Podcasts about magic band

This week, more 70th anniversary details, including dining package updates, merch, and more, start dates for the upcoming entertainment, Star Wars Nite still has tickets, a new photo op appears in DCA, one of the Red Car Trolleys has a new home, we talk with Amanda and Kevin from Where in the Park, and more! Please support the show if you can by going to https://www.dlweekly.net/support/. Check out all of our current partners and exclusive discounts at https://www.dlweekly.net/promos. News: The Disneyland 70th Anniversary is bringing with it a refreshed dining package for World of Color Happiness! The specifics of the package have not been released, but the Disney Eats Instagram page showed the new food offering. There is also a similar dining package offering for Better Together A Pixar Pals Celebration parade. It looks to include not only sweet desserts, but also meats, crackers, and cheeses. Reservations open on April 10th. – https://www.instagram.com/p/DH_fUi-Cgl5/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ%3D%3D https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2025/04/04/disney-announces-new-additions-for-70th-anniversary-including-dessert-parties/ A few new lines of Disneyland 70th merchandise have been announced. The celebration collection features the classic Disney Parks style, The Castle Collection is inspired by Sleeping Beauty Castle, The Vault Collection has vintage Disneyland and Mickey Mouse, with new releases throughout the celebration, and the Disneyland Resort 70th Anniversary Walt Disney Nostalgia Collection, which honors Walt Disney and celebrating Disneyland. – https://disneyparksblog.com/dlr/celebrate-happy-with-disneyland-70th-anniversary-merchandise/ One of the most interesting pieces of merchandise is the Key to Disneyland. This is a larger “key” that can be used to unlock the 9 lands of Disneyland to reveal a hidden keepsake pin inside the key. There are 9 pins possible. The lands can be unlocked in one visit, or over multiple visits as your progress is saved between visits. All 9 lands must be unlocked sometime during the 70th to get the pin. – https://disneyland.disney.go.com/attractions/disneyland/key-to-disneyland/ Even more has been announced for the 70th. Guests will be able to vote on the Disneyland app for one of the four emotions – Sadness, Anger, Disgust, or Envy – to have them featured in the World of Color Happiness show that night. A new tour called “A Story of Celebration: 70th Anniversary Guided Tour will be available. The tour is two hours and explore the history of Disneyland. Bookings start on April 24th. Some new interactions and effects are coming for MagicBand+ around the resort, and new PhotoPass magic. There are also some limited-time ticket and hotel offers. – https://disneyparksblog.com/dlr/guide-to-the-70th-anniversary-at-disneyland-resort/ Last week when we talked about the new entertainment offerings coming to the resort, we did not mention start dates. Disney Jr. Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Live! starts on May 16th at the Disney Theatre in Hollywood Land, the Pixar Pals Playtime Party at the Fantasyland Theatre starts May 23rd, along with Stitch's Interplanetary Beach Party Blast in Tomorrowland. Rex will be out on Pixar Pier starting June 1st. – DISNEYLAND UPDATE: Dance Parties, Demolition & The Competition Awakens This week, the first of the Star Wars Nites at Disneyland is taking place. If you are wanting to attend this event, there are still tickets available for all the nites, except for May 4th. Some new food items are also coming to the event – DISNEYLAND UPDATE: Dance Parties, Demolition & The Competition Awakens The new National Geographic Hulu and Disney+ show “Secrets of the Penguins” has a photo op inside of Disney California Adventure. One of the storefronts in Hollywood Land has been decorated with penguins have a great time in their habitat. – https://www.micechat.com/412710-disneyland-news-construction-demolition-competition/ A piece of good and bad news was reported by The Garner Holt Foundation on Instagram. One of the Red Car Trolleys has been donated to the foundation to support their mission of helping students discover STEM and STEAM careers. The bad news is that this means that it is likely not coming back at DCA. – https://www.instagram.com/p/DIFBaXARVYm/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== I know we are a Disneyland podcast, but I feel that we need to talk about the dragons, monsters, wizards, turtle shells and banana peels in the room… This week, influencers were invited by Universal Studios to experience their new theme park in Florida – Epic Universe. We have been watching the videos of their experiences and it looks absolutely amazing! What they have done seems Disney level good. – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrg59ZOTlhY Once again the outside world crept into the Happiest Place on Earth at the parking structure. There was a car fire at the Pixar Pals parking structure around 9:45am on April 4th. – https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2025/04/04/fire-breaks-out-in-disneyland-parking-structure/#more-1022446 SnackChat: Aunt Cass Cafe – https://disneyland.disney.go.com/dining/disney-california-adventure/aunt-cass-cafe/menus/ Discussion Topic: Kevin and Amanda Richards of Where in the Park ‘https://shop.whereinthepark.com https://www.instagram.com/whereinthepark

On this episode, Jen and Frank chat with Rich Criado about the MagicBand! Rich is an exceptional product development leader and patent holder with demonstrated success delivering high quality experiences at scale for the world's largest brands such as Disney, Fanatics, Penn Entertainment, and Carnival Corporation. *** Get a vacation quote from Vasilia at ET Family Travel today!  *** Dillo's Diz 55 Gerard St. #987. Huntington, NY 11743 Affiliate Links Music & Themes produced by Matt Harvey. Feedspot's Top 25 Siblings Podcasts You Must Follow AND Top 100 Disney Podcasts You Must Follow. ONE STOP SHOP ALL THE @DillosDiz LINKS! DIllo's Diz Resort Guests: Theme Park Rob, Jeffers, Skipper Bob, Nathaniel Hardy, Louis and Dr. Val of #FigmentsInTime, Lee Taylor, Maz, Troy with the Disney Assembled Podcast, Judy Van Cleef, Ryan Alexander, PixieDustPhD, Tony Orgelfinger, Holly Maddock, Lexi Andrea, Adam Elmers, DCLDuo, Disney Assembled Question or Comment? We LOVE interacting with listeners! FOLLOW Dillo's Diz on INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/dillosdiz/ FOLLOW Dillo's Diz on YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/dillosdiz FOLLOW Dillo's Diz on TWITTER: https://twitter.com/dillosdiz

The Jazz Session No.401 from RaidersBroadcast.com as aired in February 2025, featuring Miles Davis' elegant and melodic 1968 album “Water Babies”. TRACK LISTING: The Pearls - Jelly Roll Morton; Temptation Rag - Kenny Ball; Upon the My-O-My - Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band; Drunk on the Moon - Tom Waits; Capricorn - Miles Davis; Sweet Pea - Miles Davis; St.Louis Blues, w. Stevie Wonder voc.  - Herbie Hancock; Windows - Gary Burton, w. Corea, Metheny, Haynes, Holland; Soul of Things, Var.2 - Tomasz Stanko Quartet; Waltz - Liam Noble Group; Miles' Mode - John Coltrane; My Reverie - Sonny Rollins; Brasiliance - Duke Ellington & his Orchestra ; A.M.Mayhem - The Stan Tracey Quartet; Splash - Miles Davis; Water Babies - Miles Davis; Now You Has Jazz - Bing Crosby & Louis Armstrong; Jeepers Creepers - Tony Bennett with the Count Basie Orchestra; Plato - John Pope Quintet; Dada Was Here - Soft Machine.

Send us a textGuitarist, improviser and research diver Henry Kaiser visits YMAAA and introduces Al to Captain Beefheart's 1972 album The Spotlight Kid. Henry talks about his personal connections to Captain Beefheart's backing ensemble, The Magic Band, and particularly his connection to Elliot Ingber, who passed away just days before this episode was recorded. Henry recalls how seeing a live performance of one of the tracks from The Spotlight Kid led to him taking up the guitar, and how he developed as both a fan and a colleague of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. Henry also talks about his deployments as a research diver in Antarctica, as well as some of his recent musical projects, including his work on Two Views of Steve Lacy's The Wire.Henry had mentioned that he found a video of the Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band performance at Tufts University that inspired him to become a guitarist. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzDaFDhkv9A. The specific moment that Henry mentioned begins at 5:19.You can find Henry's music on his website, http://www.henrykaiserguitar.com/, as well as on the Cuneiform Records YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@CuneiformRecords). Among many other videos, that's where you can find Henry's recent Elliot Ingber tribute video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpoVA6qkEX0).Al is on Bluesky at @almelchior.bsky.social. This show has an account on Instagram at @youmealbum. Subscribe for free to You, Me and An Album: The Newsletter! https://youmealbum.substack.com/. You can also support the show on Buzzsprout at https://www.buzzsprout.com/1542814/episodes or at the link at the bottom of these show notes.1:24 Henry joins the show1:45 Henry talks about the important role that Elliot Ingber played in his life8:58 Henry explains why The Spotlight Kid was not loved by The Magic Band10:49 Henry recounts the first time he met Ingber and other members of The Magic Band12:52 Henry talks about his first experience with listening to The Spotlight Kid16:15 Henry discusses his YouTube videos, including his tribute performances18:48 Henry talks about how The Spotlight Kid was a different kind of album for Captain Beefheart20:00 Henry explains why he chose The Spotlight Kid for this episode and what it's like for him to listen to it now22:15 Al picks his favorite tracks from the album and explains what he gets out of them29:10 The Spotlight Kid gets overshadowed by several other Captain Beefheart albums29:54 Henry cites his favorite tracks from the album31:36 The Spotlight Kid had some commercial success32:41 Henry's Captain Beefheart fandom was shaped by his inside knowledge of the band's workings36:01 Henry identifies what makes The Spotlight Kid unique among blues rock albums38:05 Henry talks about becoming a diver and his path to becoming a scientific diver in Antarctica43:00 Henry discusses his recent Steve Lacy cover album collaboration46:33 Henry enjoys reworking some of his favorite music48:13 Henry talks about his recent projectsOutro music is from “Esteem” by Ackley-Chen-Centazzo-DeGruttola-Kaiser-Manning.Support the show

Intro:  One More Night – Can 1. Eisiger Wind – LiLiPUT (3:26) 2.  Steal Softly Thru' Snow – Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band (2:16) 3.  Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds (5:31)                                                                               4.  NY Snow Globe – Rachel's (2:22)                                                                                                 5.  Frozen Warnings – Nico (4:02)                                                                                                                                       6.  Des Pas sur la Neige (Footprints in the Snow) – Debussy, Barenboim (4:31)                                                                    7.  January Hymn – Decemberists (3:10)                                                                             8. Footprints in the Snow – Bill Monroe & his Blue Grass Boys (2:38) 9.  Frosty the Snowman – Leon Redbone & Dr John (1:54)                                                               10.  20 Years of Snow – Regina Spektor (3:28)                                                                           11.  Snowy Morning Blues – James P. Johnson (2:41)                                                                                                               12.  La Nevada – Gil Evans Orchestra (15:31)                                                                                                                                                13. Cold Rain and Snow – Grateful Dead (2:28)                                                                                                                       14.  Snow in San Anselmo – Van Morrison (4:34)                                                                                                                     15.  Under Ice – Kate Bush (2:22)                                                                                                         16.  The Snows – Pentangle (3:43)                           17.  Neuschnee – Neu! (4:03)                                                                                                                                                   18.  Snow Jumper's Harp – 75 Dollar Bill (8:56)                                                                                                                       19.  When the Frost is on the Pumpkin – Fred Jordan (1:17) 20. Cold, Cold, Cold – Little Feat (3:58)                                       21.  Cold Weather Blues – Muddy Waters (4:40)                                       22.  First Snow – Dave Holland Quartet (6:29)                                                                                                                      23.  The Snow Abides – Michael Cashmore (4:35)                                                                                                              24.  Blanche comme la Neige – Kate & Anna McGarrigle (3:45)                                  25.  A-Rovin' on a Winter's Night – Peter Bellamy (3:29)                                                                                                         Outro: Pogles Walk – Vernon Elliott Ensemble

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Duncan Wardle, former Head of Innovation and Creativity at Disney. Duncan, who played a transformative role at Disney Imagineering, Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm, shares how he fostered a culture of innovation that reshaped the guest experience, resulting in breakthroughs like the Magic Band. As the author of The Imagination Emporium: Creative Recipes for Innovation, Duncan unveils powerful tools for unlocking creativity, tackling challenges, and building "yes, and" cultures in organizations. Today we discussed: [00:00] Opening [00:09] Introduction to Duncan Wardle [01:00] Defining Innovation and Embedding a Culture of Creativity [03:12] Embracing Innate Creativity [04:48] The Future of Employability [09:38] Collaborative Brainstorming Exercise [12:43] Unlocking Creativity through Playfulness and Collaboration [17:01] River of Thinking and Innovation More About Duncan Wardle Duncan Wardle's website - https://theimaginationemporium.com/ Connect with Duncan Wardle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/duncanwardle/ Rate, Review, & Follow If you liked this episode, please rate and review the show. Let us know what you loved most about the episode. Struggling with strategy? Unlock your free AI-powered prompts now and start building a winning strategy today!

Hey there, and a very happy Monday to you! This is your Disney News for Monday, November 11th, 2024. - Disneyland Resort introduces "Disney Merriest Nites," an after-hours event with themed parties and holiday festivities. - Walt Disney World launches MagicBand+ featuring interactive light and vibration elements, enhancing park experiences. - Tokyo Disneyland celebrates Fantasy Springs grand opening with attractions inspired by Frozen, Tangled, and Peter Pan. - Disney+ debuts "Olaf's Wintery Tales," a holiday special with Olaf's charming storytelling. Have a magical day and tune in again tomorrow for more updates.

The Jazz Session No.388 from RaidersBroadcast.com as aired in November 2024, featuring a tribute to the superlative, and now sadly departed, bandleader and arranger, Quincy Jones. TRACK LISTING: Just the Smile - Rory Gallagher; Click Clack - Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band; Still in the Room - Carla Bley; Cacion Sin Nombre - Barbara Thompson's Paraphernalia; Soul Bossa Nova - Quincy Jones & His Orchestra; Black Orpheus (Manha de Carnaval) - Quincy Jones & His Orchestra; Quintessence  - Quincy Jones & His Orchestra; Just a Little While to Stay Here - Chris Barber; Sweet Georgia Brown - Acker Bilk; Wiggle-Waggle - Herbie Hancock; The Right Hand Path - John Pope Quintet; Light Blue - Thelonius Monk; Limehouse Blues - Oscar Peterson; Revolving Door - Lalo; Inca Roads - Frank Zappa, w. Ruth Underwood; The Twitch - Quincy Jones & His Orchestra; Hard Sock Dance - Quincy Jones & His Orchestra; Serenata - Quincy Jones & His Orchestra; Scenes From An Italian Restaurant - Billy Joel; Countermoon - Donald Fagen; I Wish I Knew - John Coltrane; Cool Blues - Charlie Parker.

Stay updated with the latest Disney news and rumors in this episode! We've got you covered from Park refurbishments to Swan and Dolphin Renovation and Rumors. Thanks for listening. 0:00 Introduction 3:44 Big Thunder Mountain Refurbishment 6:28 Dino Land phased closures 8:53 Swan and Dolphin Renovation 13:59 Breakfast at Satu'li Canteen 17:00 New Experiences at EPCOTS's International Festival of the Holidays 22:58 Shutting down Magic Band 1.0? 33:19 Wrap-Up   Support the Show: Luxury Travel Advisors LLC - Book your next Disney World vacation with Mike....His services are completely free and you will support a small business. (luxurytraveladvisorsllc.com) Magic Candle Company - Bringing the Vacation to you...On your next purchase use discount code (wdwbtg) at check-out to receive 15% off your purchase. (www.magiccandlecompany.com)   Helpful Links: Check out our YouTube Channel (youtube.com/@wdwbtg) Social media (@wdwbtg)

Get ready for a packed week of spooky Disney magic! Halloween is in full swing, and the legendary Headless Horseman haunts Disney's Fort Wilderness! We spotted Muppet Ghosts, and Cake Bake Shop is now serving sweet treats on the Boardwalk. Over at EPCOT, the Ocean Explorer kiosks at The Seas with Nemo bring an extra splash of fun, while the DVC Member Lounge nears completion at the Imagination Pavilion. New holiday merchandise is filling shelves in the parks, and we spotted fresh pavement at Hollywood Studios and new MagicBand+ magic at the Frozen Sing-Along Celebration. Disney Springs is getting into the holiday spirit, too, as the Star Wars Trading Post makes room for Santa! And don't miss the jaw-dropping new giant cheese stick at Blue Ribbon Corn Dogs. To top it all off, the Grand Floridian is starting construction on its iconic 25th annual gingerbread house. Stick around for a nostalgic look at the 1983 Disney Halloween Treat holiday special to round out a truly magical week! Youtube https://www.youtube.com/live/VSCCMx7lXPM?si=OMBmAtudWjyJkJYu

Le Magicband à Walt Disney World est l'outil indispensable pour améliorer votre séjour dans le parc le plus magique du monde ! Dans cet épisode, nous vous dévoilons tout ce que vous devez savoir sur cet accessoire innovant : comment l'utiliser, ses fonctionnalités cachées, et comment il peut simplifier votre visite à Disney. Du paiement sans contact à l'accès rapide aux attractions, le Magicband est un véritable passe-partout qui rend votre expérience à Disney encore plus fluide et amusante. Découvrez également nos astuces pour tirer le meilleur parti de votre Magicband, et comment il peut vous offrir des surprises supplémentaires tout au long de votre séjour. Abonnez-vous pour ne rien manquer de nos conseils sur Walt Disney World et vivez la magie Disney comme jamais auparavant !

Here is your Daily Disney News for Thursday, October 10th, 2024 - "Agatha All Along" on Disney+ hits 9.3 million views in its first week, impressing fans and critics alike with budget efficiency and earning fresh ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. - Disneyland and Disney World enhance security and entry policies with automated gates and MagicBand+ scanning, aiming for safer, smoother park experiences. - Tiana's Bayou Adventure opens in Anaheim on November 15th, 2024, reimagining Splash Mountain with vibrant theming inspired by Disney's Tiana. - A Mandalorian and Grogu movie is in the works, while "Ahsoka" Season 2 moves forward, showing new storytelling formats for Star Wars on Disney+. Have a magical day and tune in again tomorrow for more updates.

Enjoy our discussion of Captain Beefheart's Safe As Milk! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/three-different-ones/support

Hey there, and a very happy Wednesday! This is your Disney News for Wednesday, September 25th, 2024. I hope you're ready for your daily dose of Disney magic! - Disneyland Resort in California is launching "MagicBand+" next month. This wearable device will serve as your park ticket, room key, and interact with attractions. - Tokyo Disneyland's "Enchanted Tiki Room" has reopened with updated animatronics and a refreshed storyline, blending nostalgia with new magic. - "Moana: Journey of Water" at Epcot, Disney World, will open next summer. This interactive experience explores the wonders of water through Moana's eyes. - Disney+ announces "Pixar Popcorn Shorts," featuring mini-episodes with iconic Pixar characters, perfect for a quick Disney fix. Have a magical day and tune in again tomorrow for more updates.

387 - Discover money-saving hacks for your next Disney World vacation in this must-listen episode of Disney Travel Secrets! Hosts Rob and Kerri Stuart reveal their top 5 tips to cut costs without sacrificing magic, including whether you really need a MagicBand. Learn about the groundbreaking CMV Heroes Project, supporting military families through Folds of Honor. CLICK TO LEARN MORE Get insider advice on trip insurance, dining strategies, and avoiding holiday price surges. Perfect for Disney enthusiasts and budget-conscious travelers alike. Tune in for exclusive Disney World tips, travel agent insights, and a chance to win Disney luggage tags! #DisneyWorldTips #DisneyVacationHacks #DisneyTravelSecrets Come join us for Weekends on the Wish - November 8, 2024 is our next on  Download the free Stress-Free Planning Worksheet at HowToDoDisney.com to help plan your next magical Disney vacation. Don't forget to subscribe to the Disney Travel Secrets YouTube channel to catch this episode on video. And get ready to share your thoughts and reactions using #DisneyTravelSecrets. LYFT REFERRAL CODE: You get 50% off 2 Lyft rides in Orlando if you sign up using our referral link. Terms apply, excludes Wait & Save. Ready to plan your 2024 and 2025 Disney Destinations Vacation? CLICK HERE Join us on our Facebook Page _________________________ Let us help you plan your next Disney vacation. Our services are free and you get us and our insider tips customized to YOUR family to help you have the most magical vacation. CONNECT WITH US HERE Want to save on gas? Upside App Referral Code - XD3VD Make sure you are receiving our weekly email. Just go to DisneyTravelSecrets.com and complete the form.  Have a topic you would like covered on the show? Please reach out to us on social media and let us know.   

In celebration of its 55th anniversary, Aaron takes a deep dive into the story behind the making of Captain Beefheart's classic 1969 album.    Marked as explicit for mature content.

