So, I was playing around with numbers and Presidents' names and whatnot, and started wondering about the gematria of these names.
Washington hillside
By way of background, gematria is a type of Hebrew numerology. Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet has a numerical value. The first nine have the values 1 to 9. The next 9 have the values 10 to 90. The final four have the values 100 to 400. A word's total value is the sum of the values of its letters. For example, the Hebrew word חי, meaning life, has a value of 18. Which is why 18 is a lucky number in Judaism.*
Polk hillside
So, I wondered what the gematria of the various President's last names would be. In order to do that, I had to start by creating values for the letters in the Latin alphabet. In case anyone's interested, the values of the names range from 104 (Obama) to Taylor (1,081).
Roosevelt hillside
Then I started wondering about what it would look like to graph the Presidents' progressions of the cumulative gematria, letter by letter of the names. To explain with a concrete example, let's look at "Taft." "T" has a value of 200. "Ta" has a value of 201. "Taf" has a value of 207. "Taft" has a value of 407. Of course -- and I should have thought of it before I started -- these graphs all kind of look like cross sections of hillsides. Or cumulative probability functions (assuming you normalize to a final
total value of 1).
I think the Roosevelt hill looks the best, though Washington looks good too. Polk is pretty boring. I've reproduced them in this post. But if you want to see all 39 (some presidential last names have been repeated, but I don't want to bother repeating**), follow this link.
Yeah...I need a hobby.
*And, by the way, the name of Asher's cat. **Yeah, I put together this mishegass, and say I don't want to bother with repetition. Go figure.
Session: Man/Corpse/Woman into Monster, Week 3 Movie: Brides of Blood (1968) Directed by Eddie Romero and Gerardo de Leon As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL Plot:
A Peace Corps volunteer, a scientist and his frustrated wife land on a remote South Pacific Island. But the Island has a monstrous secret that they may not be able to live with. Hilarity ensues. Reaction:
I really couldn't get into this film. It didn't really suck, but the sound and picture quality were atrocious, and it was hard to follow. Especially the dialogue. And it wasn't a good night for me to have to concentrate extra hard, because I was really exhausted. Now, that's not really the fault of the movie. Certainly not the part about me being exhausted. And even the part about the picture and sound quality shouldn't be counted against it. The disc it was on had been mastered from a beaten-up copy; the movie, as it originally showed in theatres and drive-ins, was probably much better. I rated it a "4" in class, acknowledging that I would have to rewatch it.
Upon rewatching, I understood the plot better. The story is better than I had originally thought. There's more nuance, and the premise is explained better than I had originally realized. In many ways, it's kind of a classic Star Trek story, except for the fact that it's you know, set on earth. But it still didn't really hook me in.
I've been told that Filipino horror films have a reputation for being overtly sexual, and this really wasn't -- although the climactic "the monster's dead so let's all fuck" sequence kind of hinted at that aesthetic.
Oh, by the way, a bit of advice for the guys. If you ever find your love interest stripped naked and tied to an altar where a hideous beast of unknown origin is going to rape her to death, and said beast may arrive at any moment, untie her and run off immediately. Don't take the time to cover her up. Such nods to modesty could be deadly for the both of you.
Ratings:
Me: 4.2
Dave: 9.3
Ethan: 8.5
Joe: 9.8
Scott: 6
Sean: 1 out of 4
Extras:
Following up last week's session, in which we watched The Horror of Party Beach, Keith showed us an interview with director, Del Tenney. Tenney talked about his history in show business, and how HoPB came to be. He seemed like your typical Florida retiree. A regular guy.
That was followed by Joe giving us his belated review of El Topo, which we saw in January. I was, I admit, feeling vindicated that Joe -- like me -- didn't much care for that unintelligible piece of shit. His review was actually quite amusing, and I note that he no longer considers Shock Treatment (the 1981 film -- not the 1964 film) to be the worst thing shown in this class. That said, he still prefers El Topo (which is Spanish for "The Topo") to any Adam Sandler film. Go figure.
I haven't said that in a while...but, well, yeah. Time to clear off my desk and fill it up with all new clutter.
No, I haven't gone to a new company. Not now, anyway. That would feel weird -- I've been at this company since I started my career. It was, literally, the first company I went to work for out of school. Which is not to say I won't leave. Just that I haven't.
