Rant #2,761: Circle Sky

Hey, hey!
 
Guess where I was last night?
 
I went to see one stop of the farewell tour of Michael Nesmith and Micky Dolenz, what equates to The Monkees nowadays.
 
With Davy Jones and Peter Tork gone, you get one half of the act that mesmerized the world 55 years ago, but you don’t get half of the effort.
 
It is there, it is on full view, and it is fun, fun, fun.
 
It is very difficult to rate a show like this, because you know exactly what you are going to get: the hits, the popular songs, and some deeper tracks that flesh out the performance.
 
So you have to look at other things amid all the joviality, the happiness and the fun of hearing these songs live, songs that are literally tattooed on your memory banks.
 
The show was held at the Paramount Theater in Huntington, Long Island, a venue that has been around in one incarnation or another for about 100 years. I believe it began life as a vaudeville theater, and by the time I was around and could get to it, it had become a laser light venue—remember those?—with shows geared to Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and the Beatles.
 
It went into disrepair for a few years, but about 10 years ago, it emerged as a live concert venue, and it has had many different acts on its stage, including comedians, pop and rock bands, and even mentalists.
 
The place doesn’t have one bad seat, and wherever you sit, you can see everything clearly.
 
And the acoustics are about as top-notch as possible, making for s show where you can both see everything and hear everything clearly (more about that later).
 
This was also the only show that I have attended in my memory where the place was only about 10 percent full five minutes before show time, and by the time the show began, people came in in droves and the place became 90-95 percent full.
 
As for the show, both Dolenz and Nesmith held up their part of the bargain to present something more than an oldies concert, but more of a paean to the history of the act that touched so many of us way back when.

 
Dolenz carried the entire show. It is funny how yes, he has aged, but he continues to be ageless, with one of the best pop rock voices of all time, and he hasn’t missed a beat, although that beat is a bit slower now.
 
Nesmith is another story. He doesn’t look well, looks a bit gaunt through all the medical episodes he has had over the past 10 years or so, and he really is a shadow of her former self.
 
During the first part of the show, he looked like he wasn’t going to make it, to be honest with you. He sat for most of the show, and at one point about midway through the first half of the show, I thought he looked like he was ready to keel over as he took a drink of water.
 
He no longer plays the guitar—he did earlier on in the tour and evidently found that he simply could not do it anymore—and since his hands have nothing to do at this point, most of the time, he waved them to the music a la Lawrence Welk.
 
He was also slurring his speech, and when he spoke, I could pick up a lot of what he was saying, but a lot of it was lost in the mist. The sound in the venue was good, but Papa Nez simply wasn’t.
 
However, in the second half of the show, Nesmith got his second wind, and he was much better. His voice, which sounded strained in the first part of the show, became more resilient after the break, and that voice is still there, and so is he, I am happy to say.

 
Dolenz is Dolenz, and on a lot of the songs—including Nesmith’s “Circle Sky”—Micky’s voice supplemented Nesmith’s voice, and the two voices continue to blend together perfectly as they have since Day One of the entire Monkees project.
 
Highlights? You could pick any song that the duo sung and say it was a high point of the night, but Dolenz’s voice and piano rendering of “Porpoise Song” gave the song almost a new meaning.
 
Nesmith’s pretty much forgotten rendering of “While I Cry” was another personal favorite, although Papa Nez gave the impression during his introduction of the song that he was actually going to do another lost Monkees’ chestnut, “Nine Times Blue” rather than this song, and I have to wonder if he changed his mind about doing that song in midstream and decided on this one instead.
 
Nesmith said it was a very personal song, and he appeared to be weeping as he sung the song, which is always a good dramatic device during a concert, but it appeared the tears were genuine.
 
And then you had Dolenz’s rendering of Nesmith’s gift to Linda Ronstadt, “Different Drum,” much like he has on his current solo LP “Dolenz Sings Nesmith.” Already listed among the year’s best albums by a variety of sources, Micky gives the song a slightly different take than Ronstadt did, and it really works, even more so in concert.
 
And every song that they did off 2016” “Good Times”—one of that year’s surprise hits and an excellent end to the Monkees’ recording career—held up nicely in concert, with “Me and Magdalena,” putting both Dolenz and Nesmith in fine form.
 
Look, this type of concert is what it is, and by “The Door Into Summer,” under my mask, I couldn’t help myself, and I was singing along, as was just about everyone else in the theater.
 
And yes, I was wearing my mask, and about a half of the crowd was too. They did strident checks of coronavirus cards at the door, and I did see one fellow get turned away because while he had a ticket, he had no card.
 
