American singer, songwriter and guitarist
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14 episodes with Ben Gibbard
6 episodes with Ben Gibbard
3 episodes with Ben Gibbard
4 episodes with Ben Gibbard
4 episodes with Ben Gibbard
3 episodes with Ben Gibbard
2 episodes with Ben Gibbard
2 episodes with Ben Gibbard
2 episodes with Ben Gibbard
Natalie Lew is a Seattle based songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and founding member of Sea Lemon. Sea Lemon's dream fuzz pop debut LP, Diving For A Prize, is out May 30th via Luminelle Recordings. Natalie shares her performance adjacent music experience growing up in the Seattle music scene and how a move to New York led her to the picking up a guitar and singing. Joe and Natalie discuss the observational approach to her lyrics, and she explains the refrain on the song Stay, a current single. Natalie tells us how Crystals (feat. Ben Gibbard) was transformed from a big rock song to a darker shoe gazer and why the drums (Sean T. Lane) remain the center piece. We learn why the direction and sound of Diving For A Prize exposed a new musicality within herself and we hear a couple new tunes Sea Lemon Luminelle Records Tour Stories is now supported by @tandemdrums, maker of Drops drum mutes. Joe's absolute favorite drummute for live, rehearsal and the studio. visit Tandem Drums Please visit and support Izotope and Distrokid for continued exclusive listener discounts. Izotope is the leader in audio repair, mixing and mastering. Ruinous uses Izotope and you should too. Trust us. The best way to get your music into the worlds ears is Distrokid. Artist keep 100% of their royalties and their mobile app is smartly designed, easy to use and perfectly intuitive.
The New Scene - Episode 278: Rocky Votolato (Suzzallo / Solo Artist / Waxwing) Keith sits down with Rocky Votolato to discuss getting sober, adjusting to life without alcohol, the genesis of Rocky's new band Suzzallo formed after the passing of his child Kienan and how the band became a creative outlet to channel his grief. We also discuss Suzzallo's creative process, the writing of their debut LP "The Quiet Year", collaborating with Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For a Cutie on the LP, Suzzallo's future plans, Rocky's early life in Seattle, his introduction to the music scene and witnessing the first Foo Fighters show, his early bands including Waxwing and some of their history, how Rocky transitioned to performing solo and more.
Will and Anurag discuss new releases by Deafheaven, The Limiñanas, and The Murder Capital, plus random banter and bonus songs.
Everyone knows the hit track “There She Goes,” a song that sounds like it has always existed and emerged into the world fully formed by the hand of God. Liverpudlian band The La's made that perfect song, and according to the many musicians it influenced, including Oasis' Liam Gallagher or our guest, Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service, a nearly perfect album, and then basically never put anything out again. Join Yasi and Ben as they talk about one of the most interesting, mysterious, and secretly influential bands from the UK. EPISODE PLAYLIST: Listen to the songs we talk about HERE CREDITS: Host: Yasi Salek @yasisalek Guest: Ben Gibbard Producer: Liz Sánchez Audio Editor: Adrian Bridges Additional Production Supervision: Justin Sayles Theme Song: Bethany Cosentino Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
ELYELLA ft ELEM - Nadie Lo Podrá CambiarLORI MEYERS - Hacerte VolarNIÑA POLACA - Viaje de EstudiosREPION - Viernes (con Rufus T. Firefly)RUFUS T. FIREFLY - Me Has Conocido En Un Momento Extraño De Mi VidaLADY BANANA - La Casa MagnéticaARDE BOGOTÁ - Flores de VenganzaEVA RYJLEN - MetafísicaCORIZONAS - Principio y FinalJULIEN BAKER & TORRES – TuesdaySUZZALLO - Tsunami Waves (ft BEN GIBBARD)DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE - Gold RushL.A. - Reach The TopLITTLE SIMZ - FloodFRANZ FERDINAND - ToxicMIKEL IZAL, XIMENA SARIÑANA - Nada Importa TantoFONTAINES D.C. - It's Amazing To Be YoungEscuchar audio
Ten years ago, Nick Sanborn & Amelia Meath (Sylvan Esso) exploded onto the indie music scene with their unique electro-pop sound and mysterious aura.Since then, they've played some of the biggest stages in the world and have even created their own record label in their adopted hometown of Durham, NC. In this conversation, Nick and Amelia reflect on their chance meeting and the remix that sparked their creative/life partnership; how they blended their musical styles after touring for years with other bands; and why songwriting sometimes feels like fishing. Catch Sylvan Esso's latest tour dates here: https://www.sylvanesso.com/tour Links from the Show: Hey Mami on YouTubeSylvan Esso performing 'Coffee' live at Coachella on April 17, 2015 For more conversations like this with musicians like Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie, go to https://www.thegreatcreators.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Fellow music lovers, you are in for a treat, because for this episode we are diving head-first into a full-on rock concert of epic proportions. Join us for the 13th annual SMooCH benefit show at The Showbox in Seattle, where our community, this year alone, has raised over $2.2 million dollars for Uncompensated Care at Seattle Children's Hospital. We've mentioned SMooCH before on the Nordy Pod way back in episode 3 with Megan Jasper, and again in episode 29 with Dr. Jeff Sperring, but we've never actually taken you to the show itself. If you're new to the Nordy Pod; SMooCH, which stands for Seattle Musicians for Children's Hospital, is an event that was started by Pete Nordstrom and his wife, Brandy, in 2012 after their own experience needing the care of Seattle Children's Hospital. In this episode you'll learn more about the Uncompensated Care program from return Nordy Pod guest, CEO of Seattle Children's Hospital, Dr. Jeff Sperring, you'll hear from one of the many patient families that have been directly impacted by the support of the Uncompensated Care fund, and you'll hear from Megan Jasper, CEO of Sub-Pop Records, who talks about what it takes to pull together a mind-blowing rock concert like SMooCH. On top of all that you'll get to hear from a few of the incredible musicians that agreed to come play the event this year. Since the very first show SMooCH has consistently managed to bring iconic artists to the Showbox, like Macklemore, Modest Mouse, Ben Gibbard, Iron and Wine, The New Pornographers, The Head and the Heart, Sir Mix-a-Lot, Phantogram, and so many more. This year's event is no different. Prepare yourself for this all-star lineup featuring Doug Martsch from Built to Spill, Sebadoh, Duff McKagen, of Guns n' Roses and Velvet Revolver, and the headliner, Nude Dragons, which are the reunited members from Soundgarden. We're very grateful to all of the musicians who showed up to donate their time and talents, we're grateful for those who helped organize the event, and we're super proud of our community that has donated to date over $30 million dollars to the Uncompensated Care fund. Thanks for tuning in to episode 77. We hope you enjoy it! Did you know that YOU can be on The Nordy Pod? This show isn't just a one-way conversation. We want to hear about what Nordstrom looks like through your eyes. Share your Nordstrom experience, good or bad, by giving us a call and leaving a voicemail at: 206.594.0526, or send an email to nordypodcast@nordstrom.com to be a part of the conversation! And, be sure to follow us on Instagram @thenordypod to stay up to date on new episodes, announcements and more.
The glove compartment is inaccurately named, but Know Your Writes! is right on the money! In another special New Year's episode, Robb and Colton welcome returning guest Alex Periera (Birthday Dad) as the trio breakdown Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism. Other topics include: - Alex, Robb, and Colton's favorite songs of the year - the origins of "Giraffic Park" - whether or not Ben Gibbard is fun at parties Artists mentioned in this episode: - The Shins - Will Smith - Mount Eerie - Mk.gee - Rose and Bruno Mars - Streetlight Manifesto - Motion City Soundtrack - Thursday - Blink 182 - Bright Eyes - The Postal Service
With a career spanning decades, Tom Hanks has embodied more unforgettable characters than most actors have roles.This episode brings back Tom's inspiring conversation with Guy Raz from 2023, where he shares his journey through film—from early breakout roles to timeless classics—and his process of breathing life into each character.You'll also learn how Tom deals with nerves and self-consciousness on set; what Joe DiMaggio and Paul Newman told him about performance anxiety; and why he believes ‘bringing an idea' is the secret to success.Links from the show:Tom and Peter Scolari in Bosom BuddiesTom and Daryl Hannah in SplashThe cross-country running scene from Forrest GumpThe execution scene from The Green MileTom as Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger in Sullly: plane crash in the Hudson sceneTom as Colonel Tom Parker in Baz Luhrmann's ElvisThe real Colonel Tom Parker in an interview on ABC Trailer for A Man Called OttoFor more conversations like this – with guests ranging from Jason Sudeikis to Anna Kendrick to Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie – go to https://www.thegreatcreators.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Calling all aspiring TikTok stars! Get ready to learn from the best as former wrestler and current TikTok influencer, DJ Buttafuoco (played by Sean O'Connor), joins the Geoff and Whisp Show for a masterclass on conquering the platform! Raising Cane's Review Extravaganza: Dive into DJ Buttafuoco's hilarious obsession with the fast-food chain Raising Cane's, and his quest to review every location! His Son's TikTok Account: Buttafuoco explains how he gained control of his son's TikTok account and his motivations for taking it! Dead & Co. Ticket Giveaway: Win tickets to see Dead & Co. at Val Verde's iconic Big Ball venue (think Las Vegas Sphere, but bigger!) Sir Chompington's Foodie Adventures: Meet DJ Buttafuoco's nephew, Sir Chompington, another rising TikTok star reviewing all the Sharney's locations in Val Verde (prepare to be charmed by his voice!) Plus, discuss the state of the entertainment industry with a satirical review of Eric Clapton's latest remake, "No Heaven '27.” Geoff and Whisp get it all out with a new segment, “I'm Fucking Sick Of It!” And wait until you hear Whisp's “Ben Gibbard” impression! Sponsored by: Spurtz, Shetland Creameries, Betbones, Channel 8's "Spatterfucks" Guest: Sean O'Connor (Solar Opposites, Close Enough, The Late Late Show with James Corden) Love 108.9 The Hawk? Here's how to get more: Subscribe to the podcast! Get official merch: http://tee.pub/lic/goodrockshirts Early access & bonus shows: https://patreon.com/1089thehawk Follow us on social media: YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, Threads Learn more: https://1089thehawk.com
Join me as I talk to record producer/engineer, Steve Fisk. As a musician, he has been in bands such as the instrumental alternative/indie rock band Pell Mell and the electronic band Pigeonhed. He has long been associated with the Pacific Northwest music scenes recording such artists as Nirvana, Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, Unwound, Ben Gibbard, the Wedding Present, Beat Happening and much more! Fun talk.
Chef Christina stops by the garage to talk about her travels and how a 3 star restaurant in Japan molded the service model at 84 Yesler. Ben Gibbard stops by to borrow some sugar and give a new theme song. Listen to the very end to find about a fun new project Syd has been working on.
Our guest today is the incredibly talented multi-instrumentalist and producer Chaz Bear, better known to the world as Toro Y Moi. A pioneer of the chillwave genre in the 2010s, Chaz has continually evolved his sound, pushing musical boundaries with each release. Last week, he dropped his eighth studio album, Hole Erth, a genre-blending masterpiece that fuses Y2K emo and hip-hop, featuring collaborations with Kevin Abstract and Ben Gibbard. In today's episode, we sit down with Chaz to explore the creative process behind Hole Erth, dive into his early emo influences, and talk about how he finally found the perfect track to collaborate on with Ben Gibbard. Plus, we get a sneak peek at when we might see Toro Y Moi returning to Australia.Toro Y Moi: Instagram / SpotifyPurchase Hole Erth here and AUS exclusive here.Visit our official website here and follow us across our socials.