Peter Meaden was a key figure in the Mod movement. He changed the world view of Andrew Loog Oldham, which shaped the early Stones, and he managed the Who, remodelling their look and sound, writing their first single and turning them into Mod figureheads. Steve Turner interviewed him in 1975, an exchange that's now the centrepiece of his new book 'King Mod: the Story of Peter Meaden, the Who and the Birth of a British Subculture', and the NME's published extract in 1978 paved the way for the Mod Revival. It's an extraordinary story that would make a movie, discussed here with Steve and including ... ... the Scene Club in Windmill Street "when a band was a way of life".... Angus McGill and the first press mention of 'the Modernists'.… the tale of Sandra Blackstone, the DJ who vanished into thin air.... the lifelong values of Mod culture for teenagers like Eric Clapton, Marc Bolan and David Bowie.  ... the single Meaden wrote for the Who - Zoot Suit/I'm The Face - and where he stole the music from. ... police raids in Soho. ... doing press for Bob Dylan at the time of Madhouse on Castle Street.  ... the Flamingo Club's dress policy, French and Italian film and fashion, boxing boots, cycle jackets and the origins of Mod style.  ... Chuck Berry in suburban Edmonton! ... Meaden's disastrous attempt to bring Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band to London. ... and a typical weekend in 1964, a sleepless, Drinamyl-powered 48 hours from the Ready Steady Go! green room to the Scene Club via Carnaby Street. £5 off copies of ‘King Mod' here. Just type in the discount code which is:-Podcast offerhttps://redplanetmusicbooks.com/collections/full-catalogue/products/king-modFind out more about how you can help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Peter Meaden was a key figure in the Mod movement. He changed the world view of Andrew Loog Oldham, which shaped the early Stones, and he managed the Who, remodelling their look and sound, writing their first single and turning them into Mod figureheads. Steve Turner interviewed him in 1975, an exchange that's now the centrepiece of his new book 'King Mod: the Story of Peter Meaden, the Who and the Birth of a British Subculture', and the NME's published extract in 1978 paved the way for the Mod Revival. It's an extraordinary story that would make a movie, discussed here with Steve and including ... ... the Scene Club in Windmill Street "when a band was a way of life".... Angus McGill and the first press mention of 'the Modernists'.… the tale of Sandra Blackstone, the DJ who vanished into thin air.... the lifelong values of Mod culture for teenagers like Eric Clapton, Marc Bolan and David Bowie.  ... the single Meaden wrote for the Who - Zoot Suit/I'm The Face - and where he stole the music from. ... police raids in Soho. ... doing press for Bob Dylan at the time of Madhouse on Castle Street.  ... the Flamingo Club's dress policy, French and Italian film and fashion, boxing boots, cycle jackets and the origins of Mod style.  ... Chuck Berry in suburban Edmonton! ... Meaden's disastrous attempt to bring Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band to London. ... and a typical weekend in 1964, a sleepless, Drinamyl-powered 48 hours from the Ready Steady Go! green room to the Scene Club via Carnaby Street. £5 off copies of ‘King Mod' here. Just type in the discount code which is:-Podcast offerhttps://redplanetmusicbooks.com/collections/full-catalogue/products/king-modFind out more about how you can help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Peter Meaden was a key figure in the Mod movement. He changed the world view of Andrew Loog Oldham, which shaped the early Stones, and he managed the Who, remodelling their look and sound, writing their first single and turning them into Mod figureheads. Steve Turner interviewed him in 1975, an exchange that's now the centrepiece of his new book 'King Mod: the Story of Peter Meaden, the Who and the Birth of a British Subculture', and the NME's published extract in 1978 paved the way for the Mod Revival. It's an extraordinary story that would make a movie, discussed here with Steve and including ... ... the Scene Club in Windmill Street "when a band was a way of life".... Angus McGill and the first press mention of 'the Modernists'.… the tale of Sandra Blackstone, the DJ who vanished into thin air.... the lifelong values of Mod culture for teenagers like Eric Clapton, Marc Bolan and David Bowie.  ... the single Meaden wrote for the Who - Zoot Suit/I'm The Face - and where he stole the music from. ... police raids in Soho. ... doing press for Bob Dylan at the time of Madhouse on Castle Street.  ... the Flamingo Club's dress policy, French and Italian film and fashion, boxing boots, cycle jackets and the origins of Mod style.  ... Chuck Berry in suburban Edmonton! ... Meaden's disastrous attempt to bring Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band to London. ... and a typical weekend in 1964, a sleepless, Drinamyl-powered 48 hours from the Ready Steady Go! green room to the Scene Club via Carnaby Street. £5 off copies of ‘King Mod' here. Just type in the discount code which is:-Podcast offerhttps://redplanetmusicbooks.com/collections/full-catalogue/products/king-modFind out more about how you can help us to keep the conversation going: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we are halfway to Halloween and Disney shared some Spooktacular announcements, fun merch to celebrate May the 4th, a “beary” familiar face in DCA, vacation deals for the summer, we talk with Tage & James before they sail away and more! Please support the show if you can by going to https://www.dlweekly.net/support/. Check out all of our current partners and exclusive discounts at https://www.dlweekly.net/promos. News: We are halfway to Halloween and to celebrate, Disney has announced dates for this year's Oogie Boogie Bash! This frightfully fun party is returning with 27 select nights August 25 through Halloween night. Check out the link for the full list of dates. – Disney Experiences Celebrates a Wickedly Wonderful Halfway to Halloween | Disney Parks Blog (go.com) Disney has released bone chilling merch items to get everyone in the Halloween spirit. Sneak peak items include clothing, jewlery, bags, games, toys and more. There is something sure to delight all trick or treaters! – https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2024/05/34-bone-chilling-disney-halloween-items-youll-want-in-2024/ To help celebrate May the Fourth, some new items appeared in Galaxy's Edge. New versions of the Jedi and Sith Holocrons have been spotted at Dok Ondar's as well as updated kyber crystals! The crystals are the same colors as before but feature new voices. Cast Members report that there are also two new chasers, a cracked blue crystal and a cracked red crystal! – https://wdwnt.com/2024/05/new-2024-jedi-sith-holocrons-kyber-crystals-dhs/ A familiar face has been spotted in DCA! A Big Al statue is part of the new DVC stand in the Grizzly Peak Recreation Area. The large wooden carved character is not only a great photo spot, but it also interacts with your MagicBand+ – https://wdwnt.com/2024/05/big-al-statue-with-magicband-interaction-installed-at-disney-california-adventure/ https://www.micechat.com/386115-disneyland-news-tiana-country-bear-fantasmic/ Just announced, new 2024 summer ticket and hotel offerings are coming to Disneyland! The ticket deal is for 3 day tickets, used on Monday-Thursday for a limited time. Prices start at $50 per day for children and $83 per adult per day! Guests can also save 25% on select stays at he Grand Californian, the Disneyland Hotel, or The Villas when staying 4 nights or longer. OR you can save up to 20% on stays Sunday-Thursday with out a minimum night stay. These special deals go on sale May 29th and can be used on visits during June 10 – September 26! – New 2024 Summer Ticket, Hotel Offers Coming to Disneyland | Disney Parks Blog (go.com) SnackChat: This week for Snack Chat we are venturing to Downtown Disney to check out the menus for the newly opened Paseo, Centrico, and Tiendita – https://www.micechat.com/386115-disneyland-news-tiana-country-bear-fantasmic/ Discussion Topic: Tage and James share their expectations for their first Disney cruise.

Now here comes our latest podcast, walking, looking like a zoo. Listen in to find out what the 2 old farts at play have to say about it. Will the verdict be sweet sweet bulbs growing in my ladies garden or does it sound more like a squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag?

We have a lot going on during today's show! We are so luck to have Listener Ashley joining us from down in Atlanta, Georgia to share a bunch of stories with us! Hear about her experience working at The Disney Store for 17 years and even meeting her future husband there! We also hear about how her husband was one of the folks who helped bring about the MagicBand technology we use today! Then, we discuss their 25th wedding anniversary trip to Walt Disney World where they were upgraded from All-Star Movies to Port Orleans - Riverside! Finally, hear how a Companion Pass leads to Ashley's first trip to Disneyland and her thoughts on this destination!  Thank you so much for your support of our podcast! Become a Patron of the show at www.Patreon.com/BeOurGuestPodcast.  Also, please follow the show on Twitter @BeOurGuestMike and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/beourguestpodcast.   Thanks to our friends at The Magic For Less Travel for sponsoring today's podcast!

This week, a ton of Pixar Fest information like the Foodie Guide, decorations, dining options, Downtown Disney updates are a plenty as well, we talk about our upcoming trip to the parks this weekend, and more! Please support the show if you can by going to https://www.dlweekly.net/support/. Check out all of our current partners and exclusive discounts at https://www.dlweekly.net/promos. News: Pixar Fest is coming in quick! Decorations for the festival are going up all around the resort. Last week, we talked about the decorations in Downtown Disney, this week they are showing up in both parks! Very colorful bunting has appeared on the lamp posts along Main Street in Disneyland, and Buena Vista Street in Disney California Adventure. Each lamp post has a different Pixar character at the top. – DISNEYLAND UPDATE: Goodbyes, Last Hurrahs & New Horizons! (micechat.com) With PixarFest just around the corner, there is another dining option coming to Disney California Adventure. With the launch of “Better Together: A Pixar Pals Celebration,” there will be a dessert package available to guests. The package includes reserved seating for the parade, and a selection of Pixar-inspired foods, desserts and cheeses, with unlimited soft drinks and bottled water—plus coffee and a specialty mocktail. The package is $69 per guest. – https://www.micechat.com/384351-cuisine-with-character-disneyland-resort-pixar-fest-food-guide/ Some new items are also launching for Pixar Fest that is just amazing! Doug, from Up! is available as a popcorn bucket for Magic Key Holders, and the Guitar from Coco popcorn bucket will be available for all guests. – https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2024/04/11/2-new-disney-popcorn-buckets-are-coming-soon/#more-925040 We have some new information about the new dining locations coming to Downtown Disney in the near future. Paseo, Centrico, and Tiendita will be opening in the next few weeks according to the Disney Parks Blog. Din Tai Fung will be opening this summer, and new Steakhouse and BBQ concepts will be coming as well in the former Tortilla Jo's footprint. – https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2024/04/new-culinary-delights-coming-to-downtown-disney-district/ Another location in Downtown Disney is undergoing some changes. The popular Marceline's Confectionary is expanding. During the construction, there will be a Marceline's cart in Downtown Disney selling treats. – https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2024/04/new-culinary-delights-coming-to-downtown-disney-district/ Some interactivity has come to the construction walls at the Haunted Mansion. MagicBand wearing guests can tap on specific tap points on the walls to hear sounds from the attraction. There are also QR codes to access the PhotoPass Lens options in the Disneyland App. – DISNEYLAND UPDATE: Goodbyes, Last Hurrahs & New Horizons! (micechat.com) An interesting observation was made by the crew over at MiceChat this week. Some lamp posts at Jolly Holiday, Rancho del Zocalo, and the Pirates of the Caribbean bridge have been removed. This is likely related to the lamp post blowing over a few months ago in Town Square. – DISNEYLAND UPDATE: Goodbyes, Last Hurrahs & New Horizons! (micechat.com) With Tiana's Bayou Adventure winding down construction in Walt Disney World, the Ambassadors from the resort showed off some new Minnie Ears. The ears are navy blue with gold details and artwork from the attraction. No date for when these will be on sale or coming to Disneyland. – SURPRISE! Disney Revealed a NEW Tiana's Bayou Adventure Ride Souvenir | the disney food blog SnackChat: Pixar Fest Foodie Guide – https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2024/04/disney-eats-pixar-fest-foodie-guide-starting-april-26/ May the 4th Foodie Guide – https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2024/04/disney-eats-may-the-4th-foodie-guide-2024/ Discussion Topic: https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2024/02/disney-eats-foodie-guide-to-disney-california-adventure-food-wine-festival-2024 https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2024/03/disney-eats-season-of-the-force-foodie-guide-for-disneyland-resort-2024 https://disneyanafanclub.weebly.com/dfc_expo.html

Today Listener Simon from the United Kingdom stays up really late to tell us about his amazing trip to Walt Disney World, staying at Pop Century Resort for over 2 weeks! Hear about a first haircut for his two sons at the Harmony Barbershop, first meal of the day at Crystal Palace, tips for using Genie+ and Parent Swap, tips for traveling from the UK with young children, and many, many heartwarming stories from the vacation!  Thank you so much for your support of our podcast! Become a Patron of the show at www.Patreon.com/BeOurGuestPodcast.  Also, please follow the show on Twitter @BeOurGuestMike and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/beourguestpodcast.   Thanks to our friends at The Magic For Less Travel for sponsoring today's podcast!

This week, a ton of Pixar Fest information like the Foodie Guide, decorations, dining options, Downtown Disney updates are a plenty as well, we talk about our upcoming trip to the parks this weekend, and more! Please support the show if you can by going to https://www.dlweekly.net/support/. Check out all of our current partners and exclusive discounts at https://www.dlweekly.net/promos. News: Pixar Fest is coming in quick! Decorations for the festival are going up all around the resort. Last week, we talked about the decorations in Downtown Disney, this week they are showing up in both parks! Very colorful bunting has appeared on the lamp posts along Main Street in Disneyland, and Buena Vista Street in Disney California Adventure. Each lamp post has a different Pixar character at the top. – DISNEYLAND UPDATE: Goodbyes, Last Hurrahs & New Horizons! (micechat.com) With PixarFest just around the corner, there is another dining option coming to Disney California Adventure. With the launch of “Better Together: A Pixar Pals Celebration,” there will be a dessert package available to guests. The package includes reserved seating for the parade, and a selection of Pixar-inspired foods, desserts and cheeses, with unlimited soft drinks and bottled water—plus coffee and a specialty mocktail. The package is $69 per guest. – https://www.micechat.com/384351-cuisine-with-character-disneyland-resort-pixar-fest-food-guide/ Some new items are also launching for Pixar Fest that is just amazing! Doug, from Up! is available as a popcorn bucket for Magic Key Holders, and the Guitar from Coco popcorn bucket will be available for all guests. – https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2024/04/11/2-new-disney-popcorn-buckets-are-coming-soon/#more-925040 We have some new information about the new dining locations coming to Downtown Disney in the near future. Paseo, Centrico, and Tiendita will be opening in the next few weeks according to the Disney Parks Blog. Din Tai Fung will be opening this summer, and new Steakhouse and BBQ concepts will be coming as well in the former Tortilla Jo's footprint. – https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2024/04/new-culinary-delights-coming-to-downtown-disney-district/ Another location in Downtown Disney is undergoing some changes. The popular Marceline's Confectionary is expanding. During the construction, there will be a Marceline's cart in Downtown Disney selling treats. – https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2024/04/new-culinary-delights-coming-to-downtown-disney-district/ Some interactivity has come to the construction walls at the Haunted Mansion. MagicBand wearing guests can tap on specific tap points on the walls to hear sounds from the attraction. There are also QR codes to access the PhotoPass Lens options in the Disneyland App. – DISNEYLAND UPDATE: Goodbyes, Last Hurrahs & New Horizons! (micechat.com) An interesting observation was made by the crew over at MiceChat this week. Some lamp posts at Jolly Holiday, Rancho del Zocalo, and the Pirates of the Caribbean bridge have been removed. This is likely related to the lamp post blowing over a few months ago in Town Square. – DISNEYLAND UPDATE: Goodbyes, Last Hurrahs & New Horizons! (micechat.com) With Tiana's Bayou Adventure winding down construction in Walt Disney World, the Ambassadors from the resort showed off some new Minnie Ears. The ears are navy blue with gold details and artwork from the attraction. No date for when these will be on sale or coming to Disneyland. – SURPRISE! Disney Revealed a NEW Tiana's Bayou Adventure Ride Souvenir | the disney food blog SnackChat: Pixar Fest Foodie Guide – https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2024/04/disney-eats-pixar-fest-foodie-guide-starting-april-26/ May the 4th Foodie Guide – https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2024/04/disney-eats-may-the-4th-foodie-guide-2024/ Discussion Topic: https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2024/02/disney-eats-foodie-guide-to-disney-california-adventure-food-wine-festival-2024 https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2024/03/disney-eats-season-of-the-force-foodie-guide-for-disneyland-resort-2024 https://disneyanafanclub.weebly.com/dfc_expo.html

Singles Going Around- Saturday Comes In Colors The Beatles- "Drive My Car"Van Morrison- "Jackie Wilson Said"The Standells-"Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White"The Grateful Dead- "Cumberland Blues"The Monkees- "Let's Dance On"The Sex Pistols- "C'mon Everybody"Otis Redding- "Love Man"Plastic Ono Band- "Remember"Simon & Garfunkel- "The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine"Lightnin' Slim- "Rooster Blues"The Yardirds- "Heart Full Of Soul"Nirvana- "Molly's Lips"Led Zeppelin- "Hey, Hey What Can I Do"Love- "Hey Joe"Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band- "Lick My Decals Off Baby"The White Stripes- "Lafayette Blues"The Doors- "Roadhouse Blues"13th Floor Elevators- "You Gonna Miss Me"Cream- "I'm So Glad"*all selections taken from the original records.

The capricious Californian Captain captured on 2 albums. Captivating!

One of the most unique and original artists in pop music. Don Van Vliet a.k.a. Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band created a groundbreaking sound that was a cross between Dada art and Free Jazz. This is a special tribute with select tracks from his first few albums and especially his masterpiece, "Trout Mask Replica". Please have a look at these special interest sites.If you would, please make a donation of love and hope to St. Jude Children's HospitalMake an impact on the lives of St. Jude kids - St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (stjude.org)Get your Vegan Collagen Gummies from Earth & Elle, available thru Amazon at this link.Amazon.com: Earth & Elle Vegan Collagen Gummies - Non-GMO Biotin Gummies, Vitamin A, E, C - Plant Based Collagen Supplements for Healthier Hair, Skin, Nails - 60 Chews of Orange Flavored Gummies, Made in USA : Health & HouseholdKathy Bushnell Website for Emily Muff bandHome | Kathy Bushnell | Em & MooListen to previous shows at the main webpage at:https://www.buzzsprout.com/1329053Pamela Des Barres Home page for books, autographs, clothing and online writing classes.Pamela Des Barres | The Official Website of the Legendary Groupie and Author (pameladesbarresofficial.com)Listen to more music by Laurie Larson at:Home | Shashké Music and Art (laurielarson.net)View the most amazing paintings by Marijke Koger-Dunham (Formally of the 1960's artists collective, "The Fool").Psychedelic, Visionary and Fantasy Art by Marijke Koger (marijkekogerart.com)For unique Candles have a look at Stardust Lady's Etsy shopWhere art and armor become one where gods are by TwistedByStardust (etsy.com)For your astrological chart reading, contact Astrologer Tisch Aitken at:https://www.facebook.com/AstrologerTisch/For booking Children's parties and character parties in the Los Angeles area contact Kalinda Gray at:https://www.facebook.com/wishingwellparties/I'm listed in Feedspot's "Top 10 Psychedelic Podcasts You Must Follow". https://blog.feedspot.com/psychedelic_podcasts/Please feel free to donate or Tip Jar the show at sonictyme@yahoo.com

This week, a few Magic Key updates, a huge win for DisneylandForward, some little decorations, a glimpse of the future for entering the parks, Disney Channel Nite recap, we talk about Disney vs Non-Disney Cruises, and more! Please support the show if you can by going to https://www.dlweekly.net/support/. Check out all of our current partners and exclusive discounts at https://www.dlweekly.net/promos. News: Weeklyteers who have wanted to get a Magic Key still have that opportunity. Some of the keys are still open for sale. For those who joined the queue as soon as the keys went back on sale were greeted with a new system that allowed notification through email, the inventory level of the keys they wanted, and added monthly payments to qualifying guests. Keyholders can get a special magnet, take part in exclusive character interactions, and photo spots. – DISNEYLAND UPDATE: Imagineering Reimagined, Avatar Anticipations & Magic Key Mysteries! (micechat.com) The lawsuit that was filed by Dream Magic Key Holders stating that Disneyland misled and deceived customers had its settlement finalized this week. 103,431 Dream Key Holders will get about $67 each of the $9.5 million class action lawsuit. Weeklyteers who are a part of the lawsuit will be contacted. – https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2024/03/08/confirmed-judge-finalizes-settlement-in-9-5-million-disney-park-pass-lawsuit/ Some great news on the DisneylandForward project this week. The Anaheim Planning Commission approved the proposal 5-1. The vote was after 2 hours of public comments, with 54 total speakers. 40 were in favor, 13 against. The Anaheim City Council is still required for final approval, which could happen in April. – https://wdwnt.com/2024/03/breaking-disneylandforward-proposal-for-disneyland-resort-expansion-approved-by-anaheim-planning-commission/ One of the smallest inhabitants of Disneyland has decorated their home for St. Patricks day! “The Little Man of Disneyland” – Patrick Begorra – has a pot of gold, a rainbow streamer, and some green decorations installed at his home near Indiana Jones in Adventureland. – https://www.micechat.com/382274-disneyland-update-imagineering-reimagined-avatar-anticipations-magic-key-mysteries/ The newest Disneyland After Dark Nite event was a rousing success! Disney Channel Nite was held last week on two nights and guests seemed to have a blast with all the characters, atmosphere, food, and merchandise. Social media was full of guests enjoying everything about his after hours party. – https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2024/03/06/review-we-paid-139-to-eat-beignets-and-dino-nuggets-in-disney-and-we-have-no-regrets/ Walt Disney Imagineering is getting new leadership. Barbara Bouza, the current president of Walt Disney Imagineering, announced her departure this week. Taking her place at the helm will be Bruce Vaughn, who returned to Imagineering recently and was responsible for The New Fantasyland in Magic Kingdom, Pandora, Cars Land, and Buena Vista Street, to name a few. – https://www.micechat.com/382274-disneyland-update-imagineering-reimagined-avatar-anticipations-magic-key-mysteries/ Fans of Tortilla Jo's in Downtown Disney have been given more time to say goodbye to this longtime venue. April 7th is the new closing date for the location, which was originally set to close at the end of March. – DISNEYLAND UPDATE: Imagineering Reimagined, Avatar Anticipations & Magic Key Mysteries! (micechat.com) The first of the new turnstiles coming to the resort have been installed. The new entrance turnstiles feature a MagicBand+ reader, screen with a camera, and clear gates that will open to allow guests entrance once scanned in. The new system should allow guests to scan in themselves, with cast members present to help if needed. The new turnstiles are also wider, allowing wheelchairs and strollers access in the same place as guests and not a separate gate. – https://wdwnt.com/2024/03/breaking-first-new-turnstiles-with-magicband-touchpoints-installed-at-disneyland-resort-theme-parks/ Say goodbye to the ugly green security tents at the west end of Downtown Disney. Soon, a new security portal will open behind Din Tai Fung allowing better entry to the new Parkside Market set to open in the future. The new portal will be themed and permanent, unlike the tents that have always seemed temporary. – DISNEYLAND UPDATE: Imagineering Reimagined, Avatar Anticipations & Magic Key Mysteries! (micechat.com) SnackChat: Jolly Holiday Bakery Cafe – https://disneyland.disney.go.com/dining/disneyland/jolly-holiday-bakery-cafe/ https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Jolly_Holiday_Bakery_Cafe Discussion Topic: Teresa Compares her time on a Disney and Non-Disney Cruise

This week's episode brought to you by Slice on Broadway, and Sidekick Media Services and listeners like you at www.patreon.com/awesomecast Chilla is coming to us from his Apple Vision Pro's virtual avatar on Zoom! We talk with him about his first days with the Apple Vision Pro and how we can use it in the future. Podnar bring us story about how Apple Vision Pro is being used in surgery https://9to5mac.com/2024/03/12/vision-pro-used-in-surgery/ Sorg is back from his first ever experience at Disney World's Magic Kingdom and talks about using the MagicBand+ for park access and fun. Subscribe to the Podcast: awesomecast.com Sorgatron Media Podcast Network Feed: sorgatronmedia.fireside.fm Join our AwesomeCast Facebook Group to see what we're sharing and to join the discussion! You can support the show at Patreon.com/awesomecast! Special Thanks to kidmental for the new AwesomeCast Sounds! Visit him at www.kidmental.com Join our live show Tuesdays around 7:00 PM EST on AwesomeCast Facebook, Youtube and Sorgatron Media Twitch!

