you don’t need to be an english major to love this song. but it sure helps.

i suppose it could also be said that you don’t have to be on acid to appreciate this gem. but i suspect it helps as well. (of course, i wouldn’t know about that sort of thing.)

this little gem, rejoyce, is grace slick at her most experimental and trippy, straight off of the epic after bathing at baxter’s. i often wonder whether fans freaked out or rejoiced when they caught a whiff of this beauteous work, as the  airplane definitely moved away from their commercial hits like somebody to love on this LP. in fact, this is the sort of overblown psychedelic music that gets pooh poohed in certain circles and doesn’t usually withstand the test of time.  (i mean, seriously –titles like  schizoforest love suite?)

but even though i have been known to poke fun at some works by artists who started to take themselves waaaay too seriously, i adore this song. quietly and stealthily, of course. after all, its the sort of piece that is an acquired taste.

in short, sid vicious would not have approved.

so you are welcome to listen to it. and laugh at me.

and wonder whether i require medication because i love this piece so.

worth watching, if only to see the multicolored pants on mickey.

Floatin down the river
With a saturated liver
And I wish I could forgive her
But I do believe she meant it
When she told me to forget it
And I bet she will regret it
When they find me in the morning wet and drowned
And the word gets round
Goin down
Goin down

please don’t tell me i am the only one out there who thrilled to see the monkees on TV when i was little. america’s prefab answer to the beatles, the monkees were put together to do what they were told, which pretty much meant acting zany and singing some amazing songs created by people like neil diamond (when he was remotely cool) and boyce and hart.  they had hits, they had fun, and then, they wanted to do what most other groups could do: sing and play and write their own stuff.

(cue ominous music here.)

don kirshner, who pretty much controlled them, would not have it. and after some warring, eventually, they were set free, to be bizarre (anyone out there ever see the movie head?) and then, ultimately to languish. they released stuff over the years and were brilliant (mike nesmith is famous for having come up with the idea for something known as music television.) that music television idea became huge (without nesmith, i believe) and ultimately, started airing old monkees’ episodes. they toured again, had a mild hit, and then sort of went on with their lives.

i was a very, very little girl when this stuff first aired — and yes, i watched it when it was airing when i was 3 or so. i think they were my first taste of psychedelia, with crazy, swirling colors and interesting references. goin down was the B side to monster hit daydream believer, and i just simply loved mickey’s scatting. sure, davy jones was definitely the cutest, but when i was 3, cutest didn’t mean a lot to me. what meant something to me? great music. even then. and mickey was the very best frontman, with an expressive voice and magnetic presence that even i, a preschooler, understood.

but i think i loved the show and the monkees most of all because i was always secretly hoping that the beatles would show up. while the monkees and the beatles have met over the years (and even worked together: peter shows up on george’s wonderwall), they never all ended up on the monkees show. i don’t know what i was waiting for, but i waited and waited and waited. to no avail.

oh, sad little me.

anyway, years later, i wonder whether there is a place in the rock and roll hall of fame for them. they brought rock to TV in a fresh way, and that alone is worth admission in my book. who cares whether they played their own instruments? i don’t. i think at least there should be some sort of special award, as the monkees broke ground by introducing rock — real rock, mid 60s style —  to the masses who never strayed from AM radio. right smack into their living rooms.

and from that point on, it was clear that the monkees were goin’ down a path less taken.

america. love it or heave it.

get a bunch of military brats together in england and let them name themselves after a homeland they rarely see. voila! you’ve got america. while they don’t have the same pull that they had in the mid-1970s, you gotta give these guys some props, even if their music inspires you to leave the country.

after all, this music was heavy, to use the parlance of the day. lots of people spent hours trying to decipher whether horse with no name was about heroin. (and some even named albums after snippets of the lyrics.) a blogging friend recently mused over whether the band spoke the truth about alligator lizards in the air above ventura highway. and lest we forget their deep cover of muskrat love, a song that makes me hurl, no matter who sings it.

yeah, if you get the sense that i tend to be somewhat ambivalent about this music from my childhood, i suppose you’d be spot-on. i’m not big on songs about dancing rodents or flying reptiles or even anonymous fillys. but there is one song i absolutely have always loved: daisy jane.   there’s something so straightforward and honest about this song, a love song where the singer wavers between certainty of his love being returned and a little uncertainty:

Do you really love me
I hope you do
Like the stars above me
How I love you
When its cold at night
Everythings alright

despite the fact that i have never understood what temperature had to do with the singer’s sureness of love, there’s something so simply plaintive about those words. and the melody is very pretty and fits the simple words well.

okay.  i’ll admit that i like sister golden hair, too, though i’ve always wondered whether sister golden hair surprise is some sort of lunch bargain, like the happy waitress special.

but that’s pretty much it. not saying anything else for fear of being banished from the nation.