Suffer Not!
It's neither little...
Last week’s Bonus Round: “Me & Magdalena” is a song from The Monkees 2016 album “Good Times”, written by Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie with lead vocals by Mike Nesmith.
From a 2016 article in “Under The Radar”:
“The Monkees are releasing a new album, Good Times! on May 27 via Rhino. What makes it noteworthy is that the lyrics have been written by Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, Oasis’ Noel Gallagher, and Rogue Wave’s Zach Rogue, among others. Now the band have shared “Me & Magdalena,” which was written by Gibbard and features lead vocals by The Monkees’ Mike Nesmith. NPR premiered the ballad, which definitely sounds like a Gibbard composition and can be streamed below.” Credit: Christopher Roberts for Under The Radar Link Under The Radar
From Wikipedia: “Good Times! is the twelfth studio album by American pop rock band the Monkees. Produced mainly by Adam Schlesinger (with some additional bonus tracks produced by Andrew Sandoval), the album was recorded to commemorate the band's 50th anniversary. It is the first Monkees studio album since Justus (1996), marking the longest gap between Monkees albums to date, and the first since the death of founding member Davy Jones. The album features surviving Monkees Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork, as well as a posthumous contribution from Jones. The album received generally positive reviews from music critics and reached number 14 on the Billboard 200, becoming the band's highest-charting album in 48 years.
Background and recording
The project was initiated by Rhino executives John Hughes and Mark Pinkus, who were excited about a 50th anniversary album for the Monkees.[1] Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne was hired to produce the album, with tracks by the three surviving Monkees, initially unreleased songs by the songwriters they used during their initial run including Neil Diamond, Carole King & Gerry Goffin, Harry Nilsson and Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart and contemporary rock songwriters Schlesinger, Rivers Cuomo, Andy Partridge, Ben Gibbard, Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller.[2] Schlesinger had asked his Fountains of Wayne bandmate Jody Porter to write a song for the album, but it was not used because it was too similar to the title track.[3]
The title track was written by Harry Nilsson, and a surviving demo from the late 1960s was used incorporating Nilsson's vocals posthumously in a "duet" with Micky Dolenz. Davy Jones performs the Neil Diamond-penned track "Love to Love" which was recorded in 1967 for the Monkees' third album in a Don Kirshner-supervised session while the group was trying to gain musical independence from Kirshner. Once he was removed, the song was discarded in favor of recording an album of songs both sung and played by the group. The resultant album was Headquarters. The lead vocal track was re-recorded in 1969, but it never saw an official release, still unfinished, until the late 1970s. For its inclusion on Good Times!, the 1969 version is used with new backing vocals by Dolenz and Tork.
Musicians on the album include Fountains of Wayne members Schlesinger (guitar, bass, keyboards, drums, percussion), Porter (guitar) and Brian Young (drums, percussion), as well as Mike Viola (guitar, bass, background vocals) and Erik Paparozzi (bass on the bonus track "Love's What I Want"),[4] and band members Micky Dolenz (vocals, drums), Michael Nesmith (vocals, guitar) and Peter Tork (vocals, keyboards, banjo). Credit: Wikipedia Link: Good Times!
Welcome new subscribers and thank you!! You deserve a pic of my cat, Mika, when she was but a kitten:
Spring might be just around the corner, but it hasn’t quite made it to most of the Upper Left Corner yet. Meh, spring is my favorite time of year as everything starts to green up and bloom with the promise of longer days and renewal, and I personally can’t wait for it to fully arrive. So for now it’s back to the studio and get some songs done - lawns and gardening and all the stuff that needs to be put away and all the stuff that needs to be retrieved from storage are just going to have to wait a bit.
Thank goodness my taxes are in the can and off to my accountant (talk soon, my friend!!).
So, moving on: The first soundhole pickup I wrote about over the last couple of weeks had to be returned - it was a customer return from The Big Name in online purchasing, and I kind of like the idea of second chances for stuff from them (and I do not fear saving a few bucks, either!). This one didn’t work out, so I ordered a brand new one off of Reverb - arrived a couple of days ago and it’s great! I’m thinking of recording some 8 or 12 bar comparison tracks of the Zager with the soundhole pickup and the other guitars with installed electronics. I don’t really hear differences in them other than just the inherent differences in each instrument while playing them through an amp, but some may appear when recorded in a DAW. I’ll keep everything the same for each - room, interface, cabling, DAW (Logic Pro) and export each of the tracks to an .m4a in a future Michael Acoustic post. I’ll also include a description of each type of the electronics in each guitar, and you can judge for yourself (though my brand choices will be painfully obvious…). So look for that in the coming weeks.
In case you missed or ignored this link from yesterday’s “Links” post (or you’re just not a “Thursday person” as we say around here…), I wanted to highlight some points from one of them. The link was to a post by Mr. Griff Hamlin of Blues Guitar Unleashed from one of the emails he sends out to subscribers (highly recommended!). Link: Don't Suffer Needlessly
In it he lists these items that may cause “suffering”:
“Feelings of frustration when the thing you could play on your guitar yesterday sounds like you’ve never even tried today…
Thinking that every other guitar player at the local open jam sounds better than you on the exact same amp…
Compelling desires to buy a new guitar, amp, or pedal based on the conviction that it is guaranteed to make you sound better…
As symptoms persist and get more severe, there is a higher propensity to spend time on guitar related websites and forums, and less time actually playing the guitar…
In extreme cases it is even characterized by putting the guitar in its case and then putting the case in a closet or under a bed…”
Holy smokes, did he hit some of these right in the 10 ring! I only case my guitars with humidifiers because I live in a low humidity area and gas heat during colder months exacerbates that, but every other item on that list has been spot on for me at some point. I’ll let you click the link above to see his suggested solutions - and they are ALL spot on as well! It’s pretty easy to lay it off to seasonal blues (not the musical kind) and colder weather and a million other excuses, but there is great value in reading his solutions. I’ll let you do that, as I get back to doing the same things!
Finally for today, yesterday I posted a somewhat tongue-in-cheek comment about Gonzaga University’s basketball team and their Sweet Sixteen game that took place last night. A follow on comment that I posted on another social media site is appropriate:
“That was a GAME!! Much respect to UCLA - they never quit, never gave up, and though short handed because of injuries, fought on. In the end, Gonzaga is headed to the Elite Eight, and they earned it last night.”
Congratulations to Coach Few and the entire team for a fabulous game, team and another year in “The Dance”, and props to the UCLA staff and players for the effort and “never say die” perseverance!
Bonus Round: …nor a wonder
Cheers and keep playing!!
Michael Acoustic
Enjoyed hearing about the new Monkees album, Michael! Thanks for that....wasn't aware one was coming out. I can tell those of my generation will have a hard time adjusting to hearing their name, and then hearing something besides happy melodies and ringing harmonies!
But, if they're gonna grow artistically, I guess we fans'll have to do our due diligence, and follow along, however much we DON'T know about Death Cute for Cabbie or whatever! Full disclosure: I sat behind Jan Castleberry in Jr. High/8th grade home room in 1968. She was the president, I'll have you know, of the Monkees' Houston chapter Fan Club! I even got a Mickey Dolenz lock-of-hair pinback button from her, and I had all their albums and singles, and read about them in 16 and Tiger Beat magazines!😱