Podcasts about Circus Boy

This week, Ira spoke with Micky Dolenz, performing a special Valentine's Day performance at The Strat, February 14 at 8 p.m. In this episode of “Talk About Las Vegas With Ira,” Micky talks about who influenced him in the world of music before The Monkees (including one surprising choice); moving to England to become a film and TV director; the 1986 reunion that made him aware of the cultural impact of the group; the first time singing live on stage at a press junket for “Circus Boy”); why he doesn't have a favorite episode of The Monkees' television show; performing in Broadway shows; how John Lennon said The Monkees are like The Marx Brothers; being larger than life characters for The Monkees TV show; why Peter Tork was the one in the band who had to play a fairly different character from his real life; how his current show structure is a story going into a song; what he discovered about singing non-Monkees' songs (there's always a connection); why he performs all The Monkees' hits in live shows; and his album, "Live At The Troubadour." (Also Watch Full Podcast Video)

Our 501st episode, which aired on March 10, 2024. Altan – Port Arainn Mhor/Port Kitty Rua Mooney, Donegal Altan – The Barley & The Rye, Donegal Supertrad – Flowers of Michigan/Wing Commander, Blue Sky on Walnut Virginia Kettle & Rolling Folk – Sailing on the Inside, East of Elsewhere One for the Foxes – Bat in the Cap, Take A Look Around JigJam – Cluck Ole Twig, Across the Pond Kevin Burke – The Pigeon on the Gate/Lafferty's Reel/The Morning Dew, An Evening with Kevin Burke Celtic Woman – Dulaman, Twentieth Anniversary Nuala Kennedy, Kevin Burke & Eamon O'Leary – Liffeyside, rehearsal recording Kevin Burke & Nuala Kennedy – Cashman's Polka/Lehane's Polka/Walsh's Polka, excerpt from Music from an Irish Cottage Brad Reid – Sunday Session, The Bridge Fairport Convention – Polly on the Shore, Sense of Occasion Doolin' – Chicago Waltz, Circus Boy

December 7-13, 1985   This week Ken welcomes writer, producer, professor, director and all around good guy Allan Arkush to the show.   Ken and Allan discuss Allan's cool office, Allan's record collection, Roger Corman, Emmy Nominations, directing or directing and producing over 400 episodes of TV, the path from 70s exploitation to 80s mainstream TV, having a high batting average of sold TV pilots. Fame, Summer pilot, Rock N Roll High School, telling stories through music, how popular Fame was in Israel, residuals, 80s NYC, directing videos for Elvis Costello, Bette Midler and Fleetwood Mac, the ones you turn down, why 1985 was a huge TV year for Allan, St. Elsewhere, Moonlighting, being able to be a style chameleon, being a cinema fan, having Scorsese teach you film, growing up in NJ, making whatever movie you want as long as it's the movie Roger wants, how hard it is to make good TV, coverage and lighting, how execs are not funny or creative, how bad studio notes are, King Kong, Micky Mouse Club, serialized stories, loving the theme songs from Westerns, Rocky and Bullwinkle, The Loan Ranger, Circus Boy, Abby Singer, The Twilight Zone, Soupy Sales, using rock music in movies, Get Crazy, Zacherly introducing the Grateful Dead at the Filmore East, I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners bump, being a nerd, how some things don't hold up, The Dick Van Dyke Show, working with Ron Howard, Doris Day movies, Family Affair, Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver, the importance of empathy, the transitional time of the 70s and 80s, East Side West Side, The Bronx Zoo, Hill St. Blues, the importance of casting, working for Bruce Paltrow, Crossing Jordan, ER, police procedurals, the time Ken ruined a shot in the pilot of Crossing Jordan, having to rush home and watch Saturday Night Live, SCTV, Catherine O'Hara's total character commitment, film noir, the zeitgeist of relationships between men and women, the dancing baby on Ally McBeal, Heroes, Duck Soup, The Shining, Lemony Snicket, showing The TAMI Show to young people, and how the future is female.

Today we welcome the very funny André Vincent, one of those rare entertainers who does it all. Comedian, Actor, Writer, Director, Presenter, Singer & Circus Boy. André has worked with almost everyone in the comedy biz and has much to say about television, having appeared on our screens in many guises. We discuss everything from pantomime, to his star turn in Byker Grove, as well as his love for long lost comedy greats.If you enjoy this episode please follow the show wherever you get podcasts.Follow us on Instagram & Twitter (links below):All music written and performed in this podcast by Steve Otis Gunn,Please buy my book 'You Shot My Dog and I Love You' available in all good book shops and online.Podcast Socials:Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tvtimespodInsta: https://www.instagram.com/tvtimespodYoutube: https://www.youtube.com/@tvtimespodTwitter: https://twitter.com/tvtimespodSteve's Socials:Insta: https://www.instagram.com/steveotisgunnTwitter: https://www.twitter.com/steveotisgunnFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/steveotisgunn.antisocialAndre's Socials:Insta: https://www.instagram.com/mislaid_comedy_heroes/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Vinny64Produced by Steve Otis Gunn for Jilted Maggotwww.jiltedmaggot.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

GGACP remembers producer, director and Monkees co-creator Bob Rafelson with this ENCORE of a 2014 interview with actor and musician Micky Dolenz. In this episode, Micky looks back at “Monkeemania” and his own unlikely journey from 1950's child star (“Circus Boy”) to 1960's pop/rock icon. Also, Micky drops in on a “Sgt. Pepper” recording session, makes movies with Jack Nicholson and Frank Zappa (and Bob Rafelson!) and hits the town with fellow “Hollywood Vampires” John Lennon, Keith Moon and Alice Cooper. PLUS: Lon Chaney Jr.! Micky's mom meets “The Creeper”! The Monkees take on “Faust”! Harry Nilsson quits his day job! And Sgt. Bilko sings “Yesterday”! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Micky Dolenz, lead singer and drummer for The Monkees, agrees his most recognizable artistic achievement is his time on the TV show and with the band, but it hardly captures the breadth of his show-business career. Starting in the 1950s on the TV show Circus Boy, he played Corky, the waterboy for the elephants. He went on to perform in and direct musical theater in the West End, direct and produce TV shows for the BBC, and he continued touring as a musician. But his first loves remain architecture and science.

Micky Dolenz, lead singer and drummer for The Monkees, agrees his most recognizable artistic achievement is his time on the TV show and with the band, but it hardly captures the breadth of his show-business career. Starting in the 1950s on the TV show Circus Boy, he played Corky, the waterboy for the elephants. He went on to perform in and direct musical theater in the West End, direct and produce TV shows for the BBC, and he continued touring as a musician. But his first loves remain architecture and science.

From child star to teen music sensation - Mickey Dolenz has almost always been meant to be in the spotlight.  At the age of ten in 1956  he starred in a children's TV show called Circus Boy under the name Mickey Braddock.  He played Corky, an orphaned water boy for the elephants in a one-ring circus at the start of the 20th century. The program ran for two seasons, after which Dolenz made sporadic appearances on network television shows and pursued his education.  In 1964, he was cast as Ed in the episode "Born of Kings and Angels" of the NBC education drama series Mr Novak, starring James Franciscus as an idealistic Los Angeles teacher.  Dolenz was attending college in Los Angeles when he was hired for the "drummer" role in NBC's  The Monkees.   After The Monkees television show ended, Dolenz continued performing providing voice-overs for a number of Saturday morning cartoon  series.   I had the pleasure of meeting Mickey twice. Once when he headlined for one of our K-HITS concert series of Oldies artists we called "Hullabaloo" and again for this interview when he was in town for a free live concert.  Here's that interview on K-HITS 92.1

SHOW NOTESEPISODE 004: This Week's Topic: Making Your Characters Sound AuthenticTO GET on my Email List and Get my FREE Ebooklet: The QuickGuide To TV Writing Structure, visit my website  https://howtowritetv.com/ This EPISODE: I want to show you how to answer this question: do my characters sound unique and authentic?Thanks for listening! If you have a question for me, leave a voice message on my website.Important Administrivia:TO GET on my Email List and Get my FREE Ebooklet: The QuickGuide To TV Writing Structure, visit-- https://writetv.info/OUR WEBSITE: https://howtowritetv.com/Sound effects obtained from https://www.zapsplat.comMusic from https://www.zapsplat.comThis Week I Recorded With: Neumann BCM 705. I'm not sure yet if I like this mic--What did you think of the sound? Email me at howtowritetv@gmail.com

Episode 4! A dissection of our strange desire to be ruled, our love for Kings & Queens, and how Vladimir Putin takes full advantage.  And is my passion just a state of dysregulation?  Act One: Do we want an autocrat too?  Or, Kings, Queens & Vladimir Putin 1:42 Act Two: Am I Passionate, or Just Jo-Jo the Circus Boy with his Pretty New Pet?