Anyway, all in all, this was a perfect concert to bid the Monkees, per se, adieu. I am sure Micky will continue to perform, because that is what he does and has done for his entire life; Mike probably will ride off into the sunset when this tour is over … but whatever the case, these two nearly 80 year olds made the crowd feel like they were nine and 10 years old again, and heck, I would step into that kind of time machine anytime.
 
It was a great night, with a great crowd, great atmosphere, great performers and a great backing band, and since I have seen the Monkees perform in one stage or another many, many times, it was a fitting close to their concert career.
 
I am sure that Peter Tork and Davy Jones would be proud of their two compatriots, and I just wish that they were still around to enjoy this themselves.
 
Have a great weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday. 

Rant #2,760: Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)

Hey, hey, it’s October 28, and I am exactly 64 and a half years old today!
 
Today is my half birthday, with six more months to the wonders of being the big 6-5!
 
Wow!
 
Time sure has flown. It seems like it was yesterday that I was getting my costume ready in preparation for Halloween.
 
What a big day that was when I was a kid, not just for me, but for all the other kids who were that young at that time.
 
Today, no matter how you slice it, Halloween is ho-hum, and that is because we adults confiscated the holiday from the kids beginning in the 1980s and 1990s and really haven’t given it back.
 
What was once a real kids’ holiday is now an adult holiday too … and it just has taken the life out of Halloween.
 
And we do live in a different world today, so Halloween is not just a time of fun, but a time where you have to be ultra-careful.
 
Sure, you had to be careful back when I was a kid too. I remember one year, my sister got an apple filled with pins for a “treat” from an elderly woman who must have been senile.
 
We knew exactly who gave it to my sister, but back in those days, you just tossed it out and forgot about it.
 
Today, that woman, even if she was 100 years old—and she might have been for all I know—would have been arrested almost on the spot.
 
But today, you have to be careful not only about the treats you get, but also about the environs and who may be lurking around waiting for you.
 
It has become a scary occasion both literally and figuratively, and the fun has been sapped out of Halloween.
 
And last year … well, with the pandemic, Halloween was canceled by many municipalities, so you would think that this year would be special for the resumption of the holiday … but no, the air has been taken out of this year’s celebration too, what with the inoculation for kids ready to go—
 
“Hey, kids, get your treats, and then get your inoculation right on the same day!”
 
Yes, that makes Halloween such an attractive day, doesn’t it?
 
In my neck of the woods, even though our house has been dressed up every year by my wife for the occasion, we don’t get anybody coming to our door at all, but since Halloween is on Sunday this year, my wife has told me to buy some candy anyway, just in case.
 
And I know that we will be stuck with it, just like we always are.
 
At this point in my life, the things that bring back the fun of the holiday are the songs that celebrate Halloween, whether purposely or not.
 
Here is a top-dozen list of Halloween songs, and again, some of them are directly related to the holiday, others are on the list because they are creepy and fit the holiday.
 
So, in no particular order, here is my Halloween song list:
 
Bobby “Boris” Pickett and the Crypt Kickers – “The Monster Mash”
 
John Zacherle – “Dinner With Drac”
 
Warren Zevon – "Werewolves of London”
 
David Bowie – "Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)"
 
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – "I Put a Spell On You”
 
Turtles – “Grim Reaper of Love”
 
Cliff Richard – “Devil Woman”
 
Jack Marshall – “The Munsters Theme”
 
Vic Mizzy – “The Addams Family Theme”
 
Ray Parker Jr. - "Ghostbusters”
 
Fifth Estate – “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead”
 
Donovan - "Season of the Witch”
 
And to make it a baker’s dozen …
 
Meat Loaf – “Bat Out of Hell”
 
I am sure I missed a few, but those are the songs that conjure up ghosts, goblins, monsters and the old days of “trick or treating” for me.
 
And once Halloween is over, we are right at the start of the so-called “Holiday Season,” what with Thanksgiving, Hanukkah (both three days apart this year!), and Christmas in our sights.
 
With all that is going on in our world, maybe those days are currently even scarier than Halloween ever really was. 

Rant #2,759: Time Has Come Today

I am writing this blog entry today, but it really has to do with Friday of this week.
 
On that day, at about 5 p.m. or thereabouts, my wife will have ended her career and will be fully retired.
 
She has long said that she wanted to take retirement at age 65, and that will be roughly two weeks before she turns that magic number, so she is going through with her plan to perfection.
 
She will dovetail right into Medicare, and she can begin the rest of her life knowing that she did what she did when she wanted to do it, and she did it seamlessly.
 
As you know, her husband’s personal trek to retirement was a bumpy as it could be, and still is as a result of this latest retirement in our family.
 
