Podcast appearances and mentions of Spencer Davis

Brian Auger honestly states in this podcast, “Being a professional musician and making a living at it wasn't planned, it just happened.” British Keyboard artist Brian Auger has played with the best of the best - Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Sonny Boy Williamson, Rod Stewart, Eric Burdon, John McLaughlin , Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Spencer Davis just to name a few. His groups were The Trinity with Julie Driscoll and the Oblivion Express as well as playing in many sessions with major artists. In this insightful podcast Brian takes us from being bombed by Hitler's troops  as a young boy in the streets of London to his becoming a world class musician specializing in the Hammond B3 organ. Brian sums up his approach to playing music with the following quote:     “I'm never dissatisfied with the reaction to albums because there are certain albums that I made in the ‘70s and the ‘60s that sold poor and people want them. It seems to pick up different generations as it goes along. I don't worry about that. I just worry that the tracks that we would put, have a meaning to them, they mean something to me. Each album is like a page in my musical diary: Where I am musically at that time. I am not looking to write something for any kind of need in the marketplace or anything like that. I am just trying to make the best music that I can make and put it out there.”

Dave Pegg joined Fairport Convention 56 years ago and fully deserves some sort of medal. They're playing their 49th Cropredy in August and touring the UK later in the year. He talks to us here about the first gigs he ever saw and played which, delightfully, involves … … the night Hank Marvin took him to see Bjork. … an all-nighter in Birmingham with John Mayall, Eric Clapton, Chris Farlowe and Spencer Davis.   … memories of his “school hero” Denny Laine. … the fine art of getting it together in the country: life at the Angel pub in Little Hadham – “flea-bitten, enough hot water for one person and a lorry crashed through the wall into Dave Swarbrick's bedroom”. … the link between ticket sales and high blood pressure. … what not to do when you meet McCartney. … a night on the whisky with Rick Danko that ended in hospital. … how a band lasts 58 years without falling out. … the Island albums that made their reputation but never earned them any money. … unsung Birmingham acts: Denny Laine & the Diplomats (Bev Bevan on drums), Steve Gibbons in the Uglys, Jeff Lynne in the Idle Race. … narrowboats, pewter ale jugs, outdoor settees, Matty Groves, Meet On The Ledge and other cornerstones of the Cropredy experience.… Dave Swarbrick's “small holding” and further assorted knob gags. Fairport Convention tickets here: https://www.davepegg.co.uk/gigs/fairportgigs/ Cropredy tickets here: https://www.fairportconvention.com/Find out more about how to 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.

Dave Pegg joined Fairport Convention 56 years ago and fully deserves some sort of medal. They're playing their 49th Cropredy in August and touring the UK later in the year. He talks to us here about the first gigs he ever saw and played which, delightfully, involves … … the night Hank Marvin took him to see Bjork. … an all-nighter in Birmingham with John Mayall, Eric Clapton, Chris Farlowe and Spencer Davis.   … memories of his “school hero” Denny Laine. … the fine art of getting it together in the country: life at the Angel pub in Little Hadham – “flea-bitten, enough hot water for one person and a lorry crashed through the wall into Dave Swarbrick's bedroom”. … the link between ticket sales and high blood pressure. … what not to do when you meet McCartney. … a night on the whisky with Rick Danko that ended in hospital. … how a band lasts 58 years without falling out. … the Island albums that made their reputation but never earned them any money. … unsung Birmingham acts: Denny Laine & the Diplomats (Bev Bevan on drums), Steve Gibbons in the Uglys, Jeff Lynne in the Idle Race. … narrowboats, pewter ale jugs, outdoor settees, Matty Groves, Meet On The Ledge and other cornerstones of the Cropredy experience.… Dave Swarbrick's “small holding” and further assorted knob gags. Fairport Convention tickets here: https://www.davepegg.co.uk/gigs/fairportgigs/ Cropredy tickets here: https://www.fairportconvention.com/Find out more about how to 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.

Dave Pegg joined Fairport Convention 56 years ago and fully deserves some sort of medal. They're playing their 49th Cropredy in August and touring the UK later in the year. He talks to us here about the first gigs he ever saw and played which, delightfully, involves … … the night Hank Marvin took him to see Bjork. … an all-nighter in Birmingham with John Mayall, Eric Clapton, Chris Farlowe and Spencer Davis.   … memories of his “school hero” Denny Laine. … the fine art of getting it together in the country: life at the Angel pub in Little Hadham – “flea-bitten, enough hot water for one person and a lorry crashed through the wall into Dave Swarbrick's bedroom”. … the link between ticket sales and high blood pressure. … what not to do when you meet McCartney. … a night on the whisky with Rick Danko that ended in hospital. … how a band lasts 58 years without falling out. … the Island albums that made their reputation but never earned them any money. … unsung Birmingham acts: Denny Laine & the Diplomats (Bev Bevan on drums), Steve Gibbons in the Uglys, Jeff Lynne in the Idle Race. … narrowboats, pewter ale jugs, outdoor settees, Matty Groves, Meet On The Ledge and other cornerstones of the Cropredy experience.… Dave Swarbrick's “small holding” and further assorted knob gags. Fairport Convention tickets here: https://www.davepegg.co.uk/gigs/fairportgigs/ Cropredy tickets here: https://www.fairportconvention.com/Find out more about how to 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.

Front Row Classics is celebrating the 100th birthday of Robert Altman by taking a look at one of his greatest works. Brandon is joined by Spencer Davis to discuss 1971's McCabe and Mrs, Miller. Brandon and Spencer discuss this classic anti-Western which features stellar performances from Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. The hosts also discuss the spectacular screenplay by Altman and Brian McKay as well as the tone-setting songs by Leonard Cohen.

McCabe and Mrs Miller Front Row Classics is celebrating the 100th birthday of Robert Altman by taking a look at one of his greatest works. Brandon is joined by Spencer Davis to discuss 1971’s McCabe and Mrs, Miller. Brandon and Spencer discuss this classic anti-Western which features stellar performances from Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. … Continue reading Ep. 297- McCabe and Mrs. Miller →

Jim Tretow hosts The Bullring, joined by guests Derek Thorn, Spencer Davis, Bob Sargent, Wade Lopez, and Taylor Hoar.

Captain Spencer Davis of Norfolk Fire & Rescue along with previous Kitchen Table guest Battalion Chief Jarrod Sergi join the show today to talk about forming a team, building and maintaining credibility, getting out of your comfort zone and a whole lot more. Leaders must build relationships, immerse themselves in the culture, and study the craft each and every day. Remember that leadership is just another discipline. You must continuously hone the skill and sharpen it, because just like any other skill, you can lose your effectiveness without doing so.

In this session, Spencer Davis talks about how we can easily put things before God—things like people, ideas, or possessions. Using the story of the Golden Calf in Exodus 32, Spencer shows how even the Israelites, who saw God's miracles, turned to idols. If they could fall into idolatry, so can we.Spencer explains that idols aren't just statues; they're anything we love or trust more than God. Spencer reminds us that only God can truly satisfy our desires. To fight idolatry, we need to focus on Christ and stay grounded in His Word.Exodus 32Colossians 3:5No Sanity Required PodcastPlease leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help others grow in their faith. Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.

When you're talking with someone and they want to know what final conclusion you want them to draw from your conversation, they might ask you, “What's the bottom line?” The origin of the term, “the bottom line,” is business accounting. It refers to the literal bottom line of a financial statement - a company's profit or loss. This literal bottom line is what we typically regard as the sole point of a business: the bigger the profit, the better the business. But today there are also businesses we refer to as Triple Bottom Line. These companies have three equal categories of success: profit, people, and purpose. Both of Peter's guests on Out to Lunch today have founded triple bottom line companies here in New Orleans. Along with his partner, Charon Flowers Maple, Spencer Davis co-founded Bypass Lines in 2020. Bypass Lines works with local restaurants, caterers and retailers. It promotes them to customers who support non-profit causes. Each time Bypass Lines delivers food or products to these customers, they give a portion of the proceeds to the customer's chosen charity. As of right now, Bypass Lines report they've supported over 100 catering businesses, delivered over 1,000 online food orders, and over $1m has been processed through their platform. Lauren Darnell founded her company, Porch & Okra Consulting, in 2023. Porch & Okra's clients are mainly restaurant owners and other hospitality industry leaders looking to expand diversity, and improve conditions for employees in the hospitality and restaurant business - one of the most vital sectors of the New Orleans economy.  How many of us care enough about other people to devote our professional lives to helping them? Not many. Spencer, Lauren and their companies, Bypass Lines and Porch & Okra Consulting, are exceptions to the rule. Making other people's welfare the focus of a business - and putting people and purpose on an equal plane as profit - is ambitious. It's hard work that requires multiple levels of planning and execution. Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans. You can find photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at itsneworleans.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Spencer Davis was a British rock musician and bandleader who became a major figure in the 1960s British Invasion, most notably as the founder of The Spencer Davis Group. Born in Swansea, Wales, Davis began his musical journey at a young age, inspired by American blues, jazz, and skiffle music. After moving to Birmingham to attend university, Davis immersed himself in the city's burgeoning music scene, forming the Rhythm and Blues Quartet in 1963, which quickly evolved into The Spencer Davis Group. The band's classic lineup—featuring Spencer Davis on guitar and vocals, Steve Winwood on keyboards and vocals, Muff Winwood on bass, and Pete York on drums—created a distinctive blend of R&B, blues, and rock. With Steve Winwood's soulful voice at the forefront, the band quickly found success with chart-topping hits like "Keep On Running," "Somebody Help Me," "Gimme Some Lovin'," and "I'm a Man." These tracks became iconic anthems of the era, solidifying their place in British rock history. The Spencer Davis Group was known for its energetic performances and blues-driven sound, and their influence extended across the Atlantic, helping to shape the sound of the British Invasion in the U.S. Davis's keen eye for talent was evident in his discovery of Steve Winwood, whose vocals and keyboard skills were integral to the group's success. While Steve Winwood's presence made the band famous, Davis was the guiding force, handling the management and direction of the group. When Winwood left in 1967 to form Traffic, The Spencer Davis Group underwent changes but continued to release music. Though the post-Winwood years didn't achieve the same level of success, Davis remained an active and passionate musician. He relocated to the U.S. in the late 1970s and became involved in various music projects, including collaborations with other musicians and solo work. He also became an advocate for preserving the legacy of 1960s rock music. Spencer Davis's contributions to rock extended beyond just his band's success. He played a crucial role in bringing American blues and R&B influences into the British mainstream, helping shape the direction of rock music in the 1960s. His ability to bridge these genres created a lasting impact on both sides of the Atlantic. Davis continued performing well into his later years, touring and reuniting with various iterations of The Spencer Davis Group. His career, spanning over six decades, is a testament to his enduring passion for music. Spencer Davis passed away in 2020 at the age of 81, leaving behind a legacy that continues to inspire generations of musicians. His influence on rock music, particularly the fusion of blues and rock, remains a cornerstone of his legacy. As the leader of one of the British Invasion's most iconic bands, Spencer Davis helped to define the sound of an era, and his contributions to music continue to resonate today. This week we're joined by Spencer's friend and bandmate, Ed Tree who is a highly respected American guitarist, producer, and songwriter known for his versatile work across genres like rock, Americana, country, and blues. He gained widespread recognition for his collaboration with British rock icon Spencer Davis, performing as Davis's guitarist and musical partner for many years. Tree's exceptional guitar skills and keen musical sensibilities made him an integral part of Davis's live performances, adding depth to the iconic sound of The Spencer Davis Group in its later iterations. Beyond his work with Spencer, Ed Tree has enjoyed a rich career as a session musician, playing with renowned artists such as Rita Coolidge, Juice Newton, and Al Stewart. He has also produced numerous albums, further solidifying his reputation in the music industry. As a songwriter, Tree has contributed to a wide array of projects, showcasing his talent for crafting songs that resonate across multiple genres. Ed honours his friend Spencer by sharing his story with us.