On this super special birthday episode, Kayleigh shows Ryan "13 Going On 30" for her 30th! Listen in as Ryan breaks out his Ben Gibbard impression and Kayleigh becomes so embarrassed by her pronunciation of "hierarchy" that she must move. Interruption: "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" by Wang Chung --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mademeview/support
We recorded this episode with Ben Gibbard and Lori LeFavor before a live audience at Easy Street Records in West Seattle on August 1, 2024. Lori LeFavor is the most prolific all-ages concert promoter in Seattle--and perhaps the US. Starting from age 17 and over the next 30 years, Lori hosted more than 3,000 shows across the Northwest. Her home base during the 90s was RKCNDY, a much-loved all-ages venue where she hosted every major (and minor) band of the era. And she did it all as an independent, woman-owned business. Ben Gibbard is the lead singer, songwriter and bandleader of Death Cab for Cutie and the Postal Service. Before he sold millions of records and toured the world with his bands, he started playing music and going to shows as a teenager growing up in Bremerton, WA, across the Puget Sound from Seattle. He's been an advocate for all-ages music ever since and remains one to this day. We can only make podcasts like Let the Kids Dance! because listeners support us. You have the power! Make the show happen by making a gift to KUOW. Support KUOW Podcasts: https://kuow.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Our newest member of the 'Three Timer Club,' renowned music journalist / author / photographer Michael Goldberg, joins us this week to discuss some of the most iconic images of the classic alternative era. What are some of the photos, logos, and icons that come to YOUR mind? The first-ever collection of Addicted To Noise founder and former Rolling Stone senior writer Michael Goldberg's photographs, Jukebox: Photographs 1967-2023 (Hozac Books), features an impressive array of underground figures and outcast luminaries captured in their natural habitat, most seen here for the first time anywhere. Bridging the gaps between the late ‘60s psychedelic era, primitive first-wave ‘70s punk and soul & reggae, as well as never-before seen images of country & folk iconoclasts and rule-breakers across the spectrum of all that is captivating, and even including some modern artists still making waves, Jukebox is a riveting photography collection that truly feels as good as it looks. The photos in JUKEBOX are drawn from the thousands he's taken over the years. Included are photos of the Sex Pistols, Crime, the Ramones, the Avengers, Devo, the Nuns, the Clash, Tom Verlaine, Lou Reed, John Cale and the Dils as well as Tom Waits, Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, Janis Joplin, Ben Gibbard, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Muddy Waters, Toots and the Maytals, Patti Smith, Bettye LaVette, the Who, Neil Young, Jonathan Richman, Townes Van Zandt, the Flamin' Groovies, and many many more. Photos from JUKEBOX will be on display from July 25 through September 22, 2024 at the Haight Street Art Center in San Francisco, where the exhibition, We Are the One: San Francisco Punk 1970s & 1980s, curated by Goldberg, will also be featured during those two months. Oh, and bonus! We play the latest in a series of world famous O3L games, "Record Rack of the Mind." Proud members of the Pantheon Podcasts family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Subscribe to Throwing Fits on Substack. Our interview with Tory y Moi means it's time to bear down. Toro aka Chaz Bear—whose new album Hole Erth is out September 6th—got deep on Ben Davis vs. Dickies, buying rare Japanese sandals and eating flexitarian tacos in NYC, channeling both his inner barsman and angsty suburban kid on his latest project, going dad mode, he's a musicals guy, working with rappers and Tyler, The Creator's studio sessions, taking the time and care and respect to study a new genre before incorporating it into his music, the Realtree revolution, Swagapinos and karaoke, hitting up Ben Gibbard for a feature, the real reasons why so many artists today switch up their sound, what's up with Les Sins, we fill Chaz in on his long history with our baby boy Chuck, realizing you unintentionally went stadium status, popularity perks and how even his lovely and humble ass has switched up, being just a scene kid who fell in love with a scene girl, getting teased as a kid and how much it costs to change your last name so you stop getting bullied, working at Chick-fil-A and Wendy's, Chaz can have Doritos on the road as a little treat, hoodwinking yourself into designing right wing political propaganda and trolling back, the one tee in one tee out rule, macro thoughts on the post-Online Ceramics world of graphic tees and mixing the Gen Z digital dystopian vibes with artisanal grown man swag, Tumblr trend cycles, defend the Bay Area at all costs if you love tech, still rocking Yeezys, hotel snobbery and much more on Toro y Moi's interview with The Only Podcast That Matters™.
Our newest member of the 'Three Timer Club,' renowned music journalist / author / photographer Michael Goldberg, joins us this week to discuss some of the most iconic images of the classic alternative era. What are some of the photos, logos, and icons that come to YOUR mind? The first-ever collection of Addicted To Noise founder and former Rolling Stone senior writer Michael Goldberg's photographs, Jukebox: Photographs 1967-2023 (Hozac Books), features an impressive array of underground figures and outcast luminaries captured in their natural habitat, most seen here for the first time anywhere. Bridging the gaps between the late ‘60s psychedelic era, primitive first-wave ‘70s punk and soul & reggae, as well as never-before seen images of country & folk iconoclasts and rule-breakers across the spectrum of all that is captivating, and even including some modern artists still making waves, Jukebox is a riveting photography collection that truly feels as good as it looks. The photos in JUKEBOX are drawn from the thousands he's taken over the years. Included are photos of the Sex Pistols, Crime, the Ramones, the Avengers, Devo, the Nuns, the Clash, Tom Verlaine, Lou Reed, John Cale and the Dils as well as Tom Waits, Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, Janis Joplin, Ben Gibbard, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Muddy Waters, Toots and the Maytals, Patti Smith, Bettye LaVette, the Who, Neil Young, Jonathan Richman, Townes Van Zandt, the Flamin' Groovies, and many many more. Photos from JUKEBOX will be on display from July 25 through September 22, 2024 at the Haight Street Art Center in San Francisco, where the exhibition, We Are the One: San Francisco Punk 1970s & 1980s, curated by Goldberg, will also be featured during those two months. Oh, and bonus! We play the latest in a series of world famous O3L games, "Record Rack of the Mind." Proud members of the Pantheon Podcasts family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
What's your most loved and least favorite song on Guided By Voices' 492nd album Bee Thousand?! Adam overcame his fear of assigning a 20 song record because he felt we needed to do more indie classics. Fun to hear his three co-hosts' take on a challenging 1994 lo-fi listen that was once named by Amazon music writers as the #1 indie album of all-time. We get a surprise Zoom visit from longtime 91X program director Garett Michaels (check out an extra ten minutes of his golden throat soon on Youtube) and remote opinions from Jon Wurster (Superchunk/Mountain Goats/Best Show) and Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows). Request episode results before the end credits! Listen at WeWillRankYouPod.com, Apple, Spotify and your local Thighland podcast shoppe. Follow us and weigh in with your favorites on Facebook, Instagram & Threads and Twitter @wewillrankyoupod . Jon Auer, Awful Bliss, The Baseball Project, Bee Thousand, Big Fan of the Pigpen, British singing voice, Buzzards and Dreadful Crows, Cobra Verde, Dayton, Demons Are Real, drinking, Echos Myron, epicly long live shows, Ester's Day, ever-changing band lineups, ex post facto, Jason Falkner, farewells, Kevin Fennell, FM 94/9, four track, GBV, Ben Gibbard, Gold Star for Robot Boy, The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory, Guided By Voices, Hardcore UFO's, Tim Heidecker, Her Psychology Today, Hot Freaks, I Am a Scientist, I Am A Tree, Kicker of Elves, lofi recording, Matador Records, Scott McCaughey, Garrett Michaels, Mincer Ray, the Minus 5, mouse ears, the National, necklace of 50 eyes, Neutral Milk Hotel, 1994, 91X, no hitter, nondairy creamer, Ohio, out of tune guitars, Peep-Hole, Bob Pollard, popular mechanics, the Posies, production manager, prolific, Queen of Cans and Jars, rapeseed, reunions, rock moves, Rookie Card, short songs, Sloan, Smothered in Hugs, the Soft Rock Renegades, Tobin Sprout, Superchunk, Suzanne & The Summerz, the Textbook Committee, Tractor Rape Chain, wayward miners, Jon Wurster, years spent teaching, You're Not an Airplane, Yours to Keep US: http://www.WeWillRankYouPod.com wewillrankyoupod@gmail.com NEW! Host tips: Venmo @wewillrankyoupodhttp://www.facebook.com/WeWillRankYouPodhttp://www.instagram.com/WeWillRankYouPodhttps://www.threads.net/@WeWillRankYouPodhttp://www.twitter.com/WeWillRankYouPo http://www.YourOlderBrother.com(Sam's music page) http://www.YerDoinGreat.com (Adam's music page)https://open.spotify.com/user/dancecarbuzz (Dan's playlists)
Ben Gibbard is the voice of the bands Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service. He talks about Death Cab's scrappy start, recording their classic album Transatlanticism, how the band learned to defuse internal tensions, and how he approaches songwriting in middle age. This episode was recorded in 2023.Links from the Show: Ben's Tiny Desk ConcertBen breaks down his song "Black Sun"Death Cab for Cutie video for "I Will Follow You Into The Dark"Death Cab for Cutie video for "Soul Meets Body"The Postal Service video for "Such Great Heights" For more conversations like this – with guests ranging from Tom Hanks to Bjork to Jason Sudeikis – go to https://www.thegreatcreators.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Welcome to the PodFam Amy! On Episode 113 we welcome Amy Mowers to the podcast and we get to learn all about her and her new book, DNF: Rising from the Ashes!Amy Mower, a seasoned ultra runner, shares her experiences from the 48-hour World Championship race in Hungary, her unique approach to nutrition during the race, and her upcoming race plans. She also discusses her background, training, and the challenges of ultra running. Amy Mower discusses her experience with ultra running, including 48-hour races, 6-day races, and the challenges of recovery. She also shares insights into her book 'DNF Rising From the Ashes' and her journey into running and writing. The conversation covers self-publishing, book editing, and marketing strategies. The conversation covers a range of topics including book publishing, ultra running, and travel experiences. Amy Mower shares insights about her book, the process of self-publishing, and her upcoming races. She also discusses her experiences in Budapest and her sponsorship with Mount Tocco shoes. The conversation concludes with a lighthearted segment on 'Code Brown Commandments' for ultra runners. Amy Mower shares her experience of running ultra races and the importance of not wasting time during the race. She introduces the concept of 'fiddle f***ing around' and how it can impact race performance. The conversation also touches on Amy's encounter with Ben Gibbard, her involvement with the Culture Trail Running podcast, and her upcoming trip to Budapest.During the Tros, Eric and Erika discover Eric's AI voice, you want to hear this!TakeawaysAmy Mower's unconventional approach to nutrition during the 48-hour race highlights the importance of adaptability and creativity in ultra running.The challenges and rewards of ultra running are evident in Amy Mower's experiences, showcasing the mental and physical fortitude required for such events.Amy Mower's upcoming race plans and training insights provide valuable perspectives for aspiring ultra runners and enthusiasts. Insights into the world of ultra running and the challenges of recovery after 48-hour and 6-day races.The process of self-publishing a book, including editing, cover design, and marketing strategies.Amy Mower's journey into running, her experience with DNFs, and the inspiration behind her book 'DNF Rising From the Ashes'. Insights into the process of self-publishing a bookExperiences and insights from ultra running racesTravel experiences and adventures in BudapestSponsorship and the role of shoes in long-distance runningLighthearted 'Code Brown Commandments' for ultra runners The concept of 'fiddle f***ing around' refers to wasting time during an ultra race, which can significantly impact race performance.Amy Mower's encounter with Ben Gibbard, the lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie, and his involvement in ultra running.The importance of time management and avoiding distractions during ultra races to achieve optimal performance.Amy Mower's upcoming trip to Budapest and her involvement with the Culture Trail Running podcast.Strava GroupLinktree - Find everything hereInstagram - Follow us on the gram YouTube - Subscribe to our channel Patreon - Support usThreadsEmail us at OnTheRunsPod@gmail.com
Welcome to the 2nd Season of Just Add Music!For this series, we are delving into the behind the scenes of the composing process by tracking the lifecycle of 2 short music commissions from start to finish. The pieces in question? Two 1-minute orchestra overtures for the bands Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service to open their 20th Anniversary Tour in 2023 and 2024.Join Minna as she walks through the ups and downs of the composing process and works through ideation, brainstorming, sketching, editing and execution for these two short pieces.Thank you to Ben Gibbard for bringing in me for this writing assignment, I had a blast! And to anyone who's ever been curious to try writing music themselves, I hope this series makes the process more approachable!Please enjoy the 2nd season of Just Add Music (with Minna)!Production Credits:Host, Composer, Music/Audio Editing: Minna ChoiProducer, Story Editor: Nicole WongMusic Credits:1) The District Sleeps Alone Tonight - The Postal Service2) Such Great Heights - The Postal Service3) Sleeping In - The Postal Service4) Nothing Better - The Postal Service5) Recycled Air - The Postal Service6) Clark Gable - The Postal Service7) At Last - Etta James8) Gilraen's Memorial - Howard Shore9) Olympics Fanfare - John Williams10) National Anthem - The Postal Service11) Clarinet Concerto in A Major, K. 622: II. Adagio - W.A. Mozart, Jaime Martin, Andrew Marriner, London Symphony Orchestra12) The Marriage of Figaro Overture - W.A. Mozart, London Philharmonic, Alfred Scholz
Welcome to the 2nd Season of Just Add Music! For this series, we are delving into the behind the scenes of the composing process by tracking the lifecycle of 2 short music commissions from start to finish. The pieces in question? Two 1-minute orchestra overtures for the bands Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service to open their 20th Anniversary Tour in 2023 and 2024. Join Minna as she walks through the ups and downs of the composing process and works through ideation, brainstorming, sketching, editing and execution for these two short pieces. Thank you to Ben Gibbard for bringing in me for this writing assignment, I had a blast! And to anyone who's ever been curious to try writing music themselves, I hope this series makes the process more approachable!Please enjoy the 2nd season of Just Add Music (with Minna)!Production Credits:Host, Composer, Music/Audio Editing: Minna ChoiProducer, Story Editor: Nicole WongMusic Credits:1) Magik Overture - Death Cab For Cutie with The Magik*Magik Orchestra (live)2) Kat 004 - Ghost Girl3) Tamara 004 - Ghost Girl4) Shaya 001 - Ghost Girl 5) Different Names for the Same Thing - Death Cab For Cutie with The Magik*Magik Orchestra (live)
