Michael Nesmith
Pacific Arts LPs
PAC7-1300
The Michael Nesmith Radio Special
[In 1980 Pacific Arts issued "The Michael Nesmith Radio Special" to promote
the album "Infinite Rider On The Big Dogma" and to increase awareness of
Nez's incipient audio-visual productions. The radio special comprises
segments of an extended interview with Nez intercut with tracks from
"Infinite Rider."
Some of the tracks on "Infinite Rider" apparently had different names at
the time of the radio special than they had at the time of release. The
names of the musical tracks from the radio special are given alongside
their familiar names from "Infinite Rider."]
[Side 1]
Intro
Announcer: "Infinite Rider On The Big Dogma." It's the brand new album
from Michael Nesmith on the Pacific Arts label. Hello, and welcome to the
Michael Nesmith Radio Special. For the next hour, we'll be playing tracks
from the new album and talking about everything from Jimi Hendrix to the
future of television and video. Now the first thing you'll notice about the
album is it's a rock and roll record.
[Dance / Dance And Have A Good Time]
High School Rock'N'Roll
Announcer: Michael Nesmith was born in Houston, Texas, grew up in Dallas,
but didn't think he was that good at first.
Nez: In high school, I played -- I was the lead singer in a rock'n'roll
band with a couple of kids around. I tried to play E flat saxophone with a
rock'n'roll band for awhile, which never worked out, and I wanted very much
to hang out with the people who were making music in high school, but I was
never good enough to do it. And I can remember nights in Texas there was a
guy who played the organ in the window of a music store, and I would stand
outside that man's little display case there for literally hours, because I
loved the live music.
The only type of music that was really appealing to me on a gut level was
the early black R&B music, because of course that was very highly evolved
music, but the white rock'n'rollers -- nothing happened to me for Elvis
Presley. Zip. Nothing happened to me for the early Jerry Lee Lewis stuff,
or Big Bopper, or Buddy Holly. They just passed me by. It was interesting
-- I liked it, it was hit music, and I was involved in the social boogie of
the thing, but in terms of something just sockin' me in my stomach, nothing
happened until Bo Diddley, or the early Ike & Tina Turner when they were out
of St. Louis, or Bobby "Blue" Bland, or Freddie King, or those guys who were
hanging out there.
[Magic / This Night Is Magic]
The Monkees
Announcer: Michael Nesmith from his new album, "Infinite Rider On The Big
Dogma," a much more intricate project than with his old band that nobody
will let him forget.
Nez: In order to understand The Monkees, the first thing that you have to
understand is that it was -- it was not a rock'n'roll phenomenon. It had
nothing whatsoever to do with rock'n'roll. It existed in a rock'n'roll
environment. It existed in a time when any four people together on the
street were considered a rock'n'roll "group," and that was educated to us
because of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones -- the groups that were
around. And because of the emergence into economic power of those forces,
because there had always been groups around of potent musical energy, but
really it was the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and those folks who moved
it into big business.
The Monkees were a television show. They were a television item. And we
were the beginning, as it were, of the impact that television has ultimately
come to have. Even in the middle 1960s, the full realization of the impact
of the medium of television was not upon us. It probably still isn't. And
at some point there'll have to be a recognition -- I don't think anyone has
assessed that yet -- but The Monkees were what they were, were the
phenomenon that they were, because of the television show. The Monkees were
a bona fide television article. They were a bona fide television
phenomenon. And that's where The Monkees ultimately fit. And if you watch
The Monkees' movie "Head," with willingness to understand what's going on
there, you'll catch on to just exactly what The Monkees were all about.
[Tonight / The Television Song (Tonight)]
Monkees Meet Jimi Hendrix
Announcer: The Monkees were big in England as well as America, and Michael
tells a great story about their first concerts with Jimi Hendrix.