This week's episode brought to you by Slice on Broadway, and Sidekick Media Services and listeners like you at www.patreon.com/awesomecast Chilla is coming to us from his Apple Vision Pro's virtual avatar on Zoom! We talk with him about his first days with the Apple Vision Pro and how we can use it in the future. Podnar bring us story about how Apple Vision Pro is being used in surgery https://9to5mac.com/2024/03/12/vision-pro-used-in-surgery/ Sorg is back from his first ever experience at Disney World's Magic Kingdom and talks about using the MagicBand+ for park access and fun. Subscribe to the Podcast: awesomecast.com Sorgatron Media Podcast Network Feed: sorgatronmedia.fireside.fm Join our AwesomeCast Facebook Group to see what we're sharing and to join the discussion! You can support the show at Patreon.com/awesomecast! Special Thanks to kidmental for the new AwesomeCast Sounds! Visit him at www.kidmental.com Join our live show Tuesdays around 7:00 PM EST on AwesomeCast Facebook, Youtube and Sorgatron Media Twitch!

Have you ever tapped your Magic Band to enter a Disney park? Have you ever watched fireworks on a Disney Cruise Line ship? Have you ever enjoyed a trip around Carousel of Progress. Well you've done all that thanks to amazingly talented folks like this week's guest Jon, who's a CNC Machinist for Disney. He may not be visible on stage all that often, but he's part of the army of folks helping make the magic happen on your Disney vacation.----Adventures & Mousecapades is a passion project from Alicea & Nathan Novak - two Seattleites addicted to The Mouse. We are not affiliated with Disney, nor are we travel agents. Opinions are our own.Instagram, Threads, Facebook: @ourmousecapadesOurMousecapades.compodcast@ourmousecapades.com

Mike, Scott & Rikki are here today answering your Listener Questions! Today we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using your Apple Watch vs. a MagicBand+ at around Walt Disney World. We also give some advice on how to get the most out of a VIP Tour experience that was gifted to one our our listeners (you are so lucky, Tammy!), and we also try to figure out why there are so many O'hana ADRs still available for Spring Break this year! This and much more coming your way on today's show! Please visit our website at www.beourguestpodcast.com.  Thank you so much for your support of our podcast! Become a Patron of the show at www.Patreon.com/BeOurGuestPodcast.  Also, please follow the show on Twitter @BeOurGuestMike and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/beourguestpodcast.   Thanks to our friends at The Magic For Less Travel for sponsoring today's podcast!

