Tag: The Monkees

Generally, there’s no such thing as a bad concert, and 2019 was no exception. While my criteria for what’s constitutes a good concert experience changes a bit from show to show — the location of my seat, the ticket price, whether I got to go to the meet-and-greet, the quality of the photos I get — I can usually find a lot of things I like about a show.

I couldn’t limit the list to the Top 10 shows of 2019, so I made it Top 11 this year. Really, all the concerts were very good, it’s just that these were just a little bit better.

11. Steely Dan — The Met/Philly (Nov. 9) — There was a lot right and a few things wrong for me at this show. First and foremost, the music was brilliant, Donald Fagen can still deliver the goods, and his band is nothing short of outstanding. And while the historic venue is something to behold and a nice place to see a concert, the fact that there is little parking nearby and the overly aggressive ushers on prohibiting photos really took away from this show and explains the reason for the rank. But boy, what a catalog of great songs performed with master musicianship.

Original members of Three Dog Night, Michael Allsup and Danny Hutton.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

10. Three Dog Night — American Music Theatre/Lancaster, PA — (Sept. 22) — There are only two original members left — vocalist Danny Hutton and guitarist Michael Allsup — but they still sound like classic TDN. The band’s library of hits includes some of my favorite songs from the 1970s. And the American Music Theater is a great place to see a show. The seats are wide and comfortable and the leg room between rows is plentiful. Plus I went down to the stage, something I’ve just started doing in the past year if the opportunity presents itself, for the encore, “Joy to the World.”

9. Gary Clark Jr. — Ryman Auditorium/Nashville, TN (March 7) — I was unfamiliar with Clark’s music and my pal Jared Bilski invited me to this show when we were in Nashville for a work conference. Once the show started, I became an immediate fan of Clark’s music. Of course, being in the historic Ryman was a treat, despite the hard church pew bench seating in the balcony. The no-photo policy always annoys me, and this was no exception in that regard. Clark is a tremendous guitarist and can sing. I’d go see him again. I loved Nashville and I’d like to sit downstairs at the Ryman the next time.

8. Dan May — Sellersville Theater/Sellersville, PA — (July 5) — Dan’s shows are always wonderfully entertaining and his songwriting is brilliant. The venue is where we first discovered Dan’s music when he opened for Crystal Gayle, so we always try to see him there. In recent years, Dan has added storytelling segments to his shows, reading chapters from his books, and I really enjoy that. There isn’t a better night of music and entertainment than the Philadelphia-based local musician and his band.

Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley of America.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

7. America — Penn’s Peak/Jim Thorpe, PA — (Aug. 17) — Given my well-chronicled affinity for what is one of my favorite bands of all-time, you might be surprised at this ranking. I see this show every time I can and will continue to do so for as long as I’m able. Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley still sound great, they do all the hits and the venue offers some great seat options, great prices and a spectacular view of the Poconos.

J.D Malone and Tommy Geddes.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

6. J.D Malone and the Experts — Steel City Coffeehouse/Phoenixville, PA — (March 16) — Intimate venue, high-energy show where the artists come out and greet the fans personally before the show. Another full night of entertaining music for the ticket price by another Philadelphia-area artist. J.D’s songwriting is undeniably wonderful and he always looks like he’s enjoying himself up there on stage. That’s contagious for the audience and it returns the love.

Left to right, Elliot Lurie of Looking Glass, Peter Beckett of Player and John Ford Coley.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

5. Rock the Yacht, featuring Elliot Lurie of Looking Glass, Peter Beckett of Player, Ambrosia, John Ford Coley and Walter Egan/The Borgata, Atlantic City, NJ — (Aug. 23) — A very yacht rocky lineup of many of my favorite artists of the 1970s. They all still sound great and we had great seats at a reasonable price. In addition to the show, a highlight of the evening was before the show, where we had the opportunity to meet and have dinner with Elliot Lurie, who wrote “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl),” one of the most iconic songs of the 1970s. A personable and friendly gent, I had interviewed Elliot for “The Vinyl Dialogues Volume IV: From Studio to Stylus” after connecting with him on Facebook. It was a thrill for me to meet the guy who wrote one of the songs to the soundtrack of my life. After that, the concert was gravy.