But it's a new job within the actuarial department. I'd been doing variations of the same thing for...well, let's just say for longer than I should have. And I was good at my job. I enjoyed it. and I liked the people I worked with and for. But it was time for a change.
So now I'm in a new unit, learning new things, and feeling just a tad nervous. And this week, for the first time in a long time, I found I was actually excited about my work.
A while back I ranked all the Ducks Deluxe albums from best to worst. That post was here.
Owing to the wonderful feedback I got from that, I am following it up with a similar treatment of one of the early supergroups. So, without further ado, here is...
Every Derek & the Dominos Album* -- Ranked from Best to Worst
Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (1970)
Now considered a classic, Layla was originally considered a commercial and critical failure. It's funny how nearly fifty years can change the world's perspective on a piece of art.
The disc was anchored by the title track, whichwas Clapton's kind of icky tribute to George Harrison's then-wife. Hey, if Eric and George could work things out, there's no reason we shouldn't be able to enjoy this incredible song with one of the most recognizable opening riffs in all of rock.
But the title track wasn't the only great piece on this disc. Opening with "I Looked Away," the record (records, I guess, since it was a two-record collection) quickly established its bona fides. Just listen to that wailing guitar... And that's just to start. Other classics include as "Bell Bottom Blues" and the true oldie, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out."
With all that, there's simply no question that this was the group's best record.
*As with the post about Ducks Deluxe, this only includes the studio albums they recorded and released while still together. It does not include EPs, greatest hits packages, anthologies, live albums released after the breakup, bootlegs, reunion albums and the like.
This is the third and final installment in a series of posts about the cinema history class that Ethan and I take. In The first two posts were here and here. In those posts I described the class's origin story and how it evolved.
So where are things now?
In all the obvious ways, the class is still largely the same as when it started. There are, of course, a few superficial differences -- there are six of us now, for starters. And, in addition to Dave's death roll (mentioned in the last post) the class format has expanded to include a decent-length schmoozing session at the beginning. Sometimes I suspect that we'd go on all night if Keith didn't stop us to get things started.
And that's indicative of the fact that our little group has become more than just a film class; it's a film appreciation society. In fact, I think that's how Joe refers to it when he mentions it in his blog. Keith, Joe and I have all hosted extra-curricular get-together film-related get-togethers for the class; we've gelled into a pretty good social group.
But class is still a class first and foremost. Keith is an educator. It's not just about showing these movies. He clearly wants to share his knowledge with us and discuss our perspectives on the movies. Each of us has, at one time or another missed a class. Work happens. Life happens. And Keith understands that. But if any of us were to start simply missing classes because he was showing a movie we weren't interested in, he would be displeased.
Not that I would do such a thing. Even when I don't like the movie Keith is showing (Mantis Fists and Tiger Claws of Shaolin, I'm looking at you...), I still enjoy seeing it with the class, and I still get something out of it. Aside from that, it's hard to know in advance what movies I'll like. I had low expectations for movies such as Deranged and Cannibal Holocaust, but they blew me away.
I don't claim to remember all the information that Keith presents about these movies. I don't remember most of it. But I am gaining some insight into the broader trends and some of the more prominent names. And Ethan is also learning a lot -- not just about cinema history, but about film criticism and extemporaneous speech.
And Ethan no longer names the Saw movies as his favorites.
This is a follow-up to the last pots (which is here), in which I talked about the prehistory of the cinema history class that Ethan and I take.
Ethan and I were looking forward to class even if we didn't know what to expect. We knew we'd be watching Freaks, the seminal 1932 horror film by Tod Browning, but not much else. But we arrived at 7 on the appointed Thursday night and Keith led us to his basement viewing room where we were formally introduced to Joe and Steve.
Though we didn't really know them, Ethan and I had met both of them before, in one (or more) of Keith's classes at Nassau Community. Keith was, quite sensibly, using the class as a filter. If he was going to have a private class in his basement, he wanted to make sure there would be good chemistry. And, of course, he only wanted to invite people whom he trusted to bring into his home.