For those who haven't heard the announcement I just posted , songs from this point on will sometimes be split among multiple episodes, so this is the second part of a multi-episode look at the Byrds in 1966-69 and the birth of country rock. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a half-hour bonus episode, on "With a Little Help From My Friends" by Joe Cocker. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud at this time as there are too many Byrds songs in the first chunk, but I will try to put together a multi-part Mixcloud when all the episodes for this song are up. My main source for the Byrds is Timeless Flight Revisited by Johnny Rogan, I also used Chris Hillman's autobiography, the 331/3 books on The Notorious Byrd Brothers and The Gilded Palace of Sin, I used Barney Hoskyns' Hotel California and John Einarson's Desperadoes as general background on Californian country-rock, Calling Me Hone, Gram Parsons and the Roots of Country Rock by Bob Kealing for information on Parsons, and Requiem For The Timeless Vol 2 by Johnny Rogan for information about the post-Byrds careers of many members. Information on Gary Usher comes from The California Sound by Stephen McParland. And this three-CD set is a reasonable way of getting most of the Byrds' important recordings. The International Submarine Band's only album can be bought from Bandcamp. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before we begin, a brief warning – this episode contains brief mentions of suicide, alcoholism, abortion, and heroin addiction, and a brief excerpt of chanting of a Nazi slogan. If you find those subjects upsetting, you may want to read the transcript rather than listen. As we heard in the last part, in October 1967 Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman fired David Crosby from the Byrds. It was only many years later, in a conversation with the group's ex-manager Jim Dickson, that Crosby realised that they didn't actually have a legal right to fire him -- the Byrds had no partnership agreement, and according to Dickson given that the original group had been Crosby, McGuinn, and Gene Clark, it would have been possible for Crosby and McGuinn to fire Hillman, but not for McGuinn and Hillman to fire Crosby. But Crosby was unaware of this at the time, and accepted a pay-off, with which he bought a boat and sailed to Florida, where saw a Canadian singer-songwriter performing live: [Excerpt: Joni Mitchell, "Both Sides Now (live Ann Arbor, MI, 27/10/67)"] We'll find out what happened when David Crosby brought Joni Mitchell back to California in a future story... With Crosby gone, the group had a major problem. They were known for two things -- their jangly twelve-string guitar and their soaring harmonies. They still had the twelve-string, even in their new slimmed-down trio format, but they only had two of their four vocalists -- and while McGuinn had sung lead on most of their hits, the sound of the Byrds' harmony had been defined by Crosby on the high harmonies and Gene Clark's baritone. There was an obvious solution available, of course, and they took it. Gene Clark had quit the Byrds in large part because of his conflicts with David Crosby, and had remained friendly with the others. Clark's solo album had featured Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke, and had been produced by Gary Usher who was now producing the Byrds' records, and it had been a flop and he was at a loose end. After recording the Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers album, Clark had started work with Curt Boettcher, a singer-songwriter-producer who had produced hits for Tommy Roe and the Association, and who was currently working with Gary Usher. Boettcher produced two tracks for Clark, but they went unreleased: [Excerpt: Gene Clark, "Only Colombe"] That had been intended as the start of sessions for an album, but Clark had been dropped by Columbia rather than getting to record a second album. He had put together a touring band with guitarist Clarence White, bass player John York, and session drummer "Fast" Eddie Hoh, but hadn't played many gigs, and while he'd been demoing songs for a possible second solo album he didn't have a record deal to use them on. Chisa Records, a label co-owned by Larry Spector, Peter Fonda, and Hugh Masekela, had put out some promo copies of one track, "Yesterday, Am I Right", but hadn't released it properly: [Excerpt: Gene Clark, "Yesterday, Am I Right"] Clark, like the Byrds, had left Dickson and Tickner's management organisation and signed with Larry Spector, and Spector was wanting to make the most of his artists -- and things were very different for the Byrds now. Clark had had three main problems with being in the Byrds -- ego clashes with David Crosby, the stresses of being a pop star with a screaming teenage fanbase, and his fear of flying. Clark had really wanted to have the same kind of role in the Byrds that Brian Wilson had with the Beach Boys -- appear on the records, write songs, do TV appearances, maybe play local club gigs, but not go on tour playing to screaming fans. But now David Crosby was out of the group and there were no screaming fans any more -- the Byrds weren't having the kind of pop hits they'd had a few years earlier and were now playing to the hippie audience. Clark promised that with everything else being different, he could cope with the idea of flying -- if necessary he'd just take tranquilisers or get so drunk he passed out. So Gene Clark rejoined the Byrds. According to some sources he sang on their next single, "Goin' Back," though I don't hear his voice in the mix: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Goin' Back"] According to McGuinn, Clark was also an uncredited co-writer on one song on the album they were recording, "Get to You". But before sessions had gone very far, the group went on tour. They appeared on the Smothers Brothers TV show, miming their new single and "Mr. Spaceman", and Clark seemed in good spirits, but on the tour of the Midwest that followed, according to their road manager of the time, Clark was terrified, singing flat and playing badly, and his guitar and vocal mic were left out of the mix. And then it came time to get on a plane, and Clark's old fears came back, and he refused to fly from Minneapolis to New York with the rest of the group, instead getting a train back to LA. And that was the end of Clark's second stint in the Byrds. For the moment, the Byrds decided they were going to continue as a trio on stage and a duo in the studio -- though Michael Clarke did make an occasional return to the sessions as they progressed. But of course, McGuinn and Hillman couldn't record an album entirely by themselves. They did have several tracks in a semi-completed state still featuring Crosby, but they needed people to fill his vocal and instrumental roles on the remaining tracks. For the vocals, Usher brought in his friend and collaborator Curt Boettcher, with whom he was also working at the time in a band called Sagittarius: [Excerpt: Sagittarius, "Another Time"] Boettcher was a skilled harmony vocalist -- according to Usher, he was one of the few vocal arrangers that Brian Wilson looked up to, and Jerry Yester had said of the Modern Folk Quartet that “the only vocals that competed with us back then was Curt Boettcher's group” -- and he was more than capable of filling Crosby's vocal gap, but there was never any real camaraderie between him and the Byrds. He particularly disliked McGuinn, who he said "was just such a poker face. He never let you know where you stood. There was never any lightness," and he said of the sessions as a whole "I was really thrilled to be working with The Byrds, and, at the same time, I was glad when it was all over. There was just no fun, and they were such weird guys to work with. They really freaked me out!" Someone else who Usher brought in, who seems to have made a better impression, was Red Rhodes: [Excerpt: Red Rhodes, "Red's Ride"] Rhodes was a pedal steel player, and one of the few people to make a career on the instrument outside pure country music, which is the genre with which the instrument is usually identified. Rhodes was a country player, but he was the country pedal steel player of choice for musicians from the pop and folk-rock worlds. He worked with Usher and Boettcher on albums by Sagittarius and the Millennium, and played on records by Cass Elliot, Carole King, the Beach Boys, and the Carpenters, among many others -- though he would be best known for his longstanding association with Michael Nesmith of the Monkees, playing on most of Nesmith's recordings from 1968 through 1992. Someone else who was associated with the Monkees was Moog player Paul Beaver, who we talked about in the episode on "Hey Jude", and who had recently played on the Monkees' Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd album: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Star Collector"] And the fourth person brought in to help the group out was someone who was already familiar to them. Clarence White was, like Red Rhodes, from the country world -- he'd started out in a bluegrass group called the Kentucky Colonels: [Excerpt: The Kentucky Colonels, "Clinch Mountain Backstep"] But White had gone electric and formed one of the first country-rock bands, a group named Nashville West, as well as becoming a popular session player. He had already played on a couple of tracks on Younger Than Yesterday, as well as playing with Hillman and Michael Clarke on Gene Clark's album with the Gosdin Brothers and being part of Clark's touring band with John York and "Fast" Eddie Hoh. The album that the group put together with these session players was a triumph of sequencing and production. Usher had recently been keen on the idea of crossfading tracks into each other, as the Beatles had on Sgt Pepper, and had done the same on the two Chad and Jeremy albums he produced. By clever crossfading and mixing, Usher managed to create something that had the feel of being a continuous piece, despite being the product of several very different creative minds, with Usher's pop sensibility and arrangement ideas being the glue that held everything together. McGuinn was interested in sonic experimentation. He, more than any of the others, seems to have been the one who was most pushing for them to use the Moog, and he continued his interest in science fiction, with a song, "Space Odyssey", inspired by the Arthur C. Clarke short story "The Sentinel", which was also the inspiration for the then-forthcoming film 2001: A Space Odyssey: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Space Odyssey"] Then there was Chris Hillman, who was coming up with country material like "Old John Robertson": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Old John Robertson"] And finally there was David Crosby. Even though he'd been fired from the group, both McGuinn and Hillman didn't see any problem with using the songs he had already contributed. Three of the album's eleven songs are compositions that are primarily by Crosby, though they're all co-credited to either Hillman or both Hillman and McGuinn. Two of those songs are largely unchanged from Crosby's original vision, just finished off by the rest of the group after his departure, but one song is rather different: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Draft Morning"] "Draft Morning" was a song that was important to Crosby, and was about his -- and the group's -- feelings about the draft and the ongoing Vietnam War. It was a song that had meant a lot to him, and he'd been part of the recording for the backing track. But when it came to doing the final vocals, McGuinn and Hillman had a problem -- they couldn't remember all the words to the song, and obviously there was no way they were going to get Crosby to give them the original lyrics. So they rewrote it, coming up with new lyrics where they couldn't remember the originals: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Draft Morning"] But there was one other contribution to the track that was very distinctively the work of Usher. Gary Usher had a predilection at this point for putting musique concrete sections in otherwise straightforward pop songs. He'd done it with "Fakin' It" by Simon and Garfunkel, on which he did uncredited production work, and did it so often that it became something of a signature of records on Columbia in 1967 and 68, even being copied by his friend Jim Guercio on "Susan" by the Buckinghams. Usher had done this, in particular, on the first two singles by Sagittarius, his project with Curt Boettcher. In particular, the second Sagittarius single, "Hotel Indiscreet", had had a very jarring section (and a warning here, this contains some brief chanting of a Nazi slogan): [Excerpt: Sagittarius, "Hotel Indiscreet"] That was the work of a comedy group that Usher had discovered and signed to Columbia. The Firesign Theatre were so named because, like Usher, they were all interested in astrology, and they were all "fire signs".  Usher was working on their first album, Waiting For The Electrician or Someone Like Him, at the same time as he was working on the Byrds album: [Excerpt: The Firesign Theatre, "W.C. Fields Forever"] And he decided to bring in the Firesigns to contribute to "Draft Morning": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Draft Morning"] Crosby was, understandably, apoplectic when he heard the released version of "Draft Morning". As far as Hillman and McGuinn were concerned, it was always a Byrds song, and just because Crosby had left the band didn't mean they couldn't use material he'd written for the Byrds. Crosby took a different view, saying later "It was one of the sleaziest things they ever did. I had an entire song finished. They just casually rewrote it and decided to take half the credit. How's that? Without even asking me. I had a finished song, entirely mine. I left. They did the song anyway. They rewrote it and put it in their names. And mine was better. They just took it because they didn't have enough songs." What didn't help was that the publicity around the album, titled The Notorious Byrd Brothers minimised Crosby's contributions. Crosby is on five of the eleven tracks -- as he said later, "I'm all over that album, they just didn't give me credit. I played, I sang, I wrote, I even played bass on one track, and they tried to make out that I wasn't even on it, that they could be that good without me." But the album, like earlier Byrds albums, didn't have credits saying who played what, and the cover only featured McGuinn, Hillman, and Michael Clarke in the photo -- along with a horse, which Crosby took as another insult, as representing him. Though as McGuinn said, "If we had intended to do that, we would have turned the horse around". Even though Michael Clarke was featured on the cover, and even owned the horse that took Crosby's place, by the time the album came out he too had been fired. Unlike Crosby, he went quietly and didn't even ask for any money. According to McGuinn, he was increasingly uninterested in being in the band -- suffering from depression, and missing the teenage girls who had been the group's fans a year or two earlier. He gladly stopped being a Byrd, and went off to work in a hotel instead. In his place came Hillman's cousin, Kevin Kelley, fresh out of a band called the Rising Sons: [Excerpt: The Rising Sons, "Take a Giant Step"] We've mentioned the Rising Sons briefly in some previous episodes, but they were one of the earliest LA folk-rock bands, and had been tipped to go on to greater things -- and indeed, many of them did, though not as part of the Rising Sons. Jesse Lee Kincaid, the least well-known of the band, only went on to release a couple of singles and never had much success, but his songs were picked up by other acts -- his "Baby You Come Rollin' 'Cross My Mind" was a minor hit for the Peppermint Trolley Company: [Excerpt: The Peppermint Trolley Company, "Baby You Come Rollin' 'Cross My Mind"] And Harry Nilsson recorded Kincaid's "She Sang Hymns Out of Tune": [Excerpt: Harry Nilsson, "She Sang Hymns Out of Tune"] But Kincaid was the least successful of the band members, and most of the other members are going to come up in future episodes of the podcast -- bass player Gary Marker played for a while with Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, lead singer Taj Mahal is one of the most respected blues singers of the last sixty years, original drummer Ed Cassidy went on to form the progressive rock band Spirit, and lead guitarist Ry Cooder went on to become one of the most important guitarists in rock music. Kelley had been the last to join the Rising Sons, replacing Cassidy but he was in the band by the time they released their one single, a version of Rev. Gary Davis' "Candy Man" produced by Terry Melcher, with Kincaid on lead vocals: [Excerpt: The Rising Sons, "Candy Man"] That hadn't been a success, and the group's attempt at a follow-up, the Goffin and King song "Take a Giant Step", which we heard earlier, was blocked from release by Columbia as being too druggy -- though there were no complaints when the Monkees released their version as the B-side to "Last Train to Clarksville". The Rising Sons, despite being hugely popular as a live act, fell apart without ever releasing a second single. According to Marker, Mahal realised that he would be better off as a solo artist, but also Columbia didn't know how to market a white group with a Black lead vocalist (leading to Kincaid singing lead on their one released single, and producer Terry Melcher trying to get Mahal to sing more like a white singer on "Take a Giant Step"), and some in the band thought that Terry Melcher was deliberately trying to sink their career because they refused to sign to his publishing company. After the band split up, Marker and Kelley had formed a band called Fusion, which Byrds biographer Johnny Rogan describes as being a jazz-fusion band, presumably because of their name. Listening to the one album the group recorded, it is in fact more blues-rock, very like the music Marker made with the Rising Sons and Captain Beefheart. But Kelley's not on that album, because before it was recorded he was approached by his cousin Chris Hillman and asked to join the Byrds. At the time, Fusion were doing so badly that Kelley had to work a day job in a clothes shop, so he was eager to join a band with a string of hits who were just about to conclude a lucrative renegotiation of their record contract -- a renegotiation which may have played a part in McGuinn and Hillman firing Crosby and Clarke, as they were now the only members on the new contracts. The choice of Kelley made a lot of sense. He was mostly just chosen because he was someone they knew and they needed a drummer in a hurry -- they needed someone new to promote The Notorious Byrd Brothers and didn't have time to go through a laborious process of audtioning, and so just choosing Hillman's cousin made sense, but Kelley also had a very strong, high voice, and so he could fill in the harmony parts that Crosby had sung, stopping the new power-trio version of the band from being *too* thin-sounding in comparison to the five-man band they'd been not that much earlier. The Notorious Byrd Brothers was not a commercial success -- it didn't even make the top forty in the US, though it did in the UK -- to the presumed chagrin of Columbia, who'd just paid a substantial amount of money for this band who were getting less successful by the day. But it was, though, a gigantic critical success, and is generally regarded as the group's creative pinnacle. Robert Christgau, for example, talked about how LA rather than San Francisco was where the truly interesting music was coming from, and gave guarded praise to Captain Beefheart, Van Dyke Parks, and the Fifth Dimension (the vocal group, not the Byrds album) but talked about three albums as being truly great -- the Beach Boys' Wild Honey, Love's Forever Changes, and The Notorious Byrd Brothers. (He also, incidentally, talked about how the two songs that Crosby's new discovery Joni Mitchell had contributed to a Judy Collins album were much better than most folk music, and how he could hardly wait for her first album to come out). And that, more or less, was the critical consensus about The Notorious Byrd Brothers -- that it was, in Christgau's words "simply the best album the Byrds have ever recorded" and that "Gone are the weak--usually folky--tracks that have always flawed their work." McGuinn, though, thought that the album wasn't yet what he wanted. He had become particularly excited by the potentials of the Moog synthesiser -- an instrument that Gary Usher also loved -- during the recording of the album, and had spent a lot of time experimenting with it, coming up with tracks like the then-unreleased "Moog Raga": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Moog Raga"] And McGuinn had a concept for the next Byrds album -- a concept he was very excited about. It was going to be nothing less than a grand sweeping history of American popular music. It was going to be a double album -- the new contract said that they should deliver two albums a year to Columbia, so a double album made sense -- and it would start with Appalachian folk music, go through country, jazz, and R&B, through the folk-rock music the Byrds had previously been known for, and into Moog experimentation. But to do this, the Byrds needed a keyboard player. Not only would a keyboard player help them fill out their thin onstage sound, if they got a jazz keyboardist, then they could cover the jazz material in McGuinn's concept album idea as well. So they went out and looked for a jazz piano player, and happily Larry Spector was managing one. Or at least, Larry Spector was managing someone who *said* he was a jazz pianist. But Gram Parsons said he was a lot of things... [Excerpt: Gram Parsons, "Brass Buttons (1965 version)"] Gram Parsons was someone who had come from a background of unimaginable privilege. His maternal grandfather was the owner of a Florida citrus fruit and real-estate empire so big that his mansion was right in the centre of what was then Florida's biggest theme park -- built on land he owned. As a teenager, Parsons had had a whole wing of his parents' house to himself, and had had servants to look after his every need, and as an adult he had a trust fund that paid him a hundred thousand dollars a year -- which in 1968 dollars would be equivalent to a little under nine hundred thousand in today's money. Two events in his childhood had profoundly shaped the life of young Gram. The first was in February 1956, when he went to see a new singer who he'd heard on the radio, and who according to the local newspaper had just recorded a new song called "Heartburn Motel".  Parsons had tried to persuade his friends that this new singer was about to become a big star -- one of his friends had said "I'll wait til he becomes famous!" As it turned out, the day Parsons and the couple of friends he did manage to persuade to go with him saw Elvis Presley was also the day that "Heartbreak Hotel" entered the Billboard charts at number sixty-eight. But even at this point, Elvis was an obvious star and the headliner of the show. Young Gram was enthralled -- but in retrospect he was more impressed by the other acts he saw on the bill. That was an all-star line-up of country musicians, including Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters, and especially the Louvin Brothers, arguably the greatest country music vocal duo of all time: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, "The Christian Life"] Young Gram remained mostly a fan of rockabilly music rather than country, and would remain so for another decade or so, but a seed had been planted. The other event, much more tragic, was the death of his father. Both Parsons' parents were functioning alcoholics, and both by all accounts were unfaithful to each other, and their marriage was starting to break down. Gram's father was also, by many accounts, dealing with what we would now call post-traumatic stress disorder from his time serving in the second world war. On December the twenty-third 1958, Gram's father died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Everyone involved seems sure it was suicide, but it was officially recorded as natural causes because of the family's wealth and prominence in the local community. Gram's Christmas present from his parents that year was a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and according to some stories I've read his father had left a last message on a tape in the recorder, but by the time the authorities got to hear it, it had been erased apart from the phrase "I love you, Gram." After that Gram's mother's drinking got even worse, but in most ways his life still seemed charmed, and the descriptions of him as a teenager are about what you'd expect from someone who was troubled, with a predisposition to addiction, but who was also unbelievably wealthy, good-looking, charming, and talented. And the talent was definitely there. One thing everyone is agreed on is that from a very young age Gram Parsons took his music seriously and was determined to make a career as a musician. Keith Richards later said of him "Of the musicians I know personally (although Otis Redding, who I didn't know, fits this too), the two who had an attitude towards music that was the same as mine were Gram Parsons and John Lennon. And that was: whatever bag the business wants to put you in is immaterial; that's just a selling point, a tool that makes it easier. You're going to get chowed into this pocket or that pocket because it makes it easier for them to make charts up and figure out who's selling. But Gram and John were really pure musicians. All they liked was music, and then they got thrown into the game." That's not the impression many other people have of Parsons, who is almost uniformly described as an incessant self-promoter, and who from his teens onwards would regularly plant fake stories about himself in the local press, usually some variant of him having been signed to RCA records. Most people seem to think that image was more important to him than anything. In his teens, he started playing in a series of garage bands around Florida and Georgia, the two states in which he was brought up. One of his early bands was largely created by poaching the rhythm section who were then playing with Kent Lavoie, who later became famous as Lobo and had hits like "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo". Lavoie apparently held a grudge -- decades later he would still say that Parsons couldn't sing or play or write. Another musician on the scene with whom Parsons associated was Bobby Braddock, who would later go on to co-write songs like "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" for Tammy Wynette, and the song "He Stopped Loving Her Today", often considered the greatest country song ever written, for George Jones: [Excerpt: George Jones, "He Stopped Loving Her Today"] Jones would soon become one of Parsons' musical idols, but at this time he was still more interested in being Elvis or Little Richard. We're lucky enough to have a 1962 live recording of one of his garage bands, the Legends -- the band that featured the bass player and drummer he'd poached from Lobo. They made an appearance on a local TV show and a friend with a tape recorder recorded it off the TV and decades later posted it online. Of the four songs in that performance, two are R&B covers -- Little Richard's "Rip It Up" and Ray Charles' "What'd I Say?", and a third is the old Western Swing classic "Guitar Boogie Shuffle". But the interesting thing about the version of "Rip it Up" is that it's sung in an Everly Brothers style harmony, and the fourth song is a recording of the Everlys' "Let It Be Me". The Everlys were, of course, hugely influenced by the Louvin Brothers, who had so impressed young Gram six years earlier, and in this performance you can hear for the first time the hints of the style that Parsons would make his own a few years later: [Excerpt: Gram Parsons and the Legends, "Let it Be Me"] Incidentally, the other guitarist in the Legends, Jim Stafford, also went on to a successful musical career, having a top five hit in the seventies with "Spiders & Snakes": [Excerpt: Jim Stafford, "Spiders & Snakes"] Soon after that TV performance though, like many musicians of his generation, Parsons decided to give up on rock and roll, and instead to join a folk group. The group he joined, The Shilos, were a trio who were particularly influenced by the Journeymen, John Phillips' folk group before he formed the Mamas and the Papas, which we talked about in the episode on "San Francisco". At various times the group expanded with the addition of some female singers, trying to capture something of the sound of the New Chrisy Minstrels. In 1964, with the band members still in school, the Shilos decided to make a trip to Greenwich Village and see if they could make the big time as folk-music stars. They met up with John Phillips, and Parsons stayed with John and Michelle Phillips in their home in New York -- this was around the time the two of them were writing "California Dreamin'". Phillips got the Shilos an audition with Albert Grossman, who seemed eager to sign them until he realised they were still schoolchildren just on a break. The group were, though, impressive enough that he was interested, and we have some recordings of them from a year later which show that they were surprisingly good for a bunch of teenagers: [Excerpt: The Shilos, "The Bells of Rhymney"] Other than Phillips, the other major connection that Parsons made in New York was the folk singer Fred Neil, who we've talked about occasionally before. Neil was one of the great songwriters of the Greenwich Village scene, and many of his songs became successful for others -- his "Dolphins" was recorded by Tim Buckley, most famously his "Everybody's Talkin'" was a hit for Harry Nilsson, and he wrote "Another Side of This Life" which became something of a standard -- it was recorded by the Animals and the Lovin' Spoonful, and Jefferson Airplane, as well as recording the song, included it in their regular setlists, including at Monterey: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "The Other Side of This Life (live at Monterey)"] According to at least one biographer, though, Neil had another, more pernicious, influence on Parsons -- he may well have been the one who introduced Parsons to heroin, though several of Parsons' friends from the time said he wasn't yet using hard drugs. By spring 1965, Parsons was starting to rethink his commitment to folk music, particularly after "Mr. Tambourine Man" became a hit. He talked with the other members about their need to embrace the changes in music that Dylan and the Byrds were bringing about, but at the same time he was still interested enough in acoustic music that when he was given the job of arranging the music for his high school graduation, the group he booked were the Dillards. That graduation day was another day that would change Parsons' life -- as it was the day his mother died, of alcohol-induced liver failure. Parsons was meant to go on to Harvard, but first he went back to Greenwich Village for the summer, where he hung out with Fred Neil and Dave Van Ronk (and started using heroin regularly). He went to see the Beatles at Shea Stadium, and he was neighbours with Stephen Stills and Richie Furay -- the three of them talked about forming a band together before Stills moved West. And on a brief trip back home to Florida between Greenwich Village and Harvard, Parsons spoke with his old friend Jim Stafford, who made a suggestion to him -- instead of trying to do folk music, which was clearly falling out of fashion, why not try to do *country* music but with long hair like the Beatles? He could be a country Beatle. It would be an interesting gimmick. Parsons was only at Harvard for one semester before flunking out, but it was there that he was fully reintroduced to country music, and in particular to three artists who would influence him more than any others. He'd already been vaguely aware of Buck Owens, whose "Act Naturally" had recently been covered by the Beatles: [Excerpt: Buck Owens, "Act Naturally"] But it was at Harvard that he gained a deeper appreciation of Owens. Owens was the biggest star of what had become known as the Bakersfield Sound, a style of country music that emphasised a stripped-down electric band lineup with Telecaster guitars, a heavy drumbeat, and a clean sound. It came from the same honky-tonk and Western Swing roots as the rockabilly music that Parsons had grown up on, and it appealed to him instinctively.  In particular, Parsons was fascinated by the fact that Owens' latest album had a cover version of a Drifters song on it -- and then he got even more interested when Ray Charles put out his third album of country songs and included a version of Owens' "Together Again": [Excerpt: Ray Charles, "Together Again"] This suggested to Parsons that country music and the R&B he'd been playing previously might not quite be so far apart as he'd thought. At Harvard, Parsons was also introduced to the work of another Bakersfield musician, who like Owens was produced by Ken Nelson, who also produced the Louvin Brothers' records, and who we heard about in previous episodes as he produced Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson. Merle Haggard had only had one big hit at the time, "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers": [Excerpt: Merle Haggard, "(My Friends are Gonna Be) Strangers"] But he was about to start a huge run of country hits that would see every single he released for the next twelve years make the country top ten, most of them making number one. Haggard would be one of the biggest stars in country music, but he was also to be arguably the country musician with the biggest influence on rock music since Johnny Cash, and his songs would soon start to be covered by everyone from the Grateful Dead to the Everly Brothers to the Beach Boys. And the third artist that Parsons was introduced to was someone who, in most popular narratives of country music, is set up in opposition to Haggard and Owens, because they were representatives of the Bakersfield Sound while he was the epitome of the Nashville Sound to which the Bakersfield Sound is placed in opposition, George Jones. But of course anyone with ears will notice huge similarities in the vocal styles of Jones, Haggard, and Owens: [Excerpt: George Jones, "The Race is On"] Owens, Haggard, and Jones are all somewhat outside the scope of this series, but are seriously important musicians in country music. I would urge anyone who's interested in them to check out Tyler Mahan Coe's podcast Cocaine and Rhinestones, season one of which has episodes on Haggard and Owens, as well as on the Louvin Brothers who I also mentioned earlier, and season two of which is entirely devoted to Jones. When he dropped out of Harvard after one semester, Parsons was still mostly under the thrall of the Greenwich Village folkies -- there's a recording of him made over Christmas 1965 that includes his version of "Another Side of This Life": [Excerpt: Gram Parsons, "Another Side of This Life"] But he was encouraged to go further in the country direction by John Nuese (and I hope that's the correct pronunciation – I haven't been able to find any recordings mentioning his name), who had introduced him to this music and who also played guitar. Parsons, Neuse, bass player Ian Dunlop and drummer Mickey Gauvin formed a band that was originally called Gram Parsons and the Like. They soon changed their name though, inspired by an Our Gang short in which the gang became a band: [Excerpt: Our Gang, "Mike Fright"] Shortening the name slightly, they became the International Submarine Band. Parsons rented them a house in New York, and they got a contract with Goldstar Records, and released a couple of singles. The first of them, "The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming" was a cover of the theme to a comedy film that came out around that time, and is not especially interesting: [Excerpt: The International Submarine Band, "The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming"] The second single is more interesting. "Sum Up Broke" is a song by Parsons and Neuse, and shows a lot of influence from the Byrds: [Excerpt: The international Submarine Band, "Sum Up Broke"] While in New York with the International Submarine Band, Parsons made another friend in the music business. Barry Tashian was the lead singer of a band called the Remains, who had put out a couple of singles: [Excerpt: The Remains, "Why Do I Cry?"] The Remains are now best known for having been on the bill on the Beatles' last ever tour, including playing as support on their last ever show at Candlestick Park, but they split up before their first album came out. After spending most of 1966 in New York, Parsons decided that he needed to move the International Submarine Band out to LA. There were two reasons for this. The first was his friend Brandon DeWilde, an actor who had been a child star in the fifties -- it's him at the end of Shane -- who was thinking of pursuing a musical career. DeWilde was still making TV appearances, but he was also a singer -- John Nuese said that DeWilde sang harmony with Parsons better than anyone except Emmylou Harris -- and he had recorded some demos with the International Submarine Band backing him, like this version of Buck Owens' "Together Again": [Excerpt: Brandon DeWilde, "Together Again"] DeWilde had told Parsons he could get the group some work in films. DeWilde made good on that promise to an extent -- he got the group a cameo in The Trip, a film we've talked about in several other episodes, which was being directed by Roger Corman, the director who worked a lot with David Crosby's father, and was coming out from American International Pictures, the company that put out the beach party films -- but while the group were filmed performing one of their own songs, in the final film their music was overdubbed by the Electric Flag. The Trip starred Peter Fonda, another member of the circle of people around David Crosby, and another son of privilege, who at this point was better known for being Henry Fonda's son than for his own film appearances. Like DeWilde, Fonda wanted to become a pop star, and he had been impressed by Parsons, and asked if he could record Parsons' song "November Nights". Parsons agreed, and the result was released on Chisa Records, the label we talked about earlier that had put out promos of Gene Clark, in a performance produced by Hugh Masekela: [Excerpt: Peter Fonda, "November Nights"] The other reason the group moved West though was that Parsons had fallen in love with David Crosby's girlfriend, Nancy Ross, who soon became pregnant with his daughter -- much to Parsons' disappointment, she refused to have an abortion. Parsons bought the International Submarine Band a house in LA to rehearse in, and moved in separately with Nancy. The group started playing all the hottest clubs around LA, supporting bands like Love and the Peanut Butter Conspiracy, but they weren't sounding great, partly because Parsons was more interested in hanging round with celebrities than rehearsing -- the rest of the band had to work for a living, and so took their live performances more seriously than he did, while he was spending time catching up with his old folk friends like John Phillips and Fred Neil, as well as getting deeper into drugs and, like seemingly every musician in 1967, Scientology, though he only dabbled in the latter. The group were also, though, starting to split along musical lines. Dunlop and Gauvin wanted to play R&B and garage rock, while Parsons and Nuese wanted to play country music. And there was a third issue -- which record label should they go with? There were two labels interested in them, neither of them particularly appealing. The offer that Dunlop in particular wanted to go with was from, of all people, Jay Ward Records: [Excerpt: A Salute to Moosylvania] Jay Ward was the producer and writer of Rocky & Bullwinkle, Peabody & Sherman, Dudley Do-Right and other cartoons, and had set up a record company, which as far as I've been able to tell had only released one record, and that five years earlier (we just heard a snippet of it). But in the mid-sixties several cartoon companies were getting into the record business -- we'll hear more about that when we get to song 186 -- and Ward's company apparently wanted to sign the International Submarine Band, and were basically offering to throw money at them. Parsons, on the other hand, wanted to go with Lee Hazlewood International. This was a new label set up by someone we've only talked about in passing, but who was very influential on the LA music scene, Lee Hazlewood. Hazlewood had got his start producing country hits like Sanford Clark's "The Fool": [Excerpt: Sanford Clark, "The Fool"] He'd then moved on to collaborating with Lester Sill, producing a series of hits for Duane Eddy, whose unique guitar sound Hazlewood helped come up with: [Excerpt: Duane Eddy, "Rebel Rouser"] After splitting off from Sill, who had gone off to work with Phil Spector, who had been learning some production techniques from Hazlewood, Hazlewood had gone to work for Reprise records, where he had a career in a rather odd niche, producing hit records for the children of Rat Pack stars. He'd produced Dino, Desi, and Billy, who consisted of future Beach Boys sideman Billy Hinsche plus Desi Arnaz Jr and Dean Martin Jr: [Excerpt: Dino, Desi, and Billy, "I'm a Fool"] He'd also produced Dean Martin's daughter Deana: [Excerpt: Deana Martin, "Baby I See You"] and rather more successfully he'd written and produced a series of hits for Nancy Sinatra, starting with "These Boots are Made for Walkin'": [Excerpt: Nancy Sinatra, "These Boots are Made for Walkin'"] Hazlewood had also moved into singing himself. He'd released a few tracks on his own, but his career as a performer hadn't really kicked into gear until he'd started writing duets for Nancy Sinatra. She apparently fell in love with his demos and insisted on having him sing them with her in the studio, and so the two made a series of collaborations like the magnificently bizarre "Some Velvet Morning": [Excerpt: Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra, "Some Velvet Morning"] Hazlewood is now considered something of a cult artist, thanks largely to a string of magnificent orchestral country-pop solo albums he recorded, but at this point he was one of the hottest people in the music industry. He wasn't offering to produce the International Submarine Band himself -- that was going to be his partner, Suzi Jane Hokom -- but Parsons thought it was better to sign for less money to a label that was run by someone with a decade-long string of massive hit records than for more money to a label that had put out one record about a cartoon moose. So the group split up. Dunlop and Gauvin went off to form another band, with Barry Tashian -- and legend has it that one of the first times Gram Parsons visited the Byrds in the studio, he mentioned the name of that band, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and that was the inspiration for the Byrds titling their album The Notorious Byrd Brothers. Parsons and Nuese, on the other hand, formed a new lineup of The International Submarine Band, with bass player Chris Ethridge, drummer John Corneal, who Parsons had first played with in The Legends, and guitarist Bob Buchanan, a former member of the New Christy Minstrels who Parsons had been performing with as a duo after they'd met through Fred Neil. The International Submarine Band recorded an album, Safe At Home, which is now often called the first country-rock album -- though as we've said so often, there's no first anything. That album was a mixture of cover versions of songs by people like Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard: [Excerpt: The International Submarine Band, "I Must Be Somebody Else You've Known"] And Parsons originals, like "Do You Know How It Feels To Be Lonesome?", which he cowrote with Barry Goldberg of the Electric Flag: [Excerpt: The International Submarine Band, "Do You Know How It Feels To Be Lonesome?"] But the recording didn't go smoothly. In particular, Corneal realised he'd been hoodwinked. Parsons had told him, when persuading him to move West, that he'd be able to sing on the record and that some of his songs would be used. But while the record was credited to The International Submarine Band, everyone involved agrees that it was actually a Gram Parsons solo album by any other name -- he was in charge, he wouldn't let other members' songs on the record, and he didn't let Corneal sing as he'd promised. And then, before the album could be released, he was off. The Byrds wanted a jazz keyboard player, and Parsons could fake being one long enough to get the gig. The Byrds had got rid of one rich kid with a giant ego who wanted to take control of everything and thought his undeniable talent excused his attempts at dominating the group, and replaced him with another one -- who also happened to be signed to another record label. We'll see how well that worked out for them in two weeks' time.  

Happy New Year, everyone! Mike and Scott are here today answering your Listener Questions! Today we discuss the pros and cons of fewer but longer Walt Disney World trips vs. the shorter, but more frequent trips. I think we had a great discussion on many things you need to think about when it comes to this idea! Plus we talk about when a Magic Band might be too old, and we talk about what to expect for your first Festival of the Arts experience and much more! We hope you enjoy today's show!  Please visit our website at www.beourguestpodcast.com.  Thank you so much for your support of our podcast! Become a Patron of the show at www.Patreon.com/BeOurGuestPodcast.  Also, please follow the show on Twitter @BeOurGuestMike and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/beourguestpodcast.   Thanks to our friends at The Magic For Less Travel for sponsoring today's podcast!