On this episode of Stickered Up host Stephen Dunn welcomes Pro Late Model winner Spencer Davis. The season is winding down and things are heating up on the track. Buckle up this edition of Stickered Up starts right now. stockcarracing, stockcar, nascar, racing, motorsport, racecar, stockcars, motorsports, nascarracing , ovalracing, grassroots, grassrootsracing, speedway, racetrack, superlatemodels,See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Spencer Davis, zMAX CARS Tour winner at South Boston Speedway; George Loux, Carolina Sprint Tour winner at Halifax County Speedway; Ryan Zima, Florence Motor Speedway Track Champion in the US Legends Series are this week's guests.

Episode 104 is on the scene with the 2024 Budweiser Limited Sportsman Division Champion from South Boston Speedway Jason Myers. Myers discusses going back to back in what was an extremely competitive Limited Sportsman Division in 2024 and his preparations to go for a Martinsville Speedway grandfather clock in two weeks. This is the second part of our champions spotlight from South Boston Speedway.Danny Bohn recently picked up his first career SMART Modified Tour win at Carteret County on Labor Day Weekend. Bohn joins the show coming off a third place finish at Dominion over the weekend. Bohn discusses his big season on the SMART Tour, his past NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and Xfinity Series opportunities and how he feels the current SMART Modified Tour stacks up with the former NASCAR Southern Modified Tour a decade ago and much more!We had a conversation with Carson Kvapil who returned to zMAX CARS Tour victory lane on Saturday at South Boston. We discuss his goals for the rest of the season which includes Martinsville and finishing up this season on Tour strong as well as his Xfinity Series opportunities the rest of the season.We break down the AutosByNelson.com 280 CARS Tour race from South Boston. Ryan Millington dominated but Kvapil was the one who reminded everyone why he was on top the last two seasons. We also discuss another solid run by rookie Treyton Lapcevich, the game plan Brenden Queen is following towards a championship and how Connor Hall turned a tough night into a solid seventh place run. We also discuss Spencer Davis going back to back on the Pro Late Model side and more!We also break down the SMART Modified Tour race from Dominion. Luke Baldwin loves racing in Virginia as he has two wins in the commonwealth with his dominating win on Saturday. We discuss the run by Jimmy Showtime Blewett and set up for the upcoming playoff races at South Boston and North Wilkesboro now that the upcoming race at Lonesome Pine was canceled due to rain. Other topics of discussion include.Connor Zilisch history making Xfinity Series win and ARCA Domination. Chris Buescher taking advantage of a rare SVG mistake, big names outside the playoff bubble, damaged vehicle policies and more from Watkins Glen. We also set the scene for the last race in the first round of the playoffs from Bristol,  championship battles to be decided at Franklin County Speedway as well as the STAR Super Stock Tour's next race at the same facility and some fun facts about the Valley Star 300 at Martinsville Speedway as we are inching ever so closer to the biggest Late Model event of the year on September 28th!This and so much more on DLN!!

News:Well, here we are for another fun packed trip from the Time Tunnel, Love Bubble of Aural joy I call The Good Man's Radio Show.Once more I've included a few more familiar Groups/Bands/Artists to keep you all grounded but there's plenty of eclectic tunes in the fray for those more adventurous in nature. I hope you enjoy the show as much as I do in making them and if so, please, please share the joy and get the show out in the ether.https://www.facebook.com/TheGoodmansRadioShowPodcast https://www.buzzsprout.com/852472/14675743 https://twitter.com/TheGood_Man7 https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/info18264   Tracklist:1       To Save My Soul – Freedom Five2       Daddy Long Legs – Lindsay Muir's Untamed3       Your Love Is Gone – Trouble Bros.4       Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out – Fever Tree5       Back in Your Life Again – The Love Affair6       Morning Sun (Alt ver) – The Spencer Davis group7       I'm Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band) – The Moody Blues8       Ksilioy – Burning Red Ivanhoe9       In My Own Time – Family10   Indian Queens – Michael Chapman11   Maisie Jones – Nimbo12   Hate Street Dialogue – Rodriguez13   Visions of Molly – Blair Smith14   Imaginations of Alice – Deep Feeling15   Butterfly – The Fox16   Going All the Way – The Squires17   Lonely Avenue – Peter & Gordon18   Ev'rybody's Talking ‘Bout My baby – The Beatstalkers19   Your mother Thinks I'm a Hoodlum – Savwinkle & Turnerhopper20   The Lobster – Fairport Convention21   Good Thing – Paul Revere & The Raiders22   Gypsy (of a Strange and Distant Time) – The Moody Blues23   Gotta Get Through to You – Eden Kane24   Stupidity – The Booker T's25   Leave my Woman Alone – Peter & Gordon26   Land of One Thousand dances – The Action27   Sitting on a Blunestone – Tales of Justine28   My Prayer – Tintern Abbey29   Night of The Long Grass – The troggs30   The Pie – The Sutherland Brothers Band31   Didn't want to Have to Do It ver.2 – Cass Elliot/The Lovin' Spoonful32   You Showed Me – The Turtles

Front Row Classics is taking a look at the 1980 Oscar winner for Best Picture this week. Brandon is joined by Spencer Davis to discuss Robert Redford's Ordinary People. The film, which marked Redford's directorial debut, was a huge hit despite its very complex subject matter. It very sensitively portrays topics such as mental illness , grief and family dysfunction. Brandon and Spencer highlight the remarkable performances of Mary Tyler Moore, Donald Sutherland, Judd Hirsch and the and Oscar-winning performance by Timothy Hutton. The movie is often remembered as the film that "beat Raging Bull for Best Picture". But, we hope this discussion will inspire you to re-discover this remarkable piece of filmmaking. 

Ordinary People Front Row Classics is taking a look at the 1980 Oscar winner for Best Picture this week. Brandon is joined by Spencer Davis to discuss Robert Redford’s Ordinary People. The film, which marked Redford’s directorial debut, was a huge hit despite its very complex subject matter. It very sensitively portrays topics such as … Continue reading Ep. 214- Ordinary People →

What is shaping the way you view relationships and sexuality? The world is pressuring students to figure out their gender identity. We need to seek Christ and show students how to fight sexual immorality. In this episode, Brody points out 4 things we can learn from Romans 12 that push us to commit to walking with Christ in this area of our lives.Pornography and sexual immorality are heart issues. As we're being conformed into the image of Christ, we're going to make mistakes. But we can live in freedom because we have Christ's Spirit living in us. Brody also sits down with Spencer Davis to discuss what renewing our minds practically looks like. If we walk by the Spirit, we won't gratify the flesh. Let's set our minds on things above and rest in the freedom we have in Christ. Resources:Romans 12Romans 7Snowbird Podcast SessionsThe Griz PodcastPlease leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help improve No Sanity Required and help others grow in their faith. Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.

    An unusual second set setlist and an unusual guest highlight this week's Deadpod from February 12, 1989 in Los Angeles.  Following an opening 'Iko, Iko', Bob breaks out 'Monkey and the Engineer' for the final time, although it sounds a bit different than in the past due to Bob's different timing of the verses. 'Alabama Getaway' follows, another unusual second set choice, then again, 'Dire Wolf', if with a bit of a ragged chorus.A nice version of 'Cassidy' follows, then 'Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again' - with Dylan adding some vocals when Bobby 'forgets' in the middle of the song..  An interesting 'Other One' follows post-drums, with a Kodo drummer adding some intensity, but it is a bit shorter than usual.. 'Stella Blue' follows and flows into a set closing 'Foolish Heart'. A nice double encore follows, with Dylan taking the vocals for 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door'..   Grateful Dead Great Western Forum Inglewood, CA 2/12/1989 - Sunday Two     Iko Iko** ; Monkey And The Engineer** ; Alabama Getaway** ; Dire Wolf** ; Cassidy** ; Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again** ; Drums > Space > The Other One*** > Stella Blue > Foolish Heart Encore     Not Fade Away** ; Knockin' On Heaven's Door** * with Spencer Davis ** with Bob Dylan (guitar,vocals on Memphis Blues, Heaven's Door; guitar only on the others) *** with Kodo drummer   You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod020924.mp3  Thank you for your kind support. 

Advice: Don't eat alone. Photo by Spencer Davis on Unsplash.

Marriage Conference | Spencer Davis | Saturday MorningLove finds its meaning in Christ. In 1 Corinthians 13:4-6 we see Paul describing how love acts. Our culture today is confused by what love is. We know that Jesus is our ultimate example of how to love. Love places your spouse higher than your emotions. In this session, Spencer Davis walks through 11 things that describe God's love.This passage isn't about marriage, it's about God's love. We get to mirror His love for us to our spouses. Love is a beautiful dying to self, so let's fight to love like Jesus.Resources:1 Corinthians 13:4-6Proverbs 27:4Philippians 2John 12:24Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters exists to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the exposition of Scripture and personal relationships in order to equip the Church to impact this generation.Learn more about our student and adult conferences at https://www.swoutfitters.com/Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help others grow in their faith. Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.

Fall Retreat | Spencer Davis | Saturday MorningWhat if Jesus didn't rise from the dead? Would following Christ be worth it? In this session, Spencer Davis walks through 5 consequences of the resurrection. If Christ did not rise from the dead then your faith is worthless and you are still in your sins. But Christ has been raised. We were made to live for something bigger than ourselves. He is of first importance. Let's spend time in the Word every day and it will keep the resurrection in the forefront of our minds.Resources:1 Corinthians 15:12Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters exists to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the exposition of Scripture and personal relationships in order to equip the Church to impact this generation.Learn more about our student and adult conferences at https://www.swoutfitters.com/Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help others grow in their faith. Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.