In that first class, Keith talked about Freaks, the production, the concerns, the people. We watched the movie, and then discussed it, with each of us, in turn, rating it on a scale of one to ten. That was the first of four movies he showed in that session, which was followed by another session of four. And another... Keith had planned out a lot of how things would go, but of course there would be details that would evolve over time. Fortunately, Keith has been flexible enough to roll with the the punches. Originally, the class was supposed to be devoted to horror movies, but it's expanded, and we now talk about it as horror, fantasy and science fiction.
In a more substantive example, at some point Dave (who was not one of the charter members of the class) started bringing obituaries of movie industry people who had died during the week. Now each class begins with Dave's death notices and attendant discussion. As another example, Keith's wife is a librarian. She often uses her magical librarian skills to put together a package of newspaper clippings related to the movie we're seeing. She'll bring down the stack of printouts and we pass them around as the post-viewing discussion is going on.
Originally, Keith had planned to organize the classes into four-week sessions.* Each session would have its own theme. Early on, however, the themes were somewhat loose. For example, one was "films that will scramble your brain." That was a necessity because, in the early days he could only show us 16 millimeter prints, so coherent themes were a bit difficult to put together. Now, with digital, Keith has the ability to get more specific. So we've had a session of movies about serial killers. And another of giant monster movies.
Some of these sessions have been successful enough to become perennials. Giallo month comes to mind, as does Bring Your Own Movie month. In that one, the only session to last six weeks instead of four, each one in the class picks a movie to bring in and discuss.
The class roster has changed over the years. Steve stopped coming, but Keith added three new members -- Dave, Scott and Sean. And there have been numerous guests over the years. Keith has a friend, Loren, who used to attend sometimes. Keith's wife, Joe's wife and my daughter have all attended occasionally -- usually because there was a movie they particularly wanted to see. I have sometimes brought houseguests to attend.
In addition, Keith has sometimes invited guests who had some particular expertise on the movie he was showing. In one week, Tatyana Kot (a Russian-born actress who starred in Blitzkrieg: Escape from Stalag 69, which was one of the feature films Keith directed) introduced Planeta Bur, a cold war-era Russian science fiction movie. With firsthand experience of Russian culture, Kot was well-situated to discuss the topic.
And the class itself is still changing -- growing and evolving as developments warrant. In the next installment I'll talk about where the class is now.
In his blog, Ethan talked about his perspective on the cinema history class we take together. So today is as good a time as any to present my perspective.
Back in 2010, Ethan was enamored of horror movies. And not just any horror movies. The kind of horror movies that some call "torture porn" -- movies that graphically depict torture. The Saw series were some of his favorites. I didn't like it, but I didn't want to forbid them. Blair found that Nassau Community College has adult continuing education classes in cinema history. Maybe that could influence his taste for the better. We signed Ethan up for the class in horror movies. Well, we wanted to, anyway. But he was under 18, and the college's website wouldn't allow him to register. So I registered myself. The plan was that I'd bring him to class. I'd show up early for the first class and explain the situation to the lecturer. Hopefully he'd understand.
And that was how we met Keith Crocker. As I would come to learn, Keith was a local film historian. He makes his living being involved with movies in a variety of ways. I'm not going to try, in the venue, to do justice to what he does. Suffice to say he knows movies.
If I recall correctly, Keith was teaching several cinema classes at the college:
the history of horror films
old comedy teams
Spaghetti Westerns
filmmaking
He was, pretty much, teaching each of these classes each semester. Ethan and I started taking all of them (well, all except the filmmaking class) over and over again. The classes would meet four times*, for two hours each. During that time, Keith would talk about the genre -- the history, the influences, the people involved. He also displayed bits of memorabilia from his personal collection, and (in the comedy and horror classes) show Castle Film Digests, which were abridged versions of the movies. Essentially, they would show the beginning and ending of movies, along with some of the material in the middle. It was enough for the viewer to get the point, but not enough to get the full nuance or to understand the characters. Keith would show us a reel of several digests. I distinctly remember the abridged version of The Invisible Man.
Ethan and I probably made things marginally more difficult for Keith. With repeat customers, he started trying to find ways to make the class a little different each time. Which is to his credit. He could have easily kept the classes the same. No one could reasonably criticize him for that. But, as a teacher, he felt it was important to give us new material. At this point, I was probably simply that annoying guy with the kid who kept trying to chat with him after class.