Episode 144 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Last Train to Clarksville" and the beginnings of the career of the Monkees, along with a short primer on the origins of the Vietnam War.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a seventeen-minute bonus episode available, on "These Boots Are Made For Walking" by Nancy Sinatra, which I mispronounce at the end of this episode as "These Boots Were Made For Walking", so no need to correct me here. 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 As usual, all the songs excerpted in the podcast can be heard in full at Mixcloud. 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, the only one of those that is still in print is More of the Monkees. 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 last year, 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 We've obviously talked in this podcast about several of the biggest hits of 1966 already, but we haven't mentioned the biggest hit of the year, one of the strangest records ever to make number one in the US -- "The Ballad of the Green Berets" by Sgt Barry Sadler: [Excerpt: Barry Sadler, "The Ballad of the Green Berets"] Barry Sadler was an altogether odd man, and just as a brief warning his story, which will last a minute or so, involves gun violence. At the time he wrote and recorded that song, he was on active duty in the military -- he was a combat medic who'd been fighting in the Vietnam War when he'd got a wound that had meant he had to be shipped back to the USA, and while at Fort Bragg he decided to write and record a song about his experiences, with the help of Robin Moore, a right-wing author of military books, both fiction and nonfiction, who wrote the books on which the films The Green Berets and The French Connection were based. Sadler's record became one of those massive fluke hits, selling over nine million copies and getting him appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, but other than one top thirty hit, he never had another hit single. Instead, he tried and failed to have a TV career, then became a writer of pulp fiction himself, writing a series of twenty-one novels about the centurion who thrust his spear into Jesus' side when Jesus was being crucified, and is thus cursed to be a soldier until the second coming. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he lived until he shot Lee Emerson, a country songwriter who had written songs for Marty Robbins, in the head, killing him, in an argument over a woman. He was sentenced to thirty days in jail for this misdemeanour, of which he served twenty-eight. Later he moved to Guatemala City, where he was himself shot in the head. The nearest Army base to Nashville, where Sadler lived after his discharge, is Fort Campbell, in Clarksville: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Last Train to Clarksville"] The Vietnam War was a long and complicated war, one which affected nearly everything we're going to see in the next year or so of this podcast, and we're going to talk about it a lot, so it's worth giving a little bit of background here. In doing so, I'm going to use quite a flippant tone, but I want to make it clear that I'm not mocking the very real horrors that people suffered in the wars I'm talking about -- it's just that to sum up multiple decades of unimaginable horrors in a few sentences requires glossing over so much that you have to either laugh or cry. The origin of the Vietnam War, as in so many things in twentieth century history, can be found in European colonialism. France had invaded much of Southeast Asia in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, and created a territory known as French Indo-China, which became part of the French colonial Empire. But in 1940 France was taken over by Germany, and Japan was at war with China. Germany and Japan were allies, and the Japanese were worried that French Indo-China would be used to import fuel and arms to China -- plus, they quite fancied the idea of having a Japanese empire. So Vichy France let Japan take control of French Indo-China. But of course the *reason* that France had been taken over by Germany was that pretty much the whole world was at war in 1940, and obviously the countries that were fighting Germany and Japan -- the bloc led by Britain, soon to be joined by America and Russia -- weren't very keen on the idea of Japan getting more territory. But they were also busy with the whole "fighting a world war" thing, so they did what governments in this situation always do -- they funded local guerilla insurgent fighters on the basis that "my enemy's enemy is my friend", something that has luckily never had any negative consequences whatsoever, except for occasionally. Those local guerilla fighters were an anti-imperialist popular front, the Việt Minh, led by Hồ Chí Minh, a revolutionary Communist. They were dedicated to overthrowing foreign imperialist occupiers and gaining independence for Vietnam, and Hồ Chí Minh further wanted to establish a Soviet-style Communist government in the newly-independent country. The Allies funded the Việt Minh in their fight against the Japanese occupiers until the end of the Second World War, at which point France was liberated from German occupation, Vietnam was liberated from Japanese occupation, and the French basically said "Hooray! We get our Empire back!", to which Hồ Chí Minh's response was, more or less, "what part of anti-imperialist Marxist dedicated to overthrowing foreign occupation of Vietnam did you not understand, exactly?" Obviously, the French weren't best pleased with this, and so began what was the first of a series of wars in the region. The First Indochina War lasted for years and ended in a negotiated peace of a sort. Of course, this led to the favoured tactic of the time, partition -- splitting a formerly-occupied country into two, at an arbitrary dividing line, a tactic which was notably successful in securing peace everywhere it was tried. Apart from Ireland, India, Korea, and a few other places, but surely it wouldn't be a problem in Vietnam, right? North Vietnam was controlled by the Communists, led by Hồ Chí Minh, and recognised by China and the USSR but not by the Western states. South Vietnam was nominally independent but led by the former puppet emperor who owed his position to France, soon replaced by a right-wing dictatorship. And both the right-wing dictatorship and the left-wing dictatorship were soon busily oppressing their own citizens and funding military opposition groups in the other country. This soon escalated into full-blown war, with the North backed by China and Russia and the South backed by America. This was one of a whole series of wars in small countries which were really proxy wars between the two major powers, the USA and the USSR, both of which were vying for control, but which couldn't confront each other directly because either country had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the whole world multiple times over. But the Vietnam War quickly became more than a small proxy war. The US started sending its own troops over, and more and more of them. The US had never ended the draft after World War II, and by the mid sixties significant numbers of young men were being called up and sent over to fight in a war that had by that point lasted a decade (depending on exactly when you count the war as starting from) between two countries they didn't care about, over things few of them understood, and at an exorbitant cost in lives. As you might imagine, this started to become unpopular among those likely to be drafted, and as the people most affected (other, of course, than the Vietnamese people, whose opinions on being bombed and shot at by foreigners supporting one of other of the dictators vying to rule over them nobody else was much interested in) were also of the generation who were the main audience for popular music, slowly this started to seep into the lyrics of songs -- a seepage which had already been prompted by the appearance in the folk and soul worlds of many songs against other horrors, like segregation. This started to hit the pop charts with songs like "The Universal Soldier" by Buffy Saint-Marie, which made the UK top five in a version by Donovan: [Excerpt: Donovan, "The Universal Soldier"] That charted in the lower regions of the US charts, and a cover version by Glen Campbell did slightly better: [Excerpt: Glen Campbell, "The Universal Soldier"] That was even though Campbell himself was a supporter of the war in Vietnam, and rather pro-military. Meanwhile, as we've seen a couple of times, Jan Berry of Jan and Dean recorded a pro-war answer song to that, "The Universal Coward": [Excerpt: Jan Berry, "The Universal Coward"] This, of course, was even though Berry was himself avoiding the draft. And I've not been able to find the credits for that track, but Glen Campbell regularly played guitar on Berry's sessions, so it's entirely possible that he played guitar on that record made by a coward, attacking his own record, which he disagreed with, for its cowardice. This is, of course, what happens when popular culture tries to engage with social and political issues -- pop culture is motivated by money, not ideological consistency, and so if there's money to be made from anti-war songs or from pro-war songs, someone will take that money. And so on October the ninth 1965, Billboard magazine ran a report: "Colpix Enters Protest Field HOLLYWOOD -Colpix has secured its first protest lyric disk, "The Willing Conscript,"as General Manager Bud Katzel initiates relationships with independent producers. The single features Lauren St. Davis. Katzel says the song was written during the Civil War, rewritten during World War I and most recently updated by Bob Krasnow and Sam Ashe. Screen Gems Music, the company's publishing wing, is tracing the song's history, Katzel said. Katzel's second single is "(You Got the Gamma Goochee" by an artist with that unusual stage name. The record is a Screen Gems production and was in the house when Katzel arrived one month ago. The executive said he was expressly looking for material for two contract artists, David Jones and Hoyt Axton. The company is also working on getting Axton a role in a television series, "Camp Runamuck." " To unpack this a little, Colpix was a record label, owned by Columbia Pictures, and we talked about that a little bit in the episode on "The Loco-Motion" -- the film and TV companies were getting into music, and Columbia had recently bought up Don Kirshner's Aldon publishing and Dimension Records as part of their strategy of tying in music with their TV shows. This is a company trying desperately to jump on a bandwagon -- Colpix at this time was not exactly having huge amounts of success with its records. Hoyt Axton, meanwhile, was a successful country singer and songwriter. We met his mother many episodes back -- Mae Axton was the writer of "Heartbreak Hotel". Axton himself is now best known as the dad in the 80s film Gremlins. David Jones will be coming up shortly. Bob Krasnow and Sam Ashe were record executives then at Kama Sutra records, but soon to move on -- we'll be hearing about Krasnow more in future episodes. Neither of them were songwriters, and while I have no real reason to disbelieve the claim that "The Willing Conscript" dates back to the Civil War, the earliest version *I* have been able to track down was its publication in issue 28 of Broadside Magazine in June 1963 -- nearly a hundred years after the American Civil War -- with the credit "by Tom Paxton" -- Paxton was a popular singer-songwriter of the time, and it certainly sounds like his writing. The first recording of it I know of was by Pete Seeger: [Excerpt: Pete Seeger, "The Willing Conscript"] But the odd thing is that by the time this was printed, the single had already been released the previous month, and it was not released under the name Lauren St Davis, or under the title "The Willing Conscript" -- there are precisely two differences between the song copyrighted as by Krasnow and Ashe and the one copyrighted two years earlier as by Paxton. One is that verses three and four are swapped round, the other is that it's now titled "The New Recruit". And presumably because they realised that the pseudonym "Lauren St. Davis" was trying just a bit too hard to sound cool and drug culture, they reverted to another stage name the performer had been using, Michael Blessing: [Excerpt: Michael Blessing, "The New Recruit"] Blessing's name was actually Michael Nesmith, and before we go any further, yes his mother, Bette Nesmith Graham, did invent the product that later became marketed in the US as Liquid Paper. At this time, though, that company wasn't anywhere near as successful as it later became, and was still a tiny company. I only mention it to forestall the ten thousand comments and tweets I would otherwise get asking why I didn't mention it. In Nesmith's autobiography, while he talks a lot about his mother, he barely mentions her business and says he was uninterested in it -- he talks far more about the love of art she instilled in him, as well as her interest in the deep questions of philosophy and religion, to which in her case and his they found answers in Christian Science, but both were interested in conversations about ideas, in a way that few other people in Nesmith's early environment were. Nesmith's mother was also responsible for his music career. He had spent two years in the Air Force in his late teens, and the year he got out, his mother and stepfather bought him a guitar for Christmas, after he was inspired by seeing Hoyt Axton performing live and thinking he could do that himself: [Excerpt: Hoyt Axton, "Greenback Dollar"] As he put it in his autobiography, "What did it matter that I couldn't play the guitar, couldn't sing very well, and didn't know any folk songs? I would be going to college and hanging out at the student union with pretty girls and singing folk songs. They would like me. I might even figure out a way to get a cool car." This is, of course, the thought process that pretty much every young man to pick up a guitar goes through, but Nesmith was more dedicated than most. He gave his first performance as a folk singer ten days after he first got a guitar, after practising the few chords in most folk songs for twelve hours a day every day in that time. He soon started performing as a folk singer, performing around Dallas both on his own and with his friend John London, performing the standard folk repertoire of Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly songs, things like "Pick a Bale of Cotton": [Excerpt: Michael Nesmith, "Pick a Bale of Cotton"] He also started writing his own songs, and put out a vanity record of one of them in 1963: [Excerpt: Mike Nesmith, "Wanderin'"] London moved to California, and Nesmith soon followed, with his first wife Phyllis and their son Christian. There Nesmith and London had the good fortune to be neighbours with someone who was a business associate of Frankie Laine, and they were signed to Laine's management company as a folk duo. However, Nesmith's real love was rock and roll, especially the heavier R&B end of the genre -- he was particularly inspired by Bo Diddley, and would always credit seeing Diddley live as a teenager as being his biggest musical influence. Soon Nesmith and London had formed a folk-rock trio with their friend Bill Sleeper. As Mike & John & Bill, they put out a single, "How Can You Kiss Me?", written by Nesmith: [Excerpt: Mike & John & Bill, "How Can You Kiss Me?"] They also recorded more of Nesmith's songs, like "All the King's Horses": [Excerpt: Mike & John & Bill, "All the King's Horses"] But that was left unreleased, as Bill was drafted, and Nesmith and London soon found themselves in The Survivors, one of several big folk groups run by Randy Sparks, the founder of the New Christie Minstrels. Nesmith was also writing songs throughout 1964 and 1965, and a few of those songs would be recorded by other people in 1966, like "Different Drum", which was recorded by the bluegrass band The Greenbriar Boys: [Excerpt: The Greenbriar Boys, "Different Drum"] That would more successfully be recorded by the Stone Poneys later of course. And Nesmith's "Mary Mary" was also picked up by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band: [Excerpt: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, "Mary Mary"] But while Nesmith had written these songs by late 1965, he wasn't able to record them himself. He was signed by Bob Krasnow, who insisted he change his name to Michael Blessing, and recorded two singles for Colpix -- "The New Recruit", which we heard earlier, and a version of Buffy Saint-Marie's "Until It's Time For You To Go", sung in a high tenor range very far from Nesmith's normal singing voice: [Excerpt: Michael Blessing, "Until It's Time For You To Go"] But to my mind by far the best thing Nesmith recorded in this period is the unissued third Michael Blessing single, where Nesmith seems to have been given a chance to make the record he really wanted to make. The B-side, a version of Allen Toussaint's swamp-rocker "Get Out of My Life, Woman", is merely a quite good version of the song, but the A-side, a version of his idol Bo Diddley's classic "Who Do You Love?" is utterly extraordinary, and it's astonishing that it was never released at the time: [Excerpt: Michael Blessing, "Who Do You Love?"] But the Michael Blessing records did no better than anything else Colpix were putting out. Indeed, the only record they got onto the hot one hundred at all in a three and a half year period was a single by one David Jones, which reached the heady heights of number ninety-eight: [Excerpt: David Jones, "What Are We Going to Do?"] Jones had been brought up in extreme poverty in Openshaw in Manchester, but had been encouraged by his mother, who died when he was fourteen, to go into acting. He'd had a few parts on local radio, and had appeared as a child actor on TV shows made in Manchester, like appearing in the long-running soap opera Coronation Street (still on today) as Ena Sharples' grandson Colin: [Excerpt: Coronation St https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FDEvOs1imc , 13:30] He also had small roles in Z-Cars and Bill Naughton's TV play "June Evening", and a larger role in Keith Waterhouse's radio play "There is a Happy Land". But when he left school, he decided he was going to become a jockey rather than an actor -- he was always athletic, he loved horses, and he was short -- I've seen his height variously cited as five foot three and five foot four. But it turned out that the owner of the stables in which he was training had showbusiness connections, and got him the audition that changed his life, for the part of the Artful Dodger in Lionel Bart's West End musical Oliver! We've encountered Lionel Bart before a couple of times, but if you don't remember him, he was the songwriter who co-wrote Tommy Steele's hits, and who wrote "Living Doll" for Cliff Richard. He also discovered both Steele and Marty Wilde, and was one of the major figures in early British rock and roll. But after the Tommy Steele