The 20ish days of Christmas: Day 2- with love from Amy.

Day 2. 

This may very well be the finest piece of Christmas music out there. It should really be saved for closer to Christmas but I have been in rare form of late and I would be ever so sad if I forgot to include it. 


I love The Monkees. I love this song. I love Davy Jones. 


Lyrics, but I'm no bablefish and I don't know what it means. (Is it in Spanish? I think?)


Riu Chiu - The Monkees.

Riu riu chiu, la guarda ribera;
Dios guardo el lobo de nuestra cordera,
Dios guardo el lobo de neustra cordera.

El lobo rabioso la quiso morder,
Mas Dios poderoso la supo defender;
Quisola hazer que no pudiese pecar,
Ni aun original esta Virgen no tuviera.

Riu, riu chiu...

Este qu'es nacido es el gran monarca,
Christo patriarca de carne vestido;
Hemos redemido con se hazer chiquito,
Aunqu'era infinito, finito se hiziera.

Riu, riu chiu...


Oh Monkees. I think it's probably Spanish now that I look closer at it.  Anyway, I'll shut up and let you enjoy. 





Oh, and don't ever let me catch you saying The Monkees had/have no talent. I'll pummel ya! 

Harry Nilsson

Who's your favorite American Group? "Nilsson" 

-Paul McCartney 1968

Yes. That is indeed a picture of Harry Nilsson and John Lennon wrestling taken by May Pang in 1974 or 1975 during The Lost Weekend - arguably my favorite of all the weekends. Combined.

Two days from now is- would have been John Lennon's birthday. This makes me think of The Lost Weekend, which brings me to Harry Nilsson. And there is something about the name "Harry Nilsson" that amuses me. I immediately think of drunken debauchery. And I know that it stems from what I've read (truth debatable) from Goldman's book The Lives Of Lennon.

One such gem:  Nilsson and Lennon getting tossed from the Troubadour in Hollywood for heckling The Smothers Brothers and fisticuffin' on March 12, 1974. 

Click here for a big version of the Troubadour story from Rolling Stone and here for a large version of Lennon talking about putting a used (?!) Kotex on his head and rudely asking the waitress if she knew who he was. Classic!  

Lennon produced Nilsson's Pussy Cats album that was again filled with drunken debauchery. I love this stuff. Check out this blog for more on that.

I could go on and on about The Lost Weekend, however, I sat down and dedicated myself to Harry Nilsson blog post, not Lost Weekend blog post. Another day.

Moving on, I first heard of Harry Nilsson through The Monkees as he wrote "Cuddly Toy" and "Daddy's Song".  Which, FYI, "Cuddly Toy = one of my faves.

And from Head (which if you haven't seen, do so now) ALTHOUGH, for some reason completely unknown to me, the clip from Head totally doesn't exist. I looked. This clip does exist though and someone put the song to clips from Skidoo - which in an ironic twist contains songs by Nilsson. 

Harry Nilsson actually was one of the most prolific songwriters but his problem of not being able to stay in one genre actually threw him into a kind of obscurity.

What I didn't realize about Harry Nilsson is that not only was it his flat in London that both Mama Cass and Keith Moon died in (in the same bed it's told with flashlights under chins) but he wrote A LOT of songs!  Here's the Wiki of his discography.

Here's a couple shockers to me.

And if what you're itching for is more Harry Nilsson connecting to the Beatles, I know I always am, then guess what. You're in luck! You remember that movie Popeye? Bet ya can't guess you wrote all the songs... Okay, you got me, it was Harry. But here's my clincher - Klaus Voormann. Klausy played Von Schnitzel.

But dig a little deeper and you know what you'll find? Klaus and Harry? BFFs. Checky checky. You know you want to. http://www.iheartklaus.com/harry.html.  For those of you that are like, "Yeah? So? Who's that effin' guy?!" Well, Klaus Voormann is from North Berlin and later Hamburg, Germany. About and around 1960ish, Klaus had a fight with his then girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr (Early Beatle photographer and kind of, sort of the first "Yoko" as she did take Stuart Sutcliffe from the band) and their friend Jurgen Vollmer (gave Lennon and McCartney their first "Beatle Haircut" in Paris, 1961). Klaus wandered into The Reeperbahn and got his first taste of Rock N Roll. The Beatles. Only not the polished Beatles that we know and love today. The dirty, gritty Beatles. >__<

So in looking for stuff - aka "googling" I kept coming across this totally awesome blog on The Nilsson. Check it. For The Love Of Harry.

the stripy background. - Part 2.

So I have been thinking more about this background thing. I mean, it's in a lot of their videos and they are wearing the same clothes (well, maybe a couple of velvet shirt/blanket changes for Micky and Davy.) All of these videos were most likely filmed on the same day. And just like anything else, I must get to the bottom of it!