But those digests had piqued my interest. I started thinking that it would be great to have some kind of in-depth class where each session focused on one movie. There would be an introduction. We'd watch the movie, and then discuss it. I mentioned the idea to Keith on more than one occasion.
I like to think that that's how Keith got the idea. Maybe it is. Maybe not. But at any rate, within a couple years -- I think it was 2012 -- Keith invited Ethan and me to be inaugural members of his home-taught film class.
*For some reason, I think the Spaghetti Westerns class only met twice. Maybe I'm wrong. I dunno. But it's not a material concern. There may be other immaterial mistakes in the information above. Maybe I have a year wrong, or something like that. But nothing materially important.
Session: Man/Corpse/Woman into Monster, Week 2 Movie: The Horror of Party Beach (1964) Directed by Del Tenney As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL Plot:
Nuclear waste dumped into Long Island Sound causes plants, fish and dead sailors to merge into hideous blood-sucking monsters. Hilarity ensues. Reaction:
There was a whole lot of crap in this movie to hate. The sound is abysmal and the cinematography was worse. The bosco blood looked more like motor oil after my 5,000 mile change.*And the acting -- oh, God, the acting sucked like you wouldn't believe.
But somehow I enjoyed this movie. I think Joe put it best when he said it was "more ingenious than it was good." It was a really enjoyable mashup of the 1950s horror and beach party genres. THey tried to present it as a musical as well (even calling it one in the trailer), but that's bullshit. It's has some music built into the plot (in the form of a deservedly-unknown band called the Del-Aires), but it's not a musical per se.
The thing about it that it didn;t take itself too seriously. It didn't fall into the trap of being self-consciously and purposefully bad (Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, I'm referencing you). But there was still no pretension to high art.
Humor abounded. The men in monster suits, the dialogue... This was the crappy little movie that could.
My favorite line? As some women are discussing current events in their car, one notes that there are monsters murdering people and drinking their blood. Her friend responds, "Imagine -- being that thirsty."
Ratings:
Me: 8
Dave: 9
Ethan: 6.5
Joe: 9.8
Sean: 3 out of 4
Extras:
Joe had just gotten a special edition release of Night of the Living Dead, which is among his favorite movies. He brought it so we could all watch a brief interview with Joe Russo. At one point, Russo was talking about the film's faults, and brought up the fact that they broke one of the rules in filmmaking by "crossing the axis." They did this, he explained, because they had never learned not to. Neither Joe nor I knew what he meant by that, and asked. Sean explained -- it has to do with the way dialogue is shown onscreen, but I don;t want to bother going into detail here. If you care, read about it on Wikipedia. Keith, for his part, called it "film school bullshit." The point is that Joe and I both argued that it doesn't matter if they broke a rule if it works in the movie.
I realized that this was a case of great timing. I had, just a few hours earlier, written a post on this blog about some second-guessing I was doing in my songwriting. It comes down to worrying about whether I'm breaking a rule. Seeing Russo's comments and reacting viscerally the way I did helped convince me not to worry. If the song sounds right, then it doesn't matter what rules it breaks.
Thanks, Joe.
*I like to get the synthetic oil so I can go farther between changes.
So, I've been working on a song. Technically, revising a song I already wrote. Yeah, it's written. Copyright registered. And yet I'm still tinkering with it. Maybe that's not the best way to do things, but that's where I am. Anyway, I'm struggling with a question.
The song is "Never Kill a Man Twice." It's quite the toe-tapper.
There are four chords in it: G, C, D and Em. I've been playing with the chords for the bridge. I like to have bridges in my songs since they add a bit of variety. I finally came up with a melody and chord progression that I like. Yay!
But after thinking it through, I realized that the chords in the bridge are (in order) C D G C D. But here the G C D at the end are different forms of those chords -- barred on the 3rd and 5th frets. So they're different from the rest of the song, but not really different. If you know what I mean.
So the question: Is that cheating? I'm really torn.
On the one hand, it seems like it can't be right.
On the other hand, I keep remembering the times in high school, when I was first trying to write songs, that I would literally count syllables to make sure that the verses scanned the same. I was agonizing over things like that instead of just considering how it sounded. In similar manner, I should base my decision on whether the song sounds right rather than some technical question of chord structure.
