrote about here. 

My Heavy Metal album retrospective (which is also quoted in the T. Rex chapter) was originally posted as part of my Rescued From The Budget Bin! series. The only other Rescued From The Budget Bin! piece published so far waxed blubberific over The Very Best Of The Hollies. 

Rescued From The Budget Bin! is one of several blog series I put under the (slightly) wider category of My LP Appreciations. The My LP Appreciations umbrella encompasses used albums in Second-Hand Sound (the Monkees' Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. and Headquarters and The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees), greatest-hits sets in The Best Of Everything (Monkeemania--plainly, I like writing about the Monkees--and The Best Of The Bobby Fuller Four), perfect albums in Love At First Spin (Drop Out With The Barracudas, Mr. Tambourine Man, and Rocket To Russia), albums received as gifts in Groove Gratitude (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and The White Album), a missed opportunity in The One That Got Away! (the Dave Clark Five's Glad All Over Again), and a separate admission that Beatles VI and Beatles '65 are my all-time favorite albums.

Yeah, I like a lot of stuff, including T. Rex. A Greatest Record Ever Made! celebration of T. Rex's "20th Century Boy" is the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.

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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

I'm on Twitter @CafarelliCarl

The Eventual Return Of MY LP APPRECIATIONS

It's been a bit since I've posted any new pieces under the broad heading of My LP Appreciations. In fact, it's been more than a year since my most recent LP appreciation, a Rescued From The Budget Bin! look back at an odd 2-LP set called Heavy Metal, shared here on 11/9/18. I'll be getting back to more of My LP Appreciations in the near future. Here's a list of what we've already seen, and a glimpse at some of what we may see in the not-too-distant future.



My LP Appreciations is actually an umbrella category for a number of different series, each offering a look back at my memory of a specific record and what it meant to me. Let's review those categories.

RESCUED FROM THE BUDGET BIN!



Record stores used to have cut-out bins, overflowing with deleted albums that the labels had given up as lost causes. The cut-out LP covers had been deliberately damaged: a corner chopped off, a puncture, some sort of premeditated defacing to mark them as clearance items, as soon-to-be discarded product that had been written off, as Grade B, as "other." The cut-out bin was a record buyer's last chance to grab a record on the cheap before it slipped into the out-of-print zone. In addition to the cut-outs, there were also budget albums, produced and priced for discount sales.

Cut-outs. Budget albums. I may have purchased a few of these over the years.

The origin of My LP Appreciations! Who I am and how I came to be! Sort of. Rescued From The Budget Bin! began with a post about The Very Best Of The Hollies on March 15th of 2017, and didn't see another entry until the 2018 Heavy Metal piece mentioned a few paragraphs back. Possible future entries may discuss Nuggets, Shake Some Action by The Flamin' Groovies, Suzi Quatro, The Real Kids, and the soundtracks of That Summer! and Stardust. Some other already-published bits (and some still to come) could have just as easily been classified as Rescued From The Budget Bin!, but I chose some more specific designation instead.



LOVE AT FIRST SPIN



Love At First Spin looks back at albums that I immediately loved, from start to finish, the first time I heard them.

This category was suggested by Steve Stoeckel, and first described in an introduction posted on 3/17/17. Yep, just two days after The Hollies kicked off Rescued From The Budget Bin! The first and most popular Love At First Spin was about my favorite album of the 1980s, Drop Out With The Barracudas, posted on 3/24/17. Subsequent editions of Love At First Spin cast spotlights on Mr. Tambourine Man by The Byrds (3/31/17) and Rocket To Russia by The Ramones (4/29/17, and this blog's 500th post). Oh, there'll be more of these, possibly including The Jam's Setting Sons, Tell America by Fools Face, Mad Monster Party, and separate entries about two more Ramones LPs, Road To Ruin and It's Alive!




SECOND-HAND SOUND



Trash becomes treasure in appreciative hands. Second-Hand Sound examines used records I picked up over the years, albums that someone else discarded as unwanted or unworthy. My opinion differed from theirs.

So far, there's only been one post published in this series, a love letter to Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. by The Monkees (6/1/17; yes, I posted about a Monkees record on Sgt. Pepper's 50th anniversary). Second-Hand Sound will return to Micky, Davy, Peter, and Michael for a two-in-one discussion of Headquarters and The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees. An eventual post about The Turtles' Happy Together Again could be done as a Second-Hand Sound or as The Best Of Everything, while The Velvet Underground & Nico would definitely be Second-Hound Sound.