Since the start of the pandemic, more than 90 colleges have merged or closed permanently. One of these schools, Lincoln College, closed its doors with only about one month's notice in May of 2022 — after 157 years. Due to the pandemic and a ransomware attack, administrators say the school was unable to retain, recruit, or fundraise. Since then, students have been left scrambling and many have dropped out. Alan Jinich and Max Strickberger, recent graduates of the University of Pennsylvania and producers of the Generation Pandemic Project about the impact of Covid on young people around the country, set out to follow this story last year. Lincoln College was a small private college in central Illinois — the only school named after Abraham Lincoln in his lifetime. But instead of attracting local students, the school drew many from three hours north: Chicago's south and west sides. More than 40% were first generation college students and, even though the town is 95% white, the university was a Predominantly Black Institution. Students, alumni, and faculty described the community as deeply closeknit and, for many, a “second chance.” For some, it was also a refuge from gun violence. After the sudden closure announcement, dozens of students confronted President David Gerlach expressing grief, frustration, and concern over what might happen to those who didn't have a safe home to return to. It was the start of a fundraising predicament that drove a wedge between students' grassroots efforts and administrators. How much money is enough to stay open? What's at stake for Lincoln's brittle economy? We follow voices from across the community — professors, administrators, locals, students dispersed across the Midwest, and a member of Lincoln's last graduating class. More than a year after closing, many continue to reel. The campus is still up for sale, but a new vision for Lincoln may soon be on the horizon. Produced by Alan Jinich and Max Strickberger with soundtracks by Reed Rosenbluth and support from the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation. A special thank you to Pati and Danny Jinich for their endless support (and SUV), Deborah and Adam Strickberger for their lifelong role modeling, and for all those who helped along the way: Ron Keller, Tim Rivera, Ms. Linda, Aundrae Williams, Jaylah Bolden, Spencer Davis, David Gerlach, Scott Raper, Seth Goodman, Aaron Butler, David Upchurch, Julia Figueroa, Klaudia Blaszcyk, Dougie Barron, and the Rose family. Thanks also to Nikki Silva and The Kitchen Sisters (and The Kitchen Sisters thank these young producers!) You can follow more of Alan and Max's work at www.generationpandemicproject.com or on instagram @generationpandemic_ The Kitchen Sisters Present is produced by The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) with Brandi Howell and Nathan Dalton. We're part of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of some of the best podcasts out there. Visit kitchensisters.org for more stories and info about upcoming events — like our annual Bowling with Grace Party and fundraiser at Mission Bowling Club, San Francisco, October 28, 2023, with celebrity guest bowlers Boz Scaggs, Alice Waters, Samin Nostrat, Roman Mars, Roman Coppola, Wendy MacNaughton, Song Exploder's Hrishikesh Hirway, KQED's Alexis Madrigal, Ear Hustle's Nigel Poor & Earlonne Woods, Rebecca Solnit… and so many more.

Jonah knows he can't escape the presence of God, but he still runs from God. Jonah is continually disobedient throughout the rest of the story, but the Lord is patient. God will use our lives for his own glory and purpose, despite our sin and disobedience. In this episode, Brody sits down with Rob Conti and Spencer Davis to take a deeper look at the story of Jonah.Resources:James Montgomery Boyce Commentary on the book of JonahJonah 1Jonah 4Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters exists to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the exposition of Scripture and personal relationships in order to equip the Church to impact this generation.Learn more about our student and adult conferences at https://www.swoutfitters.com/Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help improve No Sanity Required and help others grow in their faith. Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.

In this episode, Brody sits down with Rob Conti and Spencer Davis to dive deeper into the summer sessions they taught on the life of Joseph in Genesis. Here are some of their thoughts that didn't make it into their sermons. God was at work throughout Joseph's life. Joseph was faithful to the Lord no matter the circumstance he was in. We hope you're encouraged by Joseph's life and can look to his faithfulness as an example.Resources:Genesis 34Genesis 39Snowbird SessionsJesus & His Crazy Grandmas | RahabJesus & His Crazy Grandmas | TamarJesus & His Crazy Grandmas | RuthSnowbird Wilderness Outfitters exists to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the exposition of Scripture and personal relationships in order to equip the Church to impact this generation.Learn more about our student and adult conferences at https://www.swoutfitters.com/Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help improve No Sanity Required and help others grow in their faith. Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.

Social media has a huge impact on our teenagers. Companies target students in a way that produces negative outcomes like anxiety, depression, and body image issues. In this episode, Brody sits down with Rob Conti and Spencer Davis to discuss raising godly teenagers in the age of social media and what we can do as parents to protect them. Parenting requires courage in every generation. Don't be a lazy parent. Let's slow down and be aware of how the media is affecting our families.Resources:Girls session at SWO23 Summer Camp (coming soon)Proverbs 4Social Media breakout by Spencer DavisSnowbird Wilderness Outfitters exists to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the exposition of Scripture and personal relationships in order to equip the Church to impact this generation.Learn more about our student and adult conferences at https://www.swoutfitters.com/Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help improve No Sanity Required and help others grow in their faith. Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.

The Vanrays have just released their latest long-player “Put It Out” with an accompanying video for the album's focus track “Hard Times.” The band carries on with their tradition of belting out undeniably catchy Motown and Soul tunes with big hooks, big melodies and an even bigger brass section. Taking notes from classics and contemporaries like Spencer Davis group, Detroit Cobras, Curtis Harding and the Daptone Records roster, The Vanrays have delivered an album of soulful classic R&B and garage music.  Their bio reads like a manifesto for their brand of music: It's a Motown beat down in a sharkskin suit. It's wailing like it's gospel while they're laying in the boots. It's a curb stomping rhythm on the corner of control. It's a nod in the direction, when all shoes had leather souls. And to when those shoes were twisting, to Otis and to James. And so now do, The Vanrays too, we are here to do the same.  The video for “Hard Times” was directed by Carleen Kyle and shot at the Wise Hall during the pandemic and in the middle of the heat dome. Piano and organ player Gordon Rempel describes the scenario, “We were happy for the space and air conditioning! The objective was to bring a more intimate “performance” video than a regular live video. Thus, setting the performance on the floor rather than the stage.”  Overall the album touches on themes of love and heartache which seems to tie the songs together. Bassist Phil Adington laments, “We never intended for this to be a concept album, but for me all of the songs involve love and relationships and the order they appear on the record does seem to map out a passionate, tempestuous affair that ultimately ends in heartbreak." The recording sessions for Put it Out began just before the onset of the pandemic, when the world went into lockdown. Rempel reflected on the time by saying, “It's been a journey. We were forced to adapt. With only bed tracks recorded before the lockdown, we were forced to improvise. We remotely finished a couple songs as demos compete with Zoom-like videos that we released as "The Social Distanced Demos" on Bandcamp. Slowly, we completed recording the album, instrument by instrument together and apart. I recorded many of my organ and piano parts in my garage studio. Others ventured into Brian's studio to record their parts with masks and social distancing. Scott Fletcher, producer of the Put It Out shared his take on the experience, “My shared vision as producer of this record was to tip our collective hat to the classic 60s and 70s Soul and R&B from stax records, without being a museum piece. Music is an organic, living, growing thing and I truly believe we took this genre to a new place. Recording a 9 piece band is no easy task at the best of times, but we tried to preserve the “live off the floor” feel while staying socially distanced in the studio. The Vanrays, needless to say, became my bubble. If I were to put it in a nutshell, I would say recording Put It Out got us through the tense times of the pandemic.” Photo credit: Carleen Kyle D I S C O V E R Twitter: https://twitter.com/thevanrays Website: https://www.thevanrays.com Tiktok: https://tiktok.com/@thevanrays Youtube: https://youtube.com/@thevanrays Instagram: https://instagram.com/thevanrays Bandcamp: https://thevanrays.bandcamp.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheVanrays Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/ca/artist/the-vanrays/1459548971 Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/artist/4OHvMeSKrLp6Kc8yLejjhW?si=OllAq_DIR0qQRB5czemAiw This episode is brought to you byGo to BETTERHELP.com/apologue for confidential online counselling.use the code word Apologue for a 7 day free trial Pledge monthly with Patreon https://www.patreon.com/apologueShop Apologue products at http://apologue.ca/shop Go get the 1 hour mini Documentary on Lowest of the Low's Classic Album Shakespeare my Butt at https://thelowdoc.gumroad.com/l/SMB

Join us on this exciting episode of The Inn Between as we dive into the world of western fashion with Spencer Davis, a talented influencer who knows how to rock her bougie style on a budget. Hailing from Louisiana and spending significant time in Texas, Spencer has found her passion for western fashion while maintaining a normal everyday job in the oil and gas business.    Spencer's journey towards discovering her unique personality led her to embrace her love for boots, fringe, and all things western. However, she noticed a lack of cute western clothes in her size, inspiring her to navigate the fashion landscape and curate a collection that works for her, all while staying budget-friendly and size-inclusive. Throughout her journey, Spencer has discovered numerous boutiques and brands that cater to her style preferences and are accessible to others who want to embrace the bougie cowgirl aesthetic.   In this episode, Spencer shares her tips for finding great deals and her aversion to credit cards, opting for payment plan systems that don't charge interest. She also discusses her approach to dealing with negativity on social media, emphasizing the importance of setting boundaries with strangers online.   Tune in to gain valuable insights into fashion, budgeting, and maintaining a positive online presence. Don't miss the chance to join the conversation with Spencer Davis and learn how to unleash your bougie side without breaking the bank.   IG: @Bougie_cowgirl   [00:00]  [00:46] Welcome to Spencer [01:55] Who Spencer is and what she does  [05:40] How Spencer found her style  [07:26] What it was like for Spencer to get started  [10:32] Spencer's perspective on size inclusion  [12:35] Boutiques Spencer loves [13:58] How do we become bougie on a budget? [18:47] Anti-credit card  [21:51] Negativity on social media and dealing with it  [26:49] Takeaways  [27:27] The collaboration weekend  [31:03] Wrapping it up   