Micky Dolenz and Mike Nesmith of The Monkees.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

4. The Monkees — Keswick Theatre, Glenside, PA — (March 6) — There’s only two of them left — Micky Dolenz and Mike Nesmith — but they still sounded like The Monkees. This was a rescheduled show from 2018 when Nesmsith fell ill on the stage of the Keswick during sound check and eventually needed heart surgery. But the duo put on a great show and gave us a little slice of our childhood back for one evening.

Daryl Hall and John Oates.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

3. Daryl Hall and John Oates — Allentown Fairgrounds, Allentown, PA — (Sept. 1) — This show could have been ranked lower because I’ve seen them so many times, but it’s not because Hall & Oates are just that damn good. An outdoor show on wooden chairs at a fairgrounds can present some challenges, but the weather held. Allentown is close enough to home turf for Daryl and John, and they always seem to be comfortable on their home field. We’ve seen this show many times, and it’s always ridiculously solid. The band is tight, tight, tight. The catalog of hits is undeniable. There have been times when I’ve hoped for some deeper cuts in the setlist, but John has told me in more than one interview that they feel obligated to the fans to play the hits. These guys are as good now as they ever were and we’re lucky that they’re still out there sharing their music with us.

2. Lionel Richie, Hard Rock Cafe, Atlantic City, NJ — (March 23) — This high ranking shows just how good a showman, entertainer and singer Lionel Richie is because I absolutely dislike this venue. The room is just full of bad angles, many of the seats are too far from the stage and it has a no-photos policy, which will always rub me the wrong way. But Richie can sing, he’s so personable on stage, and there’s no denying the great catalog of music. This is one where I wish I would have been sitting closer but the ticket prices were prohibitive for those seats. I’d go see him again in a heartbeat.

Little Steven Van Zandt and the Disciples of Soul.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

1. Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul — Keswick Theatre, Glenside, PA — (July 20) — All the stars lined up perfectly for this show, which is why is takes the top spot. I went by myself, which isn’t my preference, but I got a ticket for $79.50 right in the front row. The Disciples of Soul rocked the house, Little Steven was all Little Steven and more, I love his music and I was in the catbird seat for photos, which Stevie himself encourages people to take. There’s always that slight chance that Bruce Springsteen is going to show up unannounced at an East Coast Steveie show, but that didn’t happen at this one. At one point Stevie stuck the mic in my face so I could sing a little — not a really good idea — but I wasn’t familiar enough with the lyrics of the song, so I shit down my leg and had to mush-mouthed it. He looked at me like, WTF man. But it was a tremendous amount of fun and I got some outstanding photos. If the opportunity presents itself, always sit in the front row when you can.

Mike and Micky: The Monkees are still magnificent

By Mike Morsch

On March 17, 2019

In The Vinyl Dialogues Book

Mickey Dolenz belts out a tune at “The Mike and Micky Show” March 6, 2019, at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, PA.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

It was early 1967 The Monkees were frustrated. Sure, they had a successful television show — wildly more successful than anybody could have imagined at the time — and their first two albums, “The Monkees” and “More of the Monkees,” had reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 200 Albums chart.

But The Monkees — Mike Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Davy Jones — weren’t being taken seriously as musicians and songwriters. And that was beginning to wear on them heavily.

So when it came time to make the third album, they went on strike, which was spearheaded by Nesmith.

“Mike had become very frustrated, and I don’t blame him because he had bought into this whole thing (The Monkees),” said Dolenz in a July 11, 2017, interview with The Vinyl Dialogues. “He was a singer-songwriter and he came into The Monkees with that in mind. I know he was promised that we’d be doing some of his songs, and that he’d be writing and singing. That didn’t turn out to be the case.”

Dolenz doesn’t believe, more than 50 years later, that there was any nefarious plot by record executives to stifle the artistic creatively and freedom of The Monkees. It’s just that the television show steamrolled so fast and hard and became so instantly successful that the corporations behind it — RCA Victor, NCB Television and Screen Gems — got overwhelmed by the Monkees mania.

