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.