Before his solo work, before Blind Faith, before Traffic, a 14-year old known then as Stevie Winwood joined The Spencer Davis Group as a guitarist and lead singer.  This blues-oriented British band released their first LP, conveniently called Their First LP in June of 1965 to British and European audiences.  We are covering it in August 1965, but the album itself was not released in the United States at the time.  Most of the songs would make it to the US market in compilation albums released years later.The Spencer Davis Group was Spencer Davis on vocals, guitar, and harmonica; Steve Winwood on lead vocals, harmonica, guitar, and piano; Muff Winwood (Steve's older brother) on vocals and bass; and Pete York on drums.  Additional personnel included Kenny Salmon on organ for a couple of tracks, and one track found Peter Asher on piano and Millie Small on vocals.The album didn't enter the UK albums chart until January 1966, but it would reach number 6 on that chart after a single entitled "Keep On Running" from their second album entered the UK singles charts.  "Their First LP" is blues driven, and much of the album consists of covers from blues artists.  However, there are also some original pieces composed by Spencer Davis and by Steve Winwood.  Spencer Davis went on to solo and collaborative work after The Spencer Davis Group, eventually becoming an executive for Island Records.  Steve Winwood would of course move on to a storied career as a rock musician.Bruce brings this blues-laced proto-rock album to the podcast. My BabeThis track leads off the album.  While the Spencer Davis Group did not release this as a single, it reached number 75 on the Billboard Hot 100 in October 1963 when it was originally released by its writers, Bobby Hatfield and Bill Medley.  Hatfield and Medley are better known as The Righteous Brothers.DimplesThis cover was the first single released from the album, preceding the album by almost a year.  The original was written and recorded by blues artist John Lee Hooker in 1956 as an ensemble piece.  It was the first Hooker record to appear on the British record charts, though it would take until 1964 to reach the charts.  While the Hooker single charted, the Spencer Davis Group cover did not chart.Sittin' and Thinkin'Here is an original song amongst an album dominated by covers.  Spencer Davis wrote this song.  It was released as a single, the fourth from the album, but only in the Netherlands.It Hurts Me SoThe closing track to the album was written by Steve Winwood.  It was not released as a single, but it is an example of Winwood's early blues-influenced work.  ENTERTAINMENT TRACK:The Night Before by the Beatles (from the motion picture "Help!" )This film showcased the Beatles in a comedy adventure as the group tries to protect Ringo from an eastern cult. STAFF PICKS:Agent Double-O-Soul by Edwin StarrJames Bond is the obvious inspiration for Wayne's staff pick.  Edwin Starr was singing with The Bill Dogett Combo when he went to the cinema to watch the Bond feature, "Thunderball."  He wound up watching it 3 times before going back to his hotel room to write this song.  Bill Dogett rejected his pitch to sing solo on this tune, so Starr left the group to become a solo act.I Want Candy by The StrangelovesRob brings us a tune by songwriters Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein, and Richard Gottehrer.  They took on the persona of Australian sheep farmer brothers turned band members Giles, Miles, and Niles Strangelove for this group.  This song with a Bo Diddley beat was inspired by dancer Candy Johnson who was seen at the 1964 Worlds Fair.  Bow Wow Wow would have a hit with a cover of this song in the 80's.Since I Lost My Baby by The Temptations Lynch's staff pick comes from Motown in the form of a lover's lament written by Smokey Robinson and Warren Moore.  It hit number 17 on the US charts.  The Temptations would be a huge hitmaker in the 60's both with David Ruffin and Dennis Edwards on lead vocals.Same Old Song by The Four TopsBruce's staff pick features an American vocal quartet from Detroit who helped to define the Motown sound.  This Holland-Dozier-Holland song hit number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 2 on the Billboard R&B chart.  Lead singer Levi Stubbs was joined by Duke Fakir, Obie Benson, and Lawrence Payton to form the quartet, and they would remain together from 1953 until 1997 without a change in personnel. INSTRUMENTAL TRACK:The "In" Crowd by The Ramsey Lewis TrioThis jazz single hit number 2 on the R&B chart and number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100.  The Ramsey Lewis Trio would receive a Grammy Award for the album of the same name in 1966.

Continuing the conversation on the Law, Brody sits down with Rob Conti and Spencer Davis. Rob and Spencer are two of the pastors from Red Oak Church who also serve and teach at Snowbird. In this episode they discuss further the Believers relationship to the Law from the Old Testament and the book of Hebrews. We should be striving to have more intimacy with Christ. We're called to live differently, not legalistically, but different in character. Let's think through how the laws in the Old Testament reflect the character of God and how we reflect the Lord by obeying God.Resources:Previous EpisodeExodus 21:28Romans 7Galatians1 Corinthians 6Romans 10Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters exists to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the exposition of Scripture and personal relationships in order to equip the Church to impact this generation.Learn more about our student and adult conferences at https://www.swoutfitters.com/Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help improve No Sanity Required and help others grow in their faith. Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.

This week Rich & Matt feature some of the tracks that filled the dancefloor at our recent Blow Up night. Tune in to hear The Who, Spencer Davis, The Easybeats and The Supremes. Plus we have another fantastic Catalan Connection from Fidel Socias Sanchez in Barcelona.Tune into new broadcasts of Blow-Up, Sunday from 8 - 10 AM EST / 1 PM - 3 PM GMT, in association with Brisbane's 4ZZZ.For more info visit: https://thefaceradio.com/blow-up///Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Spencer Davis teaches through Hebrews 8:8-13. Spencer is a pastor of Red Oak Church.

K lots more editing tonight than normal, so just know that we've got some fun TC clips that he recorded, plus we react to the Oscar's, now that the hype has died down. AND we give a new segment called Sweet/Spoiled where we talked about contrarian takes for films that are either loved, and we hate, or viceversa. Anyways, next week is a big one. ON THE SLATE: MMM CHAMP REVEAL, JOHN WICK 4 & DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS REVIEWS STAY SO SWEEEEEETTT AND PLS WINTER GO AWAY --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/sweetfilmtalk/support

Teresa James & Terry Wilson Live on Game Changers with Vicki Abelson They may sing the blues but they sure make me happy. Grammy nominees Teresa James and Terry Wilson treated us to our first live mini-concert in Game Changers history. And it was spectacular! With their brand new album of reimagined Beatle songs, With a Little Help From Her Friends, which debuted at #9 on the Billboard Blues chart at the fore, the last third of the show was devoted to cuts from said album, and one of my favorites of theirs, Don't Make A Habit of It. Joining them was longtime Rhythm Tramps guitarist Billy Watts (Eric Burdon, John Mayall), and drummer, Richard Millsap (currently touring with John Fogerty). Special thanks to Louie Kovic for making it happen. Celebrating Teresa's nomination for Contemporary Female Blues Artist of the Year, from The Blues Foundation, we talked their early years in Texas, separately and eventually together. Terry, who goes back with my beau, 50+ years, then London calling and forming Back Street Crawler with Paul Kosoff (Free) and John Bundrick (The Who), to playing with Eric Burdon, which Teresa eventually did as well. There were lots of bands, sessions, and tours for both, with parenting taking precedence for a number of years, limiting Teresa's roading for a spell. She recorded with Eric Burdon, Spencer Davis, Tommy Castro, Stephen Bruton, Randy Newman, Neil Diamond, and many others and performed with Levon Helm, Lloyd Jones, Delbert McClinton, and Eric Burdon & the Animals to mention just a few, and did many before-mentioned sessions. A gifted and proficient songwriter, composer, producer, and bassist, Terry never stops working and creating. Numerous albums for different artists are currently in the works and another upcoming kick-ass studio album with Teresa and the Rhythm Tramps will drop in September. Teresa James and The Rhythm Tramps play regularly in LA. For upcoming shows, music, and access to all things James/Wilson visit TeresaJames.com These folks are the real deal. The music, the songs, that voice. WOW! I could listen to them all day. And many days, I do! Teresa James & Terry Wilson Live on Game Changers with Vicki Abelson Wed, February 15th, 5 pm PT, 8 pm ET Streamed Live on The Facebook Replay here: https://bit.ly/3ItqyWS

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

Spencer Davis teaches through Hebrews 2:10-18. Spencer is a pastor of Red Oak Church.

Spencer Davis teaches through Hebrews 2:10-18. Spencer is a pastor of Red Oak Church.

BIG GROUP ON THE POD TO TALK A DOUBLE HEADER HOW ARE THEY DOING?? (0:00) Brief reactions to the Golden Globes (8:00) Spencer Davis Marvel Minute (13:10) Fav Things We Watched (20:00) - Keeks: Scott Pilgrim & Inception (20:00) - Spencer (Letterboxd: spindeezy): Heat (22:10) - Nick (Letterboxd: nock): Oscar Animated Short Films (24:10) - bekki (Letterboxd: 94308309): Glass Onion & Riverdale & Skinamarink (27:10) M3GAN Review (32:30) EO Review (44:00) One Big Oscar Prediction Each (54:30) ON THE SLATE: PLANE REVIEW WOWOWOWOWOWOW ANOTHER WEEK DOWN, ANOTHER BATCH OF GREAT MOVIES COMING OUT. HOPE Y'ALL ENJOYED THE POD AND WE CAN'T WAIT TO TALK PLANE AND SEE HOW GREAT IT IS :,). LOVE Y'ALL, ENJOY THE HOLLIDAY, AND STAY SOOOOO SWWEEEEEETT

DONATE: https://evidence4faith.org/give/ MARINE BIOLOGY: https://evidence4faith.org/marinebiology/-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Watch the entire series here: https://evidence4faith.org/portfolio/christianbasics/Fortune telling today is as popular as it was in antiquity. But the attentive observer will note that predictions tend to be vague to retrofit events more easily. Their prophets also tend to have imperfect track records. The Bible is one of the only religious books to contain a multitude of prophecies about world events, and specific instruction on how to verify the credentials of a prophet. This lesson provides an overview of Old Testament prophecies, when they were written, and when they were fulfilled. Daniel in the Critic's Den by Josh McDowell: https://archive.org/details/danielincriticsd00mcdo/page/n9/mode/2upWatch the Cyrus Cylinder: https://evidence4faith.org/portfolio/archaeologyofdaniel/#session5MUSIC CREDITS: Stock Music provided by mv_production, from Pond5PHOTO CREDITS: Thumbnail photo by Spencer Davis on UnsplashTIMESTAMPS:0:00 Ministry Introduction1:30 Overview of Fortune Telling10:28 The Biblical view on prophecy13:20 Daniel 2;31-3322:14 Ezekiel 29;13-1525:36 Ezekiel 25;12-1428:56 Ezekiel 26;3-1437:10 Nahum 1;1439:33 Isaiah 13;1942:41 Isaiah 44;2844:50 Wrap-up#bible #apologetics #history #prophecy #evidence4faith #faith #defendthefaith #spirituality #christian #christianity #fortunetelling #future-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------WEBSITE: https://evidence4faith.org/NEWSLETTER: http://eepurl.com/hpazV5BOOKINGS: https://evidence4faith.org/bookings/CONTACT: Evidence 4 Faith, 5821 Bear Trail, Rhinelander WI 54501 , info@evidence4faith.orgMy goal is that their hearts, having been knit together in love, may be encouraged, and that they may have all the riches that assurance brings in their understanding of the knowledge of the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. - Colossians 2:2-3

Marriage Conference | Spencer Davis | Sunday MorningSatan hates marriage. If we think that he is inactive, then he has the upper hand. He seeks to destroy our marriages and will use lies to do it. We need to fight these lies and go into marriage with an attitude of humility and service. In this session, Spencer Davis walks through Ephesians 6 and numbers 8 lies we tend to believe about marriage. Let's work towards our spouses' growth and fulfillment. You are a believer before you're a husband/wife. Let's stand together in our marriages and pursue Christ.Resources:Ephesians 61 Peter 2Genesis 3Romans 151 Corinthians 121 Timothy 6Colossians 3Romans 5:5Genesis 18Philippians 1Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters exists to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the exposition of Scripture and personal relationships in order to equip the Church to impact this generation.Learn more about our student and adult conferences at https://www.swoutfitters.com/Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help others grow in their faith. Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.

Marriage Conference | Interview with Philip & Tawnyia Smith | Saturday MorningThis morning Spencer Davis sits down with Philip and Tawnyia Smith to hear their stories of how the Lord saved each of them and eventually brought them together. They come from very different backgrounds and struggles. Listen to see Christ magnified through their stories, their experience in marriage, and their advice on keeping Christ at the center of their marriage. Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters exists to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the exposition of Scripture and personal relationships in order to equip the Church to impact this generation.Learn more about our student and adult conferences at https://www.swoutfitters.com/Please leave a review on Apple or Spotify to help others grow in their faith. Click here to get our Colossians Bible study.