GROOVE GRATITUDE (A GIFT OF MUSIC)



Groove Gratitude (A Gift Of Music) looks back on albums I received as gifts. A gift of music can be greater than even the gift itself or the music itself, reflecting the circumstances of who gave us the record (and why) and what it meant to us, then and now. A song can transport us back in time within a single spin. But an album that's connected to a specific someone who gave you that chance to listen and experience? That album has a story to tell.

The first published Groove Gratitude was about The Beatles and Sgt. Pepper, posted on 6/2/17, one day after the above-mentioned Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. testimonial. But the series was introduced on 3/29/17, and the first post (about The White Album) was distributed privately to my paid patrons on 4/17/17, and finally made available to the public on 6/8/17. There are number of others under consideration: Armed Forces by Elvis Costello & the Attractions, Rock And Roll Over by KISS, Raspberries' Best, Live And Sleazy by The Village People, Give 'Em Enough Rope by The Clash, and Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols. Moving from LPs to CDs, I may do something about the Otis Redding boxed set Otis!, Step Up by The Flamin' Groovies, and/or Powerstance by The Fleshtones.



THE BEST OF EVERYTHING



Sometimes only the best will do. The Best Of Everything looks back on specific greatest-hits and best-of LPs and what they meant to me.

The concept of this most recent addition to My LP Appreciations was introduced on 10/3/17. The series debuted on 1/27/18 with a reverent recollection of the 3-LP Austalian import Monkeemania, and Best Of The Bobby Fuller Four followed on 4/17/18. Still to come: Big Hits (High Tide And Green Grass) by The Rolling Stones, Meaty Beaty Big And Bouncy by The Who, and The Kinks' Greatest Hits. And more.


Also within the broad category of My LP Appreciations were posts about Beatles VI and my modest bootleg collection. 



Some of my potential and pending subjects may shift from category to category, both within My LP Appreciations and to other series like The Everlasting First, which may be the best forum for me to discuss, say, The Velvet Underground. Some of these I'll get to, and some will never be done. I appreciate 'em all nonetheless.

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Fans of pop music will want to check out Waterloo Sunset--Benefit For This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, a new pop compilation benefiting SPARK! Syracuse, the home of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl. TIR'N'RR Allstars--Steve Stoeckel, Bruce Gordon, Joel Tinnel, Stacy Carson, Eytan Mirsky, Teresa Cowles, Dan Pavelich, Irene Peña, Keith Klingensmith, and Rich Firestone--offer a fantastic new version of The Kinks' classic "Waterloo Sunset." That's supplemented by eleven more tracks (plus a hidden bonus track), including previously-unreleased gems from The Click Beetles, Eytan Mirsky, Pop Co-Op, Irene Peña, Michael Slawter (covering The Posies), and The Anderson Council (covering XTC), a new remix of "Infinite Soul" by The Grip Weeds, and familiar TIRnRR Fave Raves by Vegas With Randolph, Gretchen's Wheel, The Armoires, and Pacific Soul Ltd. Oh, and that mystery bonus track? It's exquisite. You need this. You're buying it from Futureman.

(And you can still get our 2017 compilation This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4, on CD from Kool Kat Musik and as a download from Futureman Records.)

Hey, Carl's writin' a book! The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) will contain 100 essays (and then some) about 100 tracks, plus two bonus instrumentals, each one of 'em THE greatest record ever made. An infinite number of records can each be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Updated initial information can be seen here: THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE! (Volume 1).

THE BEST OF EVERYTHING: Best Of The Bobby Fuller Four

Sometimes only the best will do. The Best Of Everything looks back on specific greatest-hits and best-of LPs and what they meant to me.



THE BOBBY FULLER FOUR: Best Of The Bobby Fuller Four (Rhino, 1981)

In 1966, my brother Art had a red Alfa Romeo. I'm told it was kind of a crappy car, really, and I remember its ignominious final days in his possession: a scarlet husk parked, prone, lying in state beyond the shed at the end of our back yard. Collecting dust, collecting rust. A tow truck ultimately came to whisk this luckless red Alfa Romeo to the promised land.

But my prevailing principle memory of this doomed vehicle is a happy one. I believe the memory involves the consumption of Royal Crown Cola, or possibly a root beer and Teen Burger at the nearby A & W Drive-In. The memory absolutely involves the car's one true immortal virtue: its radio.

That radio? When I was six years old, I may have thought that radio was magic.