records, he'd turned his attention to stage musicals, writing book, music, and lyrics for a string of hits, and more-or-less singlehandedly inventing the modern British stage musical form -- something Andrew Lloyd Webber, for example, always credits him with. Oliver!, based on Oliver Twist, was his biggest success, and they were looking for a new Artful Dodger. This was *the* best role for a teenage boy in the UK at the time -- later performers to take the role on the London stage include Steve Marriott and Phil Collins, both of whom we'll no doubt encounter in future episodes -- and Jones got the job, although they were a bit worried at first about his Manchester vowels. He assured them though that he could learn to do a Cockney accent, and they took him on. Jones not having a natural Cockney accent ended up doing him the biggest favour of his career. While he could put on a relatively convincing one, he articulated quite carefully because it wasn't his natural accent. And so when the North American version found  in previews that their real Cockney Dodger wasn't being understood perfectly, the fake Cockney Jones was brought over to join the show on Broadway, and was there from opening night on. On February the ninth, 1964, Jones found himself, as part of the Broadway cast of Oliver!, on the Ed Sullivan Show: [Excerpt: Davy Jones and Georgia Brown, "I'd Do Anything"] That same night, there were some other British people, who got a little bit more attention than Jones did: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand (live on Ed Sullivan)"] Davy Jones wasn't a particular fan of pop music at that point, but he knew he liked what he saw, and he wanted some of the same reaction. Shortly after this, Jones was picked up for management by Ward Sylvester, of Columbia Pictures, who was going to groom Jones for stardom. Jones continued in Oliver! for a while, and also had a brief run in a touring version of Pickwick, another musical based on a Dickens novel, this time starring Harry Secombe, the British comedian and singer who had made his name with the Goon Show. Jones' first single, "Dream Girl", came out in early 1965: [Excerpt: Davy Jones, "Dream Girl"] It was unsuccessful, as was his one album, David Jones, which seemed to be aiming at the teen idol market, but failing miserably. The second single, "What Are  We Going to Do?" did make the very lowest regions of the Hot One Hundred, but the rest of the album was mostly attempts to sound a bit like Herman's Hermits -- a band whose lead singer, coincidentally, also came from Manchester, had appeared in Coronation Street, and was performing with a fake Cockney accent. Herman's Hermits had had a massive US hit with the old music hall song "I'm Henry VIII I Am": [Excerpt: Herman's Hermits, "I'm Henry VIII I Am"] So of course Davy had his own old music-hall song, "Any Old Iron": [Excerpt: Davy Jones, "Any Old Iron"] Also, the Turtles had recently had a hit with a folk-rock version of Dylan's "It Ain't Me Babe", and Davy cut his own version of their arrangement, in the one concession to rock music on the album: [Excerpt: Davy Jones, "It Ain't Me Babe"] The album was, unsurprisingly, completely unsuccessful, but Ward Sylvester was not disheartened. He had the perfect job for a young British teen idol who could sing and act. The Monkees was the brainchild of two young TV producers, Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, who had come up with the idea of doing a TV show very loosely based on the Beatles' film A Hard Day's Night (though Rafelson would later claim that he'd had the idea many years before A Hard Day's Night and was inspired by his youth touring with folk bands -- Schneider always admitted the true inspiration though). This was not a particularly original idea -- there were a whole bunch of people trying to make TV shows based in some way around bands. Jan and Dean were working on a possible TV series, there was talk of a TV series starring The Who, there was a Beatles cartoon series, Hanna-Barbera were working on a cartoon series about a band called The Bats, and there was even another show proposed to Screen Gems, Columbia's TV department, titled Liverpool USA, which was meant to star Davy Jones, another British performer, and two American musicians, and to have songs provided by Don Kirshner's songwriters. That The Monkees, rather than these other series, was the one that made it to the TV (though obviously the Beatles cartoon series did too) is largely because Rafelson and Schneider's independent production company, Raybert, which they had started after leaving Screen Gems, was given two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars to develop the series by their former colleague, Screen Gems' vice president in charge of programme development, the former child star Jackie Cooper. Of course, as well as being their former colleague, Cooper may have had some more incentive to give Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider that money in that the head of Columbia Pictures, and thus Cooper's boss' boss, was one Abe Schneider. The original idea for the show was to use the Lovin' Spoonful, but as we heard last week they weren't too keen, and it was quickly decided instead that the production team would put together a group of performers. Davy Jones was immediately attached to the project, although Rafelson was uncomfortable with Jones, thinking he wasn't as rock and roll as Rafelson was hoping for -- he later conceded, though, that Jones was absolutely right for the group. As for everyone else, to start with Rafelson and Schneider placed an ad in a couple of the trade papers which read "Madness!! Auditions Folk and Roll Musicians-Singers for acting roles in new TV series. Running parts for 4 insane boys ages 17-21. Want spirited Ben Frank's types. Have courage to work. Must come down for interview" There were a couple of dogwhistles in there, to appeal to the hip crowd -- Ben Frank's was a twenty-four-hour restaurant on the Sunset Strip, where people including Frank Zappa and Jim Morrison used to hang out, and which was very much associated with the freak scene we've looked at in episodes on Zappa and the Byrds. Meanwhile "Must come down for interview" was meant to emphasise that you couldn't actually be high when you turned up -- but you were expected to be the kind of person who would at least at some points have been high. A lot of people answered that ad -- including Paul Williams, Harry Nilsson, Van Dyke Parks, and many more we'll be seeing along the way. But oddly, the only person actually signed up for the show because of that ad was Michael Nesmith -- who was already signed to Colpix Records anyway. According to Davy Jones, who was sitting in at the auditions, Schneider and Rafelson were deliberately trying to disorient the auditioners with provocative behaviour like just ignoring them, to see how they'd react. Nesmith was completely unfazed by this, and apparently walked in wearing a  green wool hat and carrying a bag of laundry, saying that he needed to get this over with quickly so he could go and do his washing. John London, who came along to the audition as well, talked later about seeing Nesmith fill in a questionnaire that everyone had to fill in -- in a space asking about previous experience Nesmith just wrote "Life" and drew a big diagonal line across the rest of the page. That attitude certainly comes across in Nesmith's screen test: [Excerpt: Michael Nesmith screen test] Meanwhile, Rafelson and Schneider were also scouring the clubs for performers who might be useful, and put together a shortlist of people including Jerry Yester and Chip Douglas of the Modern Folk Quartet, Bill Chadwick, who was in the Survivors with Nesmith and London, and one Micky Braddock, whose agent they got in touch with and who was soon signed up. Braddock was the stage name of Micky Dolenz, who soon reverted to his birth surname, and it's the name by which he went in his first bout of fame. Dolenz was the son of two moderately successful Hollywood actors, George Dolenz and Janelle Johnson, and their connections had led to Dolenz, as Braddock, getting the lead role in the 1958 TV series Circus Boy, about a child named Corky who works in a circus looking after an elephant after his parents, the Flying Falcons, were killed in a trapeze accident. [Excerpt: Circus Boy, "I can't play a drum"] Oddly, one of the other people who had been considered for that role was Paul Williams, who was also considered for the Monkees but ultimately turned down, and would later write one of the Monkees' last singles. Dolenz had had a few minor TV appearances after that series had ended, including a recurring role on Peyton Place, but he had also started to get interested in music. He'd performed a bit as a folk duo with his sister Coco, and had also been the lead singer of a band called Micky and the One-Nighters, who later changed their name to the Missing Links, who'd played mostly covers of Little Richard and Chuck Berry songs and later British Invasion hits. He'd also recorded two tracks with Wrecking Crew backing, although neither track got released until after his later fame -- "Don't Do It": [Excerpt: Micky Dolenz, "Don't Do It"] and "Huff Puff": [Excerpt: Micky Dolenz, "Huff Puff"] Dolenz had a great singing voice, an irrepressible personality, and plenty of TV experience. He was obviously in. Rafelson and Schneider took quite a while whittling down the shortlist to the final four, and they *were* still considering people who'd applied through the ads. One they actually offered the role to was Stephen Stills, but he decided not to take the role. When he turned the role down, they asked if he knew anyone else who had a similar appearance to him, and as it happened he did. Steve Stills and Peter Tork had known of each other before they actually met on the streets of Greenwich Village -- the way they both told the story, on their first meeting they'd each approached the other and said "You must be the guy everyone says looks like me!" The two had become fast friends, and had played around the Greenwich Village folk scene together for a while, before going their separate ways -- Stills moving to California while Tork joined another of those big folk ensembles of the New Christie Minstrels type, this one called the Phoenix Singers. Tork had later moved to California himself, and reconnected with his old friend, and they had performed together for a while in a trio called the Buffalo Fish, with Tork playing various instruments, singing, and doing comedy bits. Oddly, while Tork was the member of the Monkees with the most experience as a musician, he was the only one who hadn't made a record when the TV show was put together. But he was by far the most skilled instrumentalist of the group -- as distinct from best musician, a distinction Tork was always scrupulous about making -- and could play guitar, bass, and keyboards, all to a high standard -- and I've also seen him in more recent years play French horn live. His great love, though, was the banjo, and you can hear how he must have sounded on the Greenwich Village folk scene in his solo spots on Monkees shows, where he would show off his banjo skills: [Excerpt: Peter Tork, "Cripple Creek"] Tork wouldn't get to use his instrumental skills much at first though, as most of the backing tracks for the group's records were going to be performed by other people. More impressive for the TV series producers was his gift for comedy, especially physical comedy -- having seen Tork perform live a few times, the only comparison I can make to his physical presence is to Harpo Marx, which is about as high a compliment as one can give. Indeed, Micky Dolenz has often pointed out that while there were intentional parallels to the Beatles in the casting of the group, the Marx Brothers are a far better parallel, and it's certainly easy to see Tork as Harpo, Dolenz as Chico, Nesmith as Groucho, and Jones as Zeppo. (This sounds like an insult to Jones, unless you're aware of how much the Marx Brothers films actually depended on Zeppo as the connective tissue between the more outrageous brothers and the more normal environment they were operating in, and how much the later films suffered for the lack of Zeppo). The new cast worked well together, even though there were obvious disagreements between them right from the start. Dolenz, at least at this point, seems to have been the gel that held the four together -- he had the experience of being a child star in common with Jones, he was a habitue of the Sunset Strip clubs where Nesmith and Tork had been hanging out, and he had personality traits in common with all of them. Notably, in later years, Dolenz would do duo tours with each of his three bandmates without the participation of the others. The others, though, didn't get on so well with each other. Jones and Tork seem to have got on OK, but they were very different people -- Jones was a showbiz entertainer, whose primary concern was that none of the other stars of the show be better looking than him, while Tork was later self-diagnosed as neurodivergent, a folkie proto-hippie who wanted to drift from town to town playing his banjo. Tork and Nesmith had similar backgrounds and attitudes in some respects -- and were united in their desire to have more musical input into the show than was originally intended -- but they were such different personalities in every aspect of their lives from their religious views to their politics to their taste in music they came into conflict. Nesmith would later say of Tork "I never liked Peter, he never liked me. So we had an uneasy truce between the two of us. As clear as I could tell, among his peers he was very well liked. But we rarely had a civil word to say to each other". Nesmith also didn't get on well with Jones, both of them seeming to view themselves as the natural leader of the group, with all the clashes that entails. The four Monkees were assigned instruments for their characters based not on instrumental skill, but on what suited their roles better. Jones was the teen idol character, so he was made the maraca-playing frontman who could dance without having to play an instrument, though Dolenz took far more of the lead vocals. Nesmith was made the guitarist, while Tork was put on bass, though Tork was by far the better guitarist of the two. And Dolenz was put on drums, even though he didn't play the drums -- Tork would always say later that if the roles had been allocated by actual playing ability, Jones would have been the drummer. Dolenz did, though, become a good drummer, if a rather idiosyncratic one. Tork would later say "Micky played the drums but Mike kept time, on that one record we all made, Headquarters. Mike was the timekeeper. I don't know that Micky relied on him but Mike had a much stronger sense of time. And Davy too, Davy has a much stronger sense of time. Micky played the drums like they were a musical instrument, as a colour. He played the drum colour.... as a band, there was a drummer and there was a timekeeper and they were different people." But at first, while the group were practising their instruments so they could mime convincingly on the TV and make personal appearances, they didn't need to play on their records. Indeed, on the initial pilot, they didn't even sing -- the recordings had been made before the cast had been finalised: [Excerpt: Boyce & Hart, "Monkees Theme (pilot version)"] The music was instead performed by two songwriters, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, who would become hugely important in the Monkees project. Boyce and Hart were not the first choice for the project. Don Kirshner, the head of Screen Gems Music, had initially suggested Roger Atkins, a Brill Building songwriter working for his company, as the main songwriter for The Monkees. Atkins is best known for writing "It's My Life", a hit for the Animals: [Excerpt: The Animals, "It's My Life"] But Atkins didn't work out, though he would collaborate later on one song with Nesmith, and reading between the lines, it seems that there was some corporate infighting going on, though I've not seen it stated in so many words. There seems to have been a turf war between Don Kirshner, the head of Screen Gems' music publishing, who was based in the Brill Building, and Lester Sill, the West Coast executive we've seen so many times before, the mentor to Leiber and Stoller, Duane Eddy, and Phil Spector, who was now the head of Screen Gems music on the West Coast. It also seems to be the case that none of the top Brill Building songwriters were all that keen on being involved at this point -- writing songs for an unsold TV pilot wasn't exactly a plum gig. Sill ended up working closely with the TV people, and it seems to have been him who put forward Boyce and Hart, a songwriting team he was mentoring. Boyce and Hart had been working in the music industry for years, both together and separately, and had had some success, though they weren't one of the top-tier songwriting teams like Goffin and King. They'd both started as performers -- Boyce's first single, "Betty Jean", had come out in 1958: [Excerpt: Tommy Boyce, "Betty Jean"] And Hart's, "Love Whatcha Doin' to Me", under his birth name Robert Harshman, a year later: [Excerpt: Robert Harshman, "Love Whatcha Doin' to Me"] Boyce had been the first one to have real songwriting success, writing Fats Domino's top ten hit "Be My Guest" in 1959: [Excerpt: Fats Domino, "Be My Guest"] and cowriting two songs with singer Curtis Lee, both of which became singles produced by Phil Spector -- "Under the Moon of Love" and the top ten hit "Pretty Little Angel Eyes": [Excerpt: Curtis Lee, "Pretty Little Angel Eyes"] Boyce and Hart together, along with Wes Farrell, who had co-written "Twist and Shout" with Bert Berns, wrote "Lazy Elsie Molly" for Chubby Checker, and the number three hit "Come a Little Bit Closer" for Jay and the Americans: [Excerpt: Jay and the Americans, "Come a Little Bit Closer"] At this point they were both working in the Brill Building, but then Boyce moved to the West Coast, where he was paired with Steve Venet, the brother of Nik Venet, and they co-wrote and produced "Peaches and Cream" for the Ikettes: [Excerpt: The Ikettes, "Peaches and Cream"] Hart, meanwhile, was playing in the band of Teddy Randazzo, the accordion-playing singer who had appeared in The Girl Can't Help It, and with Randazzo and Bobby Weinstein he wrote "Hurts So Bad", which became a big hit for Little Anthony and the Imperials: [Excerpt: Little Anthony and the Imperials, "Hurts So Bad"] But Hart soon moved over to the West Coast, where he joined his old partner Boyce, who had been busy writing TV themes with Venet for shows like "Where the Action Is". Hart soon replaced Venet in the team, and the two soon wrote what would become undoubtedly their most famous piece of music ever, a theme tune that generations of TV viewers would grow to remember: [Excerpt: "Theme from Days of Our Lives"] Well, what did you *think* I meant? Yes, just as Davy Jones had starred in an early episode of Britain's longest-running soap opera, one that's still running today, so Boyce and Hart wrote the