Skip to main content

Watch Frank Zappa Play Michael Nesmith (RIP) on The Monkees–and Vice Versa (1967)

In December 1967, The Monkees blew their audience’s minds by hosting Frank Zappa, “participant in and perhaps even leader of” the Mothers Of Invention.

Or did they?

The tidal wave of affection that comprises twenty-first century Monkees mania makes us forget that children were the primary audience for The Monkees’ titular sitcom. (One might also say that The Monkees were the sitcom’s titular band.)

But even if the kids at home weren’t sufficiently conversant in the musical underground to identify the special guest star of the episode, “The Monkees Blow Their Minds,” we are.

It’s a joy to see Zappa and The Monkees’ supremely laid back Michael Nesmith (RIP) impersonating each other.

Zappa’s idea, apparently. He’s in complete control of the gimmick from the get go, whereas Nesmith struggles to keep their names straight and his prosthetic nose in place before getting up to speed.

It’s important to remember that it’s not Frank, but Nesmith playing Frank who accuses The Monkees’ music of being banal and insipid.

Zappa himself was a great supporter of The Monkees. “When people hated us more than anything, he said kind things about us,” Nesmith recalled in Barry Miles’ Zappa biography. Zappa attempted to teach Nesmith how to play lead guitar, and offered drummer Micky Dolenz a post-Monkees gig with The Mothers of Invention.

Their mutual warmth makes lines like “You’re the popular musician! I’m dirty gross and ugly” palatable. It put me in mind of comedian Zach Galifianakis’ Between Two Ferns, and countless other loosely rehearsed web series.

After a couple of minutes, Nesmith gets his hat back to conduct as Zappa smashes up a car to the tune of the Mother’s Of Invention’s “Mother People.”

Watch the full episode here, or if pressed for time, perhaps just Zappa’s cameo in the Monkees’ movie Head, as a studio lot bull wrangler who counsels lead singer Davy Jones on his career.

Related Content:

A Young Frank Zappa Turns the Bicycle into a Musical Instrument on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Jimi Hendrix Opens for The Monkees on a 1967 Tour; Then After 8 Shows, Flips Off the Crowd and Quits

Watch the Last Time Peter Tork (RIP) & The Monkees Played Together During Their 1960s Heyday: It’s a Psychedelic Freakout

Ayun Halliday is an author, homeschooler, and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Follow her @AyunHalliday

 

Watch Frank Zappa Play Michael Nesmith (RIP) on The Monkees–and Vice Versa (1967) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.



from Open Culture https://ift.tt/3oLPijr
via Ilumina

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When Albert Einstein & Charlie Chaplin Met and Became Fast Famous Friends (1930)

Photo via Wikimedia Commons “You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother,” goes a well-known quote attributed variously to Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, and Ernest Rutherford. No matter who said it, “the sentiment… rings true,” writes Michelle Lavery , “for researchers in all disciplines from particle physics to ecopsychology.” As Feynman discovered during his many years of teaching , it could be “the motto of all professional communicators,” The Guardian ’s Russell Grossman writes , “and especially those who earn a living communicating the tricky business of science.” Einstein became one of the world’s great science communicators by choice, not necessity, and found ways to explain his complex theories to children and the elderly alike. But perhaps, if he’d had his way, he would rather have avoided words altogether, and preferred acrobatic feats of silent daring to get his message across. We might at least conclude so from his reverence f...
Post a Comment
Read more

1,100 Delicate Drawings of Root Systems Reveals the Hidden World of Plants

We know that plants can inspire art. If you, personally, still require convincing on that point, just have a look at Elizabeth Twining’s Illustrations of the Natural Orders of Plants , the drawings of Ernst Heinrich Haeckel , Elizabeth Blackwell’s  A Curious Herbal , and Nancy Anne Kingsbury Wollstonecraft’s Specimens of the Plants and Fruits of the Island of Cuba — not to mention the paintings of Georgia O’ Keeffe — all previously featured here on Open Culture. But those works concern themselves only with plant life as it exists above ground. What goes on down below, underneath the soil? That you can see for yourself — and without having to pull up one of our fine flowering (or non-flowering) friends to do so — at Wageningen University’s online archive of root system drawings . “The outcome of 40 years of  root system excavations in Europe,” says that site, the collection contains 1,180 diagrams of species from  Abies alba (best known today as a kind of Christmas t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Zamrock: An Introduction to Zambia’s 1970s Rich & Psychedelic Rock Scene

The story of popular music in the late 20th century is never complete without an account of the explosive psychedelic rock, funk, Afrobeat, and other hybrid styles that proliferated on the African continent and across Latin American and the Caribbean in the 1960s and 70s. It’s only lately, however, that large audiences are discovering how much pioneering music came out of Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, and other postcolonial countries, thanks to UK labels like Strut and Soundway (named by The Guardian as “one of the 10 British Labels defining the sound of 2014” and named “Label of the Year” in 2017). Germany’s Analogue Africa , a label that reissues classic albums from the era, puts it this way: “the future of music happened decades ago.” Only most Western audiences weren’t paying attention—with notable exceptions, of course: superstar drummer Ginger Baker apprenticed himself to Fela Kuti and became an evangelist for African drumming; Brian Eno and Talking Heads’ David Byrne ( who ...
Post a Comment
Read more