Rant #1,895: Listen To the Band

I want to alert you to a book and an accompanying recording that I think is worth your while to give a look and give a listen to, even if you aren't an ardent fan of the subject at hand.

"Infinite Tuesday, An Autobiographical Riff" by Michael Nesmith, and the accompanying "Infinite Tuesday, Autobiographical Riffs: The Music" were recently released, and yes, I bought them because I am a big fan of Nesmith and the Monkees.

But Nesmith is so much more than that.

The autobiography deals with Nesmith's time as a Monkee in basically one chapter, although he does weave his experience as a member of that act and a TV star throughout many of the passages in the book.

Those years of about 1965-1969 really are a footnote in the telling of his tale, but yes, a very strong footnote, because without the stardom he achieved during those years, much of what he experienced would not have happened, or not happened in the way it did.

But again, Nesmith is so much more than a Monkee; he is an intellectual, a world traveler, a renaissance man, a musician, a writer, and yes, a storyteller, and while this book is an autobiography, it is really a collection of stories woven together by Papa Nez, who is sort of a "Zelig"-type character of sorts, seemingly being in right place at the right time and witnessing the world's happenings from his own unique vantage point.

He started out as a somewhat unruly kid from a relatively poor, broken home, but like his mother--who created Liquid Paper, sold it for millions, and bequeathed everything to her son--he lifted himself up, took on all preconceptions of what he could be, and threw them on their ear.

Nesmith admits that the reality he will be talking about in the book is his reality, because he oftentimes cannot remember what actually happened. But whatever the case, even if his memory is a little dampened by years and age, he remembers enough to satisfy our curiosity about his early life, how he became a musician, how he handled the entire Monkees situation, his relationship with his mother, and his emergence as something of an intellectual.

He talks of meeting up with John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix, but he also talks about learning to play guitar in 10 days so he could perform and make some money to get by.

His writing style is kind of Kurt Vonnegut without the drawings; he paints vivid pictures of what he is allowing us to see, and the reading style is nice and easy. Sure, he sometimes uses big words, but because of the style he uses, one doesn't have to know what those words exactly mean in order to understand what he, and the words, are trying to convey.

No, this is not "Dune," so his use of wordplay doesn't need a dictionary or an index, just an open mind.

My one major knock on the book is that he often name drops and expects the reader to know exactly who he is talking about. Some of the names I knew, some I didn't, but perhaps that was his direction for the book: not only to learn a bit about his own life, but put the book down, and look up the names you don't know and find out about them.

Nesmith humbleness throughout the book is praiseworthy; this guy who only managed a GED because he was completely bored with school found his way in the world in a big way, and sometimes his self-chiding doesn't ring 100-percent true, but you go with it, because that is what Papa Nez asks you to do.

Whatever the case, this is fine reading, even if you are not a tried-and-true Monkees fan like myself. Again, the book is about Nesmith, not about the Monkees, so if you are looking for just the opposite, please stay away.

If you are looking for a book that really paints a fine picture of someone who never took "No" for an answer, this is the book for you.

The CD which was also released is a fine thumbnail sketch of Nesmith as a tunesmith and singer, and I wish that it could be much longer than 14 songs. I could easily have added 50 more that define Papa Nez as a musician, but these 14 will have to suffice as the legit CD released as a companion to the book.

We have Nesmith going from folkie to Monkee to country artist to video music artist to New Age artist right before our ears, and he definitely rolled with the flow during his more than 50 years of recordings.

The collection is short, and it is short on tracks. One glaring omission would have rounded out the set nicely, and that is "I Am What I Am" from last year's "Good Times!" album, a song that would bring the collection pretty much full circle, as well as provide another push for last year's excellent album, which managed to make the upper reaches of Billboard's Top Album chart solely on social media push, perhaps the first album to do that.

Why it is not on this collection is kind of odd, but I guess you take what you can get and you can make your own CD-R of stuff that should have been included (something I plan on doing sometime in the future).

Honestly, I don't like all his recorded output, but the thing with Nesmith is that he never fit in the round hole well; he was always maybe not a square peg, but perhaps an oval peg, and when you listen to this sample of his work, I think you will get the point.