theme music for *America's* longest-running soap opera, which has been running every weekday since 1965, and has so far aired well in excess of fourteen thousand episodes. Meanwhile, Hart had started performing in a band called the Candy Store Prophets, with Larry Taylor  -- who we last saw with the Gamblers, playing on "LSD-25" and "Moon Dawg" -- on bass, Gerry McGee on guitar, and Billy Lewis on drums. It was this band that Boyce and Hart used -- augmented by session guitarists Wayne Erwin and Louie Shelton and Wrecking Crew percussionist Gene Estes on tambourine, plus Boyce and session singer Ron Hicklin on backing vocals, to record first the demos and then the actual tracks that would become the Monkees hits. They had a couple of songs already that would be suitable for the pilot episode, but they needed something that would be usable as a theme song for the TV show. Boyce and Hart's usual working method was to write off another hit -- they'd try to replicate the hook or the feel or the basic sound of something that was already popular. In this case, they took inspiration from the song "Catch Us If You Can", the theme from the film that was the Dave Clark Five's attempt at their own A Hard Day's Night: [Excerpt: The Dave Clark Five, "Catch Us If You Can"] Boyce and Hart turned that idea into what would become the Monkees theme. We heard their performance of it earlier of course, but when the TV show finally came out, it was rerecorded with Dolenz singing: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Monkees Theme"] For a while, Boyce and Hart hoped that they would get to perform all the music for the TV show, and there was even apparently some vague talk of them being cast in it, but it was quickly decided that they would just be songwriters. Originally, the intent was that they wouldn't even produce the records, that instead the production would be done by a name producer. Micky Most, the Animals' producer, was sounded out for the role but wasn't interested. Snuff Garrett was brought in, but quickly discovered he didn't get on with the group at all -- in particular, they were all annoyed at the idea that Davy would be the sole lead vocalist, and the tracks Garrett cut with Davy on lead and the Wrecking Crew backing were scrapped. Instead, it was decided that Boyce and Hart would produce most of the tracks, initially with the help of the more experienced Jack Keller, and that they would only work with one Monkee at a time to minimise disruption -- usually Micky and sometimes Davy. These records would be made the same way as the demos had been, by the same set of musicians, just with one of the Monkees taking the lead. Meanwhile, as Nesmith was seriously interested in writing and production, and Rafelson and Schneider wanted to encourage the cast members, he was also assigned to write and produce songs for the show. Unlike Boyce and Hart, Nesmith wanted to use his bandmates' talents -- partly as a way of winning them over, as it was already becoming clear that the show would involve several competing factions. Nesmith's songs were mostly country-rock tracks that weren't considered suitable as singles, but they would be used on the TV show and as album tracks, and on Nesmith's songs Dolenz and Tork would sing backing vocals, and Tork would join the Wrecking Crew as an extra guitarist -- though he was well aware that his part on records like "Sweet Young Thing" wasn't strictly necessary when Glen Campbell, James Burton, Al Casey and Mike Deasy were also playing guitar: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Sweet Young Thing"] That track was written by Nesmith with Goffin and King, and there seems to have been some effort to pair Nesmith, early on, with more commercial songwriters, though this soon fell by the wayside and Nesmith was allowed to keep making his own idiosyncratic records off to the side while Boyce and Hart got on with making the more commercial records. This was not, incidentally, something that most of the stars of the show objected to or even thought was a problem at the time. Tork was rather upset that he wasn't getting to have much involvement with the direction of the music, as he'd thought he was being employed as a musician, but Dolenz and Jones were actors first and foremost, while Nesmith was happily making his own tracks. They'd all known going in that most of the music for the show would be created by other people -- there were going to be two songs every episode, and there was no way that four people could write and record that much material themselves while also performing in a half-hour comedy show every week. Assuming, of course, that the show even aired. Initial audience response to the pilot was tepid at best, and it looked for a while like the show wasn't going to be green-lit. But Rafelson and Schneider -- and director James Frawley who played a crucial role in developing the show -- recut the pilot, cutting out one character altogether -- a manager who acted as an adult supervisor -- and adding in excerpts of the audition tapes, showing the real characters of some of the actors. As three of the four were playing characters loosely based on themselves -- Peter's "dummy" character wasn't anything like he was in real life, but was like the comedy character he'd developed in his folk-club performances -- this helped draw the audience in. It also, though, contributed to some line-blurring that became a problem. The re-edited pilot was a success, and the series sold. Indeed, the new format for the series was a unique one that had never been done on TV before -- it was a sitcom about four young men living together, without any older adult supervision, getting into improbable adventures, and with one or two semi-improvised "romps", inspired by silent slapstick, over which played original songs. This became strangely influential in British sitcom when the series came out over here  -- two of the most important sitcoms of the next couple of decades, The Goodies and The Young Ones, are very clearly influenced by the Monkees. And before the broadcast of the first episode, they were going to release a single to promote it. The song chosen as the first single was one Boyce and Hart had written, inspired by the Beatles. Specifically inspired by this: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Paperback Writer"] Hart heard that tag on the radio, and thought that the Beatles were singing "take the last train". When he heard the song again the next day and realised that the song had nothing to do with trains, he and Boyce sat down and wrote their own song inspired by his mishearing. "Last Train to Clarksville" is structured very, very, similarly to "Paperback Writer" -- both of them stay on one chord, a G7, for an eight-bar verse before changing to C7 for a chorus line -- the word "writer" for the Beatles, the "no no no" (inspired by the Beatles "yeah yeah yeah") for the Monkees. To show how close the parallels are, I've sped up the vocals from the Beatles track slightly to match the tempo with a karaoke backing track version of "Last Train to Clarksville" I found, and put the two together: [Excerpt: "Paperback Clarksville"] Lyrically, there was one inspiration I will talk about in a minute, but I think I've identified another inspiration that nobody has ever mentioned. The classic country song "Night Train to Memphis", co-written by Owen Bradley, and made famous by Roy Acuff, has some slight melodic similarity to "Last Train to Clarksville", and parallels the lyrics fairly closely -- "take the night train to Memphis" against "take the last train to Clarksville", both towns in Tennessee, and "when you arrive at the station, I'll be right there to meet you I'll be right there to greet you, So don't turn down my invitation" is clearly close to "and I'll meet you at the station, you can be here by 4:30 'cos I've made your reservation": [Excerpt: Roy Acuff, "Night Train to Memphis"] Interestingly, in May 1966, the same month that "Paperback Writer" was released, and so presumably the time that Hart heard the song on the radio for the first time, Rick Nelson, the teen idol formerly known as Ricky Nelson, who had started his own career as a performer in a sitcom, had released an album called Bright Lights and Country Music. He'd had a bit of a career downslump and was changing musical direction, and recording country songs. The last track on that album was a version of "Night Train to Memphis": [Excerpt: Rick Nelson, "Night Train to Memphis"] Now, I've never seen either Boyce or Hart ever mention even hearing that song, it's pure speculation on my part that there's any connection there at all, but I thought the similarity worth mentioning. The idea of the lyric, though, was to make a very mild statement about the Vietnam War. Clarksville was, as mentioned earlier, the site of Fort Campbell, a military training base, and they crafted a story about a young soldier being shipped off to war, calling his girlfriend to come and see him for one last night. This is left more-or-less ambiguous -- this was a song being written for a TV show intended for children, after all -- but it's still very clear on the line "and I don't know if I'm ever coming home". Now, Boyce and Hart were songwriters first and foremost, and as producers they were quite hands-off and would let the musicians shape the arrangements. They knew they wanted a guitar riff in the style of the Beatles' recent singles, and Louie Shelton came up with one based around the G7 chord that forms the basis of the song, starting with an octave leap: Shelton's riff became the hook that drove the record, and engineer Dave Hassinger added the final touch, manually raising the volume on the hi-hat mic for a fraction of a second every bar, creating a drum sound like a hissing steam brake: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Last Train to Clarksville"] Now all that was needed was to get the lead vocals down. But Micky Dolenz was tired, and hungry, and overworked -- both Dolenz and Jones in their separate autobiographies talk about how it was normal for them to only get three hours' sleep a night between working twelve hour days filming the series, three-hour recording sessions, and publicity commitments. He got the verses down fine, but he just couldn't sing the middle eight. Boyce and Hart had written a complicated, multisyllabic, patter bridge, and he just couldn't get his tongue around that many syllables when he was that tired. He eventually asked if he could just sing "do do do" instead of the words, and the producers agreed. Surprisingly, it worked: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Last Train to Clarksville"] "Last Train to Clarksville" was released in advance of the TV series, on a new label, Colgems, set up especially for the Monkees to replace Colpix, with a better distribution deal, and it went to number one. The TV show started out with mediocre ratings, but soon that too became a hit. And so did the first album released from the TV series. And that album was where some of the problems really started. The album itself was fine -- ten tracks produced by Boyce and Hart with the Candy Store Prophets playing and either Micky or Davy singing, mostly songs Boyce and Hart wrote, with a couple of numbers by Goffin and King and other Kirshner staff songwriters, plus two songs produced by Nesmith with the Wrecking Crew, and with token participation from Tork and Dolenz. The problem was the back cover, which gave little potted descriptions of each of them, with their height, eye colour, and so on. And under three of them it said "plays guitar and sings", while under Dolenz it said "plays drums and sings". Now this was technically accurate -- they all did play those instruments. They just didn't play them on the record, which was clearly the impression the cover was intended to give. Nesmith in particular was incandescent. He believed that people watching the TV show understood that the group weren't really performing that music, any more than Adam West was really fighting crime or William Shatner travelling through space. But crediting them on the record was, he felt, crossing a line into something close to con artistry. To make matters worse, success was bringing more people trying to have a say. Where before, the Monkees had been an irrelevance, left to a couple of B-list producer-songwriters on the West Coast, now they were a guaranteed hit factory, and every songwriter working for Kirshner wanted to write and produce for them -- which made sense because of the sheer quantity of material they needed for the TV show, but it made for a bigger, less democratic, organisation -- one in which Kirshner was suddenly in far more control. Suddenly as well as Boyce and Hart with the Candy Store Prophets and Nesmith with the Wrecking Crew, both of whom had been operating without much oversight from Kirshner, there were a bunch of tracks being cut on the East Coast by songwriting and production teams like Goffin and King, and Neil Sedaka and Carole Bayer. On the second Monkees album, released only a few months after the first, there were nine producers credited -- as well as Boyce, Hart, Jack Keller, and Nesmith, there were now also Goffin, King, Sedaka, Bayer, and Jeff Barry, who as well as cutting tracks on the east coast was also flying over to the West Coast, cutting more tracks with the Wrecking Crew, and producing vocal sessions while there. As well as producing songs he'd written himself, Barry was also supervising songs written by other people. One of those was a new songwriter he'd recently discovered and been co-producing for Bang Records, Neil Diamond, who had just had a big hit of his own with "Cherry Cherry": [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Cherry Cherry"] Diamond was signed with Screen Gems, and had written a song which Barry thought would be perfect for the Monkees, an uptempo song called "I'm a Believer", which he'd demoed with the regular Bang musicians -- top East Coast session players like Al Gorgoni, the guitarist who'd played on "The Sound of Silence": [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "I'm a Believer"] Barry had cut a backing track for the Monkees using those same musicians, including Diamond on acoustic guitar, and brought it over to LA. And that track would indirectly lead to the first big crisis for the group. Barry, unlike Boyce and Hart, was interested in working with the whole group, and played all of them the backing track. Nesmith's reaction was a blunt "I'm a producer too, and that ain't no hit". He liked the song -- he wanted to have a go at producing a track on it himself, as it happened -- but he didn't think the backing track worked. Barry, trying to lighten the mood, joked that it wasn't finished and you needed to imagine it with strings and horns. Unfortunately, Nesmith didn't get that he was joking, and started talking about how that might indeed make a difference -- at which point everyone laughed and Nesmith took it badly -- his relationship with Barry quickly soured. Nesmith was getting increasingly dissatisfied with the way his songs and his productions were being sidelined, and was generally getting unhappy, and Tork was wanting more musical input too. They'd been talking with Rafelson and Schneider, who'd agreed that the group were now good enough on their instruments that they could start recording some tracks by themselves, an idea which Kirshner loathed. But for now they were recording Neil Diamond's song to Jeff Barry's backing track. Given that Nesmith liked the song, and given that he had some slight vocal resemblance to Diamond, the group suggested that Nesmith be given the lead vocal, and Kirshner and Barry agreed, although Kirshner at least apparently always intended for Dolenz to sing lead, and was just trying to pacify Nesmith. In the studio, Kirshner kept criticising Nesmith's vocal, and telling him he was doing it wrong, until eventually he stormed out, and Kirshner got what he wanted -- another Monkees hit with Micky Dolenz on lead, though this time it did at least have Jones and Tork on backing vocals: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "I'm a Believer"] That was released on November 23rd, 1966, as their second single, and became their second number one. And in January 1967, the group's second album, More of the Monkees, was released. That too went to number one. There was only one problem. The group weren't even told about the album coming out beforehand -- they had to buy their own copies from a record shop to even see what tracks were on it. Nesmith had his two tracks, but even Boyce and Hart were only given two, with the rest of the album being made up of tracks from the Brill Building songwriters Kirshner preferred. Lots of great Nesmith and Boyce and Hart tracks were left off the album in favour of some astonishingly weak material, including the two worst tracks the group ever recorded, "The Day We Fall in Love" and "Laugh", and a novelty song they found embarrassing, "Your Auntie Grizelda", included to give Tork a vocal spot. Nesmith called it "probably the worst album in the history of the world", though in truth seven of the twelve tracks are really very strong, though some of the other material is pretty poor. The group were also annoyed by the packaging. The liner notes were by Don Kirshner, and read to the group at least like a celebration of Kirshner himself as the one person responsible for everything on the record. Even the photo was an embarrassment -- the group had taken a series of photos in clothes from the department store J. C. Penney as part of an advertising campaign, and the group thought the clothes were ridiculous, but one of those photos was the one chosen for the cover. Nesmith and Tork made a decision, which the other two agreed to with varying degrees of willingness. They'd been fine miming to other people's records when it was clearly just for a TV show. But if they were being promoted as a real band, and having to go on tour promoting albums credited to them, they were going to *be* a real band, and take some responsibility for the music that was being put out in their name.  With the support of Rafelson and Schneider, they started making preparations to do just that. But Don Kirshner had other ideas, and told them so in no uncertain terms. As far as he was concerned, they were a bunch of ungrateful, spoiled, kids who were very happy cashing the ridiculously large cheques they were getting, but now wanted to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. They were going to keep doing what they were told. Things came to a head in a business meeting in January 1967, when Nesmith gave an ultimatum. Either the group got to start playing on their own records, or he was quitting. Herb Moelis, Kirshner's lawyer, told Nesmith that he should read his contract more carefully, at which point Nesmith got up, punched a hole in the wall of the hotel suite they were in, and told Moelis "That could have been your face". So as 1967 began, the group were at a turning point. Would they be able to cut the puppet strings, or would they have to keep living a lie? We'll find out in a few weeks' time...