I mean, it must have been magic. There were songs I heard on that car's radio that I never seemed to hear anywhere else. I should ask Art if he listened to Syracuse's 1260 WNDR in '66, or if it was WOLF instead, or even the less-fabled WFBL. Whatever it was, it played "I Like It Like That" by The Dave Clark Five, a record that--to me--only existed on the AM dial of Art's star-crossed Alfa Romeo. Even better, it played--often!--another irresistible exclusive: "I Fought The Law" by The Bobby Fuller Four. To this day, more than five decades later, my visceral memory of that terrific song is inextricably linked to those moments in my brother's Alfa Romeo, of drums, guitars, and a singer bemoaning his fate of Breakin' rocks in the hot sun, all pouring forth from the little car's speakers as my big brother cruised suburban streets with his pesky kid brother on board. It's indelible, and I embrace and cherish its vivid image.

A decade and change passed. In 1978, I was finishing my freshman year in college, and immersing myself in the rockin' pop of the '60s and the then-contemporary sounds of punk, new wave, and power pop. It was all one big ol' ball of pop music to me, from The Monkees to The Sex Pistols, The Romantics to The Beau Brummels, The Ramones  to Joey Ramone's fave raves The Who and Herman's Hermits. Oh, and The Kinks to The Kinks, "You Really Got Me" to "Rock And Roll Fantasy." In this joyous crucible of discovery and rediscovery, "I Fought The Law" was ripe to reclaim. I think I found an oldies 45 reissue, but I found something lacking in its sound--couldn't match the magic of the Alfa Romeo, lemme tell ya! I bought a various-artists LP called 15 Original Rock N' Roll Biggies Vol. 2, an oddball set that gave me "I Fought The Law," familiar old gold from The Platters and Little Anthony & the Imperials (and, incongruously, "Day By Day" from Godspell), and some archival stuff that was brand-new to me, by names like The Standells, The E-Types, and Chocolate Watchband. I played "I Fought The Law" and the two Standells tracks--"Why Pick On Me" and "Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White"--a lot in that music-filled summer of '78.



I don't know if it occurred to me that The Bobby Fuller Four might have had more than just one great song. Hell, my "I Fought The Law" 45 had only contained one BF4 track, its flip occupied by The Seeds' "Pushin' Too Hard." Nor did I know that Bobby Fuller himself was dead, and I certainly didn't know anything at all about the suspicious circumstances surrounding his demise. The opportunity to learn about all of this would not present itself until after I graduated from college in 1980.

The specific sequence of events is cluttered and imprecise in my recollection. In 1981, my girlfriend and I were living in an apartment in Brockport. She would graduate that spring, and I'd already leveraged my Bachelor of Arts degree into full-time employment at McDonald's--success! And rent money, as well as cash for beer and food and beer, and to keep buying music at Main Street Records. At Main Street, my dovetailing interests in punk and pop led me to Pebbles, the essential Nuggets-inspired series of possibly-not-fully-authorized compilations of '60s garage and psych. I started with Pebbles' second volume, which introduced me to The Choir's "It's Cold Outside" and The Moving Sidewalks' "99th Floor," and to The Electric Prunes' unforgettable commercial for Vox wah-wah pedals. It's the NOW sound! It's what's happening!



Pebbles, Volume 2 also offered my first exposure to a Bobby Fuller song that was not about robbing people with a WHOMP-WHOMP-WHOMP six-gun: the relatively nondescript "Wine Wine Wine." Fuller remained a one-hit wonder to me for just a little bit longer.

Within this same time frame, Phil Seymour (formerly of The Dwight Twilley Band, and a collaborator with ace combos like Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and 20/20) released his first solo album. My favorite track on Phil Seymour was his version of "Let Her Dance," an incredible pop confection first recorded by--you guessed it!--The Bobby Fuller Four. Something nagging at the edges of my memory insists that I did hear the original version before hearing Seymour's cover, but I can't imagine where I heard it. Either way, I loved the song. I was ready and eager to dive more deeply into Fuller's c.v.



I probably snapped up Rhino Records' Best Of The Bobby Fuller Four the first time I saw it on the shelf at Main Street; if not, it wasn't long thereafter. I knew, at best, two songs. It was high time to know more.

The album begins with the lone hit, Sonny Curtis' "I Fought The Law," originally recorded by The Crickets, later covered successfully by The Clash. I've always considered The Bobby Fuller's version to be definitive. I still do. By the early '80s, I would have been more than skeptical of the idea that it could ever be demoted to something like my fourth or even fifth favorite BF4 track. But that revelation was mere grooves away.

Granted, nothing else on Side 1 of Best Of The Bobby Fuller Four really threatens to challenge the primacy of "I Fought The Law." "King Of The Wheels," the LP's second track, is its weakest, an amiable but unremarkable car tune. The rest of the side is pretty damned good, with the pure pop likes of "The Magic Touch," "It's Love, Come What May, "Only When I Dream," "Don't Let Me Know," and Buddy Holly's "Love's Made A Fool Of You" combining to build the case that maybe these one-hit wonders deserved greater notoriety than the one hit that defined them. In particular, "Don't Let Me Know" seems like it should have at least been a hit single, perhaps capable of cracking the lower end of the Top 20 while never quite matching the Top 10 status of "I Fought The Law."



