I Have No More Than I Did Before
Has anyone noticed I haven't written much recently? It's been a matter of access, since we've been staying in a motel. I finished reading The Lost Tales of Oz, and I might be able to write a review this weekend, but I'm not making any promises.
Beth and I saw two concerts last week. The first was Neko Case at the Beacon Theatre on Thursday. She doesn't like people to take pictures at her shows, which is fine, but I would have liked to have had a better look at the dress she was wearing when her set started. Her opener was Thao, who's in a band called the Get Down Stay Down, but I know nothing about them. I didn't find her songs particularly memorable, but she make some interesting sounds with her guitar. Kelly Hogan wasn't there for this show (I think she might still be touring with the Decemberists, but I'm not sure), although this was the first time I saw Rachel Flotard, a long-time collaborator with Neko who was also in Visqueen. And Johnny Sangster, who played guitar and keyboard, is the brother of the Young Fresh Fellows' bass player Jim Sangster, and there was a song about his band, the Sharing Patrol, on the Fellows' second album. The setlist was heavy on songs from the last few albums; she did include a few from Blacklisted, but nothing from before that. But then, more of the songs on the earlier albums were covers. Neko has a really confident voice, but points out how nervous she is in between numbers. It's a combination I've noticed in a lot of people I know, so that's cool.
Saturday's show was Michael Nesmith at the Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, a town about fifteen miles from where I grew up, and also where they filmed The Blob. Beth's mom went with us to that one. It was advertised as the First National Band Redux, revisiting the material he released soon after leaving the Monkees for the first time. It's mostly country-rock music, the same kind of stuff he wrote for the Monkees. None of the First National Band's output was particularly successful, although "Joanne" was somewhat of a hit. It's really good, though. Aside from Mike himself, the original members of the band had either died or were unwilling to tour. The new lineup is partially a family affair, with Mike's sons Christian and Jonathan on guitar, and Christian's wife and bandmate Circe Link on backing vocals. The set included some material from after the FNB era, and at one point he played three of his earliest songs, "Propinquity," "Different Drum," and "Papa Gene's Blues" with only the steel guitar player accompanying him. "Different Drum" was, of course, a hit for Linda Ronstadt that the Monkees' producers had rejected; he later included his own version on a solo record. I first knew another one of Mike's songs, "Some of Shelly's Blues," from the cover by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. The title is presumably channeling Bob Dylan; a lot of his songs from that period had titles that had no clear connection to the songs themselves, although I'm not sure he did that so much during the FNB years. When he re-released "Carlisle Wheeling," he gave it the much less enigmatic title "Conversations."
Beth and I saw two concerts last week. The first was Neko Case at the Beacon Theatre on Thursday. She doesn't like people to take pictures at her shows, which is fine, but I would have liked to have had a better look at the dress she was wearing when her set started. Her opener was Thao, who's in a band called the Get Down Stay Down, but I know nothing about them. I didn't find her songs particularly memorable, but she make some interesting sounds with her guitar. Kelly Hogan wasn't there for this show (I think she might still be touring with the Decemberists, but I'm not sure), although this was the first time I saw Rachel Flotard, a long-time collaborator with Neko who was also in Visqueen. And Johnny Sangster, who played guitar and keyboard, is the brother of the Young Fresh Fellows' bass player Jim Sangster, and there was a song about his band, the Sharing Patrol, on the Fellows' second album. The setlist was heavy on songs from the last few albums; she did include a few from Blacklisted, but nothing from before that. But then, more of the songs on the earlier albums were covers. Neko has a really confident voice, but points out how nervous she is in between numbers. It's a combination I've noticed in a lot of people I know, so that's cool.
Saturday's show was Michael Nesmith at the Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, a town about fifteen miles from where I grew up, and also where they filmed The Blob. Beth's mom went with us to that one. It was advertised as the First National Band Redux, revisiting the material he released soon after leaving the Monkees for the first time. It's mostly country-rock music, the same kind of stuff he wrote for the Monkees. None of the First National Band's output was particularly successful, although "Joanne" was somewhat of a hit. It's really good, though. Aside from Mike himself, the original members of the band had either died or were unwilling to tour. The new lineup is partially a family affair, with Mike's sons Christian and Jonathan on guitar, and Christian's wife and bandmate Circe Link on backing vocals. The set included some material from after the FNB era, and at one point he played three of his earliest songs, "Propinquity," "Different Drum," and "Papa Gene's Blues" with only the steel guitar player accompanying him. "Different Drum" was, of course, a hit for Linda Ronstadt that the Monkees' producers had rejected; he later included his own version on a solo record. I first knew another one of Mike's songs, "Some of Shelly's Blues," from the cover by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. The title is presumably channeling Bob Dylan; a lot of his songs from that period had titles that had no clear connection to the songs themselves, although I'm not sure he did that so much during the FNB years. When he re-released "Carlisle Wheeling," he gave it the much less enigmatic title "Conversations."