This is PART 2 of this interview with Bobby. For PART 1 click here Reach out to Bobby: https://circusboy.com/ Reach out to Victor: https://cyborg4life.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/leglengthening/support

In the first LL LIVE of 2022 we're joined by cosmetic limb lengthening patient; Bobby "Circus Boy" Hunt. He's 58 years old and his starting height was 5'6" and currently he's nearly 3cm taller as he continues his lengthening process. Bobby is a world-renowned circus performer who recently embarked on his greatest act yet...getting taller! Be sure to join the stream if you have questions for Bobby especially if you feel age is a limitation for this procedure. Feel free to reach out and connect with Bobby: 1. https://circusboy.com/ Victor info www.cyborg4life.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/leglengthening/support

Launching his new non-fiction creative film Circus Boy, director Lester "LA" Alfonso sits down with us today!  Circus Boy is a quietly impactful work looking at the relationship between a circus trainer and his young protege and adoptive son.  The film captures both their artistry as well as the inspiration they impart on both their mothers who witness the bond and parenting between the man and his son. LA is a genre-defying multi-media maverick. He is the director, producer, and star of his creative nonfiction films Twelve, Trying to Be Some Kind of Hero, The Best Waitress in the World, and Birthmark. He is a film theorist and artist focusing on themes of vision, wonder, otherness, and the self. The range of his work also includes experimental short films, ukulele-inspired podcasts, 35mm street photography NFTs, and large-scale video projection mapping events. With co-host Brody Levesque

Launching his new non-fiction creative film Circus Boy, director Lester "LA" Alfonso sits down with us today!  Circus Boy is a quietly impactful work looking at the relationship between a circus trainer and his young protege and adoptive son.  The film captures both their artistry as well as the inspiration they impart on both their mothers who witness the bond and parenting between the man and his son. LA is a genre-defying multi-media maverick. He is the director, producer, and star of his creative nonfiction films Twelve, Trying to Be Some Kind of Hero, The Best Waitress in the World, and Birthmark. He is a film theorist and artist focusing on themes of vision, wonder, otherness, and the self. The range of his work also includes experimental short films, ukulele-inspired podcasts, 35mm street photography NFTs, and large-scale video projection mapping events. With co-host Brody Levesque

Fifty years ago this week, NBC TV introduced America to four young men who would change the way music and television interact. Looking to capitalize on the humongous an ongoing success of th Beatles and so many other groups,NBC assembled a team of four actors who also happened to have musical talent: Mike Nesmith, Davy Jones, Peter Tork, and, of course, Micky Dolenz who, years before, actually started in a short-lived series called Circus Boy. After The Monkees premiered something strange happened. It wasn't clear whether this was a TV show about musicians or musicians doing a TV show ,, or something in between.It was a strange and new hybrid that actually frightened some people in the entertainment industry.

Hey Hey we're the Monkees fans. Yes, Brian and Kevin are unashamedly thrilled to be chatting to Micky Dolenz about those heady days of Monkeemania, Circus Boy, his new album of Michael Nesmith songs and lots more. Plus two tracks from the album including one you will remember sung by Linda Ronstadt. Musician and composer Roger Mason also joins us to talk about his latest project with Steve Kilbey and reflects on some of his travels across the musical landscape. All thanks to Murcotts Driving Excellence - 1300 555 576  murcotts.edu.au              You are a good driver now, but Murcotts will make you even better.  .   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Micky Dolenz joins Nancy to discuss his musical and acting journey from Circus Boy to The Monkees and beyond, the Laurel Canyon music days, and his latest adventures and projects including ‘The Monkees Live - The Mike & Micky Show,' his new album with Michael Nesmith (1:24). Plus, Nancy reviews the benefits of adding simple routines to your daily life (28:30). Like and follow Entertaining Insights Facebook Page. Watch the offical trailer for The Monkees Live - The Mike & Micky Show. Visit Nancy’s website. Learn about segment sponsor the Finding Brave podcast with host Kathy Caprino (1:04, 28:16). Find out more about Kathy Caprino’s new book The Most Powerful You.