But Side Two...!

Side Two opens with "Let Her Dance," a bona fide gem later covered by Marshall Crenshaw, and I don't think I've ever heard a bad version of it. The BF4's original is the equal of "I Fought The Law," perhaps its superior. "Another Sad And Lonely Night" is even better, a lovelorn lament that all too few recognize as the essential classic it is. "My True Love," "I'm A Lucky Guy," and the Eddie Cochran ripof...er, tribute "Saturday Night" keep things moving at a mere-mortal (but terrific!) level. By this point, Best Of The Bobby Fuller Four has already proven the group to be worthy of repeated play beyond just its best-known song.

"Fool Of Love" is the icing on this cake, a cruel-love compatriot to "Another Sad And Lonely Night," both of them simultaneously shiny and devastating in their resigned, boppin' acceptance of the heart's tear-stained pursuit of an elusive happiness. The two tracks politely take turns as my all-time top Bobby Fuller Four track. The haunting "Never To Be Forgotten" brings the program proper to a close, the heart's quest yet unfulfilled, but its lonely plight comforted by the warmth of the stereo. An unlisted bonus track--the group's radio spot for The Big Kahuna, a popular DJ on L.A.'s KHJ-AM, sung to the tune of "I Fought The Law"--finally ends the LP on a gloriously exuberant note.

I was 21 years old in 1981. I lived inside my pop music. I was also living in the (overrated) real world for the first time, trying to reconcile the frequently conflicting promise of art and the demands of responsibility, adulthood. It can be a difficult line to tread, an ongoing balancing act between the dreams we dream and the clocks we punch. Doing what we have to keeps things going; doing what we want to keeps us going.

Bobby Fuller wasn't much older than that when he died in the summer of '66, a pop star three months shy of his twenty-fourth birthday, a West Texas kid who hit the big time, a rockin' pop success story with a Billboard smash on his resumé and the world at his feet. The liner notes to Best Of The Bobby Fuller Four offered my first hint of his tragic story. Bobby had talent. Bobby had good looks. Bobby had a string of pretty young things on his arm. And on July 18th, 1966, Bobby's body was found slumped in his car outside his apartment in Hollywood. He had been beaten. He had been doused with gasoline. The authorities ruled his death a suicide (later amended to "accidental").

Right.



The record business is big and brutal. And wherever there's money, there are criminals, and there is often the mob. Ask Tommy James. Or ask Miriam Linna, co-author (with Bobby's brother Randell Fuller) of the book I Fought The Law: The Life And Strange Death Of Bobby Fuller. Linna and Fuller believe Bobby was murdered by the mob. Sound crazy? Really, crazier than suicide by beating oneself and bathing in gasoline? I'm not one for conspiracy theories. Elvis is dead. Paul is alive. Neil Armstrong did indeed walk on the moon. Oswald may well have acted alone. I find tinfoil hats unbecoming. And I also believe that the mob killed Bobby Fuller, whether over business (likely) or for revenge on Bobby for dallying with a pretty young thing whose dallying allegiance was presumed to already belong exclusively to an underworld boss. The latter scenario was, as I recall, favored in the liner notes of Best Of The Bobby Fuller Four. Whatever actually happened to Fuller, it's a safe bet it wasn't self-inflicted.



The sordid tale of Fuller's end, as sad and frustrating as it remains, can't dilute the prevailing appeal of his music. Listening to Best Of The Bobby Fuller Four was my first real evidence that there could be more--much more--to an act that show biz writes off as a one-hit wonder. I no longer own my copy of that LP; it was replaced many years ago by a CD that contained even more great Bobby Fuller tracks, and that CD was replaced by the five discs of Bobby Fuller material that now sit proudly on my shelf at home. Fool of love. Another sad and lonely night. Let her dance all night long.

My road to appreciating the bounty of The Bobby Fuller Four began in earnest with Best Of The Bobby Fuller Four in 1981. But the road truly began on the road, literally, back in '66: when the magic radio in my brother's unreliable but intrepid red Alfa Romeo played a song I could never hear anywhere else. The law didn't win this one, I fear. But the music plays on. Never to be forgotten.



(And, for a fictional take inspired by Bobby Fuller's murder, check out the blurb for my story idea The Beat And The Sting.)

