Circe Link (with Christian Nesmith) at Atwoods Tavern, Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 23, 2014

Some shows are a little harder to encapsulate than others, so here are five perspectives on a highly satisfying musical experience I enjoyed today.

1. There’s a country music subculture in Boston’s club scene, but this wasn’t part of it. This was a crowd of urban eldernerds excited at the prospect of seeing a second-generation Monkee and his hot squeeze light up a tiny taproom in Cambridge on a Sunday afternoon as March Madness raged on everywhere else.

2. Physically, Circe Link is an irresistibly compelling collage of classic ‘60s beauty. Clad in black form-fitting clothes (the pants so low-rise that the hip-hugging belt could have done double duty as a chastity preserver), she resembled Diana Rigg from The Avengers; like Twiggy, she was impossibly skinny; and her hair was as long, blond, and straight as Joni Mitchell’s on her first day in Laurel Canyon.

3. Christian Nesmith, the aforementioned prime-time progeny, is the oldest of Michael Nesmith’s children and, yes, like his father he does play his own instrument, as well as composes, produces, engineers, and, interestingly enough, sublimates his own extensive contributions to the act by remaining unbilled. Though he and Circe are a team in life and in music, the tour, the show, and the swag for sale were all Circe’s.

4. Without any help from you or I, or big record companies, or famous friends and relations, Circe Link has recorded eight albums in a style she calls Cowboy Jazz. This implies that it’s country and yet not, and that is accurate enough. It’s not particularly rife with improvisation, but given that Michael Nesmith’s pioneering country-rock was decidedly left of center both in the realms of country and rock, one should not expect labels to mean much here. Probably the keenest point of reference would be a Prozacked Patsy Cline, whose “I Fall To Pieces” was recorded by the elder Nesmith in 1970.

5. The tiny stage barely accommodated the five dedicated artists. Except for electric bass, all was acoustic: two guitars and a percussionist who sat on a small bass drum that he played with a brush as if it were a bodhran. Two generous sets were offered, all original material except for a cover of Michael Nesmith’s “Calico Girlfriend” from, again, that magical year 1970. Circe’s voice was warm and engaging; like Karen Carpenter, the bottom end of her range is very strong and they both could use a sandwich. Christian took many of the acoustic guitar solos, proving himself to be a fluid player with, OK, maybe a tinge of jazz among the cowboy.

 If a summary is thought necessary, it is this: I pray they make it back to Boston again because both Circe and Christian are very talented, friendly folks who, in the grand Nesmith tradition, take their music more seriously than they take themselves. They are precisely the kind of artists you want to give your money to because they seem so comfortable in their semi-obscurity you almost forget you don't know them personally. In many ways, they're just like your friends - just more talented.

First set opener:


Newest tune:

How I Got This Way

To my knowledge, I was not genetically predisposed to being a music nut. My immediate family was not particularly musical: my sisters and I went through a variety of instruments, committing any number of crimes against humanity as we defiled the intentions of noble instrument makers, without ever mastering one. My grandfather Harry, though, he was another story. He possessed a magnificent bass-baritone voice and as a younger man performed in synagogue choirs, local operas, and even gave concerts.

In the early 1930s, he sang on a long-defunct Boston radio station under the less-ethnic name of Harry Robbins. A recording exists of three songs he cut at Ace Recording Studios, 120 Boylston Street in Boston, on October 27 and November 2, 1947: “Old Man River,” “Der Becher” (“The Cup”), and “Eibik” (“Eternity”). At his wedding in 1926, he sang a popular tune of the day called “Until” to his bride; he reprised it at each of his five children’s weddings and at least a couple of his grandchildren’s weddings as well.

His children, my father and his siblings, therefore grew up in a house filled with opera and lieder. None of them, however, seem to have gotten an ounce of his talent. I grew up with radio broadcasts of operas, from which I ran as fast as I could. I would not be influenced by my father’s music and instead took to rummaging through my older sister’s small stack of LPs and 45s. For the most part, this was a choice selection of early ‘70s pop and soft rock: Carpenters, Carole King, Three Dog Night, Bobby Sherman, and James Taylor.

