Put it in the ground where the flowers grow

Thursday music corner: Micky Dolenz (b.1945), the last surviving member of the Monkees, got his start in show-business as a child actor on the children's TV programme Circus Boy (1956-57). With his Monkees bandmates he attained global fame that endured long after the two-year initial run of the TV musical comedy programme from 1966 to 1968, and he appeared on all nine of the Monkees studio albums issued in the band's heyday from 1966 to 1970.

Following on from Dolenz's 2021 solo covers album Dolenz Sings Nesmith, in which he performed songs written by his former bandmate Michael Nesmith, and produced by Nesmith's son Christian, Dolenz has been working on a new covers project. Dolenz Sings R.E.M. will be released as an EP on the UK record label 7A Records on 3 November. R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe is definitely keen on the idea:

Micky Dolenz covering R.E.M. Monkees style, I have died and gone to heaven. This is really something. ‘Shiny Happy People’ sounds incredible (never thought you or I would hear me say that!!!). Give it a spin. It’s wild.

R.E.M.'s Shiny Happy People appeared on the band's 1991 album Out Of Time, and featured guest vocals from the B-52s' Kate Pierson. Dolenz's version was released on 14 September 2023. 

Micky Dolenz - Shiny Happy People (2023)    

See also:

Music: Micky Dolenz - Little Red Rider (Nesmith cover, 2021)

Music: The Monkees - Do You Feel It Too (1970)

Music: R.E.M. - Moon River / Pretty Persuasion (live, 1984)

An inmate at Rikers Island

There were no suicides in my cellblock during my time at Rikers, but an inmate in one of the adjoining blocks had hanged himself in the shower room soon after I arrived. I remember being disgusted when I heard one of the COs [correctional officers] referring to the victim as 'another mope on a rope'. But that was early on in my sentence, before my ongoing Rikers 'education' taught me to take the callousness of the average guard for granted. The few guards who treated the inmates decently turned out to be the crooked ones who smuggled drugs into the cellblocks. Their profit motive gave them reason to consider us as potential customers, rather than just bags of meat that had to be inventoried three times a day, so in the upside-down world of prison life these black-market capitalists were actually the only guards to exhibit any human compassion. I considered it a lucky break to have been assigned to a cell block where one of these bent guards held the keys.

With our in-house smuggler on duty, the overnight hours in the dorm were a lot more mellow than they would have been if the hard-ass CO who worked the day shift had been in charge. At least at night we didn't have to worry that the smell of marijuana smoke would be reported to the shift commander and bring the flying squad rushing in to search our bunks and lockers for contraband. This was a real bonus. Our cell block was crammed with eighty inmates in a space built to house fifty, so the air in the dorm was always foul - even when the barred windows set high in the cell walls were cracked for ventilation. But the scent of burning marijuana after lights-out brought a welcome change that I came to appreciate as one of those minor blessings that made prison life slightly more tolerable. That's one lesson you can count on a place like Rikers to teach you - how to savour the little things. It was also the one lesson I promised myself I'd keep in mind once I hit the streets again.

- Peter Kaldheim, Idiot Wind: a Memoir, Edinburgh, 2019, p.282-3.

Pukehinau

Pukehinau Apartments, Aro Valley

 

I detect the El Supremo from the room at the top of the stairs

Thursday music corner: Walter Becker and Donald Fagen's eclectic, intellectually-charged band Steely Dan, founded in 1971 and still releasing material in the 2020s, retired from touring in 1974 and reached their peak of success with their 1977 album Aja, which hit number 3 in the US album charts and ultimately went double platinum in America. Steely Dan had a run of five consecutive US platinum albums from 1974's Pretzel Logic to 1980's Gaucho, and then after a lengthy hiatus from 1981 to 1993 the band followed up that streak with yet another platinum record, the 2000 comeback album Two Against Nature.

Show Biz Kids, co-written by Becker and Fagen as was the rest of the album, was the first single released from Steely Dan's second studio album Countdown to Ecstasy (1973). The album came out in July of that year, and this live performance from the Midnight Special was broadcast the following month. The album version features ace guitarist Rick Derringer on slide guitar, but this live performance boasts an equally impressive turn from Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter, not to mention vivacious backing vocal performances from Gloria 'Porky' Granola and Jenny 'Bucky' Soule. The single reached number 61 on the US charts.

This episode of the Midnight Special was hosted by Billy Preston, and in addition to the closing performance by Steely Dan, featured appearances by Preston, Buddy Miles, Bo Diddley, Ned Doheny, Gladstone and Maureen McGovern.

Steely Dan - Show Biz Kids (live, 1973)

See also:

Music: Steely Dan - Dirty Work (1972)

Music: Donald Fagen - New Frontier (1982)

Music: Billy Preston - Will It Go Round In Circles (live, 1973)

Can I give you a hand with that tin of cat-food?

 

Dessicated

 

Dessicated leaves, Zealandia