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Our new compilation CD This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4 is now available from Kool Kat Musik! 29 tracks of irresistible rockin' pop, starring Pop Co-Op, Ray Paul, Circe Link & Christian Nesmith, Vegas With Randolph Featuring Lannie Flowers, The Slapbacks, P. Hux, Irene Peña, Michael Oliver & the Sacred Band Featuring Dave Merritt, The Rubinoos, Stepford Knives, The Grip Weeds, Popdudes, Ronnie Dark, The Flashcubes,Chris von Sneidern, The Bottle Kids, 1.4.5., The Smithereens, Paul Collins' Beat, The Hit Squad, The Rulers, The Legal Matters, Maura & the Bright Lights, Lisa Mychols, and Mr. Encrypto & the Cyphers. You gotta have it, so order it here.

THE BEST OF EVERYTHING: Monkeemania

This is the 800th post on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do).

Sometimes only the best will do. The Best Of Everything looks back on specific greatest-hits and best-of LPs and what they meant to me.



THE MONKEES: Monkeemania (Arista [Australia], 1979)

You may not remember what it was like.

Ah, maybe you do remember. If you were a fan of The Monkees in the late '70s and early '80s, that vague tinge of isolation, even defensiveness, could well nip at the corners of your recollection even now. It may still feel uncomfortable, an icy chill when you prefer to give up your secrets and let down your hair, and sit with friends here by the fire light. The Monkees. You liked The Monkees. You loved The Monkees. But everyone else seemed to think The Monkees were utter, irredeemable crap.

You didn't necessarily look for validation. You knew you were right about The Monkees, that detractors were wrong, myopic in their smug dismissal of a made-for-TV fake band that didn't play its own instruments. You knew The Monkees were more than just their artificial origin, their test-tube genesis; you knew The Monkees' music mattered.  You'd stand your ground, you'd make your case to the skeptics, the Philistines, and proudly declare, I'm a believer! Some would listen. More would not. But you remained secure in your conviction. You just...y'know, wished there were a few more believers to be found.

The believers were out there. And you would find each other before too long.

I graduated from college in 1980. I didn't have specific plans beyond wanting to stay with my girlfriend Brenda and try to build some kind of life together. She still had another year of school left, and I had no immediate professional prospects; it made sense to remain in our college town of Brockport, get an apartment together, and take a shot. Perils awaited us on our chosen path. We loved each other. We still do. So there we went, walkin' down the street. My B.A. in English was good enough for McDonald's, so I had a paycheck. The head of the English Department at Brockport called me one day at McDonald's to see if I was interested in becoming a Graduate Assistant, but I surprised him by declining the offer. Objectively, one would say this was a stupid move on my part. But it may have been the right stupid move. I wasn't ready for grad school. My college days were over.

Money was a struggle, yet we managed. The rent was paid. Groceries were purchased. We had beer. I was even able to scrape up sufficient cash to keep on buying records. I wouldn't have called it living if I couldn't buy records.

My musical taste was left-of-the-dial mixed with classic: The Beatles, The Ramones, The Kinks, The Jam, The Rolling Stones, The Undertones, The Yardbirds, The Romantics, et al. That certainly included the music of The Monkees.

By the early '80s, I had a decent Monkees collection. I'd inherited copies of The Monkees and More Of The Monkees from my brother when he moved out of the house, I'd scored flea market copies of Headquarters and The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, found used copies of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. and Head, and acquired a beat-up copy of Changes. I had an RCA Record Club copy of Greatest Hits, and 45s of "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You"/"The Girl I Knew Somewhere" and "Daydream Believer"/"Goin' Down," maybe "D.W. Washburn," too. I didn't have Instant Replay or The Monkees Present, and had never even heard the former, but nonetheless: not bad for a twenty-year-old Monkees fan at a time when the entirety of the group's original catalog was long out of print.

I played the Monkees music I had, and I played it often, right alongside my punk and British Invasion and power pop and new wave. It all fit right together for me. I remember turning in for bed one evening, letting the sound of The Monkees' Changes lull us to sleep as it played at low volume on Brenda's little stereo. Our almost-slumber was interrupted by a knock at the door: the police, responding to a complaint from our downstairs neighbor, who insisted we were playing our goddamned music too goddamned loud. It would not be his last complaint in that area, but that's a story for another day.



My record store of choice was Main Street Records, the best little record store that ever was. Main Street owners Bill and Carol Yerger were believers. It was in Main Street's import section in late '80 or thereabouts that I first spied the manifestation of a seemingly impossible dream: a comprehensive double-LP set from Australia, promising "40 Timeless Hits From The Monkees." This was Monkeemania.