Most guests think it's all about the parks and resort hotels when it comes to Christmas at Walt Disney World, but Disney Springs can give them all a run for their money (and even top one park as a must-do holiday destination). Here's why Disney Springs is a top pick for holiday spirit at Walt Disney World (and the fact that it's free for anyone to visit is just a bonus). The Complete Guide to Disney Springs Christmas 2023The best things to do at Disney Springs this Christmas holiday seasonDisney Springs Christmas Tree Stroll (Free)One of the most underrated traditions at Walt Disney World is the Disney Springs Christmas Tree Stroll. For 2023 the Christmas Tree Stroll has 19 Disney- decorated trees with themes from Disney, Pixar, Star Wars and Super Heros. For the first time you can interact with six of the Christmas trees with your DIsneyBand+ (aka MagicBand+). Look for a DisneyBand+ icon to know which trees are active. There's also a Christmas tree map adventure. Get a map of the trees from City Works Eatery & Pour House, Crystal Arts, Joffrey's Coffee, The LEGO Store or Planet Hollywood. As you see each tree, match a sticker to the location on the map then bring your map to any of these same locations for a special surprise.Meet Santa at Once Upon a Toy (Free)You don't have to pay for a Disney Park to meet a Disney Santa. Santa Claus is at Once Upon a Toy in Disney Springs right up until Christmas Eve, December 24. There is a virtual queue to meet Santa: you cannot just wait in line. Queue spots open daily at 9:00 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 2:00 p.m., 4:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. in the My Disney Experience app. You must be at Disney Springs to enter the queue. One person can do it for everyone in your group (up to a max of 10 people)Photo Memories of a Disney ChristmasChristmas photos are fun memories, especially when they're Disney vacation Christmas photos. The Disney PhotoPass Studio in the Marketplace at Disney Springs has several holiday-themed Disney virtual backdrops perfect for your Christmas card or however else you want to use them. It can be hit and miss with the photographers here, but it's still worth a try. Disney Snow falling and Holiday Entertainment (Free)The magic of snow falling on Walt Disney World does just happen in the parks. As sundown nears, head to the the Town Center tree and keep your eyes on the skies for a little holiday magic. Plus, watch for holiday-themed stilt walkers, rollerblading snowflakes, a Santa Sleigh DJ, and more surprises bringing a festive ambiance throughout all of Disney Springs.Christmas Holidays Means Festive Food and DrinkThere are over 60 places at Disney Springs to eat and drink, including Jock Lindsey's Holiday Bar, which is all spruced up for the holidays. So be sure to grab some cheer while visiting Disney Springs!Christmas Shopping at Disney SpringsWhether you need a gift someone on your list or something special for yourself, you'll find it all at Disney Springs. You can browse for almost anything here, so leave yourself time if Christmas shopping is on your checklist.Thank You for Listening to the Disney Travel PodcastThank you very much for listening to this episode, Amelia and I hope that you enjoyed it. If you did, we would be very grateful if you could rate, review and subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts/iTunes (or on whichever app you choose to listen). A brief review about what you liked most about an episode truly helps to keep the show going by exposing it to new listeners. We look forward to continue producing new episodes each week.Sharing the podcast with your friends and on social media is also extremely helpful and very much appreciated.Contact 1923 Main StreetThank you for listening to the Disney Travel News Podcast at 1923MainStreet.com. As always, we love to get feedback and questions from our listeners and to hear your suggestions and ideas for future episodes.Shop unique and original Disney-inspired t-shirts, sweatshirt, hoodies, yoga leggings, dresses, swimwear and more at the Emporium at 1923 Main StreetPlease be sure to follow along on X, Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook.Thank you for listening and have a magical day!Mike Belobradic and Amelia Belobradic--Media provided by Jamendo

Samuel Andreyev's music is incredibly varied, from the sparse resonance of the Sonata da Camera, the ‘cartoon music' – as the composer puts it – of Vérifications, characterized by primary colors and strong instrumental timbres; the Sextet in Two Parts which in contrast focuses on minute timbral shadings; and of course the cantata for solo voice and ensemble which is the title track of the album.Performed by ensemble proton bern, conducted by Luigi Gaggero with the magical soprano voice of Peyee Chen on In Glow of Like Seclusion (set to verse by J. H. Prynne), this album was beautifully captured in Zurich in 2022. The CD and digital album is to be followed with a double-LP vinyl version in the New Year.Samuel Andreyev's music has been featured in portrait concerts in Bern, Geneva, Toronto, Paris, Kyiv, Strasbourg, Montréal, Tours, and many other cities. Andreyev is a laureate of the Henri Dutilleux Prize (2012, for ‘Night Division'), and the Grand Prix Lycéen des Compositeurs (2020, for ‘Vérifications'). He is also Vice President of the music council of the Fondation Prince Pierre (Monaco). With his YouTube channel and Podcast, Samuel Andreyev presents lectures on musical topics, as well as long-form interviews with prominent musicians as varied as Brian Ferneyhough, every member of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band, Linda Catlin Smith, Hugues Dufourt, Adam Neely and countless others. He has twice been a featured guest on the Jordan Peterson Podcast, in addition to appearances on Vox, The Symbolic World, Classical Chats and many others.Tracks Sonata de Camera (2020-21) (22:15)Sextet in Two Parts (2019) I. (13:09) II. (7:53) Verifications (2012) I. (3:12) II. (1:53) III. (3:30) IV. (2:15) In Glow of Like Seclusions (2021-22) I. All Such to Life (3:37) II. To Eye Apart (2:22) III. Impromptu I (1:28) IV. Not Far (3:23) V. How Smart We Are (4:50) VI. Impromptu II (2:08) VII. Lark Advent (3:10) Help support our show by purchasing this album  at:Downloads (classicalmusicdiscoveries.store) Classical Music Discoveries is sponsored by Uber. @CMDHedgecock#ClassicalMusicDiscoveries #KeepClassicalMusicAlive#CMDGrandOperaCompanyofVenice #CMDParisPhilharmonicinOrléans#CMDGermanOperaCompanyofBerlin#CMDGrandOperaCompanyofBarcelonaSpain#ClassicalMusicLivesOn#Uber#AppleClassical Please consider supporting our show, thank you!Donate (classicalmusicdiscoveries.store) staff@classicalmusicdiscoveries.com This album is broadcast with the permission of Sean Dacy from Rosebrook Media.

Samuel Andreyev's music is incredibly varied, from the sparse resonance of the Sonata da Camera, the ‘cartoon music' – as the composer puts it – of Vérifications, characterized by primary colors and strong instrumental timbres; the Sextet in Two Parts which in contrast focuses on minute timbral shadings; and of course the cantata for solo voice and ensemble which is the title track of the album.Performed by ensemble proton bern, conducted by Luigi Gaggero with the magical soprano voice of Peyee Chen on In Glow of Like Seclusion (set to verse by J. H. Prynne), this album was beautifully captured in Zurich in 2022. The CD and digital album are to be followed with a double-LP vinyl version in the New Year.Samuel Andreyev's music has been featured in portrait concerts in Bern, Geneva, Toronto, Paris, Kyiv, Strasbourg, Montréal, Tours, and many other cities. Andreyev is a laureate of the Henri Dutilleux Prize (2012, for ‘Night Division'), and the Grand Prix Lycéen des Compositeurs (2020, for ‘Vérifications'). He is also Vice President of the music council of the Fondation Prince Pierre (Monaco). With his YouTube channel and Podcast, Samuel Andreyev presents lectures on musical topics, as well as long-form interviews with prominent musicians as varied as Brian Ferneyhough, every member of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band, Linda Catlin Smith, Hugues Dufourt, Adam Neely, and countless others. He has twice been a featured guest on the Jordan Peterson Podcast, in addition to appearances on Vox, The Symbolic World, Classical Chats, and many others.Tracks Sonata de Camera (2020-21) (22:15)Sextet in Two Parts (2019) I. (13:09) II. (7:53) Verifications (2012) I. (3:12) II. (1:53) III. (3:30) IV. (2:15) In Glow of Like Seclusions (2021-22) I. All Such to Life (3:37) II. To Eye Apart (2:22) III. Impromptu I (1:28) IV. Not Far (3:23) V. How Smart We Are (4:50) VI. Impromptu II (2:08) VII. Lark Advent (3:10) Help support our show by purchasing this album  at:Downloads (classicalmusicdiscoveries.store) Classical Music Discoveries is sponsored by Uber. @CMDHedgecock#ClassicalMusicDiscoveries #KeepClassicalMusicAlive#CMDGrandOperaCompanyofVenice #CMDParisPhilharmonicinOrléans#CMDGermanOperaCompanyofBerlin#CMDGrandOperaCompanyofBarcelonaSpain#ClassicalMusicLivesOn#Uber#AppleClassical Please consider supporting our show, thank you!Donate (classicalmusicdiscoveries.store) staff@classicalmusicdiscoveries.comThis album is broadcast with the permission of Sean Dacy from Rosebrook Media.

Despite mounting a legacy as a pioneer of experimental rock and roll, Captain Beefheart really wanted a slice of mainstream popularity - his debut album Safe As Milk provides the most substantial musical evidence of this desire in his double-digit discog.

THE ARWEN LEWIS SHOW Featuring Emily Duff - Emily Duff is a longtime icon of New York City's roots-rock community. Emily Duff has spent her career blurring the lines between rock & roll, soul, roadhouse country, and punk. She's been a solo artist. A bandmate. A multi-instrumentalist who strums the guitar plays the cello, and writes her own string arrangements. But above all else, Emily Duff has been — and always will be — a songwriter.  "If you ain't composing, you're decomposing," she says. "I like to keep myself moving and keep myself writing. I usually write one song a day. It's been that way for years." Duff's songs emphatically nod to the sounds that first captivated her attention as a child during the 1970s. Raised in Queens and Long Island, she gravitated toward the era's roots legends and soul singers: Kris Kristofferson, Aretha Franklin, Willie Nelson, Janis Joplin, Johnny Cash, Al Green, and countless others. Don't Let Go turns that rich tapestry of sound into fuel for something original, with Duff delivering a collection of heartland rock anthems, folksongs, barn burners, gothic murder ballads, soulful love songs, and everything in between.  She's a street-smart New Yorker who traded mix tapes with Lou Reed during her 20s and struck up a musical partnership with Gary Lucas, the experimental guitarist who performed with Captain Beefheart's Magic Band before launching his project, Gods and Monsters. When the band's original lead singer, Jeff Buckley, left the lineup to launch his meteoric solo career, Duff stepped in as his replacement. Before long, she'd left that band and formed another group, Eudora, whose mix of Americana instrumentation and baroque textures earned them a gig opening for Bob Dylan and Paul Simon. From the stage of CBGB's — where she played her first show — to the confines of her 340 square foot Greenwich Village tenement apartment where she is happily raising her two teenage children and hound dog with her husband, Emily Duff has never been afraid to chase her muse into uncharted territory. Duff presently has a record being mixed and another in production. Both are “modern records” inspired by classic American roots music, with Duff upholding her status as a genre-bending lifer. Emily Duff On Instagram @emilyduffband211 The Arwen Lewis Show Host | Arwen Lewis Executive Producer | Jeremiah D. Higgins Producer - Sound Engineer - Richard “Dr. D” Dugan https://arwenlewismusic.com/ The Arwen Lewis Show is Brought to you by John DeNicola and Omad Records https://www.omadrecords.com/ On Instagram, Follow Arwen Lewis Here: @thearwenlewisshow @arwenlewis www.thejeremiahshow.com On Instagram @jeremiahdhiggins https://linktr.ee/jeremiahdhiggins

This week, a new nighttime show is coming soon, Tiana's Palace opened to large crowds, new menu items at other locations, Oogie Boogie Bash details, new things coming to the parks, we finish our talk with Imagineer and Artist Eric Robison, and more! Please support the show if you can by going to https://www.dlweekly.net/support/. If you want some DLWeekly Swag, you can pick some up at https://www.dlweekly.net/store/. Book your travel through ConciEARS at no extra cost to you! Be sure to mention that you heard about ConciEARS from DLWeekly at booking! DISCOUNTS! We have partnered with the Howard Johnson Anaheim Hotel & Water Playground to get great deals for our listeners! Book your stay at the Howard Johnson Anaheim and get 15% off your stay (code 1000022077)! Magic Key Holders get 20% off their stay (code 1000025935) as well! Book now! Need the perfect bag for your days in the parks? Look no further than Designer Park Co.! Purchase the Rope Drop Bag as featured on Episode 222 and get 10% off your purchase! Use coupon code DLWEEKLY to get the discount. If you want some awesome headwear or one of a kind items, be sure to visit our friends over at All Enchanting Ears! You can use the promo code DLWEEKLY10 to get 10% off your order! News: A new nighttime show is coming to the Rivers of America soon. No, this isn't a replacement for Fantasmic! just yet, but it is a little more showy than the musical acts that were a temporary replacement for summer. The Heartbeat of New Orleans — A Living Mural is the new show and it will feature a dynamic jazz score and projections. The story will follow a "mischievous little frog from the bayou that leaps into the lively heartbeat of New Orleans when he is lured by the jazzy sounds he hears in the distance." The show debuts on September 29th and will run on select nights throughout the fall. - https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2023/09/08/disneyland-announces-opening-date-for-a-new-nighttime-show/#more-851035 https://www.micechat.com/366985-breaking-news-disneyland-magic-key-lawsuit-settlement-details/ Tiana's Palace finally opened to eager guests last week. On opening day the standby line for food was over an hour long and mobile orders stretched into the evening pretty early in the day. The interior of the restaurant looks amazing with new decor and nods to the movie. The food has been a hit with guests, with New Orleans inspired dishes and freshly prepared beignets. - https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2023/09/10/wait-are-we-still-in-disneyland-5-ways-tianas-palace-restaurant-instantly-transported-us-to-new-orleans/#more-850264 https://www.micechat.com/344214-disneyland-tianas-palace-menu-guide/ Tiana's Palace isn't the only place on the west side of the park with new menu items. The River Belle Terrace, Cafe Orleans, and Carnation Cafe all are offering new options for guests. {talk about what we like}. This also includes alcoholic and some non-alcoholic options in addition to the food. - https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2023/09/disney-eats-whats-cooking-at-river-belle-terrace-cafe-orleans-and-carnation-cafe/?CMP=SOC-DPFY23Q4wo0907230045H The first Oogie Boogie Bash party nights have happened and we have all the details for this year. Judge Doom is setup in the Grizzly Peak Airfield and is a sight to behold. When Judge Doom decides to dip an animated shoe, the scene is chilling. Yokai is also new this year and is located in San Fransokyo Square. Other treat trail characters have relocated this year including Ernesto De La Cruz who is in the queue for the Hyperion, and Madam Mim is where Ernesto was last year in the Bountiful Valley Hideaway. Minnie, Daisy, and Clarabelle as the Sanderson Sisters have moved near the Golden Zephyr. - https://www.micechat.com/366873-oogie-boogie-bash-guide/ From September 15th through October 15th, the Disneyland Resort will celebrate Hispanic and Latin American Heritage Month. There will be a lot of food to celebrate and Disney released the Foodie Guide for the event. At Disneyland, Rancho del Zocalo, the Frontierland churro cart, and Stage Door Cafe all have good options. Over in Disney California Adventure Boardwalk Pizza dn Pasta, Cocina Cucamonga Mexican Grill, and Paradise Garden Grill are serving up options. The Grand Californian Great Hall Cart has a ton of sweets, with a lot of locations in Downtown Disney also participating. - https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2023/09/disney-eats-foodie-guide-to-hispanic-and-latin-american-heritage-month-2023/ Last weekend was the Destination D23 event at Walt Disney World. At the event, there were a number of announcements for Disney Parks all around the world. At Disneyland, the concept art for the Avengers E-Ticket attraction was shown off, and new scenes featuring locations from Ashoka will be coming to Star Tours next Spring. - https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2023/09/youre-invited-disney-parks-unveils-future-projects-surprises-at-destination-d23/ More new characters have landed in Star Wars Galaxy's Edge in Disneyland. Hera and Chopper, characters from Ashoka and Star Wars Rebels are now wandering the land greeting visitors. The duo travel together when they are out for guests and are only here for a limited time. - https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2023/09/11/come-with-us-to-meet-the-two-newest-characters-in-disneyland/#more-852454 A new souvenir glass has come to the resort and this is one not to be missed! At Carthay Circle Restaurant guests can pick up the Spooky Tree Flight Mugs for $89. This includes an Appletini cocktail. The mug looks like one of the scary trees from Snow White, with a green poison apple in one branch, and a red poison apple in the other. - https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2023/09/08/everyone-go-home-this-new-disney-souvenir-just-won-the-whole-week/#more-850612 Magic Keyholders may be getting a check from Disney for a lawsuit that was just settled. Keyholders who purchased the Dream Key will be getting $67.41. No form is needed to be completed to get the amount. - https://www.micechat.com/366985-breaking-news-disneyland-magic-key-lawsuit-settlement-details/ Magic Keyholders should make it a habit to check the Magic Key Portal inside the Disneyland mobile app. Currently, there is a promotion that Magic Keyholders can receive a complimentary Magic Key-themed MagicBand+ with ANY purchase at select Disneyland Resort locations. The locations are listed in the portal and there is no minimum purchase price to get the MagicBand+. Discussion Topic: Part Two with Eric Robison https://www.instagram.com/eric_robison_disney_artist https://ericrobisonart.com/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/46856731423 Trivia Land: https://duchessofdisneyland.com/park-history/tomorrowland-phantom-boats/

We talk to our good friend  @Dan-O  from The Dan-O Channel about the differences in the difference theme park bands: Power-Up Bands from Super Nintendo World, MagicBand+ and MagicBand 2 from the Disney Parks, and Magic Mobile. We discuss price, set up, ease of use, and functionality. Which do you think is best? AFFILIATE LINKS* MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: Multi-port USB charger: https://amzn.to/3YLsws1Mandalorian Hand Armor from Propwright: https://rstyle.me/+2pJEcpKPhYUZmUmPuwC2bQThat Corner in Coruscant Shop: https://bit.ly/3YGdxjnMagicBand puck holders for Smart Watches: https://rstyle.me/+pGdg7LnNnjqrzgDW01uoeQMagicBand Scanner Replica for Your Home: https://rstyle.me/+QqIN3rsL8js_ky1ByQ3p0w *We may earn a small commission at no cost to you if you make a purchase after clicking these links. Thank you for the support CONNECT WITH US! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ INTERESTED IN BOOKING A DISNEY TRIP? ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Book with Sara⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ If you like the RSVLTS gear you see us wearing occasionally in our videos, check out their fantastic Star Wars, Disney and other collections at www.rsvlts.com and use the code 'SCOUNDREL'  at checkout for 20% off your first online order! A THANK THE MAKER NETWORK PODCAST ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Thank the Maker⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Armor Party⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Dan-O Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ WHERE TO WATCH/LISTEN ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Anchor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Original Theme Music by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Alton James⁠⁠