Welcome to the 2nd Season of Just Add Music!For this series, we are delving into the behind the scenes of the composing process by tracking the lifecycle of 2 short music commissions from start to finish. The pieces in question? Two 1-minute orchestra overtures for the bands Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service to open their 20th Anniversary Tour in 2023 and 2024.Join Minna as she walks through the ups and downs of the composing process and works through ideation, brainstorming, sketching, editing and execution for these two short pieces.Thank you to Ben Gibbard for bringing in me for this writing assignment, I had a blast! And to anyone who's ever been curious to try writing music themselves, I hope this series makes the process more approachable!Please enjoy the 2nd season of Just Add Music (with Minna)!Production Credits:Host, Composer, Music/Audio Editing: Minna ChoiProducer, Story Editor: Nicole WongMusic Credits:1) Shaya 006 - Ghost Girl2) Gone with the Wind Main Title - Max Steiner3) West Side Story Prologue - Leonard Bernstein4) Kat 005 - Ghost Girl5) Transatlanticism - Death Cab for Cutie 6) Such Great Heights - The Postal Service 7) Camille 001 - Ghost Girl 8) Such Great Heights - The Postal Service
Have you ever lost something or someone dear to you? Though it ranges in severity and impact, loss is a shared human experience – an inevitable, inescapable part of life. Praised for her humor and sharp wit, essayist and novelist Sloane Crosley delivers her first memoir Grief is for People, exploring how loss can take many forms. After the pain and confusion of losing her closest friend Russell to suicide – which occurred only a month after also losing prized possessions and her sense of safety following a burglary – Crosley looks for answers, even where they may be elusive. She seeks solace not only in those close to her but in art and philosophy as well, hoping for a useful framework outside the oft-cited five stages of grief. Crosley's readership may not have seen this side of the author, but will nevertheless recognize those observations and examinations of the human condition interlaced with levity that popularized her earlier writings. Grief Is for People seeks to upend the traditional grief memoir and offer both consolation and challenge to standard conceptions of mourning. Crosley's talk is for anyone in a current time of sorrow or who has experienced a loss and might welcome a discussion beyond platitudes. Sloane Crosley is the author of the novels Cult Classic and The Clasp and three essay collections: Look Alive Out There and the New York Times bestsellers I Was Told There'd Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number. Benjamin Gibbard is a multi-platinum, Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is the lead vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter of Death Cab for Cutie, formed in 1997, and one half of the electronic duo The Postal Service. Gibbard released his debut solo album “Former Lives” in 2012, and he has scored two films. Gibbard is an avid ultra-marathon runner and a longtime resident of Seattle. Buy the Companion Book Grief Is for People: A Memoir The Elliott Bay Book Company
Never in my life have I met anyone who felt music so intensely as my father. He could not help listening to it; when he heard music that pleased him he became excited and there was a contraction in his throat; he sobbed and shed tears. The feelings aroused in him were unreasoning emotion and excitement. Sometimes it excited him against his will and even tormented him, and he would say: que me veut cette musique? (what does that music want of me?) - Tolstoy, C. S., & Maude, A. (1926). Music in Tolstoy's Life. The Musical Times, 67(1000), 516–518.A few weeks ago, while circling the driveway of an elementary school, I received a directive from an old friend via text: listen for nostalgia. Another bell tone followed, delivering a link to an interview about a song I had nearly forgotten in the decade since I last heard it. I am not in the habit of listening to music podcasts. Rarely have I memorized lyrics or researched the story behind a song, believing instead in the primacy of learning a song by heart, through its melodic currents and timbre. But I can understand Tolstoy's question what does that music want of me? If I find myself intrigued by a song, I like to get quiet and listen with my whole body, and then return again and again until the song becomes a friend and I notice myself asking strange questions like what's happening here? and why does this feel meaningful to me?I first heard the song “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” as a freshman in college. It opens with three incantatory notes from a synthesized organ (C, Dm, Am) and then begins to layer disarmingly self-conscious lyrics, smeared black ink, your palms are sweaty, I'm barely listening, swelling into a melodious revelation: I am finally seeing why I was the one worth leaving. The bridge repeatedly chimes where I am, where I am, offering a gentle allowance to accept where we are and have been.For those of us for whom Washington, DC in the early 2000s was not just a city but the proving ground of our relational lives, “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” touched a relatable quality of loneliness, an effervescent tension between wanting to sense our worthiness and dignity on one hand, and the public absurdities and private regrets that are emblematic of a certain chapter of life on the other. From Hrishikesh Hirway's recently remastered interview with Jimmy Tamborello and Ben Gibbard, the unlikely halves of an indie-electronic duo called The Postal Service, I learned some informative details. Their collaboration began at the fringes of their early twenties, when, living in different cities, broke, and barely acquainted, they began mailing fragments of songs back and forth to each other. Fresh musical layers were decanted in the days between sending and receiving them. Gibbard would walk through his neighborhood at night listening to that day's delivery through wire headphones; his mind would slide around with Tamborello's instrumentals until an unexpected image or memory would emerge; then he would pull a notebook out of his pocket and start scribbling. It was a faithful process. They asked another acquaintance, Jenny Lewis, to contribute harmonies, and, after some months, they christened their first and only album Give Up.Give Up was a good one, as it turned out. It is considered a landmark album for its unique fusion of indie-rock and electronic elements; to the artists' surprise, it sold more than a million records. Warm vocals stream above experimental sounds in what Tamborello and Gibbard dubbed an “80's electro-pop revival record.” Even now, the songs feel at once familiar and yet serendipitous. We sense two artists on their way somewhere else, but just available enough to slip into a creative portal meant just for them.Of the album's first song, Gibbard explains that his first love had left him to pursue a job in Washington, DC. A few months later, he was passing through on tour with Death Cab for Cutie. It felt strange to be in the vicinity of her new life, so they arranged a reunion at the venue before the show. The sweaty palms were hers; the smeared black ink, a list of grievances she had inscribed on her skin earlier that day lest she forget one in the bewilderment of the moment. Her confidence was foam, easily dissolving into anxiety, and her yearning was thick with the conviction that some mutual ground could be found, something taken could be given back.I remember the cathartic resonance of chanting I was the one worth leaving with a hundred strangers at The Black Cat in the Spring of 2003. I did not know then about the girl who had stood outside the entrance, heart blazing, nor about the boy's shifty discomfort as ticket holders passed them — I'm staring at the asphalt wondering what's buried underneath. And yet I did know the girl. I understood her longing to be heard and her futile bids for validation. And I knew the boy, his disassociation, his numbing. We recognized some part of ourselves in their awkward grappling as we had all, in one ragged moment or another, subjected our hearts to over-exposure or barely listened for fear of what would spill over.The experience of certain feelings can seem particularly pregnant with desire for resolution: loneliness, boredom, anxiety. Unless we can relax with these feelings, it's very hard to stay in the middle when we experience them. We want victory or defeat, praise or blame. For example, if somebody abandons us, we don't want to be with that raw discomfort. Instead, we conjure up a familiar identity of ourselves as a hapless victim. Or maybe we avoid the rawness by acting out and righteously telling the person how messed up he or she is. We automatically want to cover over the pain in one way or another, identifying with victory or victimhood. – Pema Chodron, “Pema Chodron's Six Kinds of Loneliness”February is advertised for romance – but love is not a narrow teacher. No matter our age or stage of life, we want to believe in our worthiness to be met. We have all failed at one time or another to meet another. The stories we have told ourselves are not special, yet they merit our healing attention. Rather than narrowing our treatment of love, rather than setting ourselves up for disappointment on the axis of praise or blame or any of the worldly winds, could we reframe loneliness as an invitation to a more generous and wakeful experience of love?Beloved Buddhist nun and teacher, Pema Chodron, distinguishes hot loneliness: restless and angsty and pregnant with the desire for resolution; from cool loneliness: an awareness of the groundlessness of life wherein we can observe fear-based patterns without stumbling headlong into them. She explores six facets of cool loneliness that, when integrated through practice over time, amount to a revolution in dignified steadiness, a middle way of presence between the traps of grasping and avoidance. They are “less desire,” or the willingness to be lonely without grasping for a fix – as the Zen master Katagirir Roshi often said, “One can be lonely and not be tossed away by it;” “contentment,” a synonym for accepting the texture of the moment as it is rather than grasping to quell the discomfort; “avoiding unnecessary activities,” an invitation to quit flailing around to escape being with ourselves; “complete discipline,” a willingness to come back again and again, naming and noting and bowing to the profound insolvability of life and our place in it; “not wandering the world of desire,” which is an acknowledgment of false refuge and an invitation to cultivate sobriety in our thoughts and actions; and “not seeking security from one's discursive thoughts,” an antidote to the subtle ways we measure ourselves against self-inflicted and perceived expectations. Let's be kind, we must remind ourselves, for this is the work of lifetimes. The word “nostalgia” is from the Greek compound nostos (meaning ‘return home') and algos (meaning ‘pain'). Some memories become eddies; once recalled, we can swirl to make meaning of them. The ache of an unfinished conversation can baffle us not for what happened then, which matters little now, but for what it can reveal about the maturation of love. For we are seekers – we study consciousness through its prisms of knowing and not knowing, of forgetting and remembering. When our attention migrates back to a place where we have surprised, disappointed, or even harmed ourselves, it is calling us to recognize and befriend the hidden forces within us that are subject to swirl in the first place.~~~In closing, a small prompt for your consideration: what is a song or a poem or a piece of art or a scene from a movie that stirs your heart to deeper inquiry? What about it draws you closer? Where in your memory does it lead, and how can you more lovingly make sense of or relate to those memories now? What does that music want of you? Get full access to The Guest House at shawnparell.substack.com/subscribe
In the first episode of 2024, Scotty catches up with UltraRunning's Editor-in-Chief, Amy Clark, to chat about the December/January issue. Race coverage includes the Barkley Fall Classic, Swiss Alps 100, Tahoe Rim Trail and Broken Anvil Backyard. They also discuss Amy's interview with Death Cab for Cutie frontman, Ben Gibbard, as well as a few more fun features from this jam-packed issue. Subscribe to UltraRunning Watch this episode on YouTube Thanks to our sponsor, Drymax
The first episode of Song Exploder, about The Postal Service song "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight," came out 10 years ago, in January 2014. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the podcast, we're doing what bands do, and putting out a deluxe, expanded edition of our very first release: this version features a new interview, new insights, and new pieces of the song and demo. The Postal Service formed in 2001. Their debut album came out in 2003, and it was a game changer. Their combination of electronic music and indie rock not only sold over a million copies; their songs were everywhere on TV and in film, and influenced a generation of artists. Last year, they played sold-out concerts across the US in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the album, and there are more shows to come in 2024. A few weeks ago, I spoke to Ben Gibbard, and I combined that with my original interview from 2013 with Jimmy Tamborello. And here, together, the two of them tell the story of how they made their song “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight.” For more, visit songexploder.net/postal-service-deluxe.
In today's show we continue to try to find a country song for Klein, Ally's wife wants a cheatin apartment, Johnny is getting robbed, we see if a Jake knows anything about Nirvana, we decide the worst couples, talk to Ben Gibbard and try to guess what happened on a first date
In the latest episode of Columbia House Party, hosts Jake Goldsbie and Blake Murphy are joined by comedian Lauren Mitchell (host of the @cavernofsecrets podcast) to discuss Death Cab For Cutie's enormous 2003 hit Transatlanticism. The podcast will explore bands that performed at The Bait Shop on the hit show The OC, which served as a snapshot and elevator of the early-2000s indie rock scene. Find out more about Ben Gibbard's workmanlike songwriting approach for Transatlanticism, what character Lauren compares Jake to a grown-up and divorced version of, and what teenage attachments the group has to Death Cab on this week's podcast. Sick of hearing all the ads? Subscribe to Soda Premium on Apple Podcasts to get rid of them!Come join the Patreon family for bonus episodes, mailbags, show notes and even more goodness: https://www.patreon.com/columbiahousepartyFollow @ColumbiaHP on Twitter! While you're there say hello to @BlakeMurphyODC and @JGoldsbie. If merch is your thing, be sure to check out the store: http://bit.ly/chpmerch Or reach out to the show and say hey: podcast@columbiahouseparty.com If you enjoyed today's show, please rate Columbia House Party 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts.See you next week for an all new episode of CHP.
The Burden of Joy by 'our own' Lexi Kent-Monning.A wonderful conversation about writing, life, relationships and The Burden of Joy! We are sitting by the creek back in the Redwood canyon.Please join us!>>>>>>>>Lexi's main site online LA Review of BooksPlease email us with your thoughts!>>>>>>>>“Never before has the wreckage of a failed marriage been more brutally and bloodily documented. The candidness with which Lexi writes about this terrible time in her life is a thing of dark beauty. The Burden of Joy is truly an incredibly brave piece of work.”— Ben Gibbard, Death Cab for Cutie/The Postal ServiceSupport the show_________________________________________________This podcast is a production of the Henry Miller Memorial LibraryBig Sur, CAFaceBookInstagramLet us know what you think!SEND US AN EMAIL!