Thomas Vaccaro is a circus coach, a circus performer, an artist, a husband, a father, a friend, and a mess... Find out how "circus saved his life."

What a gas (the good kind) we had with Coco Gemma Dolenz. Great stories about how she got her name, her brother Micky, their folks, the music, the movies. the Restaurant, Circus Boy, peroxide, The Monkees, what she learned from Peter, Mike, and Davy; The Beatles, John and George, Nilsson, Harry and Zak, Billy Bob Thornton, Dolenz & Daughters, Dolenz Delights, Etsy… music, food, a cookbook, salads, the human spirit, Religious Science, standards, recording new music, Cole Porter, singing with Micky, with Micky and Davy, with The Monkees, and currently with The Mike and Micky Show, Good Times, It’s Not Easy Being Green, Papa Gene’s Blues, sweaty palms. … so much more... and, there was singing! And, so much fun! Coco Gemma Dolenz Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson Wed, 4/24/19, 7 pm PT/ 10 pm ET With Pete George Live on The Facebook Full show replay http://bit.ly/2L4dH1C All BROADcasts, as podcasts, also available on iTunes apple.co/2dj8ld3 Soundcloud http://bit.ly/2hktWoS Stitcher bit.ly/2h3R1fl tunein bit.ly/2gGeItj This week's BROADcast is brought to you by Rick Smolke​ of Quik Impressions​, the best printers, printing, the best people people-ing. quikimpressions.com And, Nicole Venables​ of Ruby Begonia Hair Studio Beauty and Products​ for tresses like the stars she coifs, and regular peoples, like me. I love my hair, and I loves Nicole. http://www.rubybegoniahairstudio.com/ Special thanks to Kevin Walt for our Blue Yeti kicking sound ass

  Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip Episode 48 for September 26, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I'm super excited to be sharing this story with you. Our story for today is a reprint of "Circus Boy Without A Safety Net" by Craig Laurance Gidney. Potential background dog noises are unintended, but provided by Rey, Finn, and Heidi. Content warning for slurs, homophobic bullying, and descriptions of porn.     Craig Laurance Gidney is the author of the collections Sea, Swallow Me & Other Stories (Lethe Press, 2008), Skin Deep Magic (Rebel Satori Press, 2014), the Young Adult novel Bereft (Tiny Satchel Press, 2013), and The Nectar of Nightmares (Dim Shores, 2015). He lives in his native Washington, DC. Website: craiglaurancegidney.com. Instagram, Tumblr & Twitter: ethereallad.   Circus Boy Without A Safety Net by Craig Laurance Gidney   Lucifer came to him in drag. He was disguised as Lena Horne. C.B. went to see The Wiz with his family. The movie was pretty cool, by his standards, even though he thought Diana Ross was a little too old to be playing Dorothy. But the sets were amazing--the recasting of the Emerald City as downtown Manhattan, the Wicked Witch's sweatshop, the trashcan monsters in the subway. The songs sometimes lasted a little too long, but they were offset by Michael Jackson's flashy spin-dancing. But it was the image of Lena Horne as Glinda the Good Witch that would follow him. She appeared in the next to last scene in a silver dress. Her hair was captured in a net of stars, and she was surrounded by a constellation of babies, all wrapped in clouds, their adorable faces peering out like living chocolate kisses. He fell in love. Ms. Horne was undeniably beautiful, with her creamy, golden skin, and mellow, birdlike features. Her movements during the song "Home" were passionate. They were at odds with shimmering, ethereal-blur in which she was filmed. Indeed, she could not be of this earth. In all of his life in Willow Creek, NC, C.B. had not seen anything like this before. He was in love, all right. He researched her in libraries, finding old issues of Ebony and Jet; he watched old movies that she'd appeared in, like Cabin in the Sky. He collected some of her records; his 8-track of "Stormy Weather" was so worn, he had to buy another copy. But in the weeks afterwards, he began to sense that this love of his wasn't quite right. His brother and his father would tease him about his "girlfriend," who was 70 years old, and about how, when he came of an age to marry, she would be even older than that. Of how he could never have children. His brother was particularly mean: he imagined a wedding, held at Lena's hospital bed, with her in an iron lung, exhaling an "I Do" as ominous as Darth Vader's last breath. But C.B. wanted to explain that it wasn't like that at all. He couldn't quite put it into words. Lena wasn't an object of desire, someone who he wanted to kiss or hold hands with. She was something more. She was a goddess of Beauty, an ideal. She was something beyond anything he'd ever known. She hovered above Willow Creek, an angel, looking down on its box houses that were the color of orange sherbet, lemonade, and his own robin's-egg-blue house. She wasn't someone to sleep with; she was someone to be like. C.B. made a bedroom shrine to his goddess. Old pictures of her, protected in cellophane, marched up his wall. But the ultimate treasure lay unseen. In the unused chest of drawers in the back of his closet, he hid a Barbie doll, bought at a flea market and transformed into her likeness: painted skin, eyes blackened with a pen, stolen hair dye darkening the blond tresses. And he sprinkled lots of glitter on her dress, so it would be silver, like hers was in The Wiz. (This had involved experiments with several doll's dresses. There was a measure of discretion; he came up with a story about how his sick sister collected Barbie dresses, so that the store clerks wouldn't think he was strange. He ended up dunking a powder-blue dress in Elmer's glue, and dredging it in silver glitter. He learned it by imitating his mother, when she made fried chicken: first the eggwash, then the seasoned flour). But buried treasure sends out signals. Especially to mothers. She zeroed in on the spot. Oh, there was some excuse about her wanting to check out the chest, so that she could sell it at the church bazaar. Lena was exposed. His mother and father met him at the kitchen table one day after school, holding his creation in their hands. When C.B. saw them, looking as solemn as they did when they watched reruns of King's historic speech, he knew something was wrong. He thought he was going to get a lecture on idolatry. Instead, he was told, in the calmest tones they could muster, that he was not to play with dolls ever again. That was that. His mother stood up, and started making dinner. His father left the room, his head hung in shame. C.B. felt strange. They were treating him as if he were diseased. As if they'd discovered that he was freak of some kind. ("When your child reaches the age of twelve, his eyes will grow to the size of grapefruits..."). It was his brother that laid it out for him. He'd been listening in on the conversation. "They think you're a faggot." When he got to his room, the walls had been stripped. Everything of Lena was gone. The walls looked like he felt: exposed. He didn't eat dinner that night. They didn't call him to the table. He popped an 8-track of The Wiz into the player, and put the giant earmuff headphones on. Lena sang softly: "If you believe in yourself..." C.B. snatched the tape out of the player. He unspooled the brown ribbon, until it lay in curls on the floor around him. # C.B. had a Voice. That's what everybody at the church choir said. He felt it, too. His chest would fill with warmth, the spirit of sound. And when he opened his mouth, all of that warm feeling would come sliding out, like a stream of maple syrup, rich and sweet. It would circle over the church. He could feel it soaring like an angel, over Willow Creek, notes raining down on the box houses the colors of mint-green, bubblegum pink, and pastel violet. He convinced himself that he was singing to God. All of the ladies with their wiry hats would come up to tell him what a wonderful gift he had. For a while, he gained the pride and trust of his parents. Sort of. At least of his mother. His father grudgingly gave him respect for his voice; but his father must've known that singing didn't really undo all of embarrassment he'd caused when he failed at various sports. Having a musician son was a poor substitute for having a normal one; but it would have to do. Within the tiny whitewashed church, he was safe from the worst of himself. The Devil—or Lena—was imprisoned, locked away. Her smoky vocals couldn't slip in between the glorious notes of hymns. Her fabulous gowns were safely replaced by neutral choir robes. He jumped through a hoop, pleasing the Lord. C.B. thought of God as a great ringmaster, and Heaven as a circus-dream of angels and tamed beasts. The dead could trapeze through the stars, and see the little marble that was Earth below. But first, you had prove yourself worthy. Jump through this hoop, ringed with razors. Now through this circle of fire... C.B. knew that his life would be a dazzling and dangerous tightrope performance from now on. One slip and he'd fall into a Hell of naked boys and show-tunes. The church was his safety net. Another bonus of singing was the admiration of the congregation. C.B. was an average student. He struggled through math and science, tolerated history and English. He didn't have any friends. Regular kids tended to avoid religious kids. Since that was his disguise, he was a loner. He avoided the actually religious kids himself—he felt that if anyone could see through his charade, they could. They would sniff it out like bloodhounds. Everyone was at a safe distance. And the holiest of music surrounded him like a shield. He felt the most secure, when the Devil heard him sing. He came in the form of the music and drama teacher, Mr. P. Mr. P traipsed into town in loud colors. He wore banana yellow jackets, pink shirts, and bow ties as large and comical as a clown's. In a way, he matched the colors of Willow Creek's houses. His skin was dark and smooth, like a Special Dark candy bar. He had large glasses that magnified his sad-clown brown eyes. And his hair was a mass of wild and wet Jericurls. His lisp reminded C.B of Snagglepuss, the cartoon lion. Like Snagglepuss, Mr. P was prissy and aristocratic, given to fey and archaic phrases. Word got around school that C.B. could sing. He'd fastidiously avoided anything to do with the drama and music department. First of all, he reasoned, they played secular music. He sang for the glory of the Almighty. But the real reason was Mr. P. A whiff of his spicy cologne in the crowded school hall made him cringe; Mr. P's loud, theatrical laugh when he was a lunch hall monitor could set his teeth gnashing. It was around January when he was approached. He left the lunchroom, walking right by Mr. P. (who wore a suit of lime-green, with an electric blue bow tie), when he was stopped. Mr. P. spoke his name. "Yes, sir?" "I heard that you can sing, child. How come you haven't been around the chorus?" "I... I guess that I've been too busy. With school. And church." He invested the last word with an emphasis he hoped wasn't lost on Mr. P. But Mr. P flounced right by the Meaning, with a pass-me-my-smelling-salts flick of his wrists. "Nonsense. I would just love to hear you sing. Can you stop by the music room sometime this week?" "No, sir. My course load is pretty full..." "Any study halls?" (His sss's grated on him). "Not this semester," C.B. lied. "How bout after school? Just 15 minutes or so." "Uh, this week's not too good, cause I, uh, have to help my dad with some chores." Mr. P smiled, revealing gums as pink as deviled ham. He touched C.B. on the shoulder. When he left the cafeteria, the nutmeg smell of the cologne tickled his nose. It wouldn't leave him all day. That Sunday he was to sing a solo section of the hymn, "His Eye is on the Sparrow" during the distribution of the Host. Before he walked out on stage with the rest of the choir, he did a customary scan of the audience. Mr. P was there, in the pew behind his mother. His heart leapt into throat. But then, of course Mr. P would show up. The Devil can't resist stirring up souls in turmoil. In the church basement, over fizzy punch and stale cookies, Mr. P lavished praise over C.B.'s voice, how pure it was. His mother was beaming beside him. "Why, Mrs. Bertram—" "Imogene, please." "Imogene, when I heard that he had a Voice, I just had to investigate. It exceeded my wildest expectations." C.B. kept his eyes firmly trained on the linoleum. Snagglepuss continued: "I am casting parts for the spring musical. I'd like your son to try out." His mother clapped her hands. "I can't act," C. B. interrupted. He could see where this going; he had to cut it at the source. "You don't have to act," (darling, he heard Mr. P add subliminally) "you just have to perform. And you've got that down pat." (Honeychile). His mother pestered him into trying out for the spring musical, which was The Music Man. C.B. had enjoyed the movie, and found that he couldn't resist the temptation. It was too much. He felt Lena stirring in him. She whispered in his sleep. One night she came to him. She wore her sparkling fairy queen dress. Her chocolate star babies were grinning behind her. The only thing different about her this time was that she was in black-and-white. She'd occasionally ripple and sputter out of existence, like an image on an old television set. He took this as her blessing. I won't give up going to church, so I'll be safe. He landed the role of Professor Harold Hill. The play ran four nights and a Saturday matinee. It was a success. The last performance earned him a standing ovation. But in the back of his mind, there was always the issue of Mr. P. The jocks and class clowns of the school would always be whispering about him. They called him the Black Liberace. "Hand me the candelabra," they'd say when he passed them in the hall, or "I wish my brother George was here," in mincing voices. C.B. felt himself slipping. Movie posters of West Side Story, The Fantasticks, and The Sound of Music competed with the camouflage of his mother's hand-stitched prayer samplers and collected Willow Creek football bulletins. The worst was gym class. He refused to take showers. But that didn't stop the boys from making fun of him. As they emerged glistening and nude from the showers, they would faux caress and grasp one another. "Yeah baby, push it in harder!" "Stab that shit, sweetie." "Oh daddy, be my butt-pirate tonight." He knew they were directed at him. Summer came, and C.B. immersed himself in church activities. He became an aide for the church-sponsored camp for kids. He sang every Sunday, declining solo parts. It was a sacrifice that God might notice. For the fall assembly, Mr. P put together a show comprised of songs from musicals. C.B. sang lead for "New York, New York," and "Send in the Clowns." He bought the house down. Basking in the light of adulation, he was mindful of the rot that hid behind and beneath Willow Creek's façade of cheerful acceptance: a hate that corroded the aluminum siding covered in pastel icing. Church ladies in floral hats: "Mr. P, he's so, you know, theatrical. You know them theater folks." And the antics of the locker-room boys. Mr. P approached him for the lead in the spring play. "I think you'd be perfect as the Cowardly Lion in The Wiz!" C.B. told Mr. P he'd consider it. That night, Lena and her entourage appeared before him. And he was Icarus, tempted by her beauty. If he flew too high, she would supernova, and scorch his soul as black as the void surrounding her cherubs. He was a tightrope walker, and Lena was the spirit who watched over him, waiting to push him off, waiting for him to fall. He could not ignore the sign that God had sent him. This was temptation. He declined Mr. P's offer, claiming that he had to focus on his grades that semester, if he was to go to college. C.B. did the right thing. But there was no sense of liberation. Danger lurked, a phantom image just behind his eyes when he slept at night. He imagined Glinda turning into the Witch, snarling in frustration. # Manhattan spread out before him, glitzy, dirty, and labyrinthine. The architecture was as alien to C.B. as the Emerald City was to Dorothy. He was thrilled and terrified at the same time. There was no warmth, no open spaces like there was in Willow Creek. The buildings were naked and thin, and met the challenges of gravity head-on. The houses of Willow Creek were humble—modestly clothed in cheerful fabrics. C.B. wasn't so sure that he liked it. The crowds, the hurried pace, and the anorexic qualities of the landscape rejected him. The unending gray color oppressed him. The Willow Creek Community College glee club had performed in a drab little church just outside of Harlem. C.B. swore he could hear rats skittering around the eaves. The nasty hotel the glee club stayed in had water stains on the ceiling, and the beds were hard and tiny. There had been a drunk sleeping in one of the chairs in the hotel lobby, his overripe smell and loud snoring filling the space. The hotel staff didn't seem to care. Still, it had to be done. He had to test himself, to see once and for all if the Devil still lived in him. New York City was the perfect place to "experiment" without anyone knowing. The first step was to ride the subway to Greenwich Village. He moved to the smelly hole in the ground. Its mouth was wide and yellow. He remembered the monsters in the subway in The Wiz. Trash cans with gnashing teeth, pillars that detached themselves from the ceiling and chased people around. What he found was a whole less interesting. The concrete floor in the subway was dirty, covered with gray lumps of long-forgotten chewing gum. He glanced down one of the platform tracks. Fearless brown and gray rats scuttled, each holding some treasure in their claws—a crust of Wonderbread, a squashed pink jellybean. C.B.'s skin crawled. His train howled up to the platform, and the breaks squealed to a halt. He entered a drably lit car, with sour-faced people crushed next to him. He took a seat next to a blind man. The door clapped shut. His rattling trip began. About three stops later, two men entered the subway together. Both of them wore black leather jackets, and had long beards, like ZZ Top. One man wore a tight leather cap on his head, while the other had chaps encasing his pants. When he turned away from C.B., he could see the two pockets of his ripped Levi's spread out like countries on the globe of his butt. C.B. felt excitement wash over him. He allowed himself this one night. He had to know what he was giving up for the Lord. He stepped off the tightrope and tumbled into space. Christopher Street was his stop. C.B. spilled out of the train and into the warm spring night. The first thing he noticed was that the Village wasn't as crowded and squashed together as downtown. There were no tall buildings. The sidewalks were thronged with people. Men, dressed like GQ models prowled the street. C.B. looked down. He made a decision; and looked up again. I'm tumbling. He felt vertigo. Cafes and bakeries spun past him. C.B. wandered into a bookstore. The atmosphere was thick with tension in here. Heads hunched over pornographic magazines glanced up then turned back to pictures of naked men spread-eagled and airbrushed on glossy pages. C.B. cautiously crept up to the magazine stand. He picked up a magazine, called Carnival of Men. He began trembling (tumbling). The model's face was vacant. His body glistened and reflected the studio lights. His genitalia were objects: huge, flesh-colored fruits. Hairless and smooth. C.B. flipped the pages of the magazines. He found another picture, where a model spread the cheeks of his buttocks wide open. In the valley he created, he revealed the puckered rosebud of his anus. If C.B. had been white, he would have been flushed as pink as Snagglepuss. This is what it felt like, to give into temptation. What his mother hoped to destroy with church, what his father wanted to suppress with sports. The ground of Hell was fast approaching; it seethed with naked men and serpents. C.B. stayed in the bookstore, looking at magazines, for at least an hour. He was tempted to buy one of the magazines—this might be the only chance he got for a long time. But, then there was the chance of discovery, like his shrine to Lena. And it would be a visible souvenir of his shame. He left the store empty-handed. The sky above the street was the sludge of sepia and purple-black, with the stars erased. There was a hint of humidity in the air. He wandered the streets for an hour or more, putting off his eventual goal. He saw sophisticated men and women dressed in black. There were people with hair in colors of mint-green, daffodil yellow, and bubblegum pink. They wore safety pins through their ears, and some of them had white makeup on their faces, and tattoos on their arms. They were the clowns of hell. C.B. tried walking by them without gawking. He saw a shop that sold sex toys. He was too chicken to go in, so he looked through the windows, staring at the various tools and instruments of pleasure. Finally, C.B. steeled himself. A couple of blocks from the Christopher Street stop he'd exited, there was a bar where men swarmed like bees. The name of the bar was the Big Top. He took a deep breath, stepped inside. It was dark and crowded. Men perched on stools, sipping drinks, or clung to walls, gripping the nozzles of their beers. It was the sort of aggressive, ridiculous stance that the boys in the locker room mimicked. Others prowled the spaces between in cutoffs and T-shirts, leaving trails of perfume behind. The walls of the bar were paneled with some dark wood and wainscoted in a thick, red vinyl with large buttons on it, like the inside of a coffin. Willow Creek was a dry county, and his mother didn't drink. His father did, but C.B. had little experience with alcohol. He went up to the bar, and asked for a rum and coke. The bartender wore an open vest. His chest was as smooth and built as those in the magazine C.B. had seen earlier. The bartender nodded sullenly, and gave him a full glass of rum, and colored it lightly with the soft drink. C.B. looked at the drink doubtfully. He tipped the bartender, and wandered to the second room, which lay behind a black curtain. He passed through, expecting a backroom, like he'd heard about. Darkness, smells of sweaty close bodies, groping hands. Instead, he slipped into wonder. The room was decorated like his circus dream of Heaven. The walls were covered with paintings of elegant Harlequins and court jesters, their faces regal and dignified, not silly or sinister. One of the painted jesters wore a checkered garment of green and pink, and on the points of three-pronged hat were pansies, instead of the customary bells. There was a small stage at the end of the room. A circus dome capped the room, so you couldn't see the ceiling. A silver balloon rose from the back of each chair. A man in a tuxedo walked to the microphone set up in the center of the stage. He waved C.B. to a table. When he'd taken a seat, the MC spoke: "Tonight at the Big Top, we are proud to present the vocal stylings of the beautiful Lena Flügelhorn!" The lights dimmed to spectral blue as a figure made her way to the microphone. She wore a dress of stars, her hair pinned up in some gravity-defying coiffure. A single white spotlight pierced the stage. The golden skin was a miracle of foundation. The likeness was uncanny, save for a huge Adam's apple. An invisible piano started the familiar chords to "Home." And C.B. tumbled, plummeting to the floor of Hell. But the voice—resolutely male and tenor, yet somehow imbued with the essence of Lena—came and blew his poor body upwards, towards the star-babies of Heaven. C.B. found himself singing. As he fell (or rose), C.B. felt Lena swell with him in. She rose up and held his hand. Lucifer—or Lena was there for him, as God had never been. If this was Hell, it couldn't be all that bad. It was beautiful here. A celestial circus of fallen stars. At once, C.B. recognized the anemic heaven he strove for, and rejected it. Lena Flügelhorn's song ended, and with it, a chapter of C.B.'s life. END   "Circus Boy Without A Safety Net" was originally published in Spoonfed and is copyright Craig Laurance Gidney 2001. This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library. You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes. Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back soon with the first original story from the Autumn 2017 issue.

In this episode recorded live at Gary Sohmer's Southcoast Comic Con at the Hanover Mall, Ken welcomes The Monkees Micky Dolenz to the show. Ken and Micky discuss the innovation of the Monkees TV show, the Marx Brothers, the influence on MTV, directing television, Metal Mickey, Circus Boy, working behind the scenes in England, the 1997 Monkees reunion movie, "Head", Mickey's Rock N Roll tastes, Little Richard, Hellzapoppin', the divide between TV and movie actors, Michael Nesmith's Different Drum, pop music, Randy Scouse Git, Til Death Us Do Part, the surprise of the 80s Monkees revival, the 1986 reunion tour that was scheduled for 12 weeks and lasted three years, working with Disney, Boy Meets World, Jack Nicholson, how the Monkees lead to Easy Rider which lead to a Hollywood revolution, "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls", being at the crossroads of old and new Hollywood, the iron fist of the network censors, the Devil, playing the part of a drummer, The Beatles, Headquarters, The Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, Circus Boy, having parents who keep you grounded, and Dolez and Daughters Wood Working Business.

New Mike Nesmith Interview! Butch Patrick speaks about his MONKEES role! Butch portrayed snooty "Melvin," on the famed 1967 MONKEES "Christmas Episode!" Butch talks about his interest in the band, how each Monkee affected him personally, and his many memories of filming that episode! Hear a rare re-mix of "Love is Only Sleeping!" Super-psychedelic! And: Micky's very early recorded singing, in a 1958 CIRCUS BOY audio clip! Much more!