This week, new Tiana Bayou Adventure news, a new Disneyland After Dark Nite announced, a halfway celebration, some shopping locations are back, some in-person ordering returns, we have another trivia spectacular with Producer James and Vern and more! Please support the show if you can by going to https://www.dlweekly.net/support/. If you want some DLWeekly Swag, you can pick some up at https://www.dlweekly.net/store/. Book your travel through ConciEARS at no extra cost to you! Be sure to mention that you heard about ConciEARS from DLWeekly at booking! DISCOUNTS! We have partnered with the Howard Johnson Anaheim Hotel & Water Playground to get great deals for our listeners! Book your stay at the Howard Johnson Anaheim and get 15% off your stay (code 1000022077)! Magic Key Holders get 20% off their stay (code 1000025935) as well! Book now! Need the perfect bag for your days in the parks? Look no further than Designer Park Co.! Purchase the Rope Drop Bag as featured on Episode 222 and get 10% off your purchase! Use coupon code DLWEEKLY to get the discount. If you want some awesome headwear or one of a kind items, be sure to visit our friends over at All Enchanting Ears! You can use the promo code DLWEEKLY10 to get 10% off your order! News There is all kinds of new information about Tiana's Bayou Adventure coming to Disneyland in 2024. Disneyland's version of Splash Mountain will officially close on May 30th to begin the transformation. In addition, new concept art was released showing Mama Odie joking with guests in the attraction, with the return of Jenifer Lewis voicing the character. - https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2023/04/mama-odie-to-appear-in-tianas-bayou-adventure-plus-more-updates/ Another Disneyland After Dark Nite has been announced for this summer! Disneyland After Dark Pride Nite will be the first official pride celebration at Disneyland on June 13th and 15th. As with all After Dark Nites, there will be themed entertainment, Disney characters, photo ops, and more! Tickets go on sale April 20th no earlier than 9am Pacific. - https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2023/04/disneyland-after-dark-celebrates-first-pride-nite-at-disneyland-resort-june-13-and-15-2023/ Weeklyteers who are fans of the spooky time of year should get excited! Disneyland, and Walt Disney World, are celebrating halfway to Halloween with some neat sweet treats. The various treats are available starting April 20th through April 23rd. - https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2023/04/disney-eats-foodie-guide-to-halfway-to-halloween-2023/ It has been a long time since some shopping locations around the resort have been open, but that time has finally ended! Radiator Springs Curios, Wonderground Gallery, and Disney Home have reopened. Radiator Springs Curios carries MagicBand+ items, pins, and shirts instead of the Cars-themed merch from before. Wonderground has remained mostly unchanged, and Disney Home has also not changed much since it closed. - https://www.micechat.com/353074-disneyland-news-radiator-springs-curios-wonderground-gallery-and-disney-home-reopen/ In Cars Land, the Cozy Cones are welcoming guests to order at each cone again, and not just limited to mobile ordering. It is great to see locations offering guests the option to mobile order or not. - https://www.micechat.com/353451-disneyland-update-crowd-flux-the-last-splash-and-keys-to-the-kingdom/ Two locations have closed in Downtown Disney. As of Friday, Catal and Uva Bar & Cafe have closed to make way for a new addition in the future. Two Mexican restaurants, Paseo and Centrico, will be replacing the locations in the future. - https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2023/04/13/two-disney-restaurants-are-closing-tomorrow/ - https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2023/04/12/another-downtown-disney-dining-location-has-permanently-closed/ There is a metric ton of new merchandise that has show up at Disneyland. - https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2023/04/13/whats-new-at-disneyland-resort-a-100th-anniversary-popcorn-bucket-and-loungefly-bags/ There are some neat additions around the resort to celebrate Earth Month. There are some upcycled Elephants in Downtown Disney which are made of recycled flip-flops found along the beaches of Kenya, and some recycled art pieces made by Cast Members which guests can vote on to win the 2023 Environmental Art Challenge. The cast member art is located near Stage 17, in front of the Marvel Super Store. - https://www.micechat.com/353097-seven-ways-to-celebrate-earth-month-at-disneyland/ - https://www.micechat.com/353451-disneyland-update-crowd-flux-the-last-splash-and-keys-to-the-kingdom/ There has been some updates to the Disneyland Forward program at Disneyland. There is no blue sky or plans laid out, but they are working on the environmental impact statement. After that, they can send it to the city to get the parking lot rezoned. There will be issues having certain attractions in this area since there is a noise restriction in the area. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoMV2XJAOvk A Disney game that was at the D23 Expo has some new information. Ravensburger released the official Disney Lorcana how-to-play videos online before its release. The game is scheduled to launch in August. - https://dlnewstoday.com/2023/04/official-disney-lorcana-how-to-play-videos-released/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=official-disney-lorcana-how-to-play-videos-released Disney didn't have any new attractions up for a Themed Entertainment Association award this year, but they still were able to bring home an award. Susana Tubert, Disneyland's Live Entertainment Creative Director won a Catalyst Award for her theatrical work. She is responsible for Viva Navidad, the Mulan New Year's Procession, and Tale of the Lion King. Disney also won a Legacy award for The Main Street Electrical Parade. - https://www.micechat.com/353451-disneyland-update-crowd-flux-the-last-splash-and-keys-to-the-kingdom/

This is the Live Call-in Show from this past Sunday night, April 9, 2023!  During this show, Mike & Scott discuss the news of the week including the debut this summer of DisneyBand+ on select sailings of Disney Cruise Line!  This looks very much like a Magic Band+, so we try to find the differences!  We also discuss the return of Walt Disney World Annual Pass sales April 13 (DVC Members) and April 20 (General Public) and what this means for future trips, as well as registration for Marathon Weekend 2024 and Springtime Surprise Weekend this weekend at Walt Disney World!  This and much more coming your way on today's show with some great calls!  We hope you enjoy today's show! Please visit our website at www.beourguestpodcast.com.  Thank you so much for your support of our podcast! Also, please follow the show on Twitter @BeOurGuestMike and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/beourguestpodcast.  Become a patron of the Be Our Guest Podcast over at www.patreon.com/BeOurGuestPodcast.  Thanks to our friends at The Magic For Less Travel for sponsoring today's podcast!

04/11/23 - In this episode, Governor Ron DeSantis threatened to look at taxing hotels and adding tolls to roads after Disney's latest Reedy Creek action, Walt Disney World annual pass sales are returning along with Disneyland Magic Key sales, MagicBand+ is heading to Disney Cruise Line, and more! Important DIS links and more information!

In this episode, Shannon talks with Tom Bricker from Disney Tourist Blog. Listen to hear Tom's perspectives on topics including MagicBand+, Galactic Starcruiser, Tron Lightcyle/Run and Pirates of the Caribbean at Walt Disney World versus Shanghi Disneyland, the return of Happily Ever After and Epcot Forever, and the construction at Epcot. He makes a few predictions and shares his future travel plans.   This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/WDWPREPSCHOOL and get on your way to being your best self.   Links: BetterHelp Disney Tourist Blog 7 Step Disney World Planning Process Leave me a message (including trip report submissions) Please use the SpeakPipe link below to leave us a message with your first name, location, and trip info. You can do that using your computer or phone at https://www.speakpipe.com/WDWPrepToGo   Subscribe to get new episodes There are a few ways to get new episodes of WDW Prep to Go (if you're used to listening on the website, subscribe so you can take new episodes with you on your phone) Subscribe in iTunes  (and please leave a review!) Subscribe in Google Podcasts Listen on Stitcher Follow on social media Instagram Twitter Facebook Pinterest TikTok YouTube Become a Patron Get a quote request for a future trip from Small World Vacations Visit the site Check out the new WDW Prep Merch! Things we recommend   Affiliate Links: Amazon DVC Rentals Quicksilver Tours and Transportation Small World Vacations Designer Park Co - Use code “WDWPrep” to save 10%

This week, Easter is this weekend and there are a lot of things happening at the resort, a new DVC lounge is coming to Tomorrowland, something is growing in the Grand Californian, a new droid is available in Droid Depot, we continue our talk about Teresa and Vern's cruise and more! Please support the show if you can by going to https://www.dlweekly.net/support/. If you want some DLWeekly Swag, you can pick some up at https://www.dlweekly.net/store/. Book your travel through ConciEARS at no extra cost to you! Be sure to mention that you heard about ConciEARS from DLWeekly at booking! DISCOUNTS! We have partnered with the Howard Johnson Anaheim Hotel & Water Playground to get great deals for our listeners! Book your stay at the Howard Johnson Anaheim and get 15% off your stay (code 1000022077)! Magic Key Holders get 20% off their stay (code 1000025935) as well! Book now! Need the perfect bag for your days in the parks? Look no further than Designer Park Co.! Purchase the Rope Drop Bag as featured on Episode 222 and get 10% off your purchase! Use coupon code DLWEEKLY to get the discount. If you want some awesome headwear or one of a kind items, be sure to visit our friends over at All Enchanting Ears! You can use the promo code DLWEEKLY10 to get 10% off your order! News The Disney100 Celebration continues to roll along with new things appearing around the parks. A new Disney100 Purple Mickey Mouse balloon bucket has arrived. This is a new color of the same popcorn bucket that we saw previously in silver. This bucket is available in both parks at participating popcorn carts. - https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2023/03/28/a-new-popcorn-bucket-is-coming-for-disneys-100th-anniversary/ Star Wars fans who have played Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order can now pick up the BD unit droid from that game and the upcoming sequel. A BD unit droid is for sale in the Droid Depot for $109.99. The droid is black and yellow and comes with a remote control, just like the other droids available at the location. - https://dlnewstoday.com/2023/03/bd-remote-control-droid-from-star-wars-jedi-fallen-order-arrives-at-disneyland-resort/ Disney Vacation Club members will have a new place to hangout in Disneyland coming later this month. The Disney Vacation Club Star View Station - a Member Lounge is scheduled to open on April 19th in Tomorrowland on the second floor of the Star Wars Launch Bay. The theming in this location is really good and will be a great place for DVC members to relax and recharge. - https://dlnewstoday.com/2023/03/breaking-disney-vacation-club-member-lounge-at-disneyland-park-to-open-in-april/ - https://www.disneyfoodblog.com/2023/03/30/opening-date-announced-for-the-newest-disney-vacation-club-lounge/ The single rider entrance of Space Mountain has changed once again. After the single rider line returned earlier this year going through the Lightning Lane entrance, it has now been relocated to the exit of the attraction. - https://dlnewstoday.com/2023/04/space-mountain-single-rider-line-re-routed-through-exit-at-disneyland/ A post online from a former Imagineer gives us a better idea of a creature that guests would have been able to ride in Star Wars Galaxys Edge before it was deemed over budget. Frank Mezzatesta confirmed this on Twitter, along with some concept art of the experience. Elee, the name of the creature that guests would have taken a ride on, would have carried 6 passengers around a small area of the land. - https://dlnewstoday.com/2023/04/former-imagineer-confirms-elee-a-large-creature-that-could-carry-guests-around-star-wars-galaxys-edge-was-scrapped-due-to-budget/ Weeklyteers who wanted to have a "key to it all" are now out of luck. Bob Iger confirmed that the Premier Annual Pass, which offered holders the ability to visit both Disneyland and Walt Disney World would not be returning. The pass was available for just over $2,000 a year before it was discontinued due to the pandemic. - https://dlnewstoday.com/2023/04/breaking-bob-iger-says-disneyland-walt-disney-world-combination-premier-annual-pass-will-not-return/ Magic Band collectors be on the lookout for new Magic Band designs at Disneyland. The new designs feature Yoda, Mickey Mouse, Marvel Comics, and more. The new designs are all $44.99 each, and available around the resort. - https://dlnewstoday.com/2023/04/new-yoda-marvel-comics-mickey-mouse-and-more-magicband-designs-debut-at-disneyland-resort/ Fans of the Disney Channel Original Movie "Prom Pact" were enjoying Disney California Adventure last week. The cast had breakfast at Napa Rose, then spent the day enjoying the attractions around DCA. - https://www.micechat.com/352070-disneyland-update-rolling-heads-strollers-easter-eggs/ Easter is this Sunday, and there are a few things that guests can do around the resort. For Easter dining, Goofy's Kitchen and Storyteller's Cafe are offering brunch and dinner. The Grand Californian Holiday cart is also offering some sweet treats. As we have reported previously, there is a ton of Easter treats at the candy shops around the resort as well. Finally, the eggstravaganza is still going strong with three different hunts between Disneyland, DCA, and Downtown Disney. - https://www.micechat.com/352070-disneyland-update-rolling-heads-strollers-easter-eggs/ Something new has "grown" into the lobby of the Grand Californian. A large, live tree has appeared in the middle of the lobby with no explanation. MiceChat thinks that the tree is to celebrate Earth Month. - https://www.micechat.com/352070-disneyland-update-rolling-heads-strollers-easter-eggs/ Once again Minnie Mouse has vacated the lawn in front of Main Street Station and Mickey has moved back in. It seems that each year for Women's History Month Minnie may be making an appearance going forward. - https://www.micechat.com/352070-disneyland-update-rolling-heads-strollers-easter-eggs/ Discussion Topic Vern and Teresa talk in-depth of their recent trip on a Disney cruise.

Mike, Rikki, and Pam are here today answering some great listener questions! We tackle some questions about the the differences and similarities in Sanaa, Jiko, and Boma over at Disney's Animal Kingdom Resort as well as Ohana and Kona Cafe at the Polynesian Village Resort, we discuss using the same Magic Band+ at Disneyland and Walt Disney World, talk about the online check-in process for your first Disney Cruise (and if you should use a computer or the app to go about this), tips for a first Walt Disney World trip coming from Hawaii, and much more! We hope you enjoy today's show!  Please visit our website at www.beourguestpodcast.com.  Thank you so much for your support of our podcast! Become a Patron of the show at www.Patreon.com/BeOurGuestPodcast.  Also, please follow the show on Twitter @BeOurGuestMike and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/beourguestpodcast.   Thanks to our friends at The Magic For Less Travel for sponsoring today's podcast!

Mike, Rikki, and Scott are here today answering some great listener questions! We tackle some questions about the differences in pricing for in-person and virtual runDisney events, scheduling the "Small World Nursery" with Disney Cruise Line, what not to miss as a first-time Disney Cruise guest, best places to get some work done at Disney's Old Key West Resort and other places on-property, thoughts on if Magic Band+ is a hit or miss, and much more! We hope you enjoy today's show!  Please visit our website at www.beourguestpodcast.com.  Thank you so much for your support of our podcast! Become a Patron of the show at www.Patreon.com/BeOurGuestPodcast.  Also, please follow the show on Twitter @BeOurGuestMike and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/beourguestpodcast.   Thanks to our friends at The Magic For Less Travel for sponsoring today's podcast!