My son and I got our health insurance through my wife’s plan that she got at work, and we had been using her plan since literally Day One of our marriage and second, since our son was born 26 years ago.
 
Even when I was working, the health plan provided by my work was horrible in comparison to what my wife’s plan offered, so I always went with her plan—and there was even a period early in our marriage where my work at the time offered no health insurance, just a stipend to cover insurance, so I have always gone under her plan.
 
Since her coverage ends on October 31--Halloween, naturally--my own personal horror show began many weeks ago, trying to find something to cover me until I can get Medicare, which won’t be until April 2022, since I am not 65 yet and, in fact, am few months younger than my wife.
 
I went through everything that was offered to me, and all the plans open to me stink in plain English, but I found a health plan, a dental plan and a vision plan that will have to suffice for the next six months—and they do cost an arm and a leg.
 
Our son … well, he turned 26 years of age in August, meaning that he had to find his own plan. As a developmentally disabled individual, he had been on Medicare, too, so he simply dovetailed over to Medicare in full, since his two employers—he has two part-time jobs—do not offer health insurance to people in his situation.
 
He had Part A of his medical plan, which gives him hospital care and pharmacy benefits. But he doesn’t have Part B, and that has to come through Social Security.
 
The nightmare that that caused us for the past several months cannot be put into words. I will do my best to explain.
 
I had to go through my wife’s Human Resources Department to obtain certain documents, and these two-hours-on-hold calls became a daily event until they got me what I wanted—under threat of getting a lawyer to sue them for this information.
 
Then I had to go through Social Security to finish the effort, which is like trying to navigate through thick brush, only to walk into a puddle of quicksand.
 
I cannot tell you how many calls I made to get this done, how many long waiting times I went through to speak to someone, anyone, and how many times I was disconnected in the middle of talking to someone.
 
It reached its absolute nadir yesterday, when I was talking to someone who wasn’t very nice to me at the get go and who I was disconnected from—I wonder if it was on purpose?
 
After calling back about four or five times without getting through and getting disconnected, I had had enough, and called the Nassau County Executive's office, explained the problem to them, and was summarily turned down for help from them.
 
The person I spoke to claimed that Social Security is a federal agency, and they have no jurisdiction over a federal agency even if they are doing business in Nassau County.
 
I told them that the current county executive's predecessor helped me in a similar situation years ago—due to the actions of his staff, I was able to get my son on Social Security—and that I did not understand why they couldn’t do the same thing for me this time.
 
They refused, but gave me the phone number of the local State Assemblyman, who was the next person on my call list for help, so they really didn’t help me at all, and I told them as I hung up that I will not be voting for the current County Executive in the upcoming election due to these non-actions.
 
I contacted the State Assemblyman's office, and I found a staff that was ready, willing and able to assist me. I had to fill out a release form, send it back to them, and they would get the ball rolling.
 
After I did this, I decided to call up Social Security one more time, and lo and behold, I got through to them.
 
I spoke to a very nice lady there, and to make a long story short, I was promised a phone call within 48 hours by the person in charge of these things to discuss my son’s plight with them.
 
And while waiting to pick up my son from work, I got a call from a Social Security supervisor, the same person earlier in the day who said, through an email to the nice lady that I spoke to that “they couldn’t sift through 2,000 Part B applications” to find my son’s paperwork ... who now told me that they had found his paperwork, and that he would be processed immediately, and that he would have his Part B card in a week to 10 days!
 
I contacted the State Assemblyman's office, thanked his staff for their help, and they told me, “If there are any further problems, please let us know,” which leads me to believe that they had a major hand in getting this done.
 
So now that our family’s health insurance situation appears to be taken care of—getting our son’s Part B card is still two weeks away, but I don’t believe there will be any problems with that, not now in particular—my wife can have the retirement that she has earned and deserves without any hidden problems.
 
In fact, the people that she works with are taking her out to dinner tonight, in a place that has an outdoor section, at my wife’s insistence, what with the virus still whirling around the population.
 
So on Friday, at about 5 p.m., she will begin her new life as a retired person, and as I have told her, you don’t know what is involved with that until you actually do it.
 
There will be a lot of changes to get used to after working for 40-plus years, and it seems easy to retire, but in actuality, it isn’t.
 
Take if from me, this semi-retired person who hates being in this situation I was thrust into against my will.
 
But maybe things will get better on my end with my wife in somewhat the same situation.
 
We will find out on Monday, November 1, the first day of the rest of her life.

Rant #2,758: Crying

David Blatt died the other day, and with his passing, one of the great voices in popular music was stilled for good.
 
Blatt was popularly known as Jay Black, and he was the lead singer of Jay and the Americans, one of the most popular pop/rock groups of the 1960s, with hit after hit attesting to not only the greatness of the music that the act produced, but also the greatness of Black’s voice.
 