Or am I missing something?
When I'm truly happy with the result I'll try recording a rough video and posting it. Then all y'all can let the pigeons loose.
UPDATE: I modified the second paragraph to better reflect what I meant when I wrote it.
One of the bands I really loved back when I was in college was a kind-of new wave rock group from Richmond, Virginia, called Suzy Saxon and the Anglos*. Before I go on, here's a video of their single, "Boys in Dresses."
A female singer fronting a band of men in the early eighties, the Anglos drew the inevitable comparisons to Blondie or The Pretenders. But there was a certain roughness -- almost grunginess -- to their guitar sound that I found energizing. With that, they were much better, at least to my taste, than those other new wave bands. "Boys in Dresses" (video above) was one of the standout tracks on their impressive debut album, Guilt by Association. Another was "Get Out of My Stomach." Just typing that title brings the chorus back to my mind:
Get out of my mind.
Get out of my stomach.
Get out of my life.
You're not my kind. No way!
Mind you, I'm typing this all by heart -- no checking of reference materials. Finding out about the Anglos, getting (and reviewing) their record, interviewing Suzy for an article, seeing them in concert...those were some of the great experiences I had running the music section of a campus newspaper.
Why do I bring this up now?
As I am wont to do, I was playing around in Youtube, and absent-mindedly typed their name in. I found the video above. And the memories came flooding back...
The video was posted by Mad Dog, which I recognized as the pseudonym of the Anglos' producer/raconteur. Mad Dog also owned and ran Brat Records, the label that put out the album ("By Brats, for Brats" was the slogan, IIRC). So I posted a comment. And Mad Dog responded. They've been digitizing the band's material and posting it on Soundcloud. It's here, in case you're interested. And, if you have any taste in music, you are interested.
Mad Dog also said they'll be digitizing the vinyl -- the group's first three albums -- Guilt by Association, Scream to Be Heard and A Deal's a Deal, were never released on CD, or in any digital form. As far as I know, anyway. Which is a shame, because there's so much great material there. But now there's hope. I really can't wait to hear their cover of Cat Stevens' "Wild World" again.
Now, can someone who understands the interwebs better than I do tell me how I can buy the downloads of this?
*It's late now, so I won;t bore all y'all with the details of how I came across them. Hint: It involved my role as Music Editor of Skyline.
SOmetimes I need to control the literal side of my nature.
Case in point: The idiom, "I can't imagine." As in "I can't imagine anyone would prefer Chicago-style pizza over New York."
Every time I use that expression I have to stifle the urge to pause and say "Actually, I can imagine it as evidenced by the fact that I did." To claim that I can't imagine something is to prove that I can.
Yes, I know that idioms mean what they mean even if they're not literally true. Still...
Session: Man/Corpse/Woman into Monster, Week 1 Movie: The Manster (1959) Directed by George P. Breakston and Kenneth G. Crane As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL Plot:
Larry is a mild mannered foreign correspondent until he becomes the unwitting test subject in a hideous medical experiment. Hilarity ensues. Reaction:
After a few months of
My big realization watching this movie is that I'm really not into 1950's monster movies. This wasn't bad for the genre -- in fact it was quite good. Joe got it right when he called it "the perfect black and white [1950s] monster film."
But, while I was trying to enjoy this, there was a point when I realized that I just didn't. Once I had that epiphany, I was better able to just relax and have a good laugh at the cheesiness of the whole thing.
The big debate (meaning, where I disagreed with everyone else) was over whether Larry himself is likeable. Others commented that there was no character to like, but I actually thought Larry was a good guy. We hardly got to see that because the experiments start very near the beginning. But we see, early on, that Larry is loyal to his wife, and seems like an all around decent guy. It's only after the evil scientist injects him with who-knows-what and his personality starts to change that he starts blowing off his wife in favor of geisha girls.
Ratings:
I was kind of torn regarding how to rate this. Do I consider the level of my enjoyment? Or simply judge it within the pantheon of movies of its type. In the end I went with the former because it was my rating that I was giving it.
Me: 6*
Dave: 9.4-9.5
Ethan: 7.5
Joe: 9.8
Scott: 8.5
Sean: 2 out of 4
*Keith argues that I actually gave this a 7.5. Fuck him.