Nez: Micky Dolenz wandered in to see Jimi Hendrix playing in a club there
and came back, and he said, "I've found this terrific guy, and I want to
take him to open the show for us." And so I agreed to that along with the
other three guys -- they agreed. And then the next day I was with John
Lennon in a club, and he had this little tape recorder, and he played me
this song, which was "Hey Joe," by Jimi, and he said "Isn't this
incredible." And I said, "Oh yeah, that's fantastic. And who is that?" And
he said, "Jimi Hendrix." "Oh my gosh, we just hired him!"
And so, Jimi's first big power concert dates in the United States were
played in front of a bunch of little screaming Monkees fans. Now there's a
good case in point, you see, because he lasted about -- I think he had, we
had 32 or 40 dates, and I think he made it like to twelve of them. Finally,
on stage at Forest Hills in New York, he gave everybody the finger, issued
an expletive, and walked offstage in the middle of his set.
Hendrix invented psychedelic music. His was a type of guitar playing and a
type of music that had inextricably interwoven with the psychedelics and the
whole time, the Haight-Ashbury, and the drug culture. And The Monkees had
nothing whatsoever to do with any of that. So when Hendrix was on stage
with The Monkees, it was absolutely two different things. It was like
having your mouth all set for pineapple and getting lemon. It's just --
they may look alike, but they were two entirely different animals. And
Hendrix, rightly so, had no desire to play in front of a bunch of 10- to
14-year-old girls waving their arms.
[Flying / Flying (Silks And Satins)]
L.A. Music Scene
Announcer: Silks and satins. That's called "Flying," from Michael
Nesmith's new LP, "Infinite Rider On The Big Dogma." But back to our story.
After the inevitable break-up of The Monkees, Michael settled in Southern
California.
Nez: The music business in Los Angeles was just one of the places on the
planet that would accommodate the way I thought at that time, and so I came
there, with no real idea of what to expect or what to get or where to get
it, just recognizing that I had to be in the place that would accommodate in
the best way my own type of thinking.
There was a club in L.A. called the Troubadour, and a bunch of folkies hung
out. And that was where there was a lot of music born on the streets during
that time. I like to think back on the L.A. days and the Troubadour and I
think, gosh there was Stephen Stills and Linda Ronstadt and the Byrds and --
I could go on and on and on -- and Neil Young, and those were the people
that I was hanging out with at the Troubadour. And I was running the Hoots
there. I was the master of ceremonies and played a little bit. -- ...and
all these people who've since gone on to a place in popular music. And
everybody that had any part of that will share in some of that luster. But
in terms of there being a central figure, or one person of monumental
importance that goes on forever like people want to give Dylan -- God bless
him, he has to carry that mantle for a long time, and I'm sure he doesn't
want it, and I know he doesn't deserve it, and it's very heavy to carry --
if we all stop and take a look at what's going on, you realize that the
emergence of rock'n'roll in two thousand years is going to have to go up
against other signal events of our time.
I lot of people say that I pioneered country-rock music and I was
responsible for this kind of sound, and that kind of -- all of which is
utter balderdash. There was a lot of us doing that at that time, and I
wasn't doing it as well as a lot of the people were doing it, and under any
circumstances, to me, it wasn't this great abiding kind of impulse that I
had to play country-rock music. It was just simply working in a form that I
was comfortable working in, something like a painter works in oils. And
then people kept looking at the painting saying, "Oh my, he's pioneered
acrylics." And it has the same kind of effect on all of us: "So what?"
[Carioca / Blue Carioca]
The Beatles
Nez: If you think of it not so much in terms of cultural impact, because as
history goes on I think we'll turn around and see that it was not a source
material, it wasn't that anyone dreamed up something new and that suddenly
it was injected into the culture and changed everything, but it was the
result of a cultural thought -- thoughts that developed at that point. And
the Beatles were very visible because they were very good. What I think of
as the Beatles, and what I perceive as the Beatles place that they occupy,
is much like the score of a movie, in a drama. In my mind, the Beatles
scored the 1960s. They provided the score for the movie that we all lived
out during that decade. But in terms of their having this big cultural
impact, we'll probably see that history will ultimately recognize that it
was just the other way around, that it was the culture that brought the
Beatles to the front and that the Beatles were the result of that thought
during that time.