Of course, I knew the Monkees from their TV show, which I loved and still do to this day. In fact, I’m still a huge Monkees fan and sincerely believe they belong in that abomination called the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. True, they didn’t play their own instruments (most of the time) and didn’t write all their own material (though they did write a fair share of it, especially Mike Nesmith, who had at least a couple of songs on all their albums and whose solo material alone warrants significant hero worship), but guess what? Neither did the Temptations.

Looking back, it’s kind of funny how much rock music I got from television in those days. It seems like most of the kids shows I watched had some interstitial musical segment that usually featured psychedelic visual effects – an odd introduction to acid culture to an eight-year-old audience. For example, one show I enjoyed a lot was called Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, which featured a bunch of trained, costumed monkees – er, monkeys – doing Get Smart for kids not ready for the humor of Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. In each episode, the chimps were decked out in Haight-Ashbury uniforms and toy instruments, and lip-synched (well, obviously) to some pop dreck as Lancelot Link & the Evolution Revolution.

Another rock animal act for kids was the Banana Splits, a group comprising four dudes dressed in dog, gorilla (hmm), lion, and elephant suits. According to Wikipedia, music for the Splits was composed by the likes of such legitimate talents as Al Kooper, Barry White, and Gene Pitney. Then, of course, there were the Archies, the Partridge Family, the Hardy Boys, and who can forget the episode of Gilligan’s Island when the Mosquitoes showed up for a little R&R? Even the Brady Bunch kids took time out from their incestuous offscreen hanky panky to sing “Sunshine Day.”

So despite my father’s contempt for rock music, there was no escaping it in my house. In time, I was buying my own records. Inspired by their Saturday morning cartoon series, I started getting records by the Jackson Five and the Osmonds (to this day I have an almost-complete collection of the works of the original Osmond Brothers, and still listen to them). But in no way did I exhibit the characteristics of a music nut. I just enjoyed what I enjoyed. I listened to AM radio but didn’t really know who sang what songs, and didn’t really care. I was the kind of listener I now despise: someone who passively and dispassionately accepts whatever inoffensive sounds reach his ears.

That all changed in 1976. The year of our country’s bicentennial was a turning point for me. I was 13 years old, had my bar mitzvah, and became a certified, card-carrying music nut. Here’s how it happened.

My best friend and I did everything together in those days. One day we saw an ad in a magazine for the RCA Record Club. For a buck, you could get six records and best of all, two-record sets counted as a single selection. My friend and I would each select three, and we agreed that we should each pick one two-record set so as to maximize the value of our shared investment. My friend chose Frampton Comes Alive, which was all over the radio at that time. I didn’t know what record I should choose. My friend offered to help me make my selection. He decided I should get Endless Summer by The Beach Boys.

“What’s on it?” I asked. I wasn’t aware that I knew any of their songs.
“I think it has ‘Barbara Ann’,” he replied. (He was wrong.)

So I ordered it. When our shipment arrived, it was exciting as anything. It was the first time we had purchased something through the mail. When you’re a kid, any kind of mail addressed to you is special, but when it’s a big square cardboard box, probably 14”x14”x1.5”, it’s momentous. The only downside was that there were only five records in the box. One of my selections had been back-ordered. However, RCA included a coupon entitling me to another free selection. I decided I would hold off on making that selection until I checked out my other records (aside from Endless Summer, I also had ordered John Denver’s Greatest Hits, Volume 2, which I still own).

And so it was that I broke the cellophane on Endless Summer, the gatefold cover smothered with a richly colored cartoon mural of the Beach Boys in a tropical setting, including a gull perching on a bikinied breast. I didn’t know who any of the Beach Boys were individually, all I could tell from the cover was that they were a hairy bunch, and one of them had a particularly sour expression and was seemingly trying to hide behind the foliage.

The records were sided as they were in the old days, designed for stacking on the tall spindle of the record player: sides 1 and 4 on one record, and sides 2 and 3 on the other. This was before I had a nice stereo system so I was used to the stack concept, but I wasn’t sure I’d want to hear two sides in a row right off the bat (after all, a quick peek at the song list told me that my friend was wrong about “Barbara Ann” being on the set, thus I was initially disappointed), so I just put on side 1. Five songs: “Surfin’ Safari”, “Surfer Girl”, “Catch a Wave”, “The Warmth of the Sun”, and “Surfin’ USA”.