In this week's episode of Columbia House Party, Jake and Blake go deep on one of the most well-regarded side projects of the 2000s, Give Up from indie supergroup The Postal Service. With Dntel synths, Ben Gibbard's vocals, and Jenny Lewis', well, everything, Give Up withstands the test of time as something greater than a pit-stop before Death Cab for Cutie blew up. Find out more about how the recording process fed into the name, the weird concert performance that resulted, and why despite teases we never got another album from the trio on this week's podcast. Sick of hearing all the ads? Subscribe to Soda Premium on Apple Podcasts to get rid of them!Come join the Patreon family for bonus episodes, mailbags, show notes and even more goodness: https://www.patreon.com/columbiahousepartyFollow @ColumbiaHP on Twitter! While you're there say hello to @BlakeMurphyODC and @JGoldsbie. If merch is your thing, be sure to check out the store: http://bit.ly/chpmerch Or reach out to the show and say hey: podcast@columbiahouseparty.com If you enjoyed today's show, please rate Columbia House Party 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts.See you next week for an all new episode of CHP.This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4114831/advertisement
Ok, this is an ironic first for SUNNY SONGS: an emo number about death. WTF? I can't really explain why, when I set about devising a list of songs that make me feel good, this one popped into my head. Maybe it's the unflinching devotion expressed by composer Ben Gibbard. It's calm, simple, stoic, resolute. “When your soul embarks I will follow you into the dark,” he proclaims. No questions, no hesitation. His love is eternal, and conquers the fear of unending night. We'll hold hands, he assures his love. I can remember when I first heard it, riding in the backseat of a car on a roadtrip. It wasn't loud, and took me by surprise, gobsmacking me, and causing me to well up instantaneously. I wanted to know who that singer was, wondering who could have rendered this perfect piece. I had heard about the band from Bellingham, WA, with the unusual name - Death Cab For Cutie, but I had never actually heard them. The name derives, I discovered, from a song title written by the British Bonzo Dog Band humorists, Vivian Stanshall and Neil Innes. Things just got curiouser and curiouser. In the lyric Ben tells us that he was taught in Catholic school that “Fear is the heart of love,” and he is clearly doing his utmost here to countermand that dogma. Recorded solo, on a single mic during a session break, I Will Follow You Into the Dark may have failed to chart on the Billboard Top 100, but it went double platinum, was nominated for a Grammy in 2007, and has been featured in many many tv shows and films, proving that, sometimes, quieter is better.
Denis finally got to see Muse live in concert again, while Riley went all the way to Boston to see a Ben Gibbard double-header. Theme music: Lowrider by Joakim Karud Support the show on Patreon! patreon.com/havealistentothis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
It's time for another Life in the Fast Lane, and this episode is all about those pretty little customs agents. (You know the ones, those who betray your confidence.) The minute features some good small acting (and not much else), but it's a very "loosey goosey" conversation as we imagine owning yachts and reading Yachting Monthly. We then explore news about F&F, which is basically non-existent other than The Rock shedding career dead weight and re-embracing what works. We once again plug the Discord and get some background on The Bullet Train. Joe decides to stay awake during movies and we talk popular Halloween 2023 costumes. Joey talks about Lana Del Rey and Ben Gibbard, then we talk briefly about the premature cancellation of HBO's Winning Time. Email us: family@cageclub.me Visit our Patreon page at patreon.com/2fast2forever. Show your support at the 2 Fast 2 Forever shop! Extra special shout-out to Alex Elonen, Nick Burris, Brian Rodriguez (High School Slumber Party), Michael McGahon, Lane Middleton, Jason Rainey, Wes Hampton, Mike Gallier, Josh Buckley (Whole Lotta Wolves), Michael Moser, Christian Larson, Terra New One, and Aaron Woloszyn for joining at the “Interpol's Most Wanted” level or above! Intro music by Nico Vasilo. Interlude and outro music by Wes Hampton.
The singer, songwriter, and guitarist for the Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie applies the same approach to ultramarathons that he does to touring: just keep moving. A decade ago, he got into distance running almost by accident, entering a trail race in Northern California with little idea of what he was doing. He's since become a passionate and committed ultramarathoner, entering close to 50 races and training hard even when he's on the road with a band. For Ben, running is a way to both connect back to the playfulness of childhood and embrace the unknowns that come with pushing your body and soul to the limit. As he laps the U.S. on a joint tour with Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie, he talks about the freedom he finds on the trail and the lessons he learned this summer after breaking down physically and emotionally during the hardest run of his life.
BEST SHOW 24 KEEPS GETTING BETTER! Tom is joined by special guests BOB ODENKIRK, BEN GIBBARD, and HOLLYWOOD HANDBOOK'S HAYES DAVENPORT! Plus Tom competes against the Horsemen and FOTs in BEST SHOW TRIVIA hosted by the Quiz Daddy himself SCOTT ROGOWSKY! MAURICE KERN calls in! Los Angeles dog adoption agency MUTT SCOUTS brings a crew of adorable dogs by the studio! And Jason "Dudio" Gore rolls out another edition of his hit segment DUDIO FOODIO with 108.9 The Hawk cohost GEOFF GARLOCK! Only 7 hours to go... MUTT SCOUTS DOG ADOPTION (LOS ANGELES) https://www.muttscouts.org WATCH THE FULL 24 HOUR LIVESTREAM ON PATREON https://www.patreon.com/TheBestShow WATCH THE BEST SHOW LIVE EVERY TUESDAY NIGHT 6PM PT ON TWITCH https://www.twitch.tv/bestshow4life FOLLOW THE BEST SHOW: https://twitter.com/bestshow4life https://instagram.com/bestshow4life https://tiktok.com/@bestshow4life https://www.youtube.com/bestshow4life THE BEST SHOW IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://thebestshow.net https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/the-best-show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We've had quite a break while we waited for Lindsey's hand to heal, so we're finally back with a really fun episode. We had lunch and discussed what we could cover on an episode and came up with The Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie's 20th anniversary tour of Give Up and Transatlanticism. Listen in to hear our opinions and how excited we are for both album playthroughs at Riot Fest.
On this week's show, Ben Gibbard comes on to chat with Yasi about life, death, and the truth. Other big topics include: Daryl Hall—one of the greatest vocal ad-libbers of all time? Can a live performance make you want to flip a car over? What kind of protein powder are we all using? All this and more is revealed on another riveting episode of '24 Question Party People.' Host: Yasi Salek Guest: Ben Gibbard Producer: Jesse Miller-Gordon Associate Producer: Chris Sutton Additional Production Supervision: Justin Sayles Theme Song: Hether Fortune Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
What would The OC be without the music? And you can talk music, without Alexandra Patsavas, the Emmy-nominated music supervisor from The OC! In this special episode, Rachel and Melinda learn all about what music supervision entails from the super fun to not-so-sexy but needed tasks. Find out which band passed on The OC, the song Alex was afraid might not pass, and one cover song Alex would chose to go back and put on the show today. The hosts highlight some of their favorite musical moments from the series, and ask Alex the stories behind them. Then, they are all joined by Seth Cohen's favorite, Ben Gibbard, lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie. Hear what the singer has to say about the forever connection between his band and The OC.
For the 20th anniversary of The Postal Service record, GIVE UP, we take a detailed look at how it was made. After Jimmy Tamborello was looking for vocalists to collaborate with for a Dntel album he was working on, he connected with Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. Gibbard agreed to provide vocals for a track that became, “(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan.” The two of them worked so well together that they decided to work on more material and form a new project. Tamborello's friend, Tony Kiewel at Sub Pop heard about their collaboration and suggested they would be interested in releasing a full album. Tamborello got to work creating instrumentals at his home in Los Angeles and would mail rough mixes of the tracks on CD-Rs to Gibbard in Seattle. Gibbard would then come up with the melodies and lyrics, recording his vocals and other instruments to send back to Tamborello. Over the course of the year, they would keep collaborating through the mail, enlisting Jenny Lewis and Jen Wood to provide additional vocals. After the ten tracks were nearly complete, they met in Los Angeles to finish mixing the album. GIVE UP was eventually released in 2003. In this episode, Gibbard describes how these Postal Service tracks that Tamborello would send were nice breaks in his writing schedule for Death Cab for Cutie, who were in the middle of writing TRANSATLANTICISM. Because their collaboration started so spontaneously, he describes how this approach opened up his writing and pushed him into new territory. Tamborello describes how he initially conceived of a more experimental project but quickly changed directions as the tracks became more pop oriented and Gibbard's melodies were so infectious. With the limited technology of the early 2000s, he describes how the album was made almost entirely on a Kurzweil K2000 synthesizer and how he would manipulate sounds and sample classical records for added effect. As the concept of remote collaboration has taken off in recent years, GIVE UP remains a fascinating document of its time. From the unlikely marriage of indie rock and electronic music in the early 2000s to the slow process of mixing by mail to the spontaneous idea of asking Jenny Lewis to sing on the album, to the key influences of Bjork, Liz Phair, Conor Oberst and Stephin Merritt to the mysterious effortlessness of the whole project, we'll hear the stories of how the record came together.
In September, Ben Gibbard, the founder of Death Cab For Cutie, will set out on a nationwide tour to celebrate the two very different albums that have come to define his career. Both albums came out in 2003. The first was called Give Up, and it was a collaboration with his friend and producer Jimmy Tamborello. They'd made it while Gibbard was taking a break from the relentless cycle of touring and releasing music with Death Cab. They called their new band The Postal Service. Give Up steadily built momentum, found critical acclaim, and eventually became Gibbard's first platinum selling record. Musically, the Postal Service incorporated various synth and new wave-inspired elements behind Gibbard's confessional songwriting style, which set a precedent for many of the indie releases over the following decade. Later that same year, Gibbard went back to his band roots and released Death Cab For Cuties' breakthrough album, Transatlanticism. This fall Gibbard and his band will play both Transatlanticism and Give Up in their entirety. And today we'll hear him play three acoustic renditions of his classic songs. On today's episode Justin Richmond talks to Ben Gibbard about the conditions that led to the most successful year of his career. Gibbard also gets candid about the woman who inspired multiple songs on Transatlanticism, including the brutally honest, “Tiny Vessels.” You can hear a playlist of some of our favorite Ben Gibbard songs HERE.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Ben Gibbard is the voice of the bands Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service. He joins Guy to talk about forming Death Cab and recording their classic album Tranatlanticism, how the band learned to defuse internal tensions, and how he approaches songwriting in middle age.Links from the show:Ben's Tiny Desk ConcertBen breaks down his song "Black Sun"Death Cab for Cutie video for "I Will Follow You Into The Dark" Death Cab for Cutie video for "Soul Meets Body" The Postal Service video for "Such Great Heights"See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Episode 162 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Daydream Believer", and the later career of the Monkees, and how four Pinocchios became real boys. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "Born to be Wild" by Steppenwolf. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud this time, as even after splitting it into multiple files, there are simply too many Monkees tracks excerpted. The best versions of the Monkees albums are the triple-CD super-deluxe versions that used to be available from monkees.com , and I've used Andrew Sandoval's liner notes for them extensively in this episode. Sadly, though, none of those are in print. However, at the time of writing there is a new four-CD super-deluxe box set of Headquarters (with a remixed version of the album rather than the original mixes I've excerpted here) available from that site, and I used the liner notes for that here. Monkees.com also currently has the intermittently-available BluRay box set of the entire Monkees TV series, which also has Head and 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee. For those just getting into the group, my advice is to start with this five-CD set, which contains their first five albums along with bonus tracks. The single biggest source of information I used in this episode is the first edition of Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees; The Day-By-Day Story. Sadly that is now out of print and goes for hundreds of pounds. Sandoval released a second edition of the book in 2021, which I was unfortunately unable to obtain, but that too is now out of print. If you can find a copy of either, do get one. Other sources used were Monkee Business by Eric Lefcowitz, and the autobiographies of three of the band members and one of the songwriters — Infinite Tuesday by Michael Nesmith, They Made a Monkee Out of Me by Davy Jones, I'm a Believer by Micky Dolenz, and Psychedelic Bubble-Gum by Bobby Hart. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript When we left the Monkees, they were in a state of flux. To recap what we covered in that episode, the Monkees were originally cast as actors in a TV show, and consisted of two actors with some singing ability -- the former child stars Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz -- and two musicians who were also competent comic actors, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork. The show was about a fictional band whose characters shared names with their actors, and there had quickly been two big hit singles, and two hit albums, taken from the music recorded for the TV show's soundtrack. But this had caused problems for the actors. The records were being promoted as being by the fictional group in the TV series, blurring the line between the TV show and reality, though in fact for the most part they were being made by session musicians with only Dolenz or Jones adding lead vocals to pre-recorded backing tracks. Dolenz and Jones were fine with this, but Nesmith, who had been allowed to write and produce a few album tracks himself, wanted more creative input, and more importantly felt that he was being asked to be complicit in fraud because the records credited the four Monkees as the musicians when (other than a tiny bit of inaudible rhythm guitar by Tork on a couple of Nesmith's tracks) none of them played on them. Tork, meanwhile, believed he had been promised that the group would be an actual group -- that they would all be playing on the records together -- and felt hurt and annoyed that this wasn't the case. They were by now playing live together to promote the series and the records, with Dolenz turning out to be a perfectly competent drummer, so surely they could do the same in the studio? So in January 1967, things came to a head. It's actually quite difficult to sort out exactly what happened, because of conflicting recollections and opinions. What follows is my best attempt to harmonise the different versions of the story into one coherent narrative, but be aware that I could be wrong in some of the details. Nesmith and Tork, who disliked each other in most respects, were both agreed that this couldn't continue and that if there were going to be Monkees records released at all, they were going to have the Monkees playing on them. Dolenz, who seems to have been the one member of the group that everyone could get along with, didn't really care but went along with them for the sake of group harmony. And Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, the production team behind the series, also took Nesmith and Tork's side, through a general love of mischief. But on the other side was Don Kirshner, the music publisher who was in charge of supervising the music for the TV show. Kirshner was adamantly, angrily, opposed to the very idea of the group members having any input at all into how the records were made. He considered that they should be grateful for the huge pay cheques they were getting from records his staff writers and producers were making for them, and stop whinging. And Davy Jones was somewhere in the middle. He wanted to support his co-stars, who he genuinely liked, but also, he was a working actor, he'd had other roles before, he'd have other roles afterwards, and as a working actor you do what you're told if you don't want to lose the job you've got. Jones had grown up in very severe poverty, and had been his family's breadwinner from his early teens, and artistic integrity is all very nice, but not as nice as a cheque for a quarter of a million dollars. Although that might be slightly unfair -- it might be fairer to say that artistic integrity has a different meaning to someone like Jones, coming from musical theatre and a tradition of "the show must go on", than it does to people like Nesmith and Tork who had come up through the folk clubs. Jones' attitude may also have been affected by the fact that his character in the TV show didn't play an instrument other than the occasional tambourine or maracas. The other three were having to mime instrumental parts they hadn't played, and to reproduce them on stage, but Jones didn't have that particular disadvantage. Bert Schneider, one of the TV show's producers, encouraged the group to go into the recording studio themselves, with a producer of their choice, and cut a couple of tracks to prove what they could do. Michael Nesmith, who at this point was the one who was most adamant about taking control of the music, chose Chip Douglas to produce. Douglas was someone that Nesmith had known a little while, as they'd both played the folk circuit -- in Douglas' case as a member of the Modern Folk Quartet -- but Douglas had recently joined the Turtles as their new bass player. At this point, Douglas had never officially produced a record, but he was a gifted arranger, and had just arranged the Turtles' latest single, which had just been released and was starting to climb the charts: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Happy Together"] Douglas quit the Turtles to work with the Monkees, and took the group into the studio to cut two demo backing tracks for a potential single as a proof of concept. These initial sessions didn't have any vocals, but featured Nesmith on guitar, Tork on piano, Dolenz on drums, Jones on tambourine, and an unknown bass player -- possibly Douglas himself, possibly Nesmith's friend John London, who he'd played with in Mike and John and Bill. They cut rough tracks of two songs, "All of Your Toys", by another friend of Nesmith's, Bill Martin, and Nesmith's "The Girl I Knew Somewhere": [Excerpt: The Monkees, "The Girl I Knew Somewhere (Gold Star Demo)"] Those tracks were very rough and ready -- they were garage-band tracks rather than the professional studio recordings that the Candy Store Prophets or Jeff Barry's New York session players had provided for the previous singles -- but they were competent in the studio, thanks largely to Chip Douglas' steadying influence. As Douglas later said "They could hardly play. Mike could play adequate rhythm guitar. Pete could play piano but he'd make mistakes, and Micky's time on drums was erratic. He'd speed up or slow down." But the takes they managed to get down showed that they *could* do it. Rafelson and Schneider agreed with them that the Monkees could make a single together, and start recording at least some of their own tracks. So the group went back into the studio, with Douglas producing -- and with Lester Sill from the music publishers there to supervise -- and cut finished versions of the two songs. This time the lineup was Nesmith on guitar, Tork on electric harpsichord -- Tork had always been a fan of Bach, and would in later years perform Bach pieces as his solo spot in Monkees shows -- Dolenz on drums, London on bass, and Jones on tambourine: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "The Girl I Knew Somewhere (first recorded version)"] But while this was happening, Kirshner had been trying to get new Monkees material recorded without them -- he'd not yet agreed to having the group play on their own records. Three days after the sessions for "All of Your Toys" and "The Girl I Knew Somewhere", sessions started in New York for an entire album's worth of new material, produced by Jeff Barry and Denny Randell, and largely made by the same Red Bird Records team who had made "I'm a Believer" -- the same musicians who in various combinations had played on everything from "Sherry" by the Four Seasons to "Like a Rolling Stone" by Dylan to "Leader of the Pack", and with songs by Neil Diamond, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, Leiber and Stoller, and the rest of the team of songwriters around Red Bird. But at this point came the meeting we talked about towards the end of the "Last Train to Clarksville" episode, in which Nesmith punched a hole in a hotel wall in frustration at what he saw as Kirshner's obstinacy. Kirshner didn't want to listen to the recordings the group had made. He'd promised Jeff Barry and Neil Diamond that if "I'm a Believer" went to number one, Barry would get to produce, and Diamond write, the group's next single. Chip Douglas wasn't a recognised producer, and he'd made this commitment. But the group needed a new single out. A compromise was offered, of sorts, by Kirshner -- how about if Barry flew over from New York to LA to produce the group, they'd scrap the tracks both the group and Barry had recorded, and Barry would produce new tracks for the songs he'd recorded, with the group playing on them? But that wouldn't work either. The group members were all due to go on holiday -- three of them were going to make staggered trips to the UK, partly to promote the TV series, which was just starting over here, and partly just to have a break. They'd been working sixty-plus hour weeks for months between the TV series, live performances, and the recording studio, and they were basically falling-down tired, which was one of the reasons for Nesmith's outburst in the meeting. They weren't accomplished enough musicians to cut tracks quickly, and they *needed* the break. On top of that, Nesmith and Barry had had a major falling-out at the "I'm a Believer" session, and Nesmith considered it a matter of personal integrity that he couldn't work with a man who in his eyes had insulted his professionalism. So that was out, but there was also no way Kirshner was going to let the group release a single consisting of two songs he hadn't heard, produced by a producer with no track record. At first, the group were insistent that "All of Your Toys" should be the A-side for their next single: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "All Of Your Toys"] But there was an actual problem with that which they hadn't foreseen. Bill Martin, who wrote the song, was under contract to another music publisher, and the Monkees' contracts said they needed to only record songs published by Screen Gems. Eventually, it was Micky Dolenz who managed to cut the Gordian knot -- or so everyone thought. Dolenz was the one who had the least at stake of any of them -- he was already secure as the voice of the hits, he had no particular desire to be an instrumentalist, but he wanted to support his colleagues. Dolenz suggested that it would be a reasonable compromise to put out a single with one of the pre-recorded backing tracks on one side, with him or Jones singing, and with the version of "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" that the band had recorded together on the other. That way, Kirshner and the record label would get their new single without too much delay, the group would still be able to say they'd started recording their own tracks, everyone would get some of what they wanted. So it was agreed -- though there was a further stipulation. "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" had Nesmith singing lead vocals, and up to that point every Monkees single had featured Dolenz on lead on both sides. As far as Kirshner and the other people involved in making the release decisions were concerned, that was the way things were going to continue. Everyone was fine with this -- Nesmith, the one who was most likely to object in principle, in practice realised that having Dolenz sing his song would make it more likely to be played on the radio and used in the TV show, and so increase his royalties. A vocal session was arranged in New York for Dolenz and Jones to come and cut some vocal tracks right before Dolenz and Nesmith flew over to the UK. But in the meantime, it had become even more urgent for the group to be seen to be doing their own recording. An in-depth article on the group in the Saturday Evening Post had come out, quoting Nesmith as saying "It was what Kirshner wanted to do. Our records are not our forte. I don't care if we never sell another record. Maybe we were manufactured and put on the air strictly with a lot of hoopla. Tell the world we're synthetic because, damn it, we are. Tell them the Monkees are wholly man-made overnight, that millions of dollars have been poured into this thing. Tell the world we don't record our own music. But that's us they see on television. The show is really a part of us. They're not seeing something invalid." The press immediately jumped on the band, and started trying to portray them as con artists exploiting their teenage fans, though as Nesmith later said "The press decided they were going to unload on us as being somehow illegitimate, somehow false. That we were making an attempt to dupe the public, when in fact it was me that was making the attempt to maintain the integrity. So the press went into a full-scale war against us." Tork, on the other hand, while he and Nesmith were on the same side about the band making their own records, blamed Nesmith for much of the press reaction, later saying "Michael blew the whistle on us. If he had gone in there with pride and said 'We are what we are and we have no reason to hang our heads in shame' it never would have happened." So as far as the group were concerned, they *needed* to at least go with Dolenz's suggested compromise. Their personal reputations were on the line. When Dolenz arrived at the session in New York, he was expecting to be asked to cut one vocal track, for the A-side of the next single (and presumably a new lead vocal for "The Girl I Knew Somewhere"). When he got there, though, he found that Kirshner expected him to record several vocals so that Kirshner could choose the best. That wasn't what had been agreed, and so Dolenz flat-out refused to record anything at all. Luckily for Kirshner, Jones -- who was the most co-operative member of the band -- was willing to sing a handful of songs intended for Dolenz as well as the ones he was meant to sing. So the tape of "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You", the song intended for the next single, was slowed down so it would be in a suitable key for Jones instead, and he recorded the vocal for that: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You"] Incidentally, while Jones recorded vocals for several more tracks at the session -- and some would later be reused as album tracks a few years down the line -- not all of the recorded tracks were used for vocals, and this later gave rise to a rumour that has been repeated as fact by almost everyone involved, though it was a misunderstanding. Kirshner's next major success after the Monkees was another made-for-TV fictional band, the Archies, and their biggest hit was "Sugar Sugar", co-written and produced by Jeff Barry: [Excerpt: The Archies, "Sugar Sugar"] Both Kirshner and the Monkees have always claimed that the Monkees were offered "Sugar, Sugar" and turned it down. To Kirshner the moral of the story was that since "Sugar, Sugar" was a massive hit, it proved his instincts right and proved that the Monkees didn't know what would make a hit. To the Monkees, on the other hand, it showed that Kirshner wanted them to do bubblegum music that they considered ridiculous. This became such an established factoid that Dolenz regularly tells the story in his live performances, and includes a version of "Sugar, Sugar" in them, rearranged as almost a torch song: [Excerpt: Micky Dolenz, "Sugar, Sugar (live)"] But in fact, "Sugar, Sugar" wasn't written until long after Kirshner and the Monkees had parted ways. But one of the songs for which a backing track was recorded but no vocals were ever completed was "Sugar Man", a song by Denny Randell and Sandy Linzer, which they would later release themselves as an unsuccessful single: [Excerpt: Linzer and Randell, "Sugar Man"] Over the years, the Monkees not recording "Sugar Man" became the Monkees not recording "Sugar, Sugar". Meanwhile, Dolenz and Nesmith had flown over to the UK to do some promotional work and relax, and Jones soon also flew over, though didn't hang out with his bandmates, preferring to spend more time with his family. Both Dolenz and Nesmith spent a lot of time hanging out with British pop stars, and were pleased to find that despite the manufactured controversy about them being a manufactured group, none of the British musicians they admired seemed to care. Eric Burdon, for example, was quoted in the Melody Maker as saying "They make very good records, I can't understand how people get upset about them. You've got to make up your minds whether a group is a record production group or one that makes live appearances. For example, I like to hear a Phil Spector record and I don't worry if it's the Ronettes or Ike and Tina Turner... I like the Monkees record as a grand record, no matter how people scream. So somebody made a record and they don't play, so what? Just enjoy the record." Similarly, the Beatles were admirers of the Monkees, especially the TV show, despite being expected to have a negative opinion of them, as you can hear in this contemporary recording of Paul McCartney answering a fan's questions: Excerpt: Paul McCartney talks about the Monkees] Both Dolenz and Nesmith hung out with the Beatles quite a bit -- they both visited Sgt. Pepper recording sessions, and if you watch the film footage of the orchestral overdubs for "A Day in the Life", Nesmith is there with all the other stars of the period. Nesmith and his wife Phyllis even stayed with the Lennons for a couple of days, though Cynthia Lennon seems to have thought of the Nesmiths as annoying intruders who had been invited out of politeness and not realised they weren't wanted. That seems plausible, but at the same time, John Lennon doesn't seem the kind of person to not make his feelings known, and Michael Nesmith's reports of the few days they stayed there seem to describe a very memorable experience, where after some initial awkwardness he developed a bond with Lennon, particularly once he saw that Lennon was a fan of Captain Beefheart, who was a friend of Nesmith, and whose Safe as Milk album Lennon was examining when Nesmith turned up, and whose music at this point bore a lot of resemblance to the kind of thing Nesmith was doing: [Excerpt: Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, "Yellow Brick Road"] Or at least, that's how Nesmith always told the story later -- though Safe as Milk didn't come out until nearly six months later. It's possible he's