(Boy, if there were a job that was like "CSI: The 60s", I'd be RICH)

CAPE?! Check.

SPYGLASS?! Check.

GOOGLE?! Check.

Now on with the show!

How ridiculously hard is it to try and find info about this? I know the show was only filmed for two years -- 59 (?) episodes, but COME ON! I mean, there is a Monkees cover band for crap's sake (and I don't understand why you would pay to see a cover band when you can see the real band for nearly free, Sorry, Monkees, but it's kinda true). Cover band = success and should = more info on the web. All I've found out so far is that this was filmed in 1967. I feel foiled!

WAIT! I've got an idea!

Hmm. Okay. Screen grabs of all the videos to compare clothing! It's brilliant!

Daydream Believer

Love is Only Sleeping

No Time

Pleasant Valley Sunday

Randy Scouse Git

She Hangs Out

Okay. Let's Start with Mike.

White shirt. Blue, striped tie, sometimes not. Rust, perhaps brown pants and a blue suit jacket thrown into the mix. I'll go so far as to suggest the suit jacket has white ruffles on the ends of the sleeves.

Micky

Striped turtleneck, rug, grey pants (are they striped?) and then blue velvet/felt/cotton/ whatever top when it's not the rug. Oh wait, then he's wearing a red Monkee shirt.

Davy

Oh Davy. Handsome. And besides the handsome he's also sporting black pants, a red, velvet Monkee top, which gets changed out to the George Harrison / I Am The Walrus top. Then at one point, or rather the Love Is Only Sleeping point, he seems to be wearing Peter's ivory outfit. Why you'd want to wear an outfit that your friend was just sweating in.. I don't know.

And lastly Peter.

Peter is wearing an ivory top with beads, and white pants, then he gets rid of the ivory top (presumably to give to Davy) and puts on a brown puffy shirt complete with brown leather(?) vest. Then he drops the brown puffy shirt for a blue puffy shirt, but keeps the brown vest.

Most of the pictures were stolen from this site The Vincent Van-Gogh-Gogh! Also check out this site which is linked through the above - FashionState.com .

I also found that from 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee that Micky's wearin' that rug - thing, again. Hippie.

But I think it's just Micky digging that thing, rather than it being a clue. Although... Look at Davy's hair. It was likely filmed very close to the filming of these videos.

Which, by the way...

Okay, back to the task at hand. Wait! Look at Pete's sideburns - too long. Scratch all this evidence. So all we've gathered from this is that Micky tooled around in that get-up a lot and the weezer cover looks strikingly similar to that 33 1/3 pic... Interesting....

I don't think I'm any closer to the truth than when I started.

The stripy background.

I EFFIN' LOVE THE MONKEES! (They may have paved the way for your little Jonas Brothers business, so not another word about it, youngins.)

Ah. The Monkees. I have 3 million things I could go on and on about The Monkees, but I, being in the craptastic mood I'm finding myself, I want to fangirl over that stripy background that's in so many viddies. It makes me happy. Like candy.






I think the most hilarious videos come from the day they had the striped background. Off the top of my head, here are some of the videos stolen from the YouTube.




Daydream Believer









Love is Only Sleeping






No Time







She Hangs Out







Randy Scouse Git 







I know there are some that I am forgetting... Anyway, enjoy the Wonka-like goodness. And then go brush your teeth and eat an apple. 


Okay, then enjoy this as some dessert....

If I could Punk Rock, I would be a Shangri-La

I have long wished I was in a girl group. I used to joke that I wanted to be a Monkee so I wouldn't have to learn an instrument (I know, Monkee people, I know, I'll get to the talent of the Monkees in a later post). Problem is though, I can't really sing either. I suppose I could be in a punk band, just not too hard core and I don't want to have to wake up bloodied in vomit on a dirty floor somewhere with a safety pin through my nose. Which brings me to The Shangri-Las. Holy crap these girls were cool!

In 1964, the average American teenaged girl looked like this:

And here come these four girls, aged 15-17 from Queens who are wearing leather and singing about a biker boyfriend who DIES.

Even though they look a little Lavern and Shirley here,

They were tough, they were rumored to carry guns, they scared the guy groups they were on tour with. Earlier I said there were four of them and you only see three, right? Well one of the girls, she was even too cool to tour.

This is Mary Weiss, the lead singer. She's my favorite. She's totally awesome, right?!

I found a really cool blog while looking for stuff for this little spittle from my fangirl brain. Check it out. RAD!!! www.theshangri-las.com

And this song, Remember (Walking in the Sand) was in Goodfellas. It's tough.