MICKY DOLENZ is a musician, actor, writer, producer, and director of film and stage, best known as the drummer and lead singer of the iconic band The Monkees.  A Los Angeles native, Micky started acting as a child, starring in the NBC show Circus Boy at just eleven years old.  While attending college to study architecture, he landed a starring role in the NBC hit show "The Monkees" about a four-piece guitar band, which spawned a real-life following for the group, sparking a string of hits eventually selling 65 million records worldwide.  Micky wrote songs and toured with former fellow Monkees actors and writers, before begining to act, write, and direct for the stage and television in the U.S. and England.  He continues to perform as an actor and voiceover artist, as well as write and perform music.

Gilbert and Frank visit the George Burns Room at the historic New York Friars Club, where they're joined by actor, singer and musician MICKY DOLENZ for a fun and fascinating look back at "Monkeemania" and his own unlikely journey from 1950's child star ("Circus Boy") to 1960's pop/rock icon. Also, Micky drops in on a "Sgt. Pepper" recording session, makes movies with Jack Nicholson and Frank Zappa and hits the town with fellow "Hollywood Vampires" John Lennon, Keith Moon and Alice Cooper. PLUS: Lon Chaney Jr.! Micky's mom meets "The Creeper"! The Monkees take on "Faust"! Harry Nilsson quits his day job! And Sgt. Bilko sings "Yesterday"! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Stars of TGIF -- Reginald VelJohnson ("Family Matters"), Jodie Sweetin ("Full House"), Stuart Pankin ("Dinosaurs") and Brice Beckham ("Mr. Belvedere") join Cole and Vanessa at the Los Angeles Podcast Festival to chat appointment TV, debunking Belvedere, Circus Boy, smooching Hooch, Grandpa Cop and the Comfy Shoe, getting cast in Die Hard, Not Necessarily The News, The Olsen Twin Illuminati, Sword of Change and a very special episode quiz. Leave your answer to the firsts question (the first on-screen or on-stage kiss you ever had, or just your first kiss) on our website for a chance to win a poster for the podcast signed by all of our guests!

Micky Dolenz: The Lost Interview In 1991, the pop icon recalled auditioning for NBC's The Monkees. “I don't consider myself a drummer, but I do consider myself a guitar player,” he told host Robin Milling. “I had to quickly learn to play drums—and certainly played adequately for what I had to do for the band's light pop rhythms.” Micky Dolenz also discussed his nightmare fans during the Monkees' heyday. “They used to steal my mail, and my pets—poison my pets,” he said. “It's been a real love-hate thing. It's like [Stephen King's] Misery. Remember Misery? That happens, and it's pretty grim. It can get very, very annoying. And it got very dangerous, too.”

This is a wee bite-sized podcast as Circus Boy rings in the new year in style on Palm Beach, FL and makes a BIG announcement about the future of coffee and the circus...or is it circus and the life of coffee.....oh, wait, or is it the kind of coffee a circus likes....well, you'll have to listen to find out!

This week finds Circus Boy all over the country as we find him flying down Rt. 40 in the Flying Dutchman and visiting the Farmers Market in Lebanon, PA with his dear old dad as they settle the coffee bet once and for all. All of this and the coffee scenes in Duluth/Atlanta, GA and Tulsa, OK as well as an all new hit from the one, the only, MODDOG. So, put down that Wii and give it a listen!

This week finds Circus Boy in Wichita playing ketchup, and there aren't any fries involved! You're in for a treat as we get to sit down with co-founder, roaster, and coffee buyer of PT's Coffee and SCAA board member, Jeff Taylor as well as find out where Circus Boy has been hiding all this time....was he on a coffee reconnaissance mission for the CIA? Listen to find out. All of this plus a favorite hit from Moddog, so put another bean in the grinder and give it a listen!

This week is a special anniversary episode as Search for the Best Mocha Latte in the World celebrates 1 year of mocha latte goodness and podcasting! This week you'll get to meet none other than the Duckmaster of the Peabody Little Rock, hear about Circus Boy's epic motorcycle trip, taste a new Super espresso , find out what the WBC is, and a new music hit from Moddog. All of this AND a surprise guest host. So, bake a cake, take out the birthday candles, brew some coffee, and give it a listen! WARNING: many shots of espresso were consumed in the making of this podcast.....you've been warned.

This week finds Circus Boy making a bet with his father over coffee as he interviews his father and grills him on the coffee history of the family. All of this plus the coffee scenes in Tupelo/Pontotoc, Mississippi, some ideas for Father's Day gifts, and of course, a new rockin' hit from Moddog. So, stop eying that salad, order a plate of ribs and check it out!

This week finds Circus Boy in Elvis's birthplace, Tupelo, Mississippi. We get to find out about home roasting coffee as we meet Elli Work or Earthling Coffee in Newport, Oregon. Plus, the coffee scenes from Beaumont, TX as well as Lake Charles/Denham Springs, LA. All this and a cajun cookin' toe-tapper from Moddog. So boil some crawfish and come across the bayou and check it out!

This week on the southernmost podcast in the USA, Circus Boy is out and aboot as he learns about Kona coffee from coffee farmer Vince of Kena Coffee, and brings you the coffee scenes from the wonderful island of Oahu, Hawaii. Plus, a new hit from Moddog, Circus Boy gives his final thoughts on Hawaii, and you'll find out why this podcast is officially the southernmost podcast in the USA for the week. So, put on your grass skirt, grab the sun tan lotion, pull out the beach towel and give it a listen!

This week finds Circus Boy in paradise (aka- Hawaii) cupping coffee and sipping mocha lattes in Kona coffee country. You'll get to visit the famous Waikiki beach and meet world renowned coffee consultant and cupper Willem Boot (www.bootcoffee.com). All of this plus the coffee scenes from Kona and Hilo, Hawaii as well as a new, explosive, hit from Moddog. Pick a pineapple and check it out!

This week finds Circus Boy on the move from Atlanta to 30,000ft and 500mph in the air and you'll be there right along with him. We also travel to Seattle and Oregon to catch up with Circus Boy siblings and as always a new song premier from Moddog, so open that bag of roasted peanuts and skip the in-flight movie and give this podcast a listen!

This week finds Circus Boy all over Oklahoma checking out the coffee scene and driving the Flying Dutchman RV. Plus, Circus Boy annouces the destination of the long-awaited podcast trip. So, brew some coffee or pull a shot and sit down with coffee artist extraordinaire Karen Eland and then stick around for the all new exclusive Moddog hit! This'll be more fun than your Aunt Bertha's 4th of July party, check it out!

This week finds Circus Boy traversing large distances in the Flying Dutchman all while drink copious mocha lattes around the central USA. 4 coffee scenes plus an exclusive coffee interview with the Circus Songstress Liliana Escobar. All of this coffee excitement plus a preview for next week's exciting show AND a new Moddog hit.

This week finds Circus Boy in South Padre Island with the sand and the surf while he brings you the BIG interview with the coffee man himself, Winter. You'll get to meet him, find out what makes him tick, and hear about his role in the new movie Starbucking. All of this plus 3 coffee scenes in south Texas and a new world premier song from Moddog. So put on some coffee and check it out!

This week finds Circus Boy on the border, literally, in Laredo Texas. He talks about the coffee scene in Laredo (or lack thereof) and sits down with star barista AJ from The Roasterie in Kansas City, MO. All of this plus a huge, gigantic....gargantuan announcement about next week's podcast and a new music exclusive from Moddog, check it out!

This week finds Circus Boy on the road..literally...en route to Wichita Falls, TX as your fly along with him in the Flying Dutchman. Plus, we get to to meet another Circus Boy Nathan who lives in Nashville, TN. All this, plus the FINAL clue in the first ever contest and a great Texas line-dancin' hit from Moddog. So pull out your boots and your cowboy hat and give it a listen.

This week finds Circus Boy thawing out from the chily northern platitudes. You're in for a special treat this week as he sits down with none other than the Bean Booster himself, Jason from Kansas City's own Roasterie Cafe. All of this, plus the coffee scenes in Ottumwa, IA and Nashville, TN as well as an all new, never before heard, Moddog music exclusive. This is episode is fully loaded, so pour a cup or pull a shot and give it a listen already!

This week finds Circus Boy taking you on baord with him as he searches out a coffee shop in beautiful southern Tennessee. All of this plus the coffee scenes from the split circus week as well as the long-awaited interview with Frick from the Frickin Circus podcast AND a new music exclusive from Moddog. It's chuck full and good listening, check it out!

This week finds Circus Boy trying to stay warm by drinking some tasty coffee in the flying dutchman while he reflects on RVs, frozen water hoses, and the new member to his coffee family. All of this, and the coffee scenes in chilly Pikeville, KY and Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, NC and I talk about my visit to Counter Culture Coffee . So sip some brew and give it a chew (or a listen)

This week finds Circus Boy sick with a cold in a very chilly Charlotte, NC. So, what better to do when one has a cold but to sit in a heated structure (in his case an RV), drink coffee, and listen to some good music (Moddog in the house!). This is part 1 of the Charlotte coffee and a mest of Moddog music epsiode. Check it out, you'll be glad you did!

This week finds Circus Boy in chilly Charlotte, NC drinking espresso while trying to stay warm and keep the Flying Dutchman level. Plus, the coffee scene in Daytona Beach, FL and special coffee military guest, Capt. Ware. All of this and a new bananna-eating all new music exclusive from Moddog, so eat a bananna and brew a cup and give it a listen!

This week finds Circus Boy sipping coffee in the famous Clown Alley. He takes you behind the scenes to drink coffee with veteran clowns Tom and Mitch. You won't believe where the conversation leads...all this plus a great find in the coffee scene in Sarasota, FL as well as a small discourse on this podcast's nomenclature and focus and a new song from Moddog. It runs a bit long, but then again so did Prefontaine. Take a sip and check it out!

This week finds Circus Boy amidst an historic opening night for the circus in Sarasota, FL. Plus, another circus guest Pianoman Larry Hunt graces the podcast with his presence. Plus, the coffee scene in Lakeland, FL and an all new Moddog hit, Lakes at Lakeland. Check it out!

This week, in a word... Crazy! Circus Boy should have drank more coffee before the show this week as the one and only Ted McRae is this week's special coffee-lovin guest. All this plus the coffee scenes in West Palm Beach/Ft. Myers, FL and a rerelease of Moddog's hit, Chill Cafe, that climbed to the Top 10 on Acid Planet's charts. So, brew a press pot or pull a shot and settle in for the an exciting Serach for the Best Mocha Latte in the World!

This week finds Circus Boy lamenting the fate of his wisdom teeth as well as checking out the local coffee scenes in Williamsburg and Charlottesville, VA. All of this and a rockin new hit from Moddog, check it out!

This week finds Circus Boy roaming around the eastern US broadcasting from a coffee shop in beautiful Williamsburg, VA. Plus, the long awaited Crave coffee shop interview with Corey! All of this and a new Moddog hit, so make a pot of coffee or pull some shots of espresso and check it out!

This week the turkeys rule as Circus Boy explores how coffee and thanksgiving and family all mix together. Plus, he'll take you along on his black friday shopping excursion. All this and a new exclusive from Moddog make for a coffee drinking tryptophan induced thanksgiving special!

This week's search finds Circus Boy amidst the fall foliage in the Adirondack Mountains as we explore Part 3: Grinders in the Bean 2 Bowel series, the bean scene in Lake Placid, NY, and we take a walk around the circus lot at the Olympic center. So, stop reading this, make a cup of coffee already and give it a listen!

This week finds Circus Boy scoping out the coffee scene in Louisville, KY as well as launching the Bean 2 Bowel (B2B) series where part 1 features a brief history of coffee as well as an intro into how coffee is grown. Plus, a new hit (the best yet) fresh from Moddog. 9 out of 10 goatherds say, "cheack it out!"