I couldn’t believe it. I knew four of the five songs (“Catch a Wave” was new to me) and liked them all. Those incredible melodies and harmonies, especially on the two ballads (“Surfer Girl” and “The Warmth of the Sun”) and the pumping beat of the uptempo tunes was absolutely entrancing. I immediately put on side 2: “Be True to Your School”, “Little Deuce Coupe”, “In My Room”, “Shut Down”, and “Fun Fun Fun”. Are you kidding me? How is this possible? How can any group have so many quality songs? While the Chuck Berry-inspired guitar on “Fun Fun Fun” got my blood racing like a dragster, the Beach Boys had me at “In My Room”.

I cannot underestimate the profound impact that “In My Room” had on me. I was 13. I was overweight. Painfully shy. Intensely insecure. My life to this time had been centered on superhero comic books (Marvel, of course). My favorite was the Thing, the brute made of orange rock who was the muscle of the Fantastic Four. He was powerful yet gruesome, the perfect role model for a boy who felt ugly and impotent. And so I lost myself in the colored squares of comic book narratives, lying on my bed and imagining myself making things right with my big fists and confident cry of “It’s clobberin’ time!”

With “In My Room” (which I didn’t yet know was recorded and released in 1963, the year of my birth), for the first time I felt that a song truly spoke to me, that a lyric really spoke for me. I felt understood, and the music conveyed with astounding accuracy the quiet sadness and morose yearning of someone who feels less safe, less comfortable among most of his school peers than he does in the solitary confinement of his own bedroom. This is the song that made me a music nut, that made me realize that I couldn’t content myself with these magical sides, that I needed more, that I needed to collect this artist and others that spoke to me. With “In My Room” I realized for the first time that there was a music that was made just for me.



Needless to say, after side 2 I spun sides 3 and 4. When I was done, having sampled the likes of “I Get Around”, “Don’t Worry Baby”, “California Girls”, and “Help Me, Rhonda”, I had heard 20 songs, liked them all, loved most, and had a new favorite group. More important, I looked at the composer credits and found that Brian Wilson (abetted on many of the tracks by a separate lyricist) was responsible for all of this brilliance. If I had thought it impossible that one group, one album, could have so many amazing songs on it, how much more outrageous was it to learn that it all came from the mind of one man? (The man, incidentally, with the sour expression trying to hide behind the foliage on the cover.)

I wasn’t done. I still had a coupon for another selection. I looked at the catalog and there was Spirit of America, the companion compilation to Endless Summer (which did include “Barbara Ann”). When it arrived, I had 20 more slices of insanely catchy melodies to play. I began collecting Beach Boys records and researching the history of the group. I came to realize that Brian Wilson wasn’t just the mastermind behind the group, he was now my hero. Not a hero like the Thing, someone who would help me through my adolescence, but a hero I could grow up with, someone whose music and whose very life would continue to inspire and speak to me to the present day, even after the thousands of other LPs and CDs I bought after he turned me into a music nut.

Future Projects IV: Monkees tribute band

OK, you're thinking, now he's gone off the deep end. How does one go from wanting to novelize the romance between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, stage a one-act play dramatizing the spreading of one's friend's ashes at a sacred childhood spot, and develop other creative fiction and non-fiction works, to forming a band to play the repertoire of the Monkees? What can I say, I'm a renaissance man.

I love the Monkees. I have ever since I took my sister's copy of their first album. I then got their Greatest Hits, with the original orange and black cover. And of course, I loved the TV show. But, say the critics and the cynics, that's really all it was, right? A TV show about a band, and the band was just actors who didn't play on their records, right? Wrong. While the individual Monkees were indeed cast for a show, their first hit single preceded the show's debut. They provided all the vocals, and Mike Nesmith contributed two original compositions (his song, Different Drum, was already a hit for Linda Ronstadt).

Therefore, in terms of the level of participation of the members in their recordings, the distinction between the Monkees and a group like the Temptations or even the Jackson 5 seems pretty small. Furthermore, the Monkees, at least Nesmith and Peter Tork, actively campaigned for the right to play and write on their records. More Monkees performed on the group's third album, Headquarters, than Beach Boys performed on Pet Sounds. Motown had the Funk Brothers, the Beach Boys and Phil Spector had the Wrecking Crew. The Monkees also benefited from studio musicians. It makes them no less of a legitimate band.