Sometimes, one should believe in miracles, I guess.

It's difficult to fully articulate the jolt of glee I felt when I saw this album. I mean, I already had the vast majority of the songs it contained, so it's not like this could serve as a dramatic upgrade of my meager Monkees holdings. But! It did fill in some gaps, with tracks from those elusive Instant Replay and The Monkees Present LPs. The track listing indicated a live version of "Circle Sky," and I just ached to hear a live cut by The Monkees. I don't know whether or not I realized that two of the tracks--"Steam Engine 99 [sic]" and "Love To Love"--were previously unreleased, but they were for damned sure new to me. I had to have this!

It was priced around $20, in low-wage 1980 money. I had to have it, sure, but I wouldn't be able to have it anytime soon.

In those days, I was at Main Street Records at least once a week anyway, sometimes more often than that. I studied the glittering prize that was Monkeemania on each visit. The LP wasn't sealed, and the Yergers were okay with allowing me to look inside the package and read the extensive liner notes. Those liner notes made me want it even more.




This cannot be overstated: Australian rock journalist Glenn A. Baker's liner notes essay for Monkeemania was not only the first serious attempt to tell the story of The Monkees without dismissing them outright; for years, it was the only such attempt. Decades later, I can't thank the Yergers enough for letting me stand back in the corner of their store to read and re-read again and again and again what Baker wrote. Baker's essay became an integral part of this set's appeal to me. Someday it would be mine.

Months passed. I'm not exaggerating. I was poor! And, y'know, still buying other records, too. But Monkeemania was still on the rack at Main Street, awaiting its predestined rendezvous with a believer. Look out, here comes tomorrow. At long last, tomorrow arrived. I walked into Main Street, made a bee-line for the back corner, plucked Monkeemania from its perch, and returned to the front counter. Bill Yerger smiled and said, Finally getting it, huh? I smiled in reply, giddy with the satisfaction of a vow fulfilled. I went back to my apartment to listen to Monkeemania.



Monkeemania is not quite sequenced chronologically, though it does begin with the familiar "(Theme From) The Monkees" and commences through the group's first three singles, including both the A- and B-sides of the monster second 45, "I'm A Believer" b/w "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone." So Side One bashes through the theme, single sides "Last Train To Clarksville," "Steppin' Stone," "Believer," and "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You," then plays the More Of The Monkees LP track "Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)," completing a hat trick of Neil Diamond's three Monkees compositions back-to-back. Another More Of The Monkees cut--Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart's stomping "She"--follows, and leads into Boyce & Hart's sublime "Words" from third album Pisces, then David Gates' "Saturday's Child" from the eponymous debut and Harry Nilsson's "Cuddly Toy" from Pisces. A perfect side of perfect rockin' pop.

Side Two launches right into the mother lode of Monkees songs written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King: the "Clarksville" B-side "Take A Giant Step," More Of The Monkees' sublime "Sometime In The Morning," the irresistible "Pleasant Valley Sunday" single, and the Pisces groupie kiss-off "Star Collector." "Sweet Young Thing," Goffin and King's first-album co-write with Michael Nesmith, flows into the sheer majesty of Goffin and King's "Porpoise Song (Theme From 'Head')," followed by the easygoing delight of its B-side "As We Go Along," written by King with Toni Stern. Songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil's complete Monkees c.v. follows, as we hear "Shades Of Gray" (the first Headquarters track so far) and "Love Is Only Sleeping" from Pisces. Side Two concludes with my first exposure to the Instant Replay track "The Girl I Left Behind Me," written by Carole Bayer Saga and Neil Sedaka. I confess that last track has never done anything for me.

After all these groupings of The Monkees' outside songwriters on the first two sides, Side Three explodes with songs written or co-written by members of the band: Nesmith's "Mary, Mary" from More Of The Monkees, Micky Dolenz's "Randy Scouse Git" from Headquarters, Davy Jones and Bill Chadwick's agreeably heavy "You And I" from Instant Replay, Nesmith's "Tapioca Tundra" from The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, Dolenz's incendiary "Mommy And Daddy" from The Monkees Present, Peter Tork and Joey Richards' shoulda-been-a-single "For Pete's Sake" from Headquarters, and Nesmith's country triumphs "Good Clean Fun" and "Listen To The Band," both from The Monkees Present. After some spoken-word audio clips of each Monkee (from the TV series episode "The Monkees On Tour"), the side closes with the rare treat of The Monkees playing live, savagely attacking Nesmith's "Circle Sky" in the concert sequence from their movie Head. If you're not a believer after hearing that, I say the devil can have you.