It's a testament to how well the Monkees were put together that you can find endless lists of their best songs. Here's one! And here's another! And, Oh my God, here's yet another one! The lists aren't all the same -- hell, if they were, then there would be no reason for them -- but there are some songs that you'll see over and over again.
So I'm not interested in presenting my list of best Monkees songs.
But I don't see a lot of lists of the worst Monkees songs. Better yet, what's the worst Monkees song? That's my topic for tonight.
First, however, a couple ground rules:
I'm only considering songs from the nine classic Monkees albums. No nonalbum tracks or live recordings. And nothing from any of the reunion albums.
To be considered, a song has to be a song. That eliminates all those quick vocal snippets from the Head soundtrack and such gems as "Zilch" and "Peter Percival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky.
I keep saying "song," but in fact I mean "recording." As in, I'm judging the recordings of the songs rather than the songs themselves.
There are a lot of different ways of approaching this. I've decided to go through the nine albums and pick the worst from each. That will give me nine candidates, from which I will choose the worst. The reason I'm approaching it that way? Because I want to.
So, let's go through the albums and consider the candidates.
The Monkees
The debut album isn't exactly full of prime candidates for the worst Monkees song. Don Kirshner, as musical director, had an incredible knack for picking solid material. He got top notch musicians to record, and the Monkees themselves provided good vocals. Most of the material is at least good, and some is actually great. If there are any weak links, they would be the sappy "I'll Be True to You" and the novelty song, "Gonna Buy Me a Dog."
But "Gonna Buy Me a Dog" is actually kind of infectiously fun. And "I'll Be True to You" may not be particularly good, but it's not really awful either. It's kind of nebbishy. And it is the worst thing on the record. Since this is the first album, we don't have a previous candidate to compare it to. So, considering the Monkees career through the first record, the worst song so far is "I'll Be True to You."
More of the Monkees
Like it's predecessor, More... had lots of great material. In fact, it arguably had more high points. But the weak spots are weaker. There are three candidates here for worst song.
"Your Auntie Grizelda" (which happens to be the first song to feature Peter Tork on lead vocals) seemed to be an attempt at recreating the humorous magic of "Gonna Buy Me a Dog" from the first album. It doesn't succeed nearly as well, but it's not without charm.
"The Day We Fall in Love" is a load of sugary crap. Davey Jones speaks his way though a romantic vision while appropriately syrupy strings play in the background. What were they thinking? "Laugh" was an attempt at -- well, I don't really know what it was an attempt at. Davy's doing his musical theatre voice, and it just sounds awful.
"Laugh" and "The Day..." are both worthy choices.. I'll go with "The Day..." simply because of the diabetic factor.
Headquarters
The third album marked a change for the Monkees. Don Kirshner was out, and the group had artistic control over their material. This was also the first time that they were truly a recording group.
They didn't have the same kind of monster hit material, though for my money, "No Time," "Sunny Girlfriend" and "You Just May Be the One" are up there with the best material ever to be released.
I'm not considering either "Zilch" (an acapella spoken word piece) or "Band 6," which is an abortive instrumental. Neither should have been included on the album, but it's hard to hear either as an actual song.
While this album didn't have any monster hits on it, it did have some really solid good songs -- notably "You Just May Be the One" and "No Time." At the other extreme, there are some weak songs, but nothing truly awful. If I have to choose one, and I do, I'll go with "Mr. Webster" for the sheer melodrama.
Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd.
By now, the Monkees were getting creative and this, the fourth album, shows some real musical maturity. With the four Monkees controlling the musical output, they've largely left behind the snappy hits and bubble-gum sensibility that marked the earlier records.
There's only one track that could legitimately be considered a candidate for worst. That's "Peter Percival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky" by Peter. Problem? Precisely! I indicated above that I'm not going to consider non-song songs such as this. But, following the rules I've set for myself, I need to pick a candidate from PAC&JL.
By default, and with great reluctance, I nominate "Don't Call On Me" for its lounge lizard aesthetic. This exercise -- rather, performing this exercise in the way I've decided to perform it -- is proving difficult.