Episode 162 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Daydream Believer", and the later career of the Monkees, and how four Pinocchios became real boys. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "Born to be Wild" by Steppenwolf. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud this time, as even after splitting it into multiple files, there are simply too many Monkees tracks excerpted. The best versions of the Monkees albums are the triple-CD super-deluxe versions that used to be available from monkees.com , and I've used Andrew Sandoval's liner notes for them extensively in this episode. Sadly, though, none of those are in print. However, at the time of writing there is a new four-CD super-deluxe box set of Headquarters (with a remixed version of the album rather than the original mixes I've excerpted here) available from that site, and I used the liner notes for that here. Monkees.com also currently has the intermittently-available BluRay box set of the entire Monkees TV series, which also has Head and 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee. For those just getting into the group, my advice is to start with this five-CD set, which contains their first five albums along with bonus tracks. The single biggest source of information I used in this episode is the first edition of Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees; The Day-By-Day Story. Sadly that is now out of print and goes for hundreds of pounds. Sandoval released a second edition of the book in 2021, which I was unfortunately unable to obtain, but that too is now out of print. If you can find a copy of either, do get one. Other sources used were Monkee Business by Eric Lefcowitz, and the autobiographies of three of the band members and one of the songwriters — Infinite Tuesday by Michael Nesmith, They Made a Monkee Out of Me by Davy Jones, I'm a Believer by Micky Dolenz, and Psychedelic Bubble-Gum by Bobby Hart. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript When we left the Monkees, they were in a state of flux. To recap what we covered in that episode, the Monkees were originally cast as actors in a TV show, and consisted of two actors with some singing ability -- the former child stars Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz -- and two musicians who were also competent comic actors, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork.  The show was about a fictional band whose characters shared names with their actors, and there had quickly been two big hit singles, and two hit albums, taken from the music recorded for the TV show's soundtrack. But this had caused problems for the actors. The records were being promoted as being by the fictional group in the TV series, blurring the line between the TV show and reality, though in fact for the most part they were being made by session musicians with only Dolenz or Jones adding lead vocals to pre-recorded backing tracks. Dolenz and Jones were fine with this, but Nesmith, who had been allowed to write and produce a few album tracks himself, wanted more creative input, and more importantly felt that he was being asked to be complicit in fraud because the records credited the four Monkees as the musicians when (other than a tiny bit of inaudible rhythm guitar by Tork on a couple of Nesmith's tracks) none of them played on them. Tork, meanwhile, believed he had been promised that the group would be an actual group -- that they would all be playing on the records together -- and felt hurt and annoyed that this wasn't the case. They were by now playing live together to promote the series and the records, with Dolenz turning out to be a perfectly competent drummer, so surely they could do the same in the studio? So in January 1967, things came to a head. It's actually quite difficult to sort out exactly what happened, because of conflicting recollections and opinions. What follows is my best attempt to harmonise the different versions of the story into one coherent narrative, but be aware that I could be wrong in some of the details. Nesmith and Tork, who disliked each other in most respects, were both agreed that this couldn't continue and that if there were going to be Monkees records released at all, they were going to have the Monkees playing on them. Dolenz, who seems to have been the one member of the group that everyone could get along with, didn't really care but went along with them for the sake of group harmony. And Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, the production team behind the series, also took Nesmith and Tork's side, through a general love of mischief. But on the other side was Don Kirshner, the music publisher who was in charge of supervising the music for the TV show. Kirshner was adamantly, angrily, opposed to the very idea of the group members having any input at all into how the records were made. He considered that they should be grateful for the huge pay cheques they were getting from records his staff writers and producers were making for them, and stop whinging. And Davy Jones was somewhere in the middle. He wanted to support his co-stars, who he genuinely liked, but also, he was a working actor, he'd had other roles before, he'd have other roles afterwards, and as a working actor you do what you're told if you don't want to lose the job you've got. Jones had grown up in very severe poverty, and had been his family's breadwinner from his early teens, and artistic integrity is all very nice, but not as nice as a cheque for a quarter of a million dollars. Although that might be slightly unfair -- it might be fairer to say that artistic integrity has a different meaning to someone like Jones, coming from musical theatre and a tradition of "the show must go on", than it does to people like Nesmith and Tork who had come up through the folk clubs. Jones' attitude may also have been affected by the fact that his character in the TV show didn't play an instrument other than the occasional tambourine or maracas. The other three were having to mime instrumental parts they hadn't played, and to reproduce them on stage, but Jones didn't have that particular disadvantage. Bert Schneider, one of the TV show's producers, encouraged the group to go into the recording studio themselves, with a producer of their choice, and cut a couple of tracks to prove what they could do. Michael Nesmith, who at this point was the one who was most adamant about taking control of the music, chose Chip Douglas to produce. Douglas was someone that Nesmith had known a little while, as they'd both played the folk circuit -- in Douglas' case as a member of the Modern Folk Quartet -- but Douglas had recently joined the Turtles as their new bass player. At this point, Douglas had never officially produced a record, but he was a gifted arranger, and had just arranged the Turtles' latest single, which had just been released and was starting to climb the charts: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Happy Together"] Douglas quit the Turtles to work with the Monkees, and took the group into the studio to cut two demo backing tracks for a potential single as a proof of concept. These initial sessions didn't have any vocals, but featured Nesmith on guitar, Tork on piano, Dolenz on drums, Jones on tambourine, and an unknown bass player -- possibly Douglas himself, possibly Nesmith's friend John London, who he'd played with in Mike and John and Bill. They cut rough tracks of two songs, "All of Your Toys", by another friend of Nesmith's, Bill Martin, and Nesmith's "The Girl I Knew Somewhere": [Excerpt: The Monkees, "The Girl I Knew Somewhere (Gold Star Demo)"] Those tracks were very rough and ready -- they were garage-band tracks rather than the professional studio recordings that the Candy Store Prophets or Jeff Barry's New York session players had provided for the previous singles -- but they were competent in the studio, thanks largely to Chip Douglas' steadying influence. As Douglas later said "They could hardly play. Mike could play adequate rhythm guitar. Pete could play piano but he'd make mistakes, and Micky's time on drums was erratic. He'd speed up or slow down." But the takes they managed to get down showed that they *could* do it. Rafelson and Schneider agreed with them that the Monkees could make a single together, and start recording at least some of their own tracks. So the group went back into the studio, with Douglas producing -- and with Lester Sill from the music publishers there to supervise -- and cut finished versions of the two songs. This time the lineup was Nesmith on guitar, Tork on electric harpsichord -- Tork had always been a fan of Bach, and would in later years perform Bach pieces as his solo spot in Monkees shows -- Dolenz on drums, London on bass, and Jones on tambourine: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "The Girl I Knew Somewhere (first recorded version)"] But while this was happening, Kirshner had been trying to get new Monkees material recorded without them -- he'd not yet agreed to having the group play on their own records. Three days after the sessions for "All of Your Toys" and "The Girl I Knew Somewhere", sessions started in New York for an entire album's worth of new material, produced by Jeff Barry and Denny Randell, and largely made by the same Red Bird Records team who had made "I'm a Believer" -- the same musicians who in various combinations had played on everything from "Sherry" by the Four Seasons to "Like a Rolling Stone" by Dylan to "Leader of the Pack", and with songs by Neil Diamond, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, Leiber and Stoller, and the rest of the team of songwriters around Red Bird. But at this point came the meeting we talked about towards the end of the "Last Train to Clarksville" episode, in which Nesmith punched a hole in a hotel wall in frustration at what he saw as Kirshner's obstinacy. Kirshner didn't want to listen to the recordings the group had made. He'd promised Jeff Barry and Neil Diamond that if "I'm a Believer" went to number one, Barry would get to produce, and Diamond write, the group's next single. Chip Douglas wasn't a recognised producer, and he'd made this commitment. But the group needed a new single out. A compromise was offered, of sorts, by Kirshner -- how about if Barry flew over from New York to LA to produce the group, they'd scrap the tracks both the group and Barry had recorded, and Barry would produce new tracks for the songs he'd recorded, with the group playing on them? But that wouldn't work either. The group members were all due to go on holiday -- three of them were going to make staggered trips to the UK, partly to promote the TV series, which was just starting over here, and partly just to have a break. They'd been working sixty-plus hour weeks for months between the TV series, live performances, and the recording studio, and they were basically falling-down tired, which was one of the reasons for Nesmith's outburst in the meeting. They weren't accomplished enough musicians to cut tracks quickly, and they *needed* the break. On top of that, Nesmith and Barry had had a major falling-out at the "I'm a Believer" session, and Nesmith considered it a matter of personal integrity that he couldn't work with a man who in his eyes had insulted his professionalism. So that was out, but there was also no way Kirshner was going to let the group release a single consisting of two songs he hadn't heard, produced by a producer with no track record. At first, the group were insistent that "All of Your Toys" should be the A-side for their next single: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "All Of Your Toys"] But there was an actual problem with that which they hadn't foreseen. Bill Martin, who wrote the song, was under contract to another music publisher, and the Monkees' contracts said they needed to only record songs published by Screen Gems. Eventually, it was Micky Dolenz who managed to cut the Gordian knot -- or so everyone thought. Dolenz was the one who had the least at stake of any of them -- he was already secure as the voice of the hits, he had no particular desire to be an instrumentalist, but he wanted to support his colleagues. Dolenz suggested that it would be a reasonable compromise to put out a single with one of the pre-recorded backing tracks on one side, with him or Jones singing, and with the version of "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" that the band had recorded together on the other. That way, Kirshner and the record label would get their new single without too much delay, the group would still be able to say they'd started recording their own tracks, everyone would get some of what they wanted. So it was agreed -- though there was a further stipulation. "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" had Nesmith singing lead vocals, and up to that point every Monkees single had featured Dolenz on lead on both sides. As far as Kirshner and the other people involved in making the release decisions were concerned, that was the way things were going to continue. Everyone was fine with this -- Nesmith, the one who was most likely to object in principle, in practice realised that having Dolenz sing his song would make it more likely to be played on the radio and used in the TV show, and so increase his royalties. A vocal session was arranged in New York for Dolenz and Jones to come and cut some vocal tracks right before Dolenz and Nesmith flew over to the UK. But in the meantime, it had become even more urgent for the group to be seen to be doing their own recording. An in-depth article on the group in the Saturday Evening Post had come out, quoting Nesmith as saying "It was what Kirshner wanted to do. Our records are not our forte. I don't care if we never sell another record. Maybe we were manufactured and put on the air strictly with a lot of hoopla. Tell the world we're synthetic because, damn it, we are. Tell them the Monkees are wholly man-made overnight, that millions of dollars have been poured into this thing. Tell the world we don't record our own music. But that's us they see on television. The show is really a part of us. They're not seeing something invalid." The press immediately jumped on the band, and started trying to portray them as con artists exploiting their teenage fans, though as Nesmith later said "The press decided they were going to unload on us as being somehow illegitimate, somehow false. That we were making an attempt to dupe the public, when in fact it was me that was making the attempt to maintain the integrity. So the press went into a full-scale war against us." Tork, on the other hand, while he and Nesmith were on the same side about the band making their own records, blamed Nesmith for much of the press reaction, later saying "Michael blew the whistle on us. If he had gone in there with pride and said 'We are what we are and we have no reason to hang our heads in shame' it never would have happened." So as far as the group were concerned, they *needed* to at least go with Dolenz's suggested compromise. Their personal reputations were on the line. When Dolenz arrived at the session in New York, he was expecting to be asked to cut one vocal track, for the A-side of the next single (and presumably a new lead vocal for "The Girl I Knew Somewhere"). When he got there, though, he found that Kirshner expected him to record several vocals so that Kirshner could choose the best. That wasn't what had been agreed, and so Dolenz flat-out refused to record anything at all. Luckily for Kirshner, Jones -- who was the most co-operative member of the band -- was willing to sing a handful of songs intended for Dolenz as well as the ones he was meant to sing. So the tape of "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You", the song intended for the next single, was slowed down so it would be in a suitable key for Jones instead, and he recorded the vocal for that: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You"] Incidentally, while Jones recorded vocals for several more tracks at the session -- and some would later be reused as album tracks a few years down the line -- not all of the recorded tracks were used for vocals, and this later gave rise to a rumour that has been repeated as fact by almost everyone involved, though it was a misunderstanding. Kirshner's next major success after the Monkees was another made-for-TV fictional band, the Archies, and their biggest hit was "Sugar Sugar", co-written and produced by Jeff Barry: [Excerpt: The Archies, "Sugar Sugar"] Both Kirshner and the Monkees have always claimed that the Monkees were offered "Sugar, Sugar" and turned it down. To Kirshner the moral of the story was that since "Sugar, Sugar" was a massive hit, it proved his instincts right and proved that the Monkees didn't know what would make a hit. To the Monkees, on the other hand, it showed that Kirshner wanted them to do bubblegum music that they considered ridiculous. This became such an established factoid that Dolenz regularly tells the story in his live performances, and includes a version of "Sugar, Sugar" in them, rearranged as almost a torch song: [Excerpt: Micky Dolenz, "Sugar, Sugar (live)"] But in fact, "Sugar, Sugar" wasn't written until long after Kirshner and the Monkees had parted ways. But one of the songs for which a backing track was recorded but no vocals were ever completed was "Sugar Man", a song by Denny Randell and Sandy Linzer, which they would later release themselves as an unsuccessful single: [Excerpt: Linzer and Randell, "Sugar Man"] Over the years, the Monkees not recording "Sugar Man" became the Monkees not recording "Sugar, Sugar". Meanwhile, Dolenz and Nesmith had flown over to the UK to do some promotional work and relax, and Jones soon also flew over, though didn't hang out with his bandmates, preferring to spend more time with his family. Both Dolenz and Nesmith spent a lot of time hanging out with British pop stars, and were pleased to find that despite the manufactured controversy about them being a manufactured group, none of the British musicians they admired seemed to care. Eric Burdon, for example, was quoted in the Melody Maker as saying "They make very good records, I can't understand how people get upset about them. You've got to make up your minds whether a group is a record production group or one that makes live appearances. For example, I like to hear a Phil Spector record and I don't worry if it's the Ronettes or Ike and Tina Turner... I like the Monkees record as a grand record, no matter how people scream. So somebody made a record and they don't play, so what? Just enjoy the record." Similarly, the Beatles were admirers of the Monkees, especially the TV show, despite being expected to have a negative opinion of them, as you can hear in this contemporary recording of Paul McCartney answering a fan's questions: Excerpt: Paul McCartney talks about the Monkees] Both Dolenz and Nesmith hung out with the Beatles quite a bit -- they both visited Sgt. Pepper recording sessions, and if you watch the film footage of the orchestral overdubs for "A Day in the Life", Nesmith is there with all the other stars of the period. Nesmith and his wife Phyllis even stayed with the Lennons for a couple of days, though Cynthia Lennon seems to have thought of the Nesmiths as annoying intruders who had been invited out of politeness and not realised they weren't wanted. That seems plausible, but at the same time, John Lennon doesn't seem the kind of person to not make his feelings known, and Michael Nesmith's reports of the few days they stayed there seem to describe a very memorable experience, where after some initial awkwardness he developed a bond with Lennon, particularly once he saw that Lennon was a fan of Captain Beefheart, who was a friend of Nesmith, and whose Safe as Milk album Lennon was examining when Nesmith turned up, and whose music at this point bore a lot of resemblance to the kind of thing Nesmith was doing: [Excerpt: Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, "Yellow Brick Road"] Or at least, that's how Nesmith always told the story later -- though Safe as Milk didn't come out until nearly six months later. It's possible he's conflating memories from a later trip to the UK in June that year -- where he also talked about how Lennon was the only person he'd really got on with on the previous trip, because "he's a compassionate person. I know he has a reputation for being caustic, but it is only a cover for the depth of his feeling." Nesmith and Lennon apparently made some experimental music together during the brief stay, with Nesmith being impressed by Lennon's Mellotron and later getting one himself. Dolenz, meanwhile, was spending more time with Paul McCartney, and with Spencer Davis of his current favourite band The Spencer Davis Group. But even more than that he was spending a lot of time with Samantha Juste, a model and TV presenter whose job it was to play the records on Top of the Pops, the most important British TV pop show, and who had released a record herself a couple of months earlier, though it hadn't been a success: [Excerpt: Samantha Juste, "No-one Needs My Love Today"] The two quickly fell deeply in love, and Juste would become Dolenz's first wife the next year. When Nesmith and Dolenz arrived back in the US after their time off, they thought the plan was still to release "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" with "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" on the B-side. So Nesmith was horrified to hear on the radio what the announcer said were the two sides of the new Monkees single -- "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You", and "She Hangs Out", another song from the Jeff Barry sessions with a Davy vocal. Don Kirshner had gone ahead and picked two songs from the Jeff Barry sessions and delivered them to RCA Records, who had put a single out in Canada. The single was very, *very* quickly withdrawn once the Monkees and the TV producers found out, and only promo copies seem to circulate -- rather than being credited to "the Monkees", both sides are credited to '"My Favourite Monkee" Davy Jones Sings'. The record had been withdrawn, but "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" was clearly going to have to be the single. Three days after the record was released and pulled, Nesmith, Dolenz and Tork were back in the studio with Chip Douglas, recording a new B-side -- a new version of "The Girl I Knew Somewhere", this time with Dolenz on vocals. As Jones was still in the UK, John London added the tambourine part as well as the bass: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "The Girl I Knew Somewhere (single version)"] As Nesmith told the story a couple of months later, "Bert said 'You've got to get this thing in Micky's key for Micky to sing it.' I said 'Has Donnie made a commitment? I don't want to go there and break my neck in order to get this thing if Donnie hasn't made a commitment. And Bert refused to say anything. He said 'I can't tell you anything except just go and record.'" What had happened was that the people at Columbia had had enough of Kirshner. As far as Rafelson and Schneider were concerned, the real problem in all this was that Kirshner had been making public statements taking all the credit for the Monkees' success and casting himself as the puppetmaster. They thought this was disrespectful to the performers -- and unstated but probably part of it, that it was disrespectful to Rafelson and Schneider for their work putting the TV show together -- and that Kirshner had allowed his ego to take over. Things like the liner notes for More of the Monkees which made Kirshner and his stable of writers more important than the performers had, in the view of the people at Raybert Productions, put the Monkees in an impossible position and forced them to push back. Schneider later said "Kirshner had an ego that transcended everything else. As a matter of fact, the press issue was probably magnified a hundred times over because of Kirshner. He wanted everybody thinking 'Hey, he's doing all this, not them.' In the end it was very self-destructive because it heightened the whole press issue and it made them feel lousy." Kirshner was out of a job, first as the supervisor for the Monkees and then as the head of Columbia/Screen Gems Music. In his place came Lester Sill, the man who had got Leiber and Stoller together as songwriters, who had been Lee Hazelwood's production partner on his early records with Duane Eddy, and who had been the "Les" in Philles Records until Phil Spector pushed him out. Sill, unlike Kirshner, was someone who was willing to take a back seat and just be a steadying hand where needed. The reissued version of "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" went to number two on the charts, behind "Somethin' Stupid" by Frank and Nancy Sinatra, produced by Sill's old colleague Hazelwood, and the B-side, "The Girl I Knew Somewhere", also charted separately, making number thirty-nine on the charts. The Monkees finally had a hit that they'd written and recorded by themselves. Pinocchio had become a real boy: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "The Girl I Knew Somewhere (single version)"] At the same session at which they'd recorded that track, the Monkees had recorded another Nesmith song, "Sunny Girlfriend", and that became the first song to be included on a new album, which would eventually be named Headquarters, and on which all the guitar, keyboard, drums, percussion, banjo, pedal steel, and backing vocal parts would for the first time be performed by the Monkees themselves. They brought in horn and string players on a couple of tracks, and the bass was variously played by John London, Chip Douglas, and Jerry Yester as Tork was more comfortable on keyboards and guitar than bass, but it was in essence a full band album. Jones got back the next day, and sessions began in earnest. The first song they recorded after his return was "Mr. Webster", a Boyce and Hart song that had been recorded with the Candy Store Prophets in 1966 but hadn't been released. This was one of three tracks on the album that were rerecordings of earlier outtakes, and it's fascinating to compare them, to see the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches. In the case of "Mr. Webster", the instrumental backing on the earlier version is definitely slicker: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Mr. Webster (1st Recorded Version)"] But at the same time, there's a sense of dynamics in the group recording that's lacking from the original, like the backing dropping out totally on the word "Stop" -- a nice touch that isn't in the original. I am only speculating, but this may have been inspired by the similar emphasis on the word "stop" in "For What It's Worth" by Tork's old friend Stephen Stills: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Mr. Webster (album version)"] Headquarters was a group album in another way though -- for the first time, Tork and Dolenz were bringing in songs they'd written -- Nesmith of course had supplied songs already for the two previous albums. Jones didn't write any songs himself yet, though he'd start on the next album, but he was credited with the rest of the group on two joke tracks, "Band 6", a jam on the Merrie Melodies theme “Merrily We Roll Along”, and "Zilch", a track made up of the four band members repeating nonsense phrases: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Zilch"] Oddly, that track had a rather wider cultural resonance than a piece of novelty joke album filler normally would. It's sometimes covered live by They Might Be Giants: [Excerpt: They Might Be Giants, "Zilch"] While the rapper Del Tha Funkee Homosapien had a worldwide hit in 1991 with "Mistadobalina", built around a sample of Peter Tork from the track: [Excerpt: Del Tha Funkee Homosapien,"Mistadobalina"] Nesmith contributed three songs, all of them combining Beatles-style pop music and country influences, none more blatantly than the opening track, "You Told Me", which starts off parodying the opening of "Taxman", before going into some furious banjo-picking from Tork: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "You Told Me"] Tork, meanwhile, wrote "For Pete's Sake" with his flatmate of the time, and that became the end credits music for season two of the TV series: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "For Pete's Sake"] But while the other band members made important contributions, the track on the album that became most popular was the first song of Dolenz's to be recorded by the group. The lyrics recounted, in a semi-psychedelic manner, Dolenz's time in the UK, including meeting with the Beatles, who the song refers to as "the four kings of EMI", but the first verse is all about his new girlfriend Samantha Juste: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Randy Scouse Git"] The song was released as a single in the UK, but there was a snag. Dolenz had given the song a title he'd heard on an episode of the BBC sitcom Til Death Us Do Part, which he'd found an amusing bit of British slang. Til Death Us Do Part was written by Johnny Speight, a writer with Associated London Scripts, and was a family sitcom based around the character of Alf Garnett, an ignorant, foul-mouthed reactionary bigot who hated young people, socialists, and every form of minority, especially Black people (who he would address by various slurs I'm definitely not going to repeat here), and was permanently angry at the world and abusive to his wife. As with another great sitcom from ALS, Steptoe and Son, which Norman Lear adapted for the US as Sanford and Son, Til Death Us Do Part was also adapted by Lear, and became All in the Family. But while Archie Bunker, the character based on Garnett in the US version, has some redeeming qualities because of the nature of US network sitcom, Alf Garnett has absolutely none, and is as purely unpleasant and unsympathetic a character as has ever been created -- which sadly didn't stop a section of the audience from taking him as a character to be emulated. A big part of the show's dynamic was the relationship between Garnett and his socialist son-in-law from Liverpool, played by Anthony Booth, himself a Liverpudlian socialist who would later have a similarly contentious relationship with his own decidedly non-socialist son-in-law, the future Prime Minister Tony Blair. Garnett was as close to foul-mouthed as was possible on British TV at the time, with Speight regularly negotiating with the BBC bosses to be allowed to use terms that were not otherwise heard on TV, and used various offensive terms about his family, including referring to his son-in-law as a "randy Scouse git". Dolenz had heard the phrase on TV, had no idea what it meant but loved the sound of it, and gave the song that title. But when the record came out in the UK, he was baffled to be told that the phrase -- which he'd picked up from a BBC TV show, after all -- couldn't be said normally on BBC broadcasts, so they would need to retitle the track. The translation into American English that Dolenz uses in his live shows to explain this to Americans is to say that "randy Scouse git" means "horny Liverpudlian putz", and that's more or less right. Dolenz took the need for an alternative title literally, and so the track that went to number two in the UK charts was titled "Alternate Title": [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Randy Scouse Git"] The album itself went to number one in both the US and the UK, though it was pushed off the top spot almost straight away by the release of Sgt Pepper. As sessions for Headquarters were finishing up, the group were already starting to think about their next album -- season two of the TV show was now in production, and they'd need to keep generating yet more musical material for it. One person they turned to was a friend of Chip Douglas'. Before the Turtles, Douglas had been in the Modern Folk Quartet, and they'd recorded "This Could Be the Night", which had been written for them by Harry Nilsson: [Excerpt: The MFQ, "This Could Be The Night"] Nilsson had just started recording his first solo album proper, at RCA Studios, the same studios that the Monkees were using. At this point, Nilsson still had a full-time job in a bank, working a night shift there while working on his album during the day, but Douglas knew that Nilsson was a major talent, and that assessment was soon shared by the group when Nilsson came in to demo nine of his songs for them: [Excerpt: Harry Nilsson, "1941 (demo)"] According to Nilsson, Nesmith said after that demo session "You just sat down there and blew our minds. We've been looking for songs, and you just sat down and played an *album* for