Monkeemania's fourth and final side serves up "Daydream Believer," the simply wonderful "What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round?," "D.W. Washburn," fave rave "Valleri," Instant Replay's "Looking For The Good Times" (first time I'd heard it, an instant winner for me), and the non-LP B-side "Someday Man." Then the underrated "Oh My My," Brenda's favorite Monkees track, is Monkeemania's sole representation from Changes.

But we're not done yet! Monkeemania continues with the first-ever release of two fantastic tracks from the vaults: "Steam Engine" (transferred to album directly from a TV broadcast) and another Neil Diamond song, "Love To Love," which immediately became my all-time favorite Davy Jones performance. The album closes with the B-side "Goin' Down," written by Dolenz, Tork, Jones, and Nesmith with Diane Hildebrand, and with "Tema Dei Monkees," a weird, badly-edited (but great!) rendition of  "(Theme From) The Monkees" sung in Italian by Micky.

Monkeemania does suffer from...well, let's call it less-than-pristine sound quality. What's the opposite of virgin vinyl? Gigolo vinyl? Jaded six-time divorcée vinyl? Even if the plastic were pure, it's just overloaded with ten tracks per side. It ain't exactly an audiophile release. The track selection is pretty swell, though one mourns the lack of "The Door Into Summer" from Pisces, and the absence of any of Nesmith's blockbuster trifecta from Headquarters--"You Told Me," "Sunny Girlfriend," and especially "You Just May Be The One"--borders on jarring. Yet believers absolve it of its flaws. It's somehow perfect after all. In 1981, it was the Monkees collection I needed.



The 1980s would turn out okay for The Monkees and their fans. Even before I bought Monkeemania, I received a Monkees t-shirt as a present for my 21st birthday. Some time well after that, during the summer of '81 or '82, I wore it to a bar for a live show by The Insiders, a young garage band that specialized in energetic '60s covers and like-minded originals. At one point late in their set, one of The Insiders said, Hey, I hear there's someone walkin' here around tonight in a Monkees t-shirt! This is the song he came to hear.  With that, The Insiders slammed into "Last Train To Clarksville," and I believe they also did "Steppin' Stone" before the night was done. It was the first time I had ever heard anyone--anyone--play a Monkees song live.

The crowd did not protest. There was no grass-roots revolt against the ludicrous idea of a rock 'n' roll group covering The Monkees. There was dancing. There was joy. I was not alone. There was belief.

Full-blown Monkeemania (without italics) made The Monkees pop stars again in 1986. I was managing a record store in Buffalo, and happy to help all of these young fans who'd seen The Monkees on MTV and became new believers overnight. There were rumbles of resistance--the odd sneer, the occasional rolled eye, the oozing condescension of the clueless--but they were the old guard. They did not believe. The rest of us, the ones who knew better? We were the young generation, and we had something to say.



My own copy of Monkeemania is long gone, the victim of shrinking available storage space, periodic record collection purges, and continuous upgrades. It was replaced by better sets, and those sets have in turn been replaced by even better sets. In 1991, I had an opportunity to review Rhino's four-CD Monkees retrospective Listen To The Band for Goldmine. I began that review by reflecting on what the music of The Monkees means, and what its value might be:

By choosing Listen To The Band as the title of this boxed set, Rhino has made it clear where the emphasis should be in reviewing The Monkees' recording career. Just by existing, this retrospective invites us to consider an intriguing what-if scenario: what if the memory of The Monkees had to stand on the music alone, deprived of the TV show image and Prefab Four hype? Can The Monkees be judged today as a legitimate musical force of the '60s (in spite of their artificial origins), or are they best discarded as mere cathode-ray background noise (in spite of their hit records), no more relevant than the incidental music from Bewitched or My Favorite Martian?

I betcha you can guess my answer to that question.

But by then, others were eager to agree. That was always true, I'm sure, but it was evident now. I'd found Monkees fans online, and read sincere appreciations of The Monkees in books and magazines. There were even a few rock critics who had seen the light. I once believed I was alone, that I was the solitary man immortalized in a hit record by a guy who used to write hits for The Monkees. I'll be what I am. But now, I finally knew: I wasn't alone. I was not alone at all.

I'm still not alone. I guess I never really was.