WOWOWOWOWOW EVERYONE!!! We've got a double header again! Two AMAZING movies that are playing now, mixed with some great commentary from previous guest hosts: Spencer Davis & Nick Frazier. How we been? (0:00) Fav Movie News (12:15) - Keeks: Avatar: The Way of Water Trailer (12:15) - Spencer: "Hercules is going to be inspired by Tik Tok" (15:19) - Nick: No Fantastic Beasts 4 (20:20) Fav Watches (24:55) - Spencer: Punch Drunk Love & Weird (24:55) - Nick: Over the Garden Wall (27:30) - Keeks: The Watcher (29:30) TÁR Review (32:30) Banshees of Inisherin Review (48:36) Most Overlooked 2022 Movies (1:05:40) ON THE SLATE: BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER REVIEW WOWOWOWOWOW WE ARE ALMOST THERE! WAKANDA FOREVER IS COMING AND WE ARE STOKED FOR MOVIE SEASON TO RAMP UP A BIT MORE

Spencer Davis teaches through Genesis 39:1-23. Spencer is a pastor of Red Oak Church.

#344 FEATURING: @psychopositiveband @norwegiansoftkitten@thenorthrocksofficial @fire_follows @less_theband@postprofitofficial @stuntdrivermusic @killerkings_uk@homemade_skimask #slumradio #newmusic #featuredartist#rocknroll #outlawsofrock #fridaynight #artistsupport#tullydio #setlist #bigbeersandcheers ALSO on tonight's show our interview with Spencer from @trucerips We talk rock, influences, and the importance of good vibes!!! #interview #newmusic#truceband #cd #cassette #goodtimes #artistsupportartists#youtube #musicians #bigbeersandcheers

SWO 22 | Spencer Davis  | Wednesday Guy's BreakoutResources:Learn more about our student and adult conferences at Swoutfitters.com. P.S. If you liked this episode, we'd love to hear your feedback! Please leave us a review on Apple or Spotify and help us get the content out to help others grow in their faith and mission to equip the Church.Want to go deeper? Join the Snowbird Newsletter and get our list of favorite books! ==================================================Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters exists to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the exposition of Scripture and personal relationships in order to equip the Church to impact this generation.==================================================We'd love to connect with you. Follow us here:FacebookYouTubeInstagram

TC IS OUT OF TOWN, SO WELCOME BACK SPENCER DAVIS, AND WELCOME FIRST TIME TIM LEE How do we know each other? (0:00) - Freshman year (3:00) - Meet Tim & plug for AMC A-List (5:30) Spencer Davis, welcome back (10:00) Comic-Con Rundown (17:15) Fav Watch (35:00) - Keeks: Doom (35:00) - Spencer: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (36:20) - Tim: Barry (38:00) Nope Review (41:00) Tim's 5 Fav Films (55:50) ON THE SLATE: VENGEANCE AKA NEW BJ NOVAK MOVIE 193 TAKES DOWN, 7 MORE TO GO TIL WE ARE AT 200. CAN'T BELIEVE THERE HAVE BEEN SO MANY ICNREDIBLE MOVIES THAT HAVE RELEASED AND WE'RE SO GRATEFUL FOR EVERY OUNCE OF SUPPORT!! PLEASE ENJOY THIS WEEK, STAY HYDRATED, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, STAAAAAYYYYY SWEEEEEETTT TC, MISS YOU :,) --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/sweetfilmtalk/support

Spencer Davis teaches through Genesis 21:1-34. Spencer is a pastor of Red Oak Church.

Spencer Davis  | Winter SWO 22  | Session SixChristians, we need to prepare our minds for action. Our old self would give in to any desire it wanted to—not caring about any of its consequences. But now, we don't obey our old wants or listen to the cheap lie that sinfulness is freedom. The Holy Spirit will change our desires to look like His. As you study the Word you start to think, act, and want as Jesus does.Learn more about our student and adult conferences at Swoutfitters.com. P.S. If you liked this episode, we'd love to hear your feedback! Please leave us a review on Apple or Spotify and help us get the content out to help others grow in their faith and mission to equip the Church.Want to go deeper? Join the Snowbird Newsletter and get our list of favorite books! ==================================================Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters exists to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the exposition of Scripture and personal relationships in order to equip the Church to impact this generation.==================================================We'd love to connect with you. Follow us here:FacebookYouTubeInstagram