conflating memories from a later trip to the UK in June that year -- where he also talked about how Lennon was the only person he'd really got on with on the previous trip, because "he's a compassionate person. I know he has a reputation for being caustic, but it is only a cover for the depth of his feeling." Nesmith and Lennon apparently made some experimental music together during the brief stay, with Nesmith being impressed by Lennon's Mellotron and later getting one himself. Dolenz, meanwhile, was spending more time with Paul McCartney, and with Spencer Davis of his current favourite band The Spencer Davis Group. But even more than that he was spending a lot of time with Samantha Juste, a model and TV presenter whose job it was to play the records on Top of the Pops, the most important British TV pop show, and who had released a record herself a couple of months earlier, though it hadn't been a success: [Excerpt: Samantha Juste, "No-one Needs My Love Today"] The two quickly fell deeply in love, and Juste would become Dolenz's first wife the next year. When Nesmith and Dolenz arrived back in the US after their time off, they thought the plan was still to release "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" with "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" on the B-side. So Nesmith was horrified to hear on the radio what the announcer said were the two sides of the new Monkees single -- "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You", and "She Hangs Out", another song from the Jeff Barry sessions with a Davy vocal. Don Kirshner had gone ahead and picked two songs from the Jeff Barry sessions and delivered them to RCA Records, who had put a single out in Canada. The single was very, *very* quickly withdrawn once the Monkees and the TV producers found out, and only promo copies seem to circulate -- rather than being credited to "the Monkees", both sides are credited to '"My Favourite Monkee" Davy Jones Sings'. The record had been withdrawn, but "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" was clearly going to have to be the single. Three days after the record was released and pulled, Nesmith, Dolenz and Tork were back in the studio with Chip Douglas, recording a new B-side -- a new version of "The Girl I Knew Somewhere", this time with Dolenz on vocals. As Jones was still in the UK, John London added the tambourine part as well as the bass: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "The Girl I Knew Somewhere (single version)"] As Nesmith told the story a couple of months later, "Bert said 'You've got to get this thing in Micky's key for Micky to sing it.' I said 'Has Donnie made a commitment? I don't want to go there and break my neck in order to get this thing if Donnie hasn't made a commitment. And Bert refused to say anything. He said 'I can't tell you anything except just go and record.'" What had happened was that the people at Columbia had had enough of Kirshner. As far as Rafelson and Schneider were concerned, the real problem in all this was that Kirshner had been making public statements taking all the credit for the Monkees' success and casting himself as the puppetmaster. They thought this was disrespectful to the performers -- and unstated but probably part of it, that it was disrespectful to Rafelson and Schneider for their work putting the TV show together -- and that Kirshner had allowed his ego to take over. Things like the liner notes for More of the Monkees which made Kirshner and his stable of writers more important than the performers had, in the view of the people at Raybert Productions, put the Monkees in an impossible position and forced them to push back. Schneider later said "Kirshner had an ego that transcended everything else. As a matter of fact, the press issue was probably magnified a hundred times over because of Kirshner. He wanted everybody thinking 'Hey, he's doing all this, not them.' In the end it was very self-destructive because it heightened the whole press issue and it made them feel lousy." Kirshner was out of a job, first as the supervisor for the Monkees and then as the head of Columbia/Screen Gems Music. In his place came Lester Sill, the man who had got Leiber and Stoller together as songwriters, who had been Lee Hazelwood's production partner on his early records with Duane Eddy, and who had been the "Les" in Philles Records until Phil Spector pushed him out. Sill, unlike Kirshner, was someone who was willing to take a back seat and just be a steadying hand where needed. The reissued version of "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" went to number two on the charts, behind "Somethin' Stupid" by Frank and Nancy Sinatra, produced by Sill's old colleague Hazelwood, and the B-side, "The Girl I Knew Somewhere", also charted separately, making number thirty-nine on the charts. The Monkees finally had a hit that they'd written and recorded by themselves. Pinocchio had become a real boy: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "The Girl I Knew Somewhere (single version)"] At the same session at which they'd recorded that track, the Monkees had recorded another Nesmith song, "Sunny Girlfriend", and that became the first song to be included on a new album, which would eventually be named Headquarters, and on which all the guitar, keyboard, drums, percussion, banjo, pedal steel, and backing vocal parts would for the first time be performed by the Monkees themselves. They brought in horn and string players on a couple of tracks, and the bass was variously played by John London, Chip Douglas, and Jerry Yester as Tork was more comfortable on keyboards and guitar than bass, but it was in essence a full band album. Jones got back the next day, and sessions began in earnest. The first song they recorded after his return was "Mr. Webster", a Boyce and Hart song that had been recorded with the Candy Store Prophets in 1966 but hadn't been released. This was one of three tracks on the album that were rerecordings of earlier outtakes, and it's fascinating to compare them, to see the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches. In the case of "Mr. Webster", the instrumental backing on the earlier version is definitely slicker: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Mr. Webster (1st Recorded Version)"] But at the same time, there's a sense of dynamics in the group recording that's lacking from the original, like the backing dropping out totally on the word "Stop" -- a nice touch that isn't in the original. I am only speculating, but this may have been inspired by the similar emphasis on the word "stop" in "For What It's Worth" by Tork's old friend Stephen Stills: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Mr. Webster (album version)"] Headquarters was a group album in another way though -- for the first time, Tork and Dolenz were bringing in songs they'd written -- Nesmith of course had supplied songs already for the two previous albums. Jones didn't write any songs himself yet, though he'd start on the next album, but he was credited with the rest of the group on two joke tracks, "Band 6", a jam on the Merrie Melodies theme “Merrily We Roll Along”, and "Zilch", a track made up of the four band members repeating nonsense phrases: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Zilch"] Oddly, that track had a rather wider cultural resonance than a piece of novelty joke album filler normally would. It's sometimes covered live by They Might Be Giants: [Excerpt: They Might Be Giants, "Zilch"] While the rapper Del Tha Funkee Homosapien had a worldwide hit in 1991 with "Mistadobalina", built around a sample of Peter Tork from the track: [Excerpt: Del Tha Funkee Homosapien,"Mistadobalina"] Nesmith contributed three songs, all of them combining Beatles-style pop music and country influences, none more blatantly than the opening track, "You Told Me", which starts off parodying the opening of "Taxman", before going into some furious banjo-picking from Tork: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "You Told Me"] Tork, meanwhile, wrote "For Pete's Sake" with his flatmate of the time, and that became the end credits music for season two of the TV series: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "For Pete's Sake"] But while the other band members made important contributions, the track on the album that became most popular was the first song of Dolenz's to be recorded by the group. The lyrics recounted, in a semi-psychedelic manner, Dolenz's time in the UK, including meeting with the Beatles, who the song refers to as "the four kings of EMI", but the first verse is all about his new girlfriend Samantha Juste: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Randy Scouse Git"] The song was released as a single in the UK, but there was a snag. Dolenz had given the song a title he'd heard on an episode of the BBC sitcom Til Death Us Do Part, which he'd found an amusing bit of British slang. Til Death Us Do Part was written by Johnny Speight, a writer with Associated London Scripts, and was a family sitcom based around the character of Alf Garnett, an ignorant, foul-mouthed reactionary bigot who hated young people, socialists, and every form of minority, especially Black people (who he would address by various slurs I'm definitely not going to repeat here), and was permanently angry at the world and abusive to his wife. As with another great sitcom from ALS, Steptoe and Son, which Norman Lear adapted for the US as Sanford and Son, Til Death Us Do Part was also adapted by Lear, and became All in the Family. But while Archie Bunker, the character based on Garnett in the US version, has some redeeming qualities because of the nature of US network sitcom, Alf Garnett has absolutely none, and is as purely unpleasant and unsympathetic a character as has ever been created -- which sadly didn't stop a section of the audience from taking him as a character to be emulated. A big part of the show's dynamic was the relationship between Garnett and his socialist son-in-law from Liverpool, played by Anthony Booth, himself a Liverpudlian socialist who would later have a similarly contentious relationship with his own decidedly non-socialist son-in-law, the future Prime Minister Tony Blair. Garnett was as close to foul-mouthed as was possible on British TV at the time, with Speight regularly negotiating with the BBC bosses to be allowed to use terms that were not otherwise heard on TV, and used various offensive terms about his family, including referring to his son-in-law as a "randy Scouse git". Dolenz had heard the phrase on TV, had no idea what it meant but loved the sound of it, and gave the song that title. But when the record came out in the UK, he was baffled to be told that the phrase -- which he'd picked up from a BBC TV show, after all -- couldn't be said normally on BBC broadcasts, so they would need to retitle the track. The translation into American English that Dolenz uses in his live shows to explain this to Americans is to say that "randy Scouse git" means "horny Liverpudlian putz", and that's more or less right. Dolenz took the need for an alternative title literally, and so the track that went to number two in the UK charts was titled "Alternate Title": [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Randy Scouse Git"] The album itself went to number one in both the US and the UK, though it was pushed off the top spot almost straight away by the release of Sgt Pepper. As sessions for Headquarters were finishing up, the group were already starting to think about their next album -- season two of the TV show was now in production, and they'd need to keep generating yet more musical material for it. One person they turned to was a friend of Chip Douglas'. Before the Turtles, Douglas had been in the Modern Folk Quartet, and they'd recorded "This Could Be the Night", which had been written for them by Harry Nilsson: [Excerpt: The MFQ, "This Could Be The Night"] Nilsson had just started recording his first solo album proper, at RCA Studios, the same studios that the Monkees were using. At this point, Nilsson still had a full-time job in a bank, working a night shift there while working on his album during the day, but Douglas knew that Nilsson was a major talent, and that assessment was soon shared by the group when Nilsson came in to demo nine of his songs for them: [Excerpt: Harry Nilsson, "1941 (demo)"] According to Nilsson, Nesmith said after that demo session "You just sat down there and blew our minds. We've been looking for songs, and you just sat down and played an *album* for us!" While the Monkees would attempt a few of Nilsson's songs over the next year or so, the first one they chose to complete was the first track recorded for their next album, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, and Jones, Ltd., a song which from the talkback at the beginning of the demo was always intended for Davy Jones to sing: [Excerpt: Harry Nilsson, "Cuddly Toy (demo)"] Oddly, given his romantic idol persona, a lot of the songs given to Jones to sing were anti-romantic, and often had a cynical and misogynistic edge. This had started with the first album's "I Want to Be Free", but by Pisces, it had gone to ridiculous extremes. Of the four songs Jones sings on the album, "Hard to Believe", the first song proper that he ever co-wrote, is a straightforward love song, but the other three have a nasty edge to them. A remade version of Jeff Barry's "She Hangs Out" is about an underaged girl, starts with the lines "How old d'you say your sister was? You know you'd better keep an eye on her" and contains lines like "she could teach you a thing or two" and "you'd better get down here on the double/before she gets her pretty little self in trouble/She's so fine". Goffin and King's "Star Collector" is worse, a song about a groupie with lines like "How can I love her, if I just don't respect her?" and "It won't take much time, before I get her off my mind" But as is so often the way, these rather nasty messages were wrapped up in some incredibly catchy music, and that was even more the case with "Cuddly Toy", a song which at least is more overtly unpleasant -- it's very obvious that Nilsson doesn't intend the protagonist of the song to be at all sympathetic, which is possibly not the case in "She Hangs Out" or "Star Collector". But the character Jones is singing is *viciously* cruel here, mocking and taunting a girl who he's coaxed to have sex with him, only to scorn her as soon as he's got what he wanted: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Cuddly Toy"] It's a great song if you like the cruelest of humour combined with the cheeriest of music, and the royalties from the song allowed Nilsson to quit the job at the bank. "Cuddly Toy", and Chip Douglas and Bill Martin's song "The Door Into Summer", were recorded the same way as Headquarters, with the group playing *as a group*, but as recordings for the album progressed the group fell into a new way of working, which Peter Tork later dubbed "mixed-mode". They didn't go back to having tracks cut for them by session musicians, apart from Jones' song "Hard to Believe", for which the entire backing track was created by one of his co-writers overdubbing himself, but Dolenz, who Tork always said was "incapable of repeating a triumph", was not interested in continuing to play drums in the studio. Instead, a new hybrid Monkees would perform most of the album. Nesmith would still play the lead guitar, Tork would provide the keyboards, Chip Douglas would play all the bass and add some additional guitar, and "Fast" Eddie Hoh, the session drummer who had been a touring drummer with the Modern Folk Quartet and the Mamas and the Papas, among others, would play drums on the records, with Dolenz occasionally adding a bit of acoustic guitar. And this was the lineup that would perform on the hit single from Pisces. "Pleasant Valley Sunday" was written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, who had written several songs for the group's first two albums (and who would continue to provide them with more songs). As with their earlier songs for the group, King had recorded a demo: [Excerpt: Carole King, "Pleasant Valley Sunday (demo)"] Previously -- and subsequently -- when presented with a Carole King demo, the group and their producers would just try to duplicate it as closely as possible, right down to King's phrasing. Bob Rafelson has said that he would sometimes