All Monkeemania scans courtesy of Monkees Live Almanac

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Our new compilation CD This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4 is now available from Kool Kat Musik! 29 tracks of irresistible rockin' pop, starring Pop Co-Op, Ray Paul, Circe Link & Christian Nesmith, Vegas With Randolph Featuring Lannie Flowers, The Slapbacks, P. Hux, Irene Peña, Michael Oliver & the Sacred Band Featuring Dave Merritt, The Rubinoos, Stepford Knives, The Grip Weeds, Popdudes, Ronnie Dark, The Flashcubes,Chris von Sneidern, The Bottle Kids, 1.4.5., The Smithereens, Paul Collins' Beat, The Hit Squad, The Rulers, The Legal Matters, Maura & the Bright Lights, Lisa Mychols, and Mr. Encrypto & the Cyphers. You gotta have it, so order it here.

Vinyl Countdown: The Relative Popularity Of MY LP APPRECIATIONS

Tomorrow marks the second anniversary of Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), so I've been looking back at the relative popularity of some of my posts thus far. On Monday, we looked back at my posts about individual songs (The Greatest Record Ever Made) and posts about live concerts on Tuesday (Virtual Ticket Stub Gallery). Today, let's go to the ol' album rack for some LP appreciations.

I have five similar series bundled under the group title My LP Appreciations. Best Of Everything covers greatest-hits and best-of sets, but I have yet to actually write an entry in that series (other than a general introduction); I'll get to it, I promise! Love At First Spin was suggested by Steve Stoeckel, and it details albums I loved from start to finish from the first time I heard them; after a foreword, there have been three editions of Love At First Spin to date. Second-Hand Sound, focused on individual used LPs I plainly appreciated more than some clueless previous owner, has seen just one entry so far, but it was a popular one. There has also been but a single edition of Rescued From The Budget Bin!'s coverage of cut-outs, remainders, and cheapies. Finally, Groove Gratitude (A Gift Of Music) deals with albums I received as gifts; it was introduced here, and has seen two full-fledged entries so far.

Here are the links to all seven of My LP Appreciations, ranked from most-viewed to least-viewed.:

1. The Monkees: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd.



I'm not sure that I could quite narrow down my list of great used LP purchases sufficiently to name one as my all-time # 1 greatest second-hand album. But man, that copy of The Monkees' 1967 gem Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. I bought for fifty cents in '77 would have to be a contender.

2. The Hollies: The Very Best Of The Hollies



My first Hollies album. I had no idea of the world of wonder awaiting me.

3. The Barracudas: Drop Out With The Barracudas



The Barracudas' 1981 debut album Drop Out With The Barracudas isn't all that obscure--the group did chart in the UK--but it's the least-known among the albums I've examined in the My LP Appreciations essays. Whether obscure or familiar, it was my favorite album of the '80s, and the obvious choice for the inaugural Love At First Spin.

4. The Byrds: Mr. Tambourine Man




I'd nearly forgotten how much I loved The Byrds' 1965 debut.

5. The Ramones: Rocket To Russia



My first Ramones record was the 45 of "Sheena Is A Punk Rocker" (aka The Record That Changed My Life). My first Ramones album was their 1976 eponymous debut. But Rocket To Russia was likely the most important Ramones LP for me, and I bought it shortly after I'd met a girl who would wind up being pretty important to me, too.

6. The Beatles: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band




7. The Beatles: The White Album



Given the prevailing and pervasive (and justified) popularity of The Beatles, and considering how much positive feedback I received for my two Beatles album essays, I'm shocked (Yeah, shocked. Shocked.) and stunned (Yeah, stunned. Very stunned.) that those two are the least-viewed of My LP Appreciations. Go figure. Maybe Blue Meanies are handling the stats? Granted, both of these cover a period in The Beatles' career that interests me less than what came before it; I regard The Beatles' released work from 1964 through '66 as the finest body of pop music ever done, and I've often made public note of that preference. But I love the later stuff too.



TOMORROW: Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) celebrates its second birthday with an unranked listing of some of my favorite blog entries outside of My LP Appreciations. Join me! I'm here every day.

TIP THE BLOGGER: CC's Tip Jar!

You can support this blog by becoming a patron on Patreon: Fund me, baby! 

Our new compilation CD This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio, Volume 4 is now available from Kool Kat Musik! 29 tracks of irresistible rockin' pop, starring Pop Co-Op, Ray Paul, Circe Link & Christian Nesmith, Vegas With Randolph Featuring Lannie Flowers, The Slapbacks, P. Hux, Irene Peña, Michael Oliver & the Sacred Band Featuring Dave Merritt, The Rubinoos, Stepford Knives, The Grip Weeds, Popdudes, Ronnie Dark, The Flashcubes,Chris von Sneidern, The Bottle Kids, 1.4.5., The Smithereens, Paul Collins' Beat, The Hit Squad, The Rulers, The Legal Matters, Maura & the Bright Lights, Lisa Mychols, and Mr. Encrypto & the Cyphers. You gotta have it, so order it here.