Episode 143 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Summer in the City'”, and at the short but productive career of the Lovin' Spoonful.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Any More" by the Walker Brothers and the strange career of Scott Walker. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, all the songs excerpted in the podcast can be heard in full at Mixcloud. This box set contains all four studio albums by the Lovin' Spoonful, plus the one album by "The Lovin' Spoonful featuring Joe Butler", while this CD contains their two film soundtracks (mostly inessential instrumental filler, apart from "Darling Be Home Soon") Information about harmonicas and harmonicists comes from Harmonicas, Harps, and Heavy Breathers by Kim Field. There are only three books about the Lovin' Spoonful, but all are worth reading. Do You Believe in Magic? by Simon Wordsworth is a good biography of the band, while his The Magic's in the Music is a scrapbook of press cuttings and reminiscences. Meanwhile Steve Boone's Hotter Than a Match Head: My Life on the Run with the Lovin' Spoonful has rather more discussion of the actual music than is normal in a musician's autobiography. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Let's talk about the harmonica for a while. The harmonica is an instrument that has not shown up a huge amount in the podcast, but which was used in a fair bit of the music we've covered. We've heard it for example on records by Bo Diddley: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, "I'm a Man"] and by Bob Dylan: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Blowin' in the Wind"] and the Rolling Stones: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Little Red Rooster"] In most folk and blues contexts, the harmonicas used are what is known as a diatonic harmonica, and these are what most people think of when they think of harmonicas at all. Diatonic harmonicas have the notes of a single key in them, and if you want to play a note in another key, you have to do interesting tricks with the shape of your mouth to bend the note. There's another type of harmonica, though, the chromatic harmonica. We've heard that a time or two as well, like on "Love Me Do" by the Beatles: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love Me Do"] Chromatic harmonicas have sixteen holes, rather than the diatonic harmonica's ten, and they also have a slide which you can press to raise the note by a semitone, meaning you can play far more notes than on a diatonic harmonica -- but they're also physically harder to play, requiring a different kind of breathing to pull off playing one successfully. They're so different that John Lennon would distinguish between the two instruments -- he'd describe a chromatic harmonica as a harmonica, but a diatonic harmonica he would call a harp, like blues musicians often did: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love These Goon Shows"] While the chromatic harmonica isn't a particularly popular instrument in rock music, it is one that has had some success in other fields. There have been some jazz and light-orchestral musicians who have become famous playing the instrument, like the jazz musician Max Geldray, who played in those Goon Shows the Beatles loved so much: [Excerpt: Max Geldray, "C-Jam Blues"] And in the middle of the twentieth century there were a few musicians who succeeded in making the harmonica into an instrument that was actually respected in serious classical music. By far the most famous of these was Larry Adler, who became almost synonymous with the instrument in the popular consciousness, and who reworked many famous pieces of music for the instrument: [Excerpt: Larry Adler, "Rhapsody in Blue"] But while Adler was the most famous classical harmonicist of his generation, he was not generally considered the best by other musicians. That was, rather, a man named John Sebastian. Sebastian, who chose to take his middle name as a surname partly to Anglicise his name but also, it seems, at least in part as tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach (which incidentally now makes it really, really difficult to search for copies of his masterwork "John Sebastian Plays Bach", as Internet searches uniformly think you're searching just for the composer...) started out like almost all harmonica players as an amateur playing popular music. But he quickly got very, very, good, and by his teens he was already teaching other children, including at a summer camp run by Albert Hoxie, a musician and entrepreneur who was basically single-handedly responsible for the boom in harmonica sales in the 1920s and 1930s, by starting up youth harmonica orchestras -- dozens or even hundreds of kids, all playing harmonica together, in a semi-militaristic youth organisation something like the scouts, but with harmonicas instead of woggles and knots. Hoxie's group and the various organisations copying it led to there being over a hundred and fifty harmonica orchestras in Chicago alone, and in LA in the twenties and thirties a total of more than a hundred thousand children passed through harmonica orchestras inspired by Hoxie. Hoxie's youth orchestras were largely responsible for the popularity of the harmonica as a cheap instrument for young people, and thus for its later popularity in the folk and blues worlds. That was only boosted in the Second World War by the American Federation of Musicians recording ban, which we talked about in the early episodes of the podcast -- harmonicas had never been thought of as a serious instrument, and so most professional harmonica players were not members of the AFM, but were considered variety performers and were part of the American Guild of Variety Artists, along with singers, ukulele players, and musical saw players. Of course, the war did also create a problem, because the best harmonicas were made in Germany by the Hohner company, but soon a lot of American companies started making cheap harmonicas to fill the gap in the market. There's a reason the cliche of the GI in a war film playing a harmonica in the trenches exists, and it's largely because of Hoxie. And Hoxie was based in Philadelphia, where John Sebastian lived as a kid, and he mentored the young player, who soon became a semi-professional performer. Sebastian's father was a rich banker, and discouraged him from becoming a full-time musician -- the plan was that after university, Sebastian would become a diplomat. But as part of his preparation for that role, he was sent to spend a couple of years studying at the universities of Rome and Florence, learning about Italian culture. On the boat back, though, he started talking to two other passengers, who turned out to be the legendary Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart, the writers of such classic songs as "Blue Moon" and "My Funny Valentine": [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, "My Funny Valentine"] Sebastian talked to his new friends, and told them that he was feeling torn between being a musician and being in the foreign service like his father wanted. They both told him that in their experience some people were just born to be artists, and that those people would never actually find happiness doing anything else. He took their advice, and decided he was going to become a full-time harmonica player. He started out playing in nightclubs, initially playing jazz and swing, but only while he built up a repertoire of classical music. He would rehearse with a pianist for three hours every day, and would spend the rest of his time finding classical works, especially baroque ones, and adapting them for the harmonica. As he later said “I discovered sonatas by Telemann, Veracini, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Hasse, Marcello, Purcell, and many others, which were written to be played on violin, flute, oboe, musette, even bagpipes... The composer seemed to be challenging each instrument to create the embellishments and ornaments to suit its particular voice. . . . I set about choosing works from this treasure trove that would best speak through my instrument.” Soon his nightclub repertoire was made up entirely of these classical pieces, and he was making records like John Sebastian Plays Bach: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Flute Sonata in B Minor BWV1030 (J.S. Bach)"] And while Sebastian was largely a lover of baroque music above all other forms, he realised that he would have to persuade new composers to write new pieces for the instrument should he ever hope for it to have any kind of reputation as a concert instrument, so he persuaded contemporary composers to write pieces like George Kleinsinger's "Street Corner Concerto", which Sebastian premiered with the New York Philharmonic: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Street Corner Concerto"] He became the first harmonica player to play an entirely classical repertoire, and regarded as the greatest player of his instrument in the world. The oboe player Jay S Harrison once wrote of seeing him perform "to accomplish with success a program of Mr. Sebastian's scope is nothing short of wizardry. . . . He has vast technical facility, a bulging range of colors, and his intentions are ever musical and sophisticated. In his hands the harmonica is no toy, no simple gadget for the dispensing of homespun tunes. Each single number of the evening was whittled, rounded, polished, and poised. . . . Mr. Sebastian's playing is uncanny." Sebastian came from a rich background, and he managed to earn enough as a classical musician to live the lifestyle of a rich artistic Bohemian. During the forties and fifties he lived in Greenwich Village with his family -- apart from a four-year period living in Rome from 1951 to 55 -- and Eleanor Roosevelt was a neighbour, while Vivian Vance, who played Ethel Mertz on I Love Lucy, was the godmother of his eldest son. But while Sebastian's playing was entirely classical, he was interested in a wider variety of music. When he would tour Europe, he would often return having learned European folk songs, and while he was living in Greenwich Village he would often be visited by people like Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, and other folk singers living in the area. And that early influence rubbed off on Sebastian's son, John Benson Sebastian, although young John gave up trying to learn the harmonica the first time he tried, because he didn't want to be following too closely in his father's footsteps. Sebastian junior did, though, take up the guitar, inspired by the first wave rock and rollers he was listening to on Alan Freed's show, and he would later play the harmonica, though the diatonic harmonica rather than the chromatic. In case you haven't already figured it out, John Benson Sebastian, rather than his father, is a principal focus of this episode, and so to avoid confusion, from this point on, when I refer to "John Sebastian" or "Sebastian" without any qualifiers, I'm referring to the younger man. When I refer to "John Sebastian Sr" I'm talking about the father. But it was John Sebastian Sr's connections, in particular to the Bohemian folk and blues scenes, which gave his more famous son his first connection to that world of his own, when Sebastian Sr appeared in a TV show, in November 1960, put together by Robert Herridge, a TV writer and producer who was most famous for his drama series but who had also put together documentaries on both classical music and jazz, including the classic performance documentary The Sound of Jazz. Herridge's show featured both Sebastian Sr and the country-blues player Lightnin' Hopkins: [Excerpt: Lightnin' Hopkins, "Blues in the Bottle"] Hopkins was one of many country-blues players whose career was having a second wind after his discovery by the folk music scene. He'd been recording for fourteen years, putting out hundreds of records, but had barely performed outside Houston until 1959, when the folkies had picked up on his work, and in October 1960 he had been invited to play Carnegie Hall, performing with Pete Seeger and Joan Baez. Young John Sebastian had come along with his dad to see the TV show be recorded, and had an almost Damascene conversion -- he'd already heard Hopkins' recordings, but had never seen anything like his live performances. He was at that time attending a private boarding school, Blair Academy, and his roommate at the school also had his own apartment, where Sebastian would sometimes stay. Soon Lightnin' Hopkins was staying there as well, as somewhere he could live rent-free while he was in New York. Sebastian started following Hopkins around and learning everything he could, being allowed by the older man to carry his guitar and buy him gin, though the two never became close. But eventually, Hopkins would occasionally allow Sebastian to play with him when he played at people's houses, which he did on occasion. Sebastian became someone that Hopkins trusted enough that when he was performing on a bill with someone else whose accompanist wasn't able to make the gig and Sebastian put himself forward, Hopkins agreed that Sebastian would be a suitable accompanist for the evening. The singer he accompanied that evening was a performer named Valentine Pringle, who was a protege of Harry Belafonte, and who had a similar kind of sound to Paul Robeson. Sebastian soon became Pringle's regular accompanist, and played on his first album, I Hear America Singing, which was also the first record on which the great trumpet player Hugh Masakela played. Sadly, Paul Robeson style vocals were so out of fashion by that point that that album has never, as far as I can tell, been issued in a digital format, and hasn't even been uploaded to YouTube.  But this excerpt from a later recording by Pringle should give you some idea of the kind of thing he was doing: [Excerpt: Valentine Pringle, "Go 'Way From My Window"] After these experiences, Sebastian started regularly going to shows at Greenwich Village folk clubs, encouraged by his parents -- he had an advantage over his peers because he'd grown up in the area and had artistic parents, and so he was able to have a great deal of freedom that other people in their teens weren't. In particular, he would always look out for any performances by the great country blues performer Mississippi John Hurt. Hurt had made a few recordings for Okeh records in 1928, including an early version of "Stagger Lee", titled "Stack O'Lee": [Excerpt: Mississippi John Hurt, "Stack O'Lee Blues"] But those records had been unsuccessful, and he'd carried on working on a farm. and not performed other than in his tiny home town of Avalon, Mississippi, for decades. But then in 1952, a couple of his tracks had been included on the Harry Smith Anthology, and as a result he'd come to the attention of the folk and blues scholar community. They'd tried tracking him down, but been unable to until in the early sixties one of them had discovered a track on one of Hurt's records, "Avalon Blues", and in 1963, thirty-five years after he'd recorded six flop singles, Mississippi John Hurt became a minor star, playing the Newport Folk Festival and appearing on the Tonight Show. By this time, Sebastian was a fairly well-known figure in Greenwich Village, and he had become quite a virtuoso on the harmonica himself, and would walk around the city wearing a holster-belt containing harmonicas in a variety of different keys. Sebastian became a huge fan of Hurt, and would go and see him perform whenever Hurt was in New York. He soon found himself first jamming backstage with Hurt, and then performing with him on stage for the last two weeks of a residency. He was particularly impressed with what he called Hurt's positive attitude in his music -- something that Sebastian would emulate in his own songwriting. Sebastian was soon invited to join a jug band, called the Even Dozen Jug Band. Jug band music was a style of music that first became popular in the 1920s, and had many of the same musical elements as the music later known as skiffle. It was played on a mixture of standard musical instruments -- usually portable, "folky" ones like guitar and harmonica -- and improvised homemade instruments, like the spoons, the washboard, and comb and paper. The reason they're called jug bands is because they would involve someone blowing into a jug to make a noise that sounded a bit like a horn -- much like the coffee pot groups we talked about way back in episode six. The music was often hokum music, and incorporated elements of what we'd now call blues, vaudeville, and country music, though at the time those genres were nothing like as distinct as they're considered today: [Excerpt: Cincinnati Jug Band, "Newport Blues"] The Even Dozen Jug Band actually ended up having thirteen members, and it had a rather remarkable lineup. The leader was Stefan Grossman, later regarded as one of the greatest fingerpicking guitarists in