“Mike will tell you, even now, that we weren’t capable of doing our own music at first,” said Dolenz. “But the story he’s told me is that he went to the producers early on and he said he had written this song that he wanted to do as a Monkees song, and he played it for them. And they said, ‘No, that’s not a Monkees song.’ And Mike said, ‘Wait a minute, I am one of the Monkees.’ And they said, ‘Yeah, yeah, fine. But it’s not a Monkees song.’”

Mike Nesmith of The Monkees was in fine voice at “The Mike and Micky Show” at the Keswick Theatre.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

Frustrated but determined, Nesmith decided to give the song to a young female singer who was kicking around the Los Angeles area in the summer of 1967. Her name was Linda Ronstadt and the song was “Different Drum.”

Rondstadt and her band The Stone Poneys released the song in September 1967 and it went to No. 12 on the Cash Box Top 100 Singles chart, No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart and No. 16 in Record World magazine.

But putting their collective feet down, led by Nesmith, for The Monkees third album, “Headquarters” proved to work.

“Mike got us all on board and said, ‘We can do this if we put our minds to it.’ Mike was the one who encouraged me do some songwriting. Basically, we said we just want something to say about what’s going on with this album,” said Dolenz.

Dolenz believes that fans then didn’t care that the Monkees weren’t playing their own instruments or writing their own songs, although the band members did. The famous Los Angles session musicians The Wrecking Crew had played on The Monkees first two albums, as well as on albums by the Beach Boys, Sonny and Cher, The Mamas and the Papas, the 5th Dimension and Frank Sinatra, so it wasn’t that unusual in the 1960s.

“I asked my wife, who was an original fan in the 1960s at age 8, ‘Honey, did you care at all about whether we played all the instruments and that whole thing?’ And she said, ‘No, you were just cute,’” said Dolenz. “The Beatles didn’t play on every single record. They had people come in all the time. Unfortunately, we’re the ones that kind of got beat up for it, and ironically, we were the ones who didn’t have a choice.”

But the “Headquarters” album would provide some vindication for The Monkees. It was the first album that included substantial songwriting and instrumental performances by members of the group.

Mickey Dolenz on the guitar during “The Mike and Micky Show.”
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

All it did was reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200 Album chart and was certified double-platinum in the United States with sales of more than two million copies within the first two months. Released on May 22, 1967, it stayed at No.1 for just one week — and might have stayed there longer — but the Beatles released “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” on May 26, 1967, and that album replaced The Monkees at No.1 and stayed there for 11 weeks, with “Headquarters” right behind in the No. 2 spot for the same number of weeks.

“If you’re going to get blown out of the No. 1 position, I guess Sgt. Pepper is a good one to do that,” said Dolenz.
More than 50 years later, Nesmith and Dolenz, the surviving members of The Monkees — Jones died in 2012 and Tork died in February 2019 — are still proving that they’re the real deal.

“The Mike and Micky Show” at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside, PA, on March 6 left no doubt that the remaining Monkees are as good as they ever were.

Their set included The Monkees hits, songs written by both Nesmith and Dolenz, and several from the “Headquarters” album, including “You Just May Be the One,” “You Told Me” and “Sunny Girlfriend” written by Nesmith; “For Pete’s Sake,” co-written by Tork; “Randy Scouse Git,” written by Dolenz; and “I’ll Spend My Life With You,” written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart.

The show was special not only because Nesmith and Dolenz are great musicians and performers, but because it was just a few weeks after Tork’s death, and it was evident both Dolenz and Nesmith were affected by the loss of Tork. In addition, the show was a rescheduled performance from a June 2018 Keswick Theatre show where Nesmith had collapsed just after soundcheck and needed bypass surgery, from which he appears to be fully recovered.

But through it all, The Monkees put on a great show. It’s obvious the two are comfortable with each other onstage.
Everybody left the theater that evening with a smile on their faces. And rightfully so. The Monkees still got it.

Mike Nesmith and Micky Dolenz of The Monkees have surrounded themselves with a fabulous group of musicians for “The Mike and Micky” shows.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

Stories behind memorable albums of the 1970s as told by the artists

Tag: The Monkees

Whoa-oh-oh, listen to the music: The best concerts of 2019

Mike and Micky: The Monkees are still magnificent