What a lot of people don’t realize is that decades before David Lee Roth was replaced as lead vocalist of Van Halen by Sammy Hagar and with little lapse in hits or popularity, the same thing happened to Jay and the Americans.
 
Jay Traynor was the original voice of Jay and the Americans, and they had scored the act’s first hit with him as lead singer on “She Cried.”
 
For whatever reason, Traynor left the act just as it was reaching wide popularity, and the band needed a quick fix as its new lead singer, and Blatt was it.
 
He took the stage name “Jay Black” to blend right into the Jay and the Americans moniker, and truly, he became not only THE voice of the group through its bevy of hit singles, but one of the great voices of all time in the pop/rock realm.
 
Whether taking Broadway standards like “Some Enchanted Evening” to new heights as a pop/rock song or reaching even higher levels of popularity with songs like “Cara Mia,” Jay and the Americans became among the most popular acts in America during the 1960s, but it wasn’t without controversy.
 
They redid “Only in America” as a straight ahead pop rocker, but changed the words from the original Drifters’ version, which got into social injustice issues which would not have flown on Top 40 radio during this period.
 
And then there was Black, who became quite a character in his own right.
 
Leaving the group in the early 1970s, Black became a huge draw on the oldies circuit, but after being a steadfast “American” during his time as the group’s lead singer, he went in a completely different direction as a solo/oldies performer.
 
Yes, he did sing the hits—and there were many of them, including a song he absolutely hated and called the act’s “bubblegum song,” “Let’s Lock the Door (And Throw Away the Key)," but he added some new, let’s say, umm … well, if you weren’t prepared for his stage act, you might have to hold your hands over your ears when he first opened his mouth, not to sing, but to talk, at his solo concerts beginning in the late 1970s and 1980s turned into something more than just musical concerts.
 
Black became something of an X-rated performer during those years, using profanity and whatever else he could find to knock the audience on its socks.

And his popularity soared.
 
He became sort of the resident singer at Westbury Music Fair on Long Island, a venue near his home and one that had a variety of performers take to its revolving stage, but probably none more so than Black.
 
He never apologized for his move to X-rate fare, but he used to say before he started his concerts that he apologized to children in the audience, who he acknowledged were brought there by their unwitting parents to hear an “oldies” concert, but got the “oldies-plus,” for what was to come.
 
And come it did, inn a road-fire way, through dozens of sold-out concerts at the venue. When a Jay Black concert was advertised there, not only was his name used--"Jay Black and the Americans"--but he was also advertised as "The Voice."
 
Black could still sing well into the 1980s and early 1990s, so mixed in with the adult humor were the hits that you came to hear.
 
But there was a lot of other stuff going on that permeated his concerts and his life, and he became quite controversial for many of his actions.
 
He had become a friend of mobster John Gotti, and went on the record as supporting him through his numerous trials for racketeering and for other nefarious things he supposedly did and that put him in jail.
 
He was so close with Gotti that he even appeared in the gallery in his trials, and at least one time, this impacted his concerts.
 
I was at one of the many concerts I saw of Black when I was writing show business stuff for a local periodical on Long Island.
 
During one concert, Black did his usual schtick for the first half of the show, and then there was an intermission.
 
He came back alone to the microphone, and said, “Someone just called in here and said that he had planted a bomb in this place because of my friendship with John Gotti, and we all have to leave.”
 
People began to laugh, thinking that this was part of his act, and when he saw that few were leaving, he said, “This is true I am not lying to you. We all have to leave NOW!”
 
No bomb was ever found, and it might have been the only bomb that Black ever laid at Westbury.
 
He continued to perform concerts into the 1990s, but his personal life had become a well-publicized mess.
 
He went through several divorces, he lost the right to use the “Jay and the Americans” moniker for a spell, and he also lost the right to use the “Jay Black” name for a period, even selling the “Jay” of the name to the original act, which had gone back on the road as an oldies act, to stave off personal bankruptcy.
 
In later years, his performances became fewer and farther between, and the rumor was that Black was suffering from dementia.
 
He died the other day of a combination of pneumonia and dementia at 80 years of age.
 
I will remember Black for his candor about himself, his many fantastic live shows that he put on at Westbury Music Fair, and especially for his voice, which was sort of a mix of an operatic voice meets Roy Orbison, if you can even imagine that.
 
It was such a unique voice for the pop/rock realm, but he made it work, and he always gave Orbison kudos as one of his musical mentors, and then would burst into “Crying,” and you knew that he wasn’t just name dropping here.
 
Yes, Jay Black was a unique talent, potty mouth and all, and he will be missed.