us!" While the Monkees would attempt a few of Nilsson's songs over the next year or so, the first one they chose to complete was the first track recorded for their next album, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, and Jones, Ltd., a song which from the talkback at the beginning of the demo was always intended for Davy Jones to sing: [Excerpt: Harry Nilsson, "Cuddly Toy (demo)"] Oddly, given his romantic idol persona, a lot of the songs given to Jones to sing were anti-romantic, and often had a cynical and misogynistic edge. This had started with the first album's "I Want to Be Free", but by Pisces, it had gone to ridiculous extremes. Of the four songs Jones sings on the album, "Hard to Believe", the first song proper that he ever co-wrote, is a straightforward love  song, but the other three have a nasty edge to them. A remade version of Jeff Barry's "She Hangs Out" is about an underaged girl, starts with the lines "How old d'you say your sister was? You know you'd better keep an eye on her" and contains lines like "she could teach you a thing or two" and "you'd better get down here on the double/before she gets her pretty little self in trouble/She's so fine". Goffin and King's "Star Collector" is worse, a song about a groupie with lines like "How can I love her, if I just don't respect her?" and "It won't take much time, before I get her off my mind" But as is so often the way, these rather nasty messages were wrapped up in some incredibly catchy music, and that was even more the case with "Cuddly Toy", a song which at least is more overtly unpleasant -- it's very obvious that Nilsson doesn't intend the protagonist of the song to be at all sympathetic, which is possibly not the case in "She Hangs Out" or "Star Collector". But the character Jones is singing is *viciously* cruel here, mocking and taunting a girl who he's coaxed to have sex with him, only to scorn her as soon as he's got what he wanted: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Cuddly Toy"] It's a great song if you like the cruelest of humour combined with the cheeriest of music, and the royalties from the song allowed Nilsson to quit the job at the bank. "Cuddly Toy", and Chip Douglas and Bill Martin's song "The Door Into Summer", were recorded the same way as Headquarters, with the group playing *as a group*, but as recordings for the album progressed the group fell into a new way of working, which Peter Tork later dubbed "mixed-mode". They didn't go back to having tracks cut for them by session musicians, apart from Jones' song "Hard to Believe", for which the entire backing track was created by one of his co-writers overdubbing himself, but Dolenz, who Tork always said was "incapable of repeating a triumph", was not interested in continuing to play drums in the studio. Instead, a new hybrid Monkees would perform most of the album. Nesmith would still play the lead guitar, Tork would provide the keyboards, Chip Douglas would play all the bass and add some additional guitar, and "Fast" Eddie Hoh, the session drummer who had been a touring drummer with the Modern Folk Quartet and the Mamas and the Papas, among others, would play drums on the records, with Dolenz occasionally adding a bit of acoustic guitar. And this was the lineup that would perform on the hit single from Pisces. "Pleasant Valley Sunday" was written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King, who had written several songs for the group's first two albums (and who would continue to provide them with more songs). As with their earlier songs for the group, King had recorded a demo: [Excerpt: Carole King, "Pleasant Valley Sunday (demo)"] Previously -- and subsequently -- when presented with a Carole King demo, the group and their producers would just try to duplicate it as closely as possible, right down to King's phrasing. Bob Rafelson has said that he would sometimes hear those demos and wonder why King didn't just make records herself -- and without wanting to be too much of a spoiler for a few years' time, he wasn't the only one wondering that. But this time, the group had other plans. In particular, they wanted to make a record with a strong guitar riff to it -- Nesmith has later referenced their own "Last Train to Clarksville" and the Beatles' "Day Tripper" as two obvious reference points for the track. Douglas came up with a riff and taught it to Nesmith, who played it on the track: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Pleasant Valley Sunday"] The track also ended with the strongest psychedelic -- or "psycho jello" as the group would refer to it -- freak out that they'd done to this point, a wash of saturated noise: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Pleasant Valley Sunday"] King was unhappy with the results, and apparently glared at Douglas the next time they met. This may be because of the rearrangement from her intentions, but it may also be for a reason that Douglas later suspected. When recording the track, he hadn't been able to remember all the details of her demo, and in particular he couldn't remember exactly how the middle eight went. This is the version on King's demo: [Excerpt: Carole King, "Pleasant Valley Sunday (demo)"] While here's how the Monkees rendered it, with slightly different lyrics: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Pleasant Valley Sunday"] I also think there's a couple of chord changes in the second verse that differ between King and the Monkees, but I can't be sure that's not my ears deceiving me. Either way, though, the track was a huge success, and became one of the group's most well-known and well-loved tracks, making number three on the charts behind "All You Need is Love" and "Light My Fire". And while it isn't Dolenz drumming on the track, the fact that it's Nesmith playing guitar and Tork on the piano -- and the piano part is one of the catchiest things on the record -- meant that they finally had a proper major hit on which they'd played (and it seems likely that Dolenz contributed some of the acoustic rhythm guitar on the track, along with Bill Chadwick, and if that's true all three Monkee instrumentalists did play on the track). Pisces is by far and away the best album the group ever made, and stands up well against anything else that came out around that time. But cracks were beginning to show in the group. In particular, the constant battle to get some sort of creative input had soured Nesmith on the whole project. Chip Douglas later said "When we were doing Pisces Michael would come in with three songs; he knew he had three songs coming on the album. He knew that he was making a lot of money if he got his original songs on there. So he'd be real enthusiastic and cooperative and real friendly and get his three songs done. Then I'd say 'Mike, can you come in and help on this one we're going to do with Micky here?' He said 'No, Chip, I can't. I'm busy.' I'd say, 'Mike, you gotta come in the studio.' He'd say 'No Chip, I'm afraid I'm just gonna have to be ornery about it. I'm not comin' in.' That's when I started not liking Mike so much any more." Now, as is so often the case with the stories from this period, this appears to be inaccurate in the details -- Nesmith is present on every track on the album except Jones' solo "Hard to Believe" and Tork's spoken-word track "Peter Percival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky", and indeed this is by far the album with *most* Nesmith input, as he takes five lead vocals, most of them on songs he didn't write. But Douglas may well be summing up Nesmith's *attitude* to the band at this point -- listening to Nesmith's commentaries on episodes of the TV show, by this point he felt disengaged from everything that was going on, like his opinions weren't welcome. That said, Nesmith did still contribute what is possibly the single most innovative song the group ever did, though the innovations weren't primarily down to Nesmith: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Daily Nightly"] Nesmith always described the lyrics to "Daily Nightly" as being about the riots on Sunset Strip, but while they're oblique, they seem rather to be about streetwalking sex workers -- though it's perhaps understandable that Nesmith would never admit as much. What made the track innovative was the use of the Moog synthesiser. We talked about Robert Moog in the episode on "Good Vibrations" -- he had started out as a Theremin manufacturer, and had built the ribbon synthesiser that Mike Love played live on "Good Vibrations", and now he was building the first commercially available easily usable synthesisers. Previously, electronic instruments had either been things like the clavioline -- a simple monophonic keyboard instrument that didn't have much tonal variation -- or the RCA Mark II, a programmable synth that could make a wide variety of sounds, but took up an entire room and was programmed with punch cards. Moog's machines were bulky but still transportable, and they could be played in real time with a keyboard, but were still able to be modified to make a wide variety of different sounds. While, as we've seen, there had been electronic keyboard instruments as far back as the 1930s, Moog's instruments were for all intents and purposes the first synthesisers as we now understand the term. The Moog was introduced in late spring 1967, and immediately started to be used for making experimental and novelty records, like Hal Blaine's track "Love In", which came out at the beginning of June: [Excerpt: Hal Blaine, "Love In"] And the Electric Flag's soundtrack album for The Trip, the drug exploitation film starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper and written by Jack Nicholson we talked about last time, when Arthur Lee moved into a house used in the film: [Excerpt: The Electric Flag, "Peter's Trip"] In 1967 there were a total of six albums released with a Moog on them (as well as one non-album experimental single). Four of the albums were experimental or novelty instrumental albums of this type. Only two of them were rock albums -- Strange Days by the Doors, and Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones Ltd by the Monkees. The Doors album was released first, but I believe the Monkees tracks were recorded before the Doors overdubbed the Moog on the tracks on their album, though some session dates are hard to pin down exactly. If that's the case it would make the Monkees the very first band to use the Moog on an actual rock record (depending on exactly how you count the Trip soundtrack -- this gets back again to my old claim that there's no first anything). But that's not the only way in which "Daily Nightly" was innovative. All the first seven albums to feature the Moog featured one man playing the instrument -- Paul Beaver, the Moog company's West Coast representative, who played on all the novelty records by members of the Wrecking Crew, and on the albums by the Electric Flag and the Doors, and on The Notorious Byrd Brothers by the Byrds, which came out in early 1968. And Beaver did play the Moog on one track on Pisces, "Star Collector". But on "Daily Nightly" it's Micky Dolenz playing the Moog, making him definitely the second person ever to play a Moog on a record of any kind: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Daily Nightly"] Dolenz indeed had bought his own Moog -- widely cited as being the second one ever in private ownership, a fact I can't check but which sounds plausible given that by 1970 less than thirty musicians owned one -- after seeing Beaver demonstrate the instrument at the Monterey Pop Festival. The Monkees hadn't played Monterey, but both Dolenz and Tork had attended the festival -- if you watch the famous film of it you see Dolenz and his girlfriend Samantha in the crowd a *lot*, while Tork introduced his friends in the Buffalo Springfield. As well as discovering the Moog there, Dolenz had been astonished by something else: [Excerpt: The Jimi Hendrix Experience, "Hey Joe (Live at Monterey)"] As Peter Tork later put it "I didn't get it. At Monterey Jimi followed the Who and the Who busted up their things and Jimi bashed up his guitar. I said 'I just saw explosions and destruction. Who needs it?' But Micky got it. He saw the genius and went for it." Dolenz was astonished by Hendrix, and insisted that he should be the support act on the group's summer tour. This pairing might sound odd on paper, but it made more sense at the time than it might sound. The Monkees were by all accounts a truly astonishing live act at this point -- Frank Zappa gave them a backhanded compliment by saying they were the best-sounding band in LA, before pointing out that this was because they could afford the best equipment. That *was* true, but it was also the case that their TV experience gave them a different attitude to live performance than anyone else performing at the time. A handful of groups had started playing stadiums, most notably of course the Beatles, but all of these acts had come up through playing clubs and theatres and essentially just kept doing their old act with no thought as to how the larger space worked, except to put their amps through a louder PA. The Monkees, though, had *started* in stadiums, and had started out as mass entertainers, and so their live show was designed from the ground up to play to those larger spaces. They had costume changes, elaborate stage sets -- like oversized fake Vox amps they burst out of at the start of the show -- a light show and a screen on which film footage was projected. In effect they invented stadium performances as we now know them. Nesmith later said "In terms of putting on a show there was never any question in my mind, as far as the rock 'n' roll era is concerned, that we put on probably the finest rock and roll stage show ever. It was beautifully lit, beautifully costumed, beautifully produced. I mean, for Christ sakes, it was practically a revue." The Monkees were confident enough in their stage performance that at a recent show at the Hollywood Bowl they'd had Ike and Tina Turner as their opening act -- not an act you'd want to go on after if you were going to be less than great, and an act from very similar chitlin' circuit roots to Jimi Hendrix. So from their perspective, it made sense. If you're going to be spectacular yourselves, you have no need to fear a spectacular opening act. Hendrix was less keen -- he was about the only musician in Britain who *had* made disparaging remarks about the Monkees -- but opening for the biggest touring band in the world isn't an opportunity you pass up, and again it isn't such a departure as one might imagine from the bills he was already playing. Remember that Monterey is really the moment when "pop" and "rock" started to split -- the split we've been talking about for a few months now -- and so the Jimi Hendrix Experience were still considered a pop band, and as such had played the normal British pop band package tours. In March and April that year, they'd toured on a bill with the Walker Brothers, Cat Stevens, and Englebert Humperdinck -- and Hendrix had even filled in for Humperdinck's sick guitarist on one occasion. Nesmith, Dolenz, and Tork all loved having Hendrix on tour with them, just because it gave them a chance to watch him live every night (Jones, whose musical tastes were more towards Anthony Newley, wasn't especially impressed), and they got on well on a personal level -- there are reports of Hendrix jamming with Dolenz and Steve Stills in hotel rooms. But there was one problem, as Dolenz often recreates in his live act: [Excerpt: Micky Dolenz, "Purple Haze"] The audience response to Hendrix from the Monkees' fans was so poor that by mutual agreement he left the tour after only a handful of shows. After the summer tour, the group went back to work on the TV show and their next album. Or, rather, four individuals went back to work. By this point, the group had drifted apart from each other, and from Douglas -- Tork, the one who was still keenest on the idea of the group as a group, thought that Pisces, good as it was, felt like a Chip Douglas album rather than a Monkees album. The four band members had all by now built up their own retinues of hangers-on and collaborators, and on set for the TV show they were now largely staying with their own friends rather than working as a group. And that was now reflected in their studio work. From now on, rather than have a single producer working with them as a band, the four men would work as individuals, producing their own tracks, occasionally with outside help, and bringing in session musicians to work on them. Some tracks from this point on would be genuine Monkees -- plural -- tracks, and all tracks would be credited as "produced by the Monkees", but basically the four men would from now on be making solo tracks which would be combined into albums, though Dolenz and Jones would occasionally guest on tracks by the others, especially when Nesmith came up with a song he thought would be more suited to their voices. Indeed the first new recording that happened after the tour was an entire Nesmith solo album -- a collection of instrumental versions of his songs, called The Wichita Train Whistle Sings, played by members of the Wrecking Crew and a few big band instrumentalists, arranged by Shorty Rogers. [Excerpt: Michael Nesmith, "You Told Me"] Hal Blaine in his autobiography claimed that the album was created as a tax write-off for Nesmith, though Nesmith always vehemently denied it, and claimed it was an artistic experiment, though not one that came off well. Released alongside Pisces, though, came one last group-recorded single. The B-side, "Goin' Down", is a song that was credited to the group and songwriter Diane Hildebrand, though in fact it developed from a jam on someone else's song. Nesmith, Tork, Douglas and Hoh attempted to record a backing track for a version of Mose Allison's jazz-blues standard "Parchman Farm": [Excerpt: Mose Allison, "Parchman Farm"] But after recording it, they'd realised that it didn't sound that much like the original, and that all it had in common with it was a chord sequence. Nesmith suggested that rather than put it out as a cover version, they put a new melody and lyrics to it, and they commissioned Hildebrand, who'd co-written songs for the group before, to write them, and got Shorty Rogers to write a horn arrangement to go over their backing track. The eventual songwriting credit was split five ways, between Hildebrand and the four Monkees -- including Davy Jones who had no involvement with the recording, but not including Douglas or Hoh. The lyrics Hildebrand came up with were a funny patter song about a failed suicide, taken at an extremely fast pace, which Dolenz pulls off magnificently: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Goin' Down"] The A-side, another track with a rhythm track by Nesmith, Tork, Douglas, and Hoh, was a song that had been written by John Stewart of the Kingston Trio, who you may remember from the episode on "San Francisco" as being a former songwriting partner of John Phillips. Stewart had written the song as part of a "suburbia trilogy", and was not happy with the finished product. He said later "I remember going to bed thinking 'All I did today was write 'Daydream Believer'." Stewart used to include the song in his solo sets, to no great approval, and had shopped the song around to bands like We Five and Spanky And Our Gang, who had both turned it down. He was unhappy with it himself, because of the chorus: [Excerpt: John Stewart, "Daydream Believer"] Stewart was ADHD, and the words "to a", coming as they did slightly out of the expected scansion for the line, irritated him so greatly that he thought the song could never be recorded by anyone, but when Chip Douglas asked if he had any songs, he suggested that one. As it turned out, there was a line of lyric that almost got the track rejected, but it wasn't the "to a". Stewart's original second verse went like this: [Excerpt: John Stewart, "Daydream Believer"] RCA records objected to the line "now you know how funky I can be" because funky, among other meanings, meant smelly, and they didn't like the idea of Davy Jones singing about being smelly. Chip Douglas phoned Stewart to tell him that they were insisting on changing the line, and suggesting "happy" instead. Stewart objected vehemently -- that change would reverse the entire meaning of the line, and it made no sense, and what about artistic integrity? But then, as he later said "He said 'Let me put it to you this way, John. If he can't sing 'happy' they won't do it'. And I said 'Happy's working real good for me now.' That's exactly what I said to him." He never regretted the decision -- Stewart would essentially live off the royalties from "Daydream Believer" for the rest of his life -- though he seemed always to be slightly ambivalent and gently mocking about the song in his own performances, often changing the lyrics slightly: [Excerpt: John Stewart, "Daydream Believer"] The Monkees had gone into the studio and cut the track, again with Tork on piano, Nesmith on guitar, Douglas on bass, and Hoh on drums. Other than changing "funky" to "happy", there were two major changes made in the studio. One seems to have been Douglas' idea -- they took the bass riff from the pre-chorus to the Beach Boys' "Help Me Rhonda": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Help Me Rhonda"] and Douglas played that on the bass as the pre-chorus for "Daydream Believer", with Shorty Rogers later doubling it in the horn arrangement: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Daydream Believer"] And the other is the piano intro, which also becomes an instrumental bridge, which was apparently the invention of Tork, who played it: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Daydream Believer"] The track went to number one, becoming the group's third and final number one hit, and their fifth of six million-sellers. It was included on the next album, The Birds, The Bees, and the Monkees, but that piano part would be Tork's only contribution to the album. As the group members were all now writing songs and cutting their own tracks, and were also still rerecording the odd old unused song from the initial 1966 sessions, The Birds, The Bees, and the Monkees was pulled together from a truly astonishing amount of material. The expanded triple-CD version of the album, now sadly out of print, has multiple versions of forty-four different songs, ranging from simple acoustic demos to completed tracks, of which twelve were included on the final album. Tork did record several tracks during the sessions, but he spent much of the time recording and rerecording a single song, "Lady's Baby", which eventually stretched to five different recorded versions over multiple sessions in a five-month period. He racked up huge studio bills on the track, bringing in Steve Stills and Dewey Martin of the Buffalo Springfield, and Buddy Miles, to try to help him capture the sound in his head, but the various takes are almost indistinguishable from one another, and so it's difficult to see what the problem was: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Lady's Baby"] Either way, the track wasn't finished by the time the album came out, and the album that came out was a curiously disjointed and unsatisfying effort, a mixture of recycled old Boyce and Hart songs, some songs by Jones, who at this point was convinced that "Broadway-rock" was going to be the next big thing and writing songs that sounded like mediocre showtunes, and a handful of experimental songs written by Nesmith. You could pull together a truly great ten- or twelve-track album from the masses of material they'd recorded, but the one that came out was mediocre at best, and became the first Monkees album not to make number one -- though it still made number three and sold in huge numbers. It also had the group's last million-selling single on it, "Valleri", an old Boyce and Hart reject from 1966 that had been remade with Boyce and Hart producing and their old session players, though the production credit was still now given to the Monkees: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Valleri"] Nesmith said at the time he considered it the worst song ever written. The second season of the TV show was well underway, and despite -- or possibly because of -- the group being clearly stoned for much of the filming, it contains a lot of the episodes that fans of the group think of most fondly, including several episodes that break out of the formula the show had previously established in interesting ways. Tork and Dolenz were both also given the opportunity to direct episodes, and Dolenz also co-wrote his episode, which ended up being the last of the series. In another sign of how the group were being given more creative control over the show, the last three episodes of the series had guest appearances by favourite musicians of the group members who they wanted to give a little exposure to, and those guest appearances sum up the character of the band members remarkably well. Tork, for whatever reason, didn't take up this option, but the other three did. Jones brought on his friend Charlie Smalls, who would later go on to write the music for the Broadway musical The Wiz, to demonstrate to Jones the difference between Smalls' Black soul and Jones' white soul: [Excerpt: Davy Jones and Charlie Smalls] Nesmith, on the other hand, brought on Frank Zappa. Zappa put on Nesmith's Monkee shirt and wool hat and pretended to be Nesmith, and interviewed Nesmith with a false nose and moustache pretending to be Zappa, as they both mercilessly mocked the previous week's segment with Jones and Smalls: [Excerpt: Michael Nesmith and Frank Zappa] Nesmith then "conducted" Zappa as Zappa used a sledgehammer to "play" a car, parodying his own appearance on the Steve Allen Show playing a bicycle, to the presumed bemusement of the Monkees' fanbase who would not be likely to remember a one-off performance on a late-night TV show from five years earlier. And the final thing ever to be shown on an episode of the Monkees didn't feature any of the Monkees at all. Micky Dolenz, who directed and co-wrote that episode, about an evil wizard who was using the power of a space plant (named after the group's slang for dope) to hypnotise people through the TV, chose not to interact with his guest as the others had, but simply had Tim Buckley perform a solo acoustic version of his then-unreleased song "Song to the Siren": [Excerpt: Tim Buckley, "Song to the Siren"] By the end of the second season, everyone knew they didn't want to make another season of the TV show. Instead, they were going to do what Rafelson and Schneider had always wanted, and move into film. The planning stages for the film, which was initially titled Changes but later titled Head -- so that Rafelson and Schneider could bill their next film as "From the guys who gave you Head" -- had started the previous summer, before the sessions that produced The Birds, The Bees, and the Monkees. To write the film, the group went off with Rafelson and Schneider for a short holiday, and took with them their mutual friend Jack Nicholson. Nicholson was at this time not the major film star he later became. Rather he was a bit-part actor who was mostly associated with American International Pictures, the ultra-low-budget film company that has come up on several occasions in this podcast. Nicholson had appeared mostly in small roles, in films like The Little Shop of Horrors: [Excerpt: The Little Shop of Horrors] He'd appeared in multiple films made by Roger Corman, often appearing with Boris Karloff, and by Monte Hellman, but despite having been a working actor for a decade, his acting career was going nowhere, and by this point he had basically given up on the idea of being an actor, and had decided to start working behind the camera. He'd written the scripts for a few of the low-budget films he'd appeared in, and he'd recently scripted The Trip, the film we mentioned earlier: [Excerpt: The Trip trailer] So the group, Rafelson, Schneider, and Nicholson all went away for a weekend, and they all got extremely stoned, took acid, and talked into a tape recorder for hours on end. Nicholson then transcribed those recordings, cleaned them up, and structured the worthwhile ideas into something quite remarkable: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Ditty Diego"] If the Monkees TV show had been inspired by the Marx Brothers and Three Stooges, and by Richard Lester's directorial style, the only precursor I can find for Head is in the TV work of Lester's colleague Spike Milligan, but I don't think there's any reasonable way in which Nicholson or anyone else involved could have taken inspiration from Milligan's series Q.  But what they ended up with is something that resembles, more than anything else, Monty Python's Flying Circus, a TV series that wouldn't start until a year after Head came out. It's a series of ostensibly unconnected sketches, linked by a kind of dream logic, with characters wandering from one loose narrative into a totally different one, actors coming out of character on a regular basis, and no attempt at a coherent narrative. It contains regular examples of channel-zapping, with excerpts from old films being spliced in, and bits of news footage juxtaposed with comedy sketches and musical performances in ways that are sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes distasteful, and occasionally both -- as when a famous piece of footage of a Vietnamese prisoner of war being shot in the head hard-cuts to screaming girls in the audience at a Monkees concert, a performance which ends with the girls tearing apart the group and revealing that they're really just cheap-looking plastic mannequins. The film starts, and ends, with the Monkees themselves attempting suicide, jumping off a bridge into the ocean -- but the end reveals that in fact the ocean they're in is just water in a glass box, and they're trapped in it. And knowing this means that when you watch the film a second time, you find that it does have a story. The Monkees are trapped in a box which in some ways represents life, the universe, and one's own mind, and in other ways represents the TV and their TV careers. Each of them is trying in his own way to escape, and each ends up trapped by his own limitations, condemned to start the cycle over and over again. The film features parodies of popular film genres like the boxing film (Davy is supposed to throw a fight with Sonny Liston at the instruction of gangsters), the Western, and the war film, but huge chunks of the film take place on a film studio backlot, and characters from one segment reappear in another, often commenting negatively on the film or the band, as when Frank Zappa as a critic calls Davy Jones' soft-shoe routine to a Harry Nilsson song "very white", or when a canteen worker in the studio calls the group "God's gift to the eight-year-olds". The film is constantly deconstructing and commenting on itself and the filmmaking process -- Tork hits that canteen worker, whose wig falls off revealing the actor playing her to be a man, and then it's revealed that the "behind the scenes" footage is itself scripted, as director Bob Rafelson and scriptwriter Jack Nicholson come into frame and reassure Tork, who's concerned that hitting a woman would be bad for his image. They tell him they can always cut it from the finished film if it doesn't work. While "Ditty Diego", the almost rap rewriting of the Monkees theme we heard earlier, sets out a lot of how the film asks to be interpreted and how it works narratively, the *spiritual* and thematic core of the film is in another song, Tork's "Long Title (Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?)", which in later solo performances Tork would give the subtitle "The Karma Blues": [Excerpt: The Monkees, "Long Title (Do I Have To Do This All Over Again?)"] Head is an extraordinary film, and one it's impossible to sum up in anything less than an hour-long episode of its own. It's certainly not a film that's to everyone's taste, and not every aspect of it works -- it is a film that is absolutely of its time, in ways that are both good and bad. But it's one of the most inventive things ever put out by a major film studio, and it's one that rightly secured the Monkees a certain amount of cult credibility over the decades. The soundtrack album is a return to form after the disappointing Birds, Bees, too. Nicholson put the album together, linking the eight songs in the film with collages of dialogue and incidental music, repurposing and recontextualising the dialogue to create a new experience, one that people have compared with Frank Zappa's contemporaneous We're Only In It For The Money, though while t