Laugh or Cry - Spinoza or The Monkees

I posted a video on Sunday of the Monkees doing “Pleasant Valley Sunday.” I posted it along with Carole King’s demo recording of the song from 1966. I got 700 hits in the first 24 hours. I had to check my counter and make sure it wasn’t counting any spam hits. It wasn’t. 68% of the hits came from Facebook, while the rest came from, well, everywhere.

Now this was a surprise. I posted it Sunday only as a place holder, and because it had the word Sunday in it. I never expected more than 25 hits at best. I average about 200 a day; with most coming from people googling different things. At this point I have a couple of thousand posts out there, so people bump into my site all the time; just not 700 per day.

This got me thinking about what topics were the most popular. Here is a sampling of what I found just by looking at one typical week from June 2011.

Conrad Shuman – 1095 hits.

Einstein and Spinoza –  812 hits.

“Shifty’s War” – 8,842 hits.

Thomas Cole’s “The Course of Empire” – 683 hits.

“Pictures of Matchstick Men” by Staus Quo -432 hits.

Wendell  Berry’s “Manifesto” – 1,041 hits.

Remember, those totals are for over 3 years. Compare those totals to the Monkees getting 700 hits in 24 hours on a silly little blog like mine, and you will understand why I say I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

For the benefit of those who may not have read it before, here is Wendell Berry’s powerful poem “Manifesto.” I hope it gets a couple of dozen hits.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something

that won't compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot

understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap

for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy

a woman satisfied to bear a child?

Will this disturb the sleep

of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie down in the shade. Rest your head

in her lap. Swear allegiance

to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn't go.

Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

"Pleasant Valley Sunday" - Carole King Demo (1966)

Here’s Carole King’s demo recording of “Pleasant Valley Sunday” which she co-wrote with her then husband Gerry Goffin. He wrote the lyrics about the life they were then leading living in a suburban development in West Orange, New Jersey.

Demos are recordings made by artists who are writers and not necessarily performers. The demos are shopped around to various artists in the hopes that one of them will score a Number One hit with their own version of the song. The resultant royalties due the writer are enormous when a record goes Gold or Platinum. In the days before she recorded her own songs, Ms. King made a small fortune in this way. That was before she released her blockbuster album “Tapestry” in 1970.

The Monkees had the big hit with this one. Of course they aren’t really playing all the instruments as they appear in the film below. Chip Douglas, their music producer, played bass on this one, after showing Mike Nesmith which strings to play on guitar to make the signature riff. 

Notice the absence of that riff in Ms. King’s version and you will understand the difference between being a writer and a performer. That riff is actually a variation of George Harrison’s guitar part on “I Want to Tell You” from the Revolver album. Peter Tork did actually play the piano and Davy Jones shook the maracas while Mickey Dolnez sang the lead vocal.

The record peaked at Number 3 and still gets plenty of airplay today. It’s always an interesting experience to compare a writer’s version of a song to the “hit” by someone else. More often than not I enjoy the writer’s version more. But in this case, I have to go with the Monkees.

The Monkees - Daydream Believers

This was originally posted yesterday afternoon, but I wanted to give Mr. Jones his own day in the light;

Davy Jones, the innocent, boyish faced singer for the Monkees, one of the iconic "bubble gum" rock groups of the 1960's, has died. I titled this piece Daydream Believer(s) after one of their many hit records, "Daydream Believer", which was written for the group by John Stewart just before he left the Kingston Trio. The top notch songwriters who wrote for the Monkees included; Neil Diamond, Burt Bacharach, Hal David, and Carol King, who wrote "Pleasant Valley Sunday". I was one of those kids who watched the record as it spun on the turntable, and actually used to read the names beneath the titles of the songs.

Years after the fact, I realized that Davy Jones had played the Artful Dodger in the Broadway version of "Oliver", which I had seen for my birthday in 1963. As a matter of fact, on the night the Beatles first performed on the Ed Sullivan show; February 9th, 1964; the entire cast of "Oliver" appeared. Davy Jones reaction was immediate, he was later quoted as stating, "I watched the Beatles from the side of the stage, I saw the girls going crazy, and I said to myself, this is it, I want a piece of that."

The Monkees were thrown together as a group for a TV series which would try to capture the daily adventures of a madcap rock band; kind of like an American version of the Beatles in "Help." They were actually assembled, by chance, through a process of individual auditions. This was, after all, a "make believe" group. Well, nobody took the "make believe" part seriously, the songs coming from the radio and TV were bouncy and, like the times themselves, were catching. From one end of the country to the other, kids were wearing black ski caps with a pom-pom at the end, in imitation of Mike Nesmith. They also resurrected the old Navy Pea Coat, which became a staple of fashion for quite a few years. I know I had one, long before I joined the Navy, and even then, the real one was never quite as "cool" as that first one.

And, in the end, along with the help of some wonderful songwriters, they made "Daydream Believers" of us all.