The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees
The albums continue to get more and more interesting. And more incoherent as well. There are some really great high points on here -- "Daydream Believer" and "Tapioca Tundra" come to mind. And some of the more-experimental stuff is also really good. "Writing Wrongs" and "Auntie's Municipal Court," I'm talking to you.
So, where are the weaknesses? "We Were Made for Each Other" is annoying for its trite nature, and I really hate that line "No other love have I" for its clumsiness. But things like that make it a bad song -- not a truly awful one. "The Poster," a song about a circus ad, is also really bad. It would have been the worst on the prior album. But that was then and this is now. Worse than that is the closing track, "Zor and Zam." "Z&Z" is a third rate war protest song that sounds like an inferior imitation of the Jefferson Airplane. That's our candidate.
As an aside, I'll note that Birds, Bees, Monkees is the first album since the debut not to show that iconic guitar logo on its cover. And that iconic guitar logo wouldn;t appear on any more covers. It's not an important point, but it's my blog so I get to say it.
Head
The soundtrack to the Monkees' movie has fourteen tracks, but it's quite thin, musically. Only half of those tracks are songs, and that's making the questionable call that "Ditty Diego War Chant" counts. I was very torn about whether it counts, but finally decided that it does -- in consideration of the existence of rap music. Yeah, "DDWC" sounds like an early, innocent rap song.
Also, I really need it in order to come up with a candidate from this album. Seriously. What else is there that can possibly be heard as the worst Monkees song? "Daddy's Song"? "Porpoise Song"? No way. I have to go with "Ditty Diego..."
Instant Replay
Now we're firmly into the end game as far as the group goes. Their TV show had been cancelled. Their movie had come out and flopped. Peter Tork had bought his way out of the contract. At this point they seemed to be going through the motions, and IR was an album composed largely of castoff songs from earlier in the group's life.
And despite that, it's not as bad as one might think. There are some quite good tracks. But that's not the point. There are two reasonable worst-song candidates -- both Dolenz numbers. "Just a Game" and "Shorty Blackwell" are the worst things here. And it's not even close. "Just a Game is kind of annoying. But "Shorty Blackwell" is a meandering, painful piece of garbage with stupid echos and falsettos. On the surface, it seems to be a song about a cat, though I've read some commentary that it was really about depression. I'm not sure if that interpretation makes it better or worse. But either way, it's the worst thing on the record.
The Monkees Present
The second album by the Monkees as a trio differs markedly from the prior. This one has fresh material, and also had each of the three nominal group members working separately from the others. Each created his own tracks with his own chosen studio musicians.
As a result, it doesn't sound like a unified album. And it doesn't have a particularly commercial sound. But I love it. I could start listing the songs I love, but that would be more than half the album. But I suppose that's not particularly helpful, since this post is about the worst song.
There are three songs which could plausibly be considered the worst. "Ladies Aid Society" harkens back to the attempted novelty songs from the group's first two records. But this one is way more annoying than theothers -- mostly because of the falsetto vocals. "French Song," annoyed me when I first heard it decades ago (on a Japanese compilation whose name escapes me). It still doesn't interest me much. But it's not an egregiously bad song. And neither is "Pillow Time," a lullaby that was cowritten by Micky's mother. So I'm going with "Ladies Aid Society."
Changes
We reach the end of the road with the much-maligned Changes.
At this point, Michael Nesmith had quit the group, so they were now a duo. If you care enough about the Monkees to have read this far, then you've heard about the joke that eventually Micky or Davy would quit and the other would record as "The Monkee."
Anyway, Changes is generally regarded as the worst of the nine albums, but I disagree. There's some solid pop here.But, fortunately for this post, there are a few really ba songs. There are two opiated songs in "Ticket on a Ferry Ride" and "Tell Me Love," and the third rate samba of "Acapulco Sun." But for my money, the worst thing here is the fake funk of "Lady Jane," which was a sad way to close out the last of the classic albums by the group.
Let's review the candidates:
There are, by plan, nine candidates for the title of worst Monkees song.
"I'll Be True to You" from The Monkees This is only a candidate because it's the weakest track on a strong album.
"The Day We Fall in Love" from More of the Monkees By far worse than the first candidate. It's more of a narration with backing music. And it sucks.