Announcer: We'll return with more of "Infinite Rider On The Big Dogma" with
Michael Nesmith.
[Side 2]
Television
Announcer: If the Beatles and the Stones were simply a reflection of the
times, then The Monkees' TV phenomenon was too, just to a different group of
people. Michael Nesmith talks about how easily he fell into it all -- at
first.
Nez: My getting involved with that was very natural for me, because it was
-- The Monkees were a very advanced kind of an idea during their own time.
But the environment was not supportive. The environment was very difficult,
and as such it had a tendency to push me into kind of a type of insanity --
and everybody else into a type of insanity -- where you didn't know whether
you were coming or going, where you didn't know whether you were a
television show or a rock'n'roll band. And who knew? And now I can look
back and I can say, well I can see clearly what it was, and had we all been
real tough, or tougher than we were, we would have made it through and
everyone would have ultimately caught on -- the public I'm taking about --
what that whole Monkees show was about. But as it was we only managed to
make it through two years before all of us were just crumbling under the
almost unbelievable pressure of the public opinion. It was extraordinary,
the effect that it was having, because we were like a fish out of water. It
was like someone was saying -- and they continue to say -- well The Monkees
were the answer to The Beatles. Which was utter nonsense.
After The Monkees was over I was a millionaire, and I had become thrown
right into the middle of the marketplace. And the economic realities of
having a lot of money and all that stuff was starting to come down on me.
And I can tell you that one of the things that I learned early on was the
fact that having a whole lot of money, especially in the United States of
America, is not necessarily a plus, because it can be very difficult to deal
with. And that's exactly what happened to me. It was hard to manage, it
was hard to make good decisions, and I made a lot of bad decisions.
[Cruisin' / Cruisin']
The Record Business
Announcer: That's "Cruisin'," the story of Lucy and Ramona and Sunset Sam,
a track off the new Michael Nesmith album called "Infinite Rider On The Big
Dogma." The LP is the third from Michael on his own label, Pacific Arts
Records, where, after a number of albums on RCA, he realized that to see the
big picture sometimes you have to watch from a distance.
Nez: So I began to see, gee, the ownership of the store becomes real
important, and that in order to do that it makes a lot of sense to have the
artist -- or once again this thought process -- involved in the ownership of
the corporation. So about five years ago I started the Pacific Arts
Corporation specifically with that in mind, that if an artist would control
and operate a corporation and could weather the vicissitudes of economics in
America and make something solid, and stay away from the pressures of
getting big -- which we are getting and tend to get bigger -- that there was
something that could be gained for a lot of people, that it was a good move.
But I also knew that I couldn't stop my artistic endeavors. So that's what
I did. I started this corporation with my wife Kathryn and moved to Carmel,
California -- kind of moved out of that center of L.A., reasoning in the
following way: if I'm in L.A. I'm in L.A.; it's a remarkably small city. If
you're in New York you're in New York; you're in a remarkably small city.
But if you're in Carmel, you're on -- you're in a place on the planet, and
from there you can see New York, L.A., Tokyo, London, and all the places
around. And so I wasn't dropping out of the mainstream, I was really
dropping in to the center of a global consciousness, so that I could deal
effectively with Portugal and Hamburg and all those other places, which you
can see much more easily past the miasma of inter-industry hype, which
happens so much in L.A. or The Big Apple.