hear those demos and wonder why King didn't just make records herself -- and without wanting to be too much of a spoiler for a few years' time, he wasn't the only one wondering that. But this time, the group had other plans. In particular, they wanted to make a record with a strong guitar riff to it -- Nesmith has later referenced their own "Last Train to Clarksville" and the Beatles' "Day Tripper" as two obvious reference points for the track. Douglas came up with a riff and taught it to Nesmith, who played it on the track: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Pleasant Valley Sunday"] The track also ended with the strongest psychedelic -- or "psycho jello" as the group would refer to it -- freak out that they'd done to this point, a wash of saturated noise: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Pleasant Valley Sunday"] King was unhappy with the results, and apparently glared at Douglas the next time they met. This may be because of the rearrangement from her intentions, but it may also be for a reason that Douglas later suspected. When recording the track, he hadn't been able to remember all the details of her demo, and in particular he couldn't remember exactly how the middle eight went. This is the version on King's demo: [Excerpt: Carole King, "Pleasant Valley Sunday (demo)"] While here's how the Monkees rendered it, with slightly different lyrics: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Pleasant Valley Sunday"] I also think there's a couple of chord changes in the second verse that differ between King and the Monkees, but I can't be sure that's not my ears deceiving me. Either way, though, the track was a huge success, and became one of the group's most well-known and well-loved tracks, making number three on the charts behind "All You Need is Love" and "Light My Fire". And while it isn't Dolenz drumming on the track, the fact that it's Nesmith playing guitar and Tork on the piano -- and the piano part is one of the catchiest things on the record -- meant that they finally had a proper major hit on which they'd played (and it seems likely that Dolenz contributed some of the acoustic rhythm guitar on the track, along with Bill Chadwick, and if that's true all three Monkee instrumentalists did play on the track). Pisces is by far and away the best album the group ever made, and stands up well against anything else that came out around that time. But cracks were beginning to show in the group. In particular, the constant battle to get some sort of creative input had soured Nesmith on the whole project. Chip Douglas later said "When we were doing Pisces Michael would come in with three songs; he knew he had three songs coming on the album. He knew that he was making a lot of money if he got his original songs on there. So he'd be real enthusiastic and cooperative and real friendly and get his three songs done. Then I'd say 'Mike, can you come in and help on this one we're going to do with Micky here?' He said 'No, Chip, I can't. I'm busy.' I'd say, 'Mike, you gotta come in the studio.' He'd say 'No Chip, I'm afraid I'm just gonna have to be ornery about it. I'm not comin' in.' That's when I started not liking Mike so much any more." Now, as is so often the case with the stories from this period, this appears to be inaccurate in the details -- Nesmith is present on every track on the album except Jones' solo "Hard to Believe" and Tork's spoken-word track "Peter Percival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky", and indeed this is by far the album with *most* Nesmith input, as he takes five lead vocals, most of them on songs he didn't write. But Douglas may well be summing up Nesmith's *attitude* to the band at this point -- listening to Nesmith's commentaries on episodes of the TV show, by this point he felt disengaged from everything that was going on, like his opinions weren't welcome. That said, Nesmith did still contribute what is possibly the single most innovative song the group ever did, though the innovations weren't primarily down to Nesmith: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Daily Nightly"] Nesmith always described the lyrics to "Daily Nightly" as being about the riots on Sunset Strip, but while they're oblique, they seem rather to be about streetwalking sex workers -- though it's perhaps understandable that Nesmith would never admit as much. What made the track innovative was the use of the Moog synthesiser. We talked about Robert Moog in the episode on "Good Vibrations" -- he had started out as a Theremin manufacturer, and had built the ribbon synthesiser that Mike Love played live on "Good Vibrations", and now he was building the first commercially available easily usable synthesisers. Previously, electronic instruments had either been things like the clavioline -- a simple monophonic keyboard instrument that didn't have much tonal variation -- or the RCA Mark II, a programmable synth that could make a wide variety of sounds, but took up an entire room and was programmed with punch cards. Moog's machines were bulky but still transportable, and they could be played in real time with a keyboard, but were still able to be modified to make a wide variety of different sounds. While, as we've seen, there had been electronic keyboard instruments as far back as the 1930s, Moog's instruments were for all intents and purposes the first synthesisers as we now understand the term. The Moog was introduced in late spring 1967, and immediately started to be used for making experimental and novelty records, like Hal Blaine's track "Love In", which came out at the beginning of June: [Excerpt: Hal Blaine, "Love In"] And the Electric Flag's soundtrack album for The Trip, the drug exploitation film starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper and written by Jack Nicholson we talked about last time, when Arthur Lee moved into a house used in the film: [Excerpt: The Electric Flag, "Peter's Trip"] In 1967 there were a total of six albums released with a Moog on them (as well as one non-album experimental single). Four of the albums were experimental or novelty instrumental albums of this type. Only two of them were rock albums -- Strange Days by the Doors, and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones Ltd by the Monkees. The Doors album was released first, but I believe the Monkees tracks were recorded before the Doors overdubbed the Moog on the tracks on their album, though some session dates are hard to pin down exactly. If that's the case it would make the Monkees the very first band to use the Moog on an actual rock record (depending on exactly how you count the Trip soundtrack -- this gets back again to my old claim that there's no first anything). But that's not the only way in which "Daily Nightly" was innovative. All the first seven albums to feature the Moog featured one man playing the instrument -- Paul Beaver, the Moog company's West Coast representative, who played on all the novelty records by members of the Wrecking Crew, and on the albums by the Electric Flag and the Doors, and on The Notorious Byrd Brothers by the Byrds, which came out in early 1968. And Beaver did play the Moog on one track on Pisces, "Star Collector". But on "Daily Nightly" it's Micky Dolenz playing the Moog, making him definitely the second person ever to play a Moog on a record of any kind: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Daily Nightly"] Dolenz indeed had bought his own Moog -- widely cited as being the second one ever in private ownership, a fact I can't check but which sounds plausible given that by 1970 less than thirty musicians owned one -- after seeing Beaver demonstrate the instrument at the Monterey Pop Festival. The Monkees hadn't played Monterey, but both Dolenz and Tork had attended the festival -- if you watch the famous film of it you see Dolenz and his girlfriend Samantha in the crowd a *lot*, while Tork introduced his friends in the Buffalo Springfield. As well as discovering the Moog there, Dolenz had been astonished by something else: [Excerpt: The Jimi Hendrix Experience, "Hey Joe (Live at Monterey)"] As Peter Tork later put it "I didn't get it. At Monterey Jimi followed the Who and the Who busted up their things and Jimi bashed up his guitar. I said 'I just saw explosions and destruction. Who needs it?' But Micky got it. He saw the genius and went for it." Dolenz was astonished by Hendrix, and insisted that he should be the support act on the group's summer tour. This pairing might sound odd on paper, but it made more sense at the time than it might sound. The Monkees were by all accounts a truly astonishing live act at this point -- Frank Zappa gave them a backhanded compliment by saying they were the best-sounding band in LA, before pointing out that this was because they could afford the best equipment. That *was* true, but it was also the case that their TV experience gave them a different attitude to live performance than anyone else performing at the time. A handful of groups had started playing stadiums, most notably of course the Beatles, but all of these acts had come up through playing clubs and theatres and essentially just kept doing their old act with no thought as to how the larger space worked, except to put their amps through a louder PA. The Monkees, though, had *started* in stadiums, and had started out as mass entertainers, and so their live show was designed from the ground up to play to those larger spaces. They had costume changes, elaborate stage sets -- like oversized fake Vox amps they burst out of at the start of the show -- a light show and a screen on which film footage was projected. In effect they invented stadium performances as we now know them. Nesmith later said "In terms of putting on a show there was never any question in my mind, as far as the rock 'n' roll era is concerned, that we put on probably the finest rock and roll stage show ever. It was beautifully lit, beautifully costumed, beautifully produced. I mean, for Christ sakes, it was practically a revue." The Monkees were confident enough in their stage performance that at a recent show at the Hollywood Bowl they'd had Ike and Tina Turner as their opening act -- not an act you'd want to go on after if you were going to be less than great, and an act from very similar chitlin' circuit roots to Jimi Hendrix. So from their perspective, it made sense. If you're going to be spectacular yourselves, you have no need to fear a spectacular opening act. Hendrix was less keen -- he was about the only musician in Britain who *had* made disparaging remarks about the Monkees -- but opening for the biggest touring band in the world isn't an opportunity you pass up, and again it isn't such a departure as one might imagine from the bills he was already playing. Remember that Monterey is really the moment when "pop" and "rock" started to split -- the split we've been talking about for a few months now -- and so the Jimi Hendrix Experience were still considered a pop band, and as such had played the normal British pop band package tours. In March and April that year, they'd toured on a bill with the Walker Brothers, Cat Stevens, and Englebert Humperdinck -- and Hendrix had even filled in for Humperdinck's sick guitarist on one occasion. Nesmith, Dolenz, and Tork all loved having Hendrix on tour with them, just because it gave them a chance to watch him live every night (Jones, whose musical tastes were more towards Anthony Newley, wasn't especially impressed), and they got on well on a personal level -- there are reports of Hendrix jamming with Dolenz and Steve Stills in hotel rooms. But there was one problem, as Dolenz often recreates in his live act: [Excerpt: Micky Dolenz, "Purple Haze"] The audience response to Hendrix from the Monkees' fans was so poor that by mutual agreement he left the tour after only a handful of shows. After the summer tour, the group went back to work on the TV show and their next album. Or, rather, four individuals went back to work. By this point, the group had drifted apart from each other, and from Douglas -- Tork, the one who was still keenest on the idea of the group as a group, thought that Pisces, good as it was, felt like a Chip Douglas album rather than a Monkees album. The four band members had all by now built up their own retinues of hangers-on and collaborators, and on set for the TV show they were now largely staying with their own friends rather than working as a group. And that was now reflected in their studio work. From now on, rather than have a single producer working with them as a band, the four men would work as individuals, producing their own tracks, occasionally with outside help, and bringing in session musicians to work on them. Some tracks from this point on would be genuine Monkees -- plural -- tracks, and all tracks would be credited as "produced by the Monkees", but basically the four men would from now on be making solo tracks which would be combined into albums, though Dolenz and Jones would occasionally guest on tracks by the others, especially when Nesmith came up with a song he thought would be more suited to their voices. Indeed the first new recording that happened after the tour was an entire Nesmith solo album -- a collection of instrumental versions of his songs, called The Wichita Train Whistle Sings, played by members of the Wrecking Crew and a few big band instrumentalists, arranged by Shorty Rogers. [Excerpt: Michael Nesmith, "You Told Me"] Hal Blaine in his autobiography claimed that the album was created as a tax write-off for Nesmith, though Nesmith always vehemently denied it, and claimed it was an artistic experiment, though not one that came off well. Released alongside Pisces, though, came one last group-recorded single. The B-side, "Goin' Down", is a song that was credited to the group and songwriter Diane Hildebrand, though in fact it developed from a jam on someone else's song. Nesmith, Tork, Douglas and Hoh attempted to record a backing track for a version of Mose Allison's jazz-blues standard "Parchman Farm": [Excerpt: Mose Allison, "Parchman Farm"] But after recording it, they'd realised that it didn't sound that much like the original, and that all it had in common with it was a chord sequence. Nesmith suggested that rather than put it out as a cover version, they put a new melody and lyrics to it, and they commissioned Hildebrand, who'd co-written songs for the group before, to write them, and got Shorty Rogers to write a horn arrangement to go over their backing track. The eventual songwriting credit was split five ways, between Hildebrand and the four Monkees -- including Davy Jones who had no involvement with the recording, but not including Douglas or Hoh. The lyrics Hildebrand came up with were a funny patter song about a failed suicide, taken at an extremely fast pace, which Dolenz pulls off magnificently: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Goin' Down"] The A-side, another track with a rhythm track by Nesmith, Tork, Douglas, and Hoh, was a song that had been written by John Stewart of the Kingston Trio, who you may remember from the episode on "San Francisco" as being a former songwriting partner of John Phillips. Stewart had written the song as part of a "suburbia trilogy", and was not happy with the finished product. He said later "I remember going to bed thinking 'All I did today was write 'Daydream Believer'." Stewart used to include the song in his solo sets, to no great approval, and had shopped the song around to bands like We Five and Spanky And Our Gang, who had both turned it down. He was unhappy with it himself, because of the chorus: [Excerpt: John Stewart, "Daydream Believer"] Stewart was ADHD, and the words "to a", coming as they did slightly out of the expected scansion for the line, irritated him so greatly that he thought the song could never be recorded by anyone, but when Chip Douglas asked if he had any songs, he suggested that one. As it turned out, there was a line of lyric that almost got the track rejected, but it wasn't the "to a". Stewart's original second verse went like this: [Excerpt: John Stewart, "Daydream Believer"] RCA records objected to the line "now you know how funky I can be" because funky, among other meanings, meant smelly, and they didn't like the idea of Davy Jones singing about being smelly. Chip Douglas phoned Stewart to tell him that they were insisting on changing the line, and suggesting "happy" instead. Stewart objected