America, and someone who will be coming up in other contexts in future episodes I'm sure, and they also featured David Grisman, a mandolin player who would later play with the Grateful Dead among many others;  Steve Katz, who would go on to be a founder member of Blood, Sweat and Tears and produce records for Lou Reed; Maria D'Amato, who under her married name Maria Muldaur would go on to have a huge hit with "Midnight at the Oasis"; and Joshua Rifkin, who would later go on to become one of the most important scholars of Bach's music of the latter half of the twentieth century, but who is best known for his recordings of Scott Joplin's piano rags, which more or less single-handedly revived Joplin's music from obscurity and created the ragtime revival of the 1970s: [Excerpt: Joshua Rifkin, "Maple Leaf Rag"] Unfortunately, despite the many talents involved, a band as big as that was uneconomical to keep together, and the Even Dozen Jug Band only played four shows together -- though those four shows were, as Muldaur later remembered, "Carnegie Hall twice, the Hootenanny television show and some church". The group did, though, make an album for Elektra records, produced by Paul Rothchild. Indeed, it was Rothchild who was the impetus for the group forming -- he wanted to produce a record of a jug band, and had told Grossman that if he got one together, he'd record it: [Excerpt: The Even Dozen Jug Band, "On the Road Again"] On that album, Sebastian wasn't actually credited as John Sebastian -- because he was playing harmonica on the album, and his father was such a famous harmonica player, he thought it better if he was credited by his middle name, so he was John Benson for this one album. The Even Dozen Jug Band split up after only a few months, with most of the band more interested in returning to university than becoming professional musicians, but Sebastian remained in touch with Rothchild, as they both shared an interest in the drug culture, and Rothchild started using him on sessions for other artists on Elektra, which was rapidly becoming one of the biggest labels for the nascent counterculture. The first record the two worked together on after the Even Dozen Jug Band was sparked by a casual conversation. Vince Martin and Fred Neil saw Sebastian walking down the street wearing his harmonica holster, and were intrigued and asked him if he played. Soon he and his friend Felix Pappalardi were accompanying Martin and Neil on stage, and the two of them were recording as the duo's accompanists: [Excerpt: Vince Martin and Fred Neil, "Tear Down the Walls"] We've mentioned Neil before, but if you don't remember him, he was one of the people around whom the whole Greenwich Village scene formed -- he was the MC and organiser of bills for many of the folk shows of the time, but he's now best known for writing the songs "Everybody's Talkin'", recorded famously by Harry Nilsson, and "The Dolphins", recorded by Tim Buckley. On the Martin and Neil album, Tear Down The Walls, as well as playing harmonica, Sebastian acted essentially as uncredited co-producer with Rothchild, but Martin and Neil soon stopped recording for Elektra. But in the meantime, Sebastian had met the most important musical collaborator he would ever have, and this is the start of something that will become a minor trend in the next few years, of important musical collaborations happening because of people being introduced by Cass Elliot. Cass Elliot had been a singer in a folk group called the Big 3 -- not the same group as the Merseybeat group -- with Tim Rose, and the man who would be her first husband, Jim Hendricks (not the more famous guitarist of a similar name): [Excerpt: Cass Elliot and the Big 3, "The Banjo Song"] The Big 3 had split up when Elliot and Hendricks had got married, and the two married members had been looking around for other musicians to perform with, when coincidentally another group they knew also split up. The Halifax Three were a Canadian group who had originally started out as The Colonials, with a lineup of Denny Doherty, Pat LaCroix and Richard Byrne. Byrne didn't turn up for a gig, and a homeless guitar player, Zal Yanovsky, who would hang around the club the group were playing at, stepped in. Doherty and LaCroix, much to Yanovsky's objections, insisted he bathe and have a haircut, but soon the newly-renamed Halifax Three were playing Carnegie Hall and recording for Epic Records: [Excerpt: The Halifax Three, "When I First Came to This Island"] But then a plane they were in crash-landed, and the group took that as a sign that they should split up. So they did, and Doherty and Yanovsky continued as a duo, until they hooked up with Hendricks and Elliot and formed a new group, the Mugwumps. A name which may be familiar if you recognise one of the hits of a group that Doherty and Elliot were in later: [Excerpt: The Mamas and the Papas, "Creeque Alley"] But we're skipping ahead a bit there. Cass Elliot was one of those few people in the music industry about whom it is impossible to find anyone with a bad word to say, and she was friendly with basically everyone, and particularly good at matching people up with each other. And on February the 7th 1964, she invited John Sebastian over to watch the Beatles' first performance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Like everyone in America, he was captivated by the performance: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand (live on the Ed Sullivan Show)"] But Yanovsky was also there, and the two played guitar together for a bit, before retreating to opposite sides of the room. And then Elliot spent several hours as a go-between, going to each man and telling him how much the other loved and admired his playing and wanted to play more with him. Sebastian joined the Mugwumps for a while, becoming one of the two main instrumentalists with Yanovsky, as the group pivoted from performing folk music to performing Beatles-inspired rock. But the group's management team, Bob Cavallo and Roy Silver, who weren't particularly musical people, and whose main client was the comedian Bill Cosby, got annoyed at Sebastian, because he and Yanovsky were getting on *too* well musically -- they were trading blues licks on stage, rather than sticking to the rather pedestrian arrangements that the group was meant to be performing -- and so Silver fired Sebastian fired from the group. When the Mugwumps recorded their one album, Sebastian had to sit in the control room while his former bandmates recorded with session musicians, who he thought were nowhere near up to his standard: [Excerpt: The Mugwumps, "Searchin'"] By the time that album was released, the Mugwumps had already split up. Sebastian had continued working as a session musician for Elektra, including playing on the album The Blues Project, which featured white Greenwich Village folk musicians like Eric Von Schmidt, Dave Van Ronk, and Spider John Koerner playing their versions of old blues records, including this track by Geoff Muldaur, which features Sebastian on harmonica and "Bob Landy" on piano -- a fairly blatant pseudonym: [Excerpt: Geoff Muldaur, "Downtown Blues"] Sebastian also played rhythm guitar and harmonica on the demos that became a big part of Tim Hardin's first album -- and his fourth, when the record company released the remaining demos. Sebastian doesn't appear to be on the orchestrated ballads that made Hardin's name -- songs like "Reason to Believe" and "Misty Roses" -- but he is on much of the more blues-oriented material, which while it's not anything like as powerful as Hardin's greatest songs, made up a large part of his repertoire: [Excerpt: Tim Hardin, "Ain't Gonna Do Without"] Erik Jacobsen, the producer of Hardin's records, was impressed enough by Sebastian that he got Sebastian to record lead vocals, for a studio group consisting of Sebastian, Felix Pappalardi, Jerry Yester and Henry Diltz of the Modern Folk Quartet, and a bass singer whose name nobody could later remember. The group, under the name "Pooh and the Heffalumps", recorded two Beach Boys knockoffs, "Lady Godiva" and "Rooty Toot", the latter written by Sebastian, though he would later be embarrassed by it and claim it was by his cousin: [Excerpt: Pooh and the Heffalumps, "Rooty Toot"] After that, Jacobsen became convinced that Sebastian should form a group to exploit his potential as a lead singer and songwriter. By this point, the Mugwumps had split up, and their management team had also split, with Silver taking Bill Cosby and Cavallo taking the Mugwumps, and so Sebastian was able to work with Yanovsky, and the putative group could be managed by Cavallo. But Sebastian and Yanovsky needed a rhythm section. And Erik Jacobsen knew a band that might know some people. Jacobsen was a fan of a Beatles soundalike group called the Sellouts, who were playing Greenwich Village and who were co-managed by Herb Cohen, the manager of the Modern Folk Quartet (who, as we heard a couple of episodes ago, would soon go on to be the manager of the Mothers of Invention). The Sellouts were ultra-professional by the standards  of rock groups of the time -- they even had a tape echo machine that they used on stage to give them a unique sound -- and they had cut a couple of tracks with Jacobsen producing, though I've not been able to track down copies of them. Their leader Skip Boone, had started out playing guitar in a band called the Blue Suedes, and had played in 1958 on a record by their lead singer Arthur Osborne: [Excerpt: Arthur Osborne, "Hey Ruby"] Skip Boone's brother Steve in his autobiography says that that was produced by Chet Atkins for RCA, but it was actually released on Brunswick records. In the early sixties, Skip Boone joined a band called the Kingsmen -- not the same one as the band that recorded "Louie Louie" -- playing lead guitar with his brother Steve on rhythm, a singer called Sonny Bottari, a saxophone player named King Charles, bass player Clay Sonier, and drummer Joe Butler. Sometimes Butler would get up front and sing, and then another drummer, Jan Buchner, would sit in in his place. Soon Steve Boone would replace Bonier as the bass player, but the Kingsmen had no success, and split up. From the ashes of the Kingsmen had formed the Sellouts, Skip Boone, Jerry Angus, Marshall O'Connell, and Joe Butler, who had switched from playing "Peppermint Twist" to playing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in February 1964. Meanwhile Steve Boone went on a trip to Europe before starting at university in New York, where he hooked up again with Butler, and it was Butler who introduced him to Sebastian and Yanovsky. Sebastian and Yanovsky had been going to see the Sellouts at the behest of Jacobsen, and they'd been asking if they knew anyone else who could play that kind of material. Skip Boone had mentioned his little brother, and as soon as they met him, even before they first played together, they knew from his appearance that he would be the right bass player for them. So now they had at least the basis for a band. They hadn't played together, but Erik Jacobsen was an experienced record producer and Cavallo an experienced manager. They just needed to do some rehearsals and get a drummer, and a record contract was more or less guaranteed. Boone suggested Jan Buchner, the backup drummer from the Kingsmen, and he joined them for rehearsals. It was during these early rehearsals that Boone got to play on his first real record, other than some unreleased demos the Kingsmen had made. John Sebastian got a call from that "Bob Landy" we mentioned earlier, asking if he'd play bass on a session. Boone tagged along, because he was a fan, and when Sebastian couldn't get the parts down for some songs, he suggested that Boone, as an actual bass player, take over: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Maggie's Farm"] But the new group needed a name, of course. It was John Sebastian who came up with the name they eventually chose, The Lovin' Spoonful, though Boone was a bit hesitant about it at first, worrying that it might be a reference to heroin -- Boone was from a very conservative, military, background, and knew little of drug culture and didn't at that time make much of a distinction between cannabis and heroin, though he'd started using the former -- but Sebastian was insistent. The phrase actually referred to coffee -- the name came from "Coffee Blues" by Sebastian's old idol Mississippi John Hurt – or at least Hurt always *said* it was about coffee, though in live performance he apparently made it clear that it was about cunnilingus: [Excerpt: Mississippi John Hurt, "Coffee Blues"] Their first show, at the Night Owl Club, was recorded, and there was even an attempt to release it as a CD in the 1990s, but it was left unreleased and as far as I can tell wasn't even leaked. There have been several explanations for this, but perhaps the most accurate one is just the comment from the manager of the club, who came up to the group after their two sets and told them “Hey, I don't know how to break this to you, but you guys suck.” There were apparently three different problems. They were underrehearsed -- which could be fixed with rehearsal -- they were playing too loud and hurting the patrons' ears -- which could be fixed by turning down the amps -- and their drummer didn't look right, was six years older than the rest of the group, and was playing in an out-of-date fifties style that wasn't suitable for the music they were playing. That was solved by sacking Buchner. By this point Joe Butler had left the Sellouts, and while Herb Cohen was interested in managing him as a singer, he was willing to join this new group at least for the moment. By now the group were all more-or-less permanent residents at the Albert Hotel, which was more or less a doss-house where underemployed musicians would stay, and which had its own rehearsal rooms. As well as the Spoonful, Cass Elliot and Denny Doherty lived there, as did the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Joe Butler quickly fit into the group, and soon they were recording what became their first single, produced by Jacobsen, an original of Sebastian's called "Do You Believe in Magic?", with Sebastian on autoharp and vocals, Yanovsky on lead guitar and backing vocals, Boone on bass, Butler on drums, and Jerry Yester adding piano and backing vocals: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Do You Believe in Magic?"] For a long time, the group couldn't get a deal -- the record companies all liked the song, but said that unless the group were English they couldn't sell them at the moment. Then Phil Spector walked into the Night Owl Cafe, where the new lineup of the group had become popular, and tried to sign them up. But they turned him down -- they wanted Erik Jacobsen to produce them; they were a team. Spector's interest caused other labels to be interested, and the group very nearly signed to Elektra. But again, signing to Elektra would have meant being produced by Rothchild, and also Elektra were an album label who didn't at that time have any hit single acts, and the group knew they had hit single potential. They did record a few tracks for Elektra to stick on a blues compilation, but they knew that Elektra wouldn't be their real home. Eventually the group signed with Charley Koppelman and Don Rubin, who had started out as songwriters themselves, working for Don Kirshner. When Kirshner's organisation had been sold to Columbia, Koppelman and Rubin had gone along and ended up working for Columbia as executives. They'd then worked for Morris Levy at Roulette Records, before forming their own publishing and record company. Rather than put out records themselves, they had a deal to license records to Kama Sutra Records, who in turn had a distribution deal with MGM Records. Koppelman and Rubin were willing to take the group and their manager and producer as a package deal, and they released the group's demo of "Do You Believe In Magic?" unchanged as their first single: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Do You Believe in Magic?"] The single reached the top ten, and the group were soon in the studio cutting their first album, also titled Do You Believe In Magic? The album was a mix of songs that were part of the standard Greenwich Village folkie repertoire -- songs like Mississippi John Hurt's "Blues in the Bottle" and Fred Neil's "The Other Side of This Life" -- and a couple more originals. The group's second single was the first song that Steve Boone had co-written. It was inspired by a date he'd gone on with the photographer Nurit Wilde, who sadly for him didn't go on a second date, and who would later be the mother of Mike Nesmith's son Jason, but who he was very impressed by. He thought of her when he came up with the line "you didn't have to be so nice, I would have liked you anyway", and he and Sebastian finished up a song that became another top ten hit for the group: [Excerpt: (The Good Time Music of) The Lovin' Spoonful, "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice"] Shortly after that song was recorded, but before it was released, the group were called into Columbia TV with an intriguing proposition. Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson, two young TV producers, were looking at producing a TV show inspired by A Hard Day's Night, and were looking for a band to perform in it. Would the Lovin' Spoonful be up for it? They were interested at first, but Boone and Sebastian weren't sure they wanted to be actors, and also it would involve the group changing its name. They'd already made a name for themselves as the Lovin' Spoonful, did they really want to be the Monkees instead? They passed on the idea. Instead, they went on a tour of the deep South as the support act to the Supremes, a pairing that they didn't feel made much sense, but which did at least allow them to watch the Supremes and the Funk Brothers every night. Sebastian was inspired by the straight four-on-the-floor beat of the Holland-Dozier-Holland repertoire, and came up with his own variation on it, though as this was the Lovin' Spoonful the end result didn't sound very Motown at all: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Daydream"] It was only after the track was recorded that Yanovsky pointed out to Sebastian that he'd unconsciously copied part of the melody of the old standard "Got a Date With an Angel": [Excerpt: Al Bowlly, "Got a Date With an Angel"] "Daydream" became the group's third top ten hit in a row, but it caused some problems for the group. The first was Kama Sutra's advertising campaign for the record, which had the words "Lovin' Spoonful Daydream", with the initials emphasised. While the group were drug users, they weren't particularly interested in being promoted for that rather than their music, and had strong words with the label. The other problem came with the Beach Boys. The group were supporting the Beach Boys on a tour in spring of 1966, when "Daydream" came out and became a hit, and they got on with all the band members except Mike Love, who they definitely did not get on with. Almost fifty years later, in his autobiography, Steve Boone would have nothing bad to say about the Wilson brothers, but calls Love "an obnoxious, boorish braggart", a "marginally talented hack" and worse, so it's safe to say that Love wasn't his favourite person in the world. Unfortunately, when "Daydream" hit the top ten, one of the promoters of the tour decided to bill the Lovin' Spoonful above the Beach Boys, and this upset Love, who understandably thought that his group, who were much better known and had much more hits, should be the headliners. If this had been any of the other Beach Boys, there would have been no problem, but because it was Love, who the Lovin' Spoonful despised, they decided that they were going to fight for top billing, and the managers had to get involved. Eventually it was agreed that the two groups would alternate the top spot on the bill for the rest of the tour. "Daydream" eventually reached number two on the charts (and number one on Cashbox) and also became the group's first hit in the UK, reaching number two here as well, and leading to the group playing a short UK tour. During that tour, they had a similar argument over billing with Mick Jagger as they'd had with Mike Love, this time over who was headlining on an appearance on Top of the Pops, and the group came to the same assessment of Jagger as they had of Love. The performance went OK, though, despite them being so stoned on hash given them by the wealthy socialite Tara Browne that Sebastian had to be woken up seconds before he started playing. They also played the Marquee Club -- Boone notes in his autobiography that he wasn't impressed by the club when he went to see it the day before their date there, because some nobody named David Bowie was playing there. But in the audience that day were George Harrison, John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Spencer Davis, and Brian Jones, most of whom partied with the group afterwards. The Lovin' Spoonful made a big impression on Lennon in particular, who put "Daydream" and "Do You Believe in Magic" in his jukebox at home, and who soon took to wearing glasses in the same round, wiry, style as the ones that Sebastian wore. They also influenced Paul McCartney, who wasn't at that gig, but who soon wrote this, inspired by "Daydream": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Good Day Sunshine"] Unfortunately, this was more or less the high point of the group's career. Shortly after that brief UK tour, Zal Yanovsky and Steve Boone went to a party where they were given some cannabis -- and they were almost immediately stopped by the police, subjected to an illegal search of their vehicle, and arrested. They would probably have been able to get away with this -- after all, it was an illegal search, even though of course the police didn't admit to that -- were it not for the fact that Yanovsky was a Canadian citizen, and he could be deported and barred from ever re-entering the US just for being arrested. This was the first major drug bust of a rock and roll group, and there was no precedent for the group, their managers, their label or their lawyers to deal with this. And so they agreed to something they would regret for the rest of their lives. In return for being let off, Boone and Yanovsky agreed to take an undercover police officer to a party and introduce him to some of their friends as someone they knew in the record business, so he would be able to arrest one of the bigger dealers. This was, of course, something they knew was a despicable thing to do, throwing friends under the bus to save themselves, but they were young men and under a lot of pressure, and they hoped that it wouldn't actually lead to any arrests. And for almost a year, there were no serious consequences, although both Boone and Yanovsky were shaken up by the event, and Yanovsky's behaviour, which had always been erratic, became much, much worse. But for the moment, the group remained very successful. After "Daydream", an album track from their first album, "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?" had been released as a stopgap single, and that went to number two as well. And right before the arrest, the group had been working on what would be an even bigger hit. The initial idea for "Summer in the City" actually came from John Sebastian's fourteen-year-old brother Mark, who'd written a bossa nova song called "It's a Different World". The song was, by all accounts, the kind of thing that a fourteen-year-old boy writes, but part of it had potential, and John Sebastian took that part -- giving his brother full credit -- and turned it into the chorus of a new song: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Summer in the City"] To this, Sebastian added a new verse, inspired by a riff the session player Artie Schroeck had been playing while the group recorded their songs for the Woody Allen film What's Up Tiger Lily, creating a tenser, darker, verse to go with his younger brother's chorus: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Summer in the City"] In the studio, Steve Boone came up with the instrumental arrangement, which started with drums, organ, electric piano, and guitar, and then proceeded to bass, autoharp, guitar, and percussion overdubs. The drum sound on the record was particularly powerful thanks to the engineer Roy Halee, who worked on most of Simon & Garfunkel's records. Halee put a mic at the top of a stairwell, a giant loudspeaker at the bottom, and used the stairwell as an echo chamber for the drum part. He would later use a similar technique on Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer". The track still needed another section though, and Boone suggested an instrumental part, which led to him getting an equal songwriting credit with the Sebastian brothers. His instrumental piano break was inspired by Gershwin, and the group topped it off with overdubbed city noises: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Summer in the City"] The track went to number one, becoming the group's only number one record, and it was the last track on what is by far their best album, Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful. That album produced two more top ten hits for the group, "Nashville Cats", a tribute to Nashville session players (though John Sebastian seems to have thought that Sun Records was a Nashville, rather than a Memphis, label), and the rather lovely "Rain on the Roof": [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Rain on the Roof"] But that song caused friction with the group, because it was written about Sebastian's relationship with his wife who the other members of the band despised. They also felt that the songs he was writing about their relationship were giving the group a wimpy image, and wanted to make more rockers like "Summer in the City" -- some of them had been receiving homophobic abuse for making such soft-sounding music. The group were also starting to resent Sebastian for other reasons. In a recent contract renegotiation, a "key member" clause had been put into the group's record contract, which stated that Sebastian, as far as the label was concerned, was the only important member of the group. While that didn't affect decision-making in the group, it did let the group know that if the other members did anything to upset Sebastian, he was able to take his ball away with him, and even just that potential affected the way the group thought about each other. All these factors came into play with a song called "Darling Be Home Soon", which was a soft ballad that Sebastian had written about his wife, and which was written for another film soundtrack -- this time for a film by a new director named Francis Ford Coppola. When the other band members came in to play on the soundtrack, including that track, they found that rather than being allowed to improvise and come up with their own parts as they had previously, they had to play pre-written parts to fit with the orchestration. Yanovsky in particular was annoyed by the simple part he had to play, and when the group appeared on the Ed Sullivan show to promote the record, he mugged, danced erratically, and mimed along mocking the lyrics as Sebastian sang. The song -- one of Sebastian's very best -- made a perfectly respectable number fifteen, but it was the group's first record not to make the top ten: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Darling Be Home Soon"] And then to make matters worse, the news got out that someone had been arrested as a result of Boone and Yanovsky's efforts to get themselves out of trouble the year before. This was greeted with horror by the counterculture, and soon mimeographed newsletters and articles in the underground papers were calling the group part of the establishment, and calling for a general boycott of the group -- if you bought their records, attended their concerts, or had sex with any of the band members, you were a traitor. Yanovsky and Boone had both been in a bad way mentally since the bust, but Yanovsky was far worse, and was making trouble for the other members in all sorts of ways. The group decided to fire Yanovsky, and brought in Jerry Yester to replace him, giving him a severance package that ironically meant that he ended up seeing more money from the group's records than the rest of them, as their records were later bought up by a variety of shell companies that passed through the hands of Morris Levy among others, and so from the late sixties through the early nineties the group never got any royalties. For a while, this seemed to benefit everyone. Yanovsky had money, and his friendship with the group members was repaired. He released a solo single, arranged by Jack Nitzsche, which just missed the top one hundred: [Excerpt: Zal Yanovsky, "Just as Long as You're Here"] That song was written by the Bonner and Gordon songwriting team who were also writing hits for the Turtles at this time, and who were signed to Koppelman and Rubin's company. The extent to which Yanovsky's friendship with his ex-bandmates was repaired by his firing was shown by the fact that Jerry Yester, his replacement in the group, co-produced his one solo album, Alive and Well in Argentina, an odd mixture of comedy tracks, psychedelia, and tributes to the country music he loved. His instrumental version of Floyd Cramer's "Last Date" is fairly listenable -- Cramer's piano playing was a big influence on Yanovsky's guitar -- but his version of George Jones' "From Brown to Blue" makes it very clear that Zal Yanovsky was no George Jones: [Excerpt: Zal Yanovsky, "From Brown to Blue"] Yanovsky then quit music, and went into the restaurant business. The Lovin' Spoonful, meanwhile, made one further album, but the damage had been done. Everything Playing is actually a solid album, though not as good as the album before, and it produced three top forty hits, but the highest-charting was "Six O'Clock", which only made number eighteen, and the album itself made a pitiful one hundred and eighteen on the charts. The song on the album that in retrospect has had the most impact was the rather lovely "Younger Generation", which Sebastian later sang at Woodstock: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Younger Generation (Live at Woodstock)"] But at Woodstock he performed that alone, because by then he'd quit the group. Boone, Butler, and Yester decided to continue, with Butler singing lead, and recorded a single, "Never Going Back", produced by Yester's old bandmate from the Modern Folk Quartet Chip Douglas, who had since become a successful producer for the Monkees and the Turtles, and written by John Stewart of the Kingston Trio, who had written "Daydream Believer" for the Monkees, but the record only made number seventy-eight on the charts: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful featuring Joe Butler, "Never Going Back"] That was followed by an album by "The Lovin' Spoonful Featuring Joe Butler", Revelation: Revolution 69, a solo album by Butler in all but name -- Boone claims not to have played on it, and Butler is the only one featured on the cover, which shows a naked Butler being chased by a naked woman with a lion in front of them covering the naughty bits. The biggest hit other than "Never Going Back" from the album was "Me About You", a Bonner and Gordon song which only made number ninety-one: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful Featuring Joe Butler, "Me About You"] John Sebastian went on to have a moderately successful solo career -- as well as his appearance at Woodstock, he released several solo albums, guested on harmonica on records by the Doors, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young and others, and had a solo number one hit in 1976 with "Welcome Back", the theme song from the TV show Welcome Back, Kotter: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Welcome Back"] Sebastian continues to perform, though he's had throat problems for several decades that mean he can't sing many of the songs he's best known for. The original members of the Lovin' Spoonful reunited for two performances -- an appearance in Paul Simon's film One Trick Pony in 1980, and a rather disastrous induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. Zal Yanovsky died of a heart attack in 2002. The remaining band members remained friendly, and Boone, Butler, and Yester reunited as the Lovin' Spoonful in 1991, initially with Yester's brother Jim, who had played in The Association, latterly with other members. One of those other members in the 1990s was Yester's daughter Lena, who became Boone's fourth wife (and is as far as I can discover still married to him). Yester, Boone, and Butler continued touring together as the Lovin' Spoonful until 2017, when Jerry Yester was arrested on thirty counts of child pornography possession, and was immediately sacked from the group. The other two carried on, and the three surviving original members reunited on stage for a performance at one of the Wild Honey Orchestra's benefit concerts in LA in 2020, though that was just a one-off performance, not a full-blown reunion. It was also the last Lovin' Spoonful performance to date, as that was in February 2020, but Steve Boone has performed with John Sebastian's most recent project, John Sebastian's Jug Band Village, a tribute to the Greenwich Village folk scene the group originally formed in, and the two played together most recently in December 2021. The three surviving original members of the group all seem to be content with their legacy, doing work they enjoy, and basically friendly, which is more than can be said for most of their contemporaries, and which is perhaps appropriate for a band whose main songwriter had been inspired, more than anything else, to make music with a positive attitude.