Ultimately, though, the proof of the pudding is in the grooves. They were great singers and they sang great songs, written by some of the best songwriting talent around at that time, including Goffin-King, Neil Diamond, Harry Nilsson, Boyce & Hart, and John Stewart. With his contributions, Nesmith was one of the earliest pioneers of country rock. Micky Dolenz was a soulful singer with relentless energy. Davy Jones was the balladeer, but could also put some English on uptempo rockers. Peter Tork was underutilized but whenever he was featured, his efforts stood out.

So anyway, I play drums and I've always wanted to form a Monkees tribute band. Aside from loving the music, it's also a fun idea. Now, I need to be clear that I don't want a band that dresses and acts like the Monkees, nor do I want a band that slavishly copies the original recordings. I just want a band that plays this music well and with enjoyment. I even have a name for the group: MonkeeJuice. This is a tribute to the Boston-based cover band, BeatleJuice, that was fronted by former Boston (the group) vocalist Brad Delp before his unfortunate suicide a couple of years ago. BeatleJuice played Beatles songs for the sheer love of the music, and that's what I want to do with MonkeeJuice, too.

Unfortunately, the guys I've played with over the past few years aren't so much into the idea. One show, one time, we played Last Train to Clarksville, with me on drums and vocals. Other than that, I can't get these guys to buy into the idea. At the same time, I'm a bit hesitant to pursue this project more heavily. One of the guys I've played with decided a few years ago he wanted to start a Steely Dan tribute band. He placed a notice on Craig's List and was inundated with offers from people all over the country. He assembled a large group and rehearsed with them for a long time until it started to splinter, with some people complaining it was getting too jazzy, and others saying it wasn't jazzy enough. If this can't be fun, I don't want to do it.

What I do want to do, however, is spread the gospel of the Monkees, a band that absolutely deserves to be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

This rarity was written by Goffin-King, sung and produced by Nesmith. Always thought this sounded like a lost Buffalo Springfield track (not that ironic considering Peter Tork was a one-time roommate of Stephen Stills).

So, like, what's up with the Heroes and Man Crushes?

Do people still have heroes? Are there heroes to be had? I don't know, I was young and impressionable in the mid to late 1960s and it was still a fairly unjaded, hagiographic time period. If Horatio Alger was out, there was still Boy's Life magazine and the "Goofus and Gallant" features in Highlights for Children to set you straight. I was born on Lincoln's birthday and read all the myth-making biographies for young readers; because of the connection, I was always drawn to non-fiction books and biographies, and throughout my life I have been open to being inspired and influenced by other people's lives and actions. My wife will tell you (should she start her own blog) that she can often tell who I am speaking with on the phone, because I take on their verbal mannerisms. Which is not to say that I am easily led and that anyone I like automatically becomes a hero. But I do have heroes and I do find it meaningful to have heroes, if not specifically to emulate then at least to take inspiration from their words, lives, and actions.

More recently, with the advent of the term "man crush," I have acknowledged having some of them, too, and I also think a man crush is something worth having - assuming you're confident enough in your masculinity. Here, then, are my heroes and man-crushes, explained.

Abraham Lincoln. I've already mentioned I was born on his birthday. His 154th to be precise. From a young, pre-literate age, my family had always made a big deal out of this, as if it were some kind of omen. I was often given pennies. As I grew older and began to learn about Lincoln, an uncle who was an educator would quiz me on the Gettysburg Address. He would recite it and make intentional mistakes (such as "far above our poor power to add or subtract") that I would have to correct. As I grew older still, I read more sophisticated books about him, eventually studying in college with one of his premier biographers, Stephen B. Oates (see below). The more I learned about the true Lincoln - his fears and uncertainties, his depressions and his fatalism - the more I admired him. As his flaws became exposed, he became more life-size, more approachable, more real. He and I were more alike than I ever could have thought. His writing ability and his boundless compassion are beyond my reach, but they are standards to strive for. He is my oldest, deepest hero.