"Mr. Webster" from Headquarters This is a bad song. Awful, in fact, but not unlistenable.
"Don't Call On Me" from Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. Like the first candidate, this isn't so bad. It just suffers by comparison to the rest of the material on its album
"Zor and Zam" from The Birds, the Bees & the Monkees Another bad song. And maybe unlistenable. But not truly painful.
"Ditty Diego War Chant" from Head Another track that makes the list of finalists only because of the record it was on. This is the least bad of the nine candidates.
"Shorty Blackwell" from Instant Replay It hurts to listen to this. Damn this song. Damn it to hell.
"Ladies Aid Society" from The Monkees Present This is really bad. I cringe when I hear it. But it's not damnable.
"Lady Jane" from Changes This is pretty bad. Kind of awful. But not truly really awful.
And the winner is...
In case you haven't guessed, the worst Monkees song is "Shorty Blackwell." Here it is -- in all its ignominy:
Session: Inspired by Spaghetti Westerns, Week 4 Movie: The Hunting Party (1971) Directed by Don Medford As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL Plot:
A gang of outlaws kidnaps the wrong woman, and boy is her husband pissed. Hilarity ensues. Reaction:
The primary plot was pretty thin. Keith called it -- with some justification, I might add -- a one-trick pony. And in some ways, I saw this as an object lesson in what not to do when I work on my own project, Bleed Me a River. In fact, I went back to the drawing board on that when I decided that the plot was too much of the same. I came up with ways to make it more complex. ANd this could have benefited from some added complexity. There's a lot of the same old same old.
On the other hand, someone in the class (I forget who) said that it's OK to be a one-trick pony if you do that one trick well enough. And this one does it really well.
It's really easy to see how Party is influenced by Spaghetti Westerns. Brandt (Gene Hackman) -- the man whose wife gets kidnapped -- should be the hero, but he is portrayed as so contemptible that the film is effectively robbed of its good guy. On the flipside, Frank (Oliver Reed), as the kidnapping gangleader has a soft side, which keeps him from being a complete villain. That the main characters have multifaceted natures helps to make up for a lot of sins. I say that despite realizing that there isn't really a whole lot of character development.
Someone -- Joe? or was it Dave? -- correctly observed that this played more like a Sam Peckinpah film than a Spaghetti Western. The extensive use of blood squibs and graphic gun deaths assured that. On the other hand, Peckinpah was strongly influenced by Spaghetti Westerns, so (by the transitive law of cinematic influence) this derives its feel from the Spaghetti Westerns.*
On the downside, there were some scenes that were out of place. For example, there's the whole peaches sequence. It plays like a bad sitcom scene -- complete with music that sounds like it's out of a small-screen romp. I can still visualize Candace Bergen -- her face stuffed with peaches and her chin dripping with juice -- smirking like she's Marcia Brady. Along similar lines, there's the reason that Frank and his gang kidnapped Bergen's character: He wanted her to teach him how to read. That's a sitcom setup if I ever heard one
But the class really came alive in the discussion as we debated Brandt's motivation. The way he kept not shooting Frank was odd. I thought he was playing some kind of game with him -- teasing him by picking off his gang and leaving him to live with the losses until he died last. Keith interpreted it as some kind of weird psychosexual thing -- that Brandt was too awed by Frank's intense manhood. Or something like that. I know I'm not explaining that well. If Keith cares, he can chime in. Assuming he reads this post. Anyway, my interpretation yields some great irony at the end, as it means that Brandt's cruelty leads to his demise. On the other hand, the psychosexual interpretation creates its own interest. The idea that Brandt is a closeted homosexual kind of makes some of the earlier scenes -- his failure to perform with his wife and again with a prostitute -- make more sense.
The lively debate about Brandt's motivations (and, I guess, his sexuality) made for one of the best critiquing sessions the class has seen to date.
Ratings:
Balancing the strengths and weaknesses, I was thinking in terms of rating this an 8. But I changed my mind when we got into the discussion. The fact that we were able to have such a passionate discussion -- and disagreement -- about the characters' motivations elevated the film in my mind, and I gave it an extra half a point.
Me: 8.5
Dave: 9.3 - 9.4
Ethan: 8.5
Joe: 10
Scott: 6
Sean: 2 out of 4
