The Monkees

What Am I doing Hangin' Round?

The Monkees have a funny legacy and the music world is divided into two camps. One camp is comprised of people who scoff at the band, considering them nothing better than a Sixties version of New Kids on the Block. Those people are brimming over with wrongibility. On the other hand, there are those who take them very seriously, and claim they should be put up on the same pop music pedestal as The Beatles. That is also wrong, wrong, wrong. The Monkees were a decent band, and did eventually learn to play their own instruments and write their own songs—or, at least, Mike Nesmith did.

Over the course of their career, they recorded some great songs, and their legacy, although not Beatlesesque, does probably rank ahead of such respected Sixties acts as The Loving Spoonful, The Strawberry Alarm Clock, The Blues Magoos and The Doors.

Anthology

Rhino

If you’ve never seen it, I highly recommend watching the Monkees’ movie, Head, written by Jack Nicholson, and featuring appearances by Frank Zappa, Victor Mature and Dennis Hopper.

The Sadies

Tiger, Tiger

Dallas and Travis Good of The Sadies grew up with country music: their father, Bruce Good, was a member of the legendary Canadian country band, The Good Brothers. The Sadies take that old time country sound, chuck in some rockabilly and surf influences, and then make it all friendly-like by plunking a whole Gram Parsons/Byrds' vibe over it all. Listening to their music makes me "not wanna do nuthin"... okay, maybe a couple of the songs make me want to dance with my sweetie, and a few others make me want to drive my shitbox car really fast down a country road, but I don't see those things qualifying as actually doing something: that's just being alive.

Stories Often Told

Yep Roc Records

Watch a video for Flash here.

Radio Birdman

Descent into the Maelstrom

Every place has its own musical pioneers. For punk rock, Vancouver had bands like The Subhumans and D.O.A. If you lived in Australia, you would be equally if not more familiar with Radio Birdman. Back in those days (the late seventies), Australia had some big advantages over us: a) Punk bands didn't have to (or want to) pretend to be English in order to sound "authentic;" b) Aussies had a huge appreciation for Iggy Pop and The Stooges (and slightly later, the Ramones); and c) it was sunny often, so people could surf and party on the beach.

These influences combined to create Aussie punk that was kind of like angry surf music. Radio Birdman was at the forefront of this movement (you should also check out The Saints http://www.saintsmusic.com), and did it the best.

Radios Appear

Trafalgar Records

Watch a video for the Aloha Steve and Danno.

atch a video for Flash here.

Slow

Have not Been the Same

Ask some people, and they will tell you that Slow was just about the best live band Vancouver ever saw. Comprised of a gang of often drunk, sometimes surly and usually out of control local teenagers, they dubbed their music "Demolition Rock" and set out to get banned from every music venue in town (their high point was when they got chucked out of Expo 86 for getting naked).

To the casual listener, Demolition Rock bore resemblances to CCR, Agent Orange, Alice Cooper and Thin Lizzy, all fired out of a cannon into a brick wall. Consider it pre-grunge grunge, without the crybaby crap. Slow somehow managed to keep their shit together for about 3 years, coincidentally imploding on the same night that Expo closed down.

Against the Glass

Zulu Records

Members of Slow went on to play in such bands as Copyright, Canned Hamm, The Scramblers, Ogre and Tankhog.

The Young Fresh Fellows

I Got My Mojo Working (and I thought You'd like to Know)

Back in the early nineties, Seattle bands Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden became huge, while other great bands from the same city like The Young Fresh Fellows, The Fastbacks and Flop all went mostly nowhere. At the time (and actually, to this day), I saw that as a fundamental example of the intrinsic wrongheadedness of the world in general.

It wasn't surprising, it was just more evidence against things ever making sense to me. The thing was, The Young Fresh Fellows (and the other bands I mentioned) were, first and foremost, FUN, and in the long run, most people, especially alienated teenagers, eventually dismiss "fun" as trivial. It's much more dramatic to wallow in angst, to stand on the mountaintop and howl into the pouring rain, rather than, say, to invent a new dance that involves walking on your hands along the bar. Well, me? I'm all for fun. What did that Spinal Tap keyboard player say? "Have a good time... ALL the time." Now, that’s the ticket.

The Men who Loved Music

PopLlama

Watch a video of The Young Fresh Fellows covering The Kinks' Picture Book.