Brian Wilson. It was 1975 or 1976, so I was either 12 or 13. I came upon Endless Summer, a 2-LP collection of Beach Boys hits. Twenty songs, each one indispensable. I had never heard 20 brilliant songs in a row before. How could it be that one man could create such a body of work? One song, though, stood out. "In My Room." The lyrics and music touched me deeply. "There's a world where/I can go and/Tell my secrets to/In my room." My own room was such a place. I knew he knew the same feelings I had felt. That artistic and spiritual kinship was very powerful to me. The more of his music I heard, the more of his life that I learned, the more knocked out I was by his genius, his endurance, and his incredible childlike wonder and innocence. He has no business being alive at age 66 in 2008, but he is and he's still creating wonderful works. He is a very special hero to me.

Bob Dylan. As a writer, my ideal is to be able to express a big truth in as few words as possible. No one does this better than Bob Dylan. My favorite line of his is "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" ("Subterranean Homesick Blues"). I also dig "When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose" ("Like a Rolling Stone"). I once saw an exhibit of photographs of Elvis, Dylan, and the Beatles. In one room was a giant portrait of Dylan, the one from the cover fo the Biograph boxed set. I said to my wife, "If we had that on a wall in our house, I would bow and pray to it every day."

Mike Scott. Mike Scott is the leader, singer, guitarist, and songwriter for the Waterboys. He qualifies as a man crush. I'm not specifically attracted to him, but he has such rock star looks that he is sort of physically irresistible. But it's music that really makes me such a big fan of his. He's very literate and very spiritual, and both influences come out very overtly in his writing, singing, and playing. In fact, I almost called this blog "Light in My Head," a phrase from "Fisherman's Blues," but it was already taken. These days I'm pushing the Waterboys on everyone I meet, so I clearly have a crush, but I wouldn't be surprised if one day he became a hero.

Michael Nesmith. Not just the most talented Monkee, but an exceptionally unique songwriter with a voice that kills me. He's also a successful entrepreneur and a deep thinker. More a crush than a hero, but I do admire him a lot.

Carl Yastrzemksi. My all-time favorite Red Sox player. Part of what I love about him is the fact that he never won the World Series. He's a tragic hero. But that classic stance, that potato farmer work ethic, and that Impossible Dream season make him the most emotionally laden of all my heroes to me.

Tom Brady. Pure man crush. What can I say, he's just a winner, pure and simple.

Stephen B. Oates. OK, I've dealt with a president, then the musicians, a couple of athletes, time for a couple of literary folks. As I mentioned above, I studied with Oates at UMass Amherst. Yet while still in high school, I had read his Lincoln biography, With Malice Towards None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln. I took his "Civil War Era" class and read it again. In the 23 years since I graduated, I've read it three or four more times (not only because I love it, but because for a while he would send me every new edition of it, signed). What I love about Oates (and he's a crush who became a hero) is his brilliant writing style, but also his extraordinary lecture skills. I took two classes with him and every minute was riveting. He brought the characters on stage to tell their own stories. The class in which Lincoln was assassinated was one of the most moving moments of my life. At the end of the class, I literally could not move. I felt as though I had witnessed the horrific act in person, as if a member of my own family had just died. Oates brought me closer to Lincoln than anyone ever could or ever will. I'm no longer in touch with him, but he's a highly intelligent and dignified man who taught me more than he intended.

James Thurber. I don't know, maybe he's neither a hero nor a crush of mine, but there's something about his clear, witty writing and deceptively simple drawings that has stayed with me for decades. Because of him, I created for myself the distinction between a comedian and a humorist: a comedian makes you laugh, a humorist makes you smile. Ultimately, it really feels good to smile.

Max Rubin. I'll post more about my great-grandfather later. Suffice to say, more than a century ago he fled persecution in Russia to build a new life for himself in America. He left behind two children and a pregnant wife. Max stayed with his brother in New York until the Great Chelsea (Mass.) Fire of 1908. A carpenter by trade, he figured there would be a lot of work for him there. So he moved to Chelsea and in so doing ensured that his progeny would be Red Sox fans instead of being Yankees fans. Eventually Max was able to send for his family, and he fathered 11 children in all. I found out only a couple of years ago that he and my great-grandmother Rose are buried a five-minute drive from my house. Now I visit often.