vehemently -- that change would reverse the entire meaning of the line, and it made no sense, and what about artistic integrity? But then, as he later said "He said 'Let me put it to you this way, John. If he can't sing 'happy' they won't do it'. And I said 'Happy's working real good for me now.' That's exactly what I said to him." He never regretted the decision -- Stewart would essentially live off the royalties from "Daydream Believer" for the rest of his life -- though he seemed always to be slightly ambivalent and gently mocking about the song in his own performances, often changing the lyrics slightly: [Excerpt: John Stewart, "Daydream Believer"] The Monkees had gone into the studio and cut the track, again with Tork on piano, Nesmith on guitar, Douglas on bass, and Hoh on drums. Other than changing "funky" to "happy", there were two major changes made in the studio. One seems to have been Douglas' idea -- they took the bass riff from the pre-chorus to the Beach Boys' "Help Me Rhonda": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Help Me Rhonda"] and Douglas played that on the bass as the pre-chorus for "Daydream Believer", with Shorty Rogers later doubling it in the horn arrangement: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Daydream Believer"] And the other is the piano intro, which also becomes an instrumental bridge, which was apparently the invention of Tork, who played it: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Daydream Believer"] The track went to number one, becoming the group's third and final number one hit, and their fifth of six million-sellers. It was included on the next album, The Birds, The Bees, and the Monkees, but that piano part would be Tork's only contribution to the album. As the group members were all now writing songs and cutting their own tracks, and were also still rerecording the odd old unused song from the initial 1966 sessions, The Birds, The Bees, and the Monkees was pulled together from a truly astonishing amount of material. The expanded triple-CD version of the album, now sadly out of print, has multiple versions of forty-four different songs, ranging from simple acoustic demos to completed tracks, of which twelve were included on the final album. Tork did record several tracks during the sessions, but he spent much of the time recording and rerecording a single song, "Lady's Baby", which eventually stretched to five different recorded versions over multiple sessions in a five-month period. He racked up huge studio bills on the track, bringing in Steve Stills and Dewey Martin of the Buffalo Springfield, and Buddy Miles, to try to help him capture the sound in his head, but the various takes are almost indistinguishable from one another, and so it's difficult to see what the problem was: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Lady's Baby"] Either way, the track wasn't finished by the time the album came out, and the album that came out was a curiously disjointed and unsatisfying effort, a mixture of recycled old Boyce and Hart songs, some songs by Jones, who at this point was convinced that "Broadway-rock" was going to be the next big thing and writing songs that sounded like mediocre showtunes, and a handful of experimental songs written by Nesmith. You could pull together a truly great ten- or twelve-track album from the masses of material they'd recorded, but the one that came out was mediocre at best, and became the first Monkees album not to make number one -- though it still made number three and sold in huge numbers. It also had the group's last million-selling single on it, "Valleri", an old Boyce and Hart reject from 1966 that had been remade with Boyce and Hart producing and their old session players, though the production credit was still now given to the Monkees: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Valleri"] Nesmith said at the time he considered it the worst song ever written. The second season of the TV show was well underway, and despite -- or possibly because of -- the group being clearly stoned for much of the filming, it contains a lot of the episodes that fans of the group think of most fondly, including several episodes that break out of the formula the show had previously established in interesting ways. Tork and Dolenz were both also given the opportunity to direct episodes, and Dolenz also co-wrote his episode, which ended up being the last of the series. In another sign of how the group were being given more creative control over the show, the last three episodes of the series had guest appearances by favourite musicians of the group members who they wanted to give a little exposure to, and those guest appearances sum up the character of the band members remarkably well. Tork, for whatever reason, didn't take up this option, but the other three did. Jones brought on his friend Charlie Smalls, who would later go on to write the music for the Broadway musical The Wiz, to demonstrate to Jones the difference between Smalls' Black soul and Jones' white soul: [Excerpt: Davy Jones and Charlie Smalls] Nesmith, on the other hand, brought on Frank Zappa. Zappa put on Nesmith's Monkee shirt and wool hat and pretended to be Nesmith, and interviewed Nesmith with a false nose and moustache pretending to be Zappa, as they both mercilessly mocked the previous week's segment with Jones and Smalls: [Excerpt: Michael Nesmith and Frank Zappa] Nesmith then "conducted" Zappa as Zappa used a sledgehammer to "play" a car, parodying his own appearance on the Steve Allen Show playing a bicycle, to the presumed bemusement of the Monkees' fanbase who would not be likely to remember a one-off performance on a late-night TV show from five years earlier. And the final thing ever to be shown on an episode of the Monkees didn't feature any of the Monkees at all. Micky Dolenz, who directed and co-wrote that episode, about an evil wizard who was using the power of a space plant (named after the group's slang for dope) to hypnotise people through the TV, chose not to interact with his guest as the others had, but simply had Tim Buckley perform a solo acoustic version of his then-unreleased song "Song to the Siren": [Excerpt: Tim Buckley, "Song to the Siren"] By the end of the second season, everyone knew they didn't want to make another season of the TV show. Instead, they were going to do what Rafelson and Schneider had always wanted, and move into film. The planning stages for the film, which was initially titled Changes but later titled Head -- so that Rafelson and Schneider could bill their next film as "From the guys who gave you Head" -- had started the previous summer, before the sessions that produced The Birds, The Bees, and the Monkees. To write the film, the group went off with Rafelson and Schneider for a short holiday, and took with them their mutual friend Jack Nicholson. Nicholson was at this time not the major film star he later became. Rather he was a bit-part actor who was mostly associated with American International Pictures, the ultra-low-budget film company that has come up on several occasions in this podcast. Nicholson had appeared mostly in small roles, in films like The Little Shop of Horrors: [Excerpt: The Little Shop of Horrors] He'd appeared in multiple films made by Roger Corman, often appearing with Boris Karloff, and by Monte Hellman, but despite having been a working actor for a decade, his acting career was going nowhere, and by this point he had basically given up on the idea of being an actor, and had decided to start working behind the camera. He'd written the scripts for a few of the low-budget films he'd appeared in, and he'd recently scripted The Trip, the film we mentioned earlier: [Excerpt: The Trip trailer] So the group, Rafelson, Schneider, and Nicholson all went away for a weekend, and they all got extremely stoned, took acid, and talked into a tape recorder for hours on end. Nicholson then transcribed those recordings, cleaned them up, and structured the worthwhile ideas into something quite remarkable: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Ditty Diego"] If the Monkees TV show had been inspired by the Marx Brothers and Three Stooges, and by Richard Lester's directorial style, the only precursor I can find for Head is in the TV work of Lester's colleague Spike Milligan, but I don't think there's any reasonable way in which Nicholson or anyone else involved could have taken inspiration from Milligan's series Q. But what they ended up with is something that resembles, more than anything else, Monty Python's Flying Circus, a TV series that wouldn't start until a year after Head came out. It's a series of ostensibly unconnected sketches, linked by a kind of dream logic, with characters wandering from one loose narrative into a totally different one, actors coming out of character on a regular basis, and no attempt at a coherent narrative. It contains regular examples of channel-zapping, with excerpts from old films being spliced in, and bits of news footage juxtaposed with comedy sketches and musical performances in ways that are sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes distasteful, and occasionally both -- as when a famous piece of footage of a Vietnamese prisoner of war being shot in the head hard-cuts to screaming girls in the audience at a Monkees concert, a performance which ends with the girls tearing apart the group and revealing that they're really just cheap-looking plastic mannequins. The film starts, and ends, with the Monkees themselves attempting suicide, jumping off a bridge into the ocean -- but the end reveals that in fact the ocean they're in is just water in a glass box, and they're trapped in it. And knowing this means that when you watch the film a second time, you find that it does have a story. The Monkees are trapped in a box which in some ways represents life, the universe, and one's own mind, and in other ways represents the TV and their TV careers. Each of them is trying in his own way to escape, and each ends up trapped by his own limitations, condemned to start the cycle over and over again. The film features parodies of popular film genres like the boxing film (Davy is supposed to throw a fight with Sonny Liston at the instruction of gangsters), the Western, and the war film, but huge chunks of the film take place on a film studio backlot, and characters from one segment reappear in another, often commenting negatively on the film or the band, as when Frank Zappa as a critic calls Davy Jones' soft-shoe routine to a Harry Nilsson song "very white", or when a canteen worker in the studio calls the group "God's gift to the eight-year-olds". The film is constantly deconstructing and commenting on itself and the filmmaking process -- Tork hits that canteen worker, whose wig falls off revealing the actor playing her to be a man, and then it's revealed that the "behind the scenes" footage is itself scripted, as director Bob Rafelson and scriptwriter Jack Nicholson come into frame and reassure Tork, who's concerned that hitting a woman would be bad for his image. They tell him they can always cut it from the finished film if it doesn't work. While "Ditty Diego", the almost rap rewriting of the Monkees theme we heard earlier, sets out a lot of how the film asks to be interpreted and how it works narratively, the *spiritual* and thematic core of the film is in another song, Tork's "Long Title (Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?)", which in later solo performances Tork would give the subtitle "The Karma Blues": [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Long Title (Do I Have To Do This All Over Again?)"] Head is an extraordinary film, and one it's impossible to sum up in anything less than an hour-long episode of its own. It's certainly not a film that's to everyone's taste, and not every aspect of it works -- it is a film that is absolutely of its time, in ways that are both good and bad. But it's one of the most inventive things ever put out by a major film studio, and it's one that rightly secured the Monkees a certain amount of cult credibility over the decades. The soundtrack album is a return to form after the disappointing Birds, Bees, too. Nicholson put the album together, linking the eight songs in the film with collages of dialogue and incidental music, repurposing and recontextualising the dialogue to create a new experience, one that people have compared with Frank Zappa's contemporaneous We're Only In It For The Money, though while t
Chris Walla's life today is very different from where it has been in the past. The musician and producer isn't in the Pacific Northwest, for instance, where he grew up and lived for many years. He's in Trondheim, Norway, where he is putting down roots and continues to compose and produce. And while that happens, Death Cab for Cutie, the band he co-founded in the 1990s, is in the midst of a 71-stop international tour.In this interview, Chris talks about music instructors and academic experiences that didn't quite kill his love of making music. He weighs the thrill of playing music with his friends to the painful drudgery of touring and the experience of losing connection with the songs. And he details his struggles with depression, alcohol, and, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the nagging feeling that people don't really want to hear what he makes.Learn more about Chris Walla and his Seattle recording studio by visiting HallOfJusticeRecording.com. Listen to Chris Walla's music on the streaming service of your choice. Follow Chris on Twitter @calculizer.Thank you to all our listeners who support the show as monthly members of Maximum Fun.Check out our I'm Glad You're Here and Depresh Mode merchandise at the brand new merch website MaxFunStore.com!Hey, remember, you're part of Depresh Mode and we want to hear what you want to hear about. What guests and issues would you like to have covered in a future episode? Write us at depreshmode@maximumfun.org.Help is available right away.The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-8255, 1-800-273-TALKCrisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741.International suicide hotline numbers available here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlinesThe Depresh Mode newsletter is available twice a week. Subscribe for free and stay up to date on the show and mental health issues. https://johnmoe.substack.com/John's acclaimed memoir, The Hilarious World of Depression, is now available in paperback. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250209566/thehilariousworldofdepressionFind the show on Twitter @depreshpod and Instagram @depreshpod.John is on Twitter @johnmoe.
Rog and Davo break down Lionel Messi and Argentina's semifinal triumph over Croatia. Plus, special guests, Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and Postal Service; Sounders goalkeeper Stefan Frei; and hip-hop legend Sir Mix-a-Lot. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard gives Sodajerker the lowdown on the band's superb new album Asphalt Meadows, the process of round robin songwriting, and why he's always falling in love with dead movie stars. The songwriter and guitarist also talks about writing with his trusty Fender Mustang, how certain guitars can deal a hot hand creatively, and the importance of lived experience in his work.
Chris and Andy talk about the British crime series 'Sherwood' and what sets apart British true crime shows from ones made in America (1:00). Then they talk about the new Marvel TV movie 'Werewolf By Night' and how it shows what's possible for Marvel television (23:30), before Andy is joined by Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard to talk about the band's new album 'Asphalt Meadows' (44:04). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Ben Gibbard Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the latest hitting heroics by 30-year-old rookie Joey Meneses, then discuss the Guardians clinching the AL Central title, underdogs that defy the projections and playoff odds, and Albert Pujols's 700th homer. After that (47:00), they talk to Death Cab for Cutie singer/songwriter/guitarist Ben Gibbard about the Mariners' stretch […]
Ben Gibbard joins Andy Richter to talk about maintaining your self awareness, interfacing with your creativity, and more. Death Cab For Cutie's new album Asphalt Meadows will be available September 16th.
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