[Factions / Daughter Of Rock'N'Roll]
Infinite Rider On The Big Dogma
Nez: [Unintelligible, perhaps "As an artist I've"] just put out another
album, working in a new medium now, which is rock'n'roll, going back now and
visualizing some of these early forms of rock'n'roll. It's like dealing
again in -- instead of acrylics this time I'm dealing in clay. It's
sculpting; it's a little different, more three dimensional. The name of the
album is "Infinite Rider On The Big Dogma." It's a departure from the other
albums that I've done, in that there's more abandon in it.
But "The Infinite Rider On The Big Dogma" [sic] is the first stage -- well
actually it's the second stage, 'cause the first stage was "From A Radio
Engine To The Photon Wing," which is now completed some time ago. I've been
dealing in multimedia for some time, not multimedia in terms of trying to
attack the senses on several levels, but in dealing with the synergism of
multimedia. In other words, if you have two things going on simultaneously,
do you have the sum of two things going on simultaneously, or do you have
more than the sum of the parts? -- which of course is the whole concept of
synergy. And I'm convinced that you do. And my first experiment into that,
to convince myself that that existed, was "The Prison," which is a book that
you read while you listen to a record, and it develops another medium. So,
in dealing with multimedia projects, "From A Radio Engine To The Photon
Wing" and "The Infinite Rider On The Big Dogma" [sic] are albums which I
have slated and intend to make into video LPs, video records.
In ten years it'll be just as silly for us to buy an audio-only record as it
would be for us to go to a visual-only movie today. You just don't do it.
It's dumb. And the future of using the medium of television and televised
music is an extraordinary thing to contemplate, because it's forcing artists
of every caliber to grow, to rise into a higher realm. And it's a sphere of
thought that is almost native to me -- I love it. And it's very easy for me
to exercise, very easy for me to work in it, and I'm happy to work in it,
and I'm beginning to work in it now.
[Light / Light (The Eclectic Light)]
Video Art / Computer Future
Announcer: "Light," the eclectic light. Another track off the new Michael
Nesmith album. As you listen, keep in mind that one day you'll probably be
watching the album on video.
Nez: It is a field of exquisite beauty, and what it will provide to us as a
people, in enlarging our own concept of art, no one can really envision at
this point.
People began to conceive of their television as something that they could
control, and that happened with -- of all things -- Pong, the video game.
Because you began to see, gee, you know, I can play with my television set.
In much the same way that I program my radio -- which is really nothing but
a stereophonic system, high-fidelity system, that is nothing but just
programming your radio -- I can also program my television set. But unlike
audio-only programing, which is your hi-fi, audio-visual programming allows
you infinite capacity, because you have the ability to have return from the
screen, that you can understand and that you can act on. Subsequently, the
interface with computers, and the concept of having your own home computer,
having the newspaper arrive -- here's something interesting: the newspaper
arrives on the television. You can scan through it by typing in certain
numbers. You look at whatever you want to look at. You have an entire
databank, and it'll give you everything from recipes to an encyclopedia to
the directions to a friend's house. You have the ability to shop, go into a
supermarket and pick out anything you want to, except you do it all right on
your screen. You dial it up and you look at a picture of it. Now that
sounds like something right out of 2005. That's happening right now in
England, in three cities. That type of television system exists.
[Horserace / Horse Race (Beauty & Magnum Force)]
Thought Processes
Nez: It is only just the beginning of what is about to happen in the
communications medium, but it's more than just communications. It's also
self-development, and it's self-awareness, and all the things that are going
to help us to enlighten ourselves, make our thought loftier, more exalted.
And all of this I'm sure has a place for these thought processes that I
talked to you about when I first started off. And you recognize these
thought processes, and I can recognize this as another center for those very
thought process that happen -- that I recognized standing on the street
corner watching that guy play the organ.
[Capsule / Capsule]
Hello People A Hundred Years From Now
Announcer: Well, that's it for the Michael Nesmith Radio Special.
"Infinite Rider On The Big Dogma" is the name of the album. Look for it on
the Pacific Arts label. And one day look for a videotape of the album.
That'll be on Pacific Arts too. Thanks for listening.