Rant #2,797: Overnight Sensation (Hit Record) (Not)

Good morning, good day …
 
We are two days before Christmas Day, and as for me, I am personally counting the days until this wretched year ends.
 
Lots of nonsense going through my life—and my family’s life—right now, all due to incompetence on other people’s behalf, but I am not going to get into that now, because … well … it is supposed to be the happiest time of the year now, but for at least me personally, there is too much imbecility going on directly affecting me for me to have a broad smile on my face.
 
And if you must know, without going into detail, it all has to do with health insurance and cars and a defective gift that I purchased for someone, but that is all I am going to say about it now.
 
So with that in mind, I am going to try to bring a smile to my face—and maybe to your face too—as I write this blog entry, and the most fun I can have is to describe to you what this guy received for Hanukkah about a month ago from his family.
 
I received some money and gift cards, and I translated some of it into the latest entries into my record collection.
 
When I get this type of gift, I vow that I will only use these gifts on items that I would never purchase with my own money, things that could be considered as outlandish, but stuff that would fit neatly into my collection.
 
So there is going to be some stuff here that will surely make you scratch your head, stuff that might make your eyes pop out, and stuff that you didn’t even know existed … or even cared to know that it existed.
 
Case in point is the first item I am going to highlight here—I am just going to highlight five items, not the entire booty of stuff I received—which is a promotional single by the Rooney Brothers, “I’m Left To Wonder”/””I’m Wondering,” and I won’t leave you to wonder about who the “Rooney Brothers” were.

 
The trio was comprised of three of actor Mickey Rooney’s older sons, namely Mickey Jr., Tim and Teddy. Trying to follow in the footsteps of Gary Lewis, Nancy Sinatra, and Dino Martin and Desi Arnaz Jr., these second-generation Hollywood brat rockers put out a few singles, but there were no takers, so they kind of were lumped together with Danny Thomas’ son and Soupy Sales’ sons, as well as Groucho Marx’s daughter and Lou Costello’s daughter, as Hollywood brats who simply could not break through into the music industry.
 
This particular single is actually pretty good, sounding like an amalgam of the Byrds and maybe Dino, Desi and Billy. The harmonies are good, but when you listen to the tune, there is just something not there that mars the whole thing, but it is certainly a very worthy attempt.
 
And then you have Zalman Yanovsky, and if you are a true Baby Boomer, you absolutely know who he was.

 
He was the rubber-faced guitarist and co-founder of the Lovin’ Spoonful, and without John Sebastian’s musical chops and Zanovsky penchant for fun, the Spoonful would never have been ‘Lovin’.
 
This single, “As Long As You’re Here”/” Ereh Er'ouy Sa Gnol Sa,” could be songs right out of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s catalog, withe the A side a happy-go-lucky tune that came from Zalman, or Zal, or Zally’s only solo album. It is fun, uplifting, and died a quick death, getting up to only #101 on the Billboard “Bubbling Under” chart.
 
And yes, taking a page from Napoleon XIV, the B side of the single is simply the A side reversed, or played backwards, which only adds to the fun..
 
Bobby Sherman hit it big in the late 1960s and early 1970s, one of the major teen idols—along with David Cassidy, Michael Jackson and Donny Osmond—to pretty much take over the mantle of Davy Jones as the teenyboppers’ favorites during this period.

 
But the difference between Sherman and the others is that he had been around far longer than the rest, recording numerous singles from the mid-1960s that all stiffed, even with weekly exposure on TV’s “Shindig” as that show’s boy singer.
 
Anyway, I was able to find one of his early singles, a promotional 45 with a picture sleeve, “It Hurts Me”/”Give Me Your Word,” from 1965.
 
Yes, it is kind of lame, doesn’t have the “devil may care” attitude that his biggest hits had, nor the confidence in his singing that he showed in those later great recordings, but this single is OK, primarily the B side, which is more akin to his later work than the A side is.
 
And then we have the final two singles I am going to talk about today, two real finds that I got, ultimately to honor someone who I was a huge fan of who recently left us.
 
Michael Nesmith was best known as one of the Monkees, but he was so much more than that, and I am not talking about his non-singing endeavors, which were quite substantial.
 
But as a singer/musician/songwriter and a musical visionary, this guy was really way ahead of the field, even though he wasn’t, and still hasn’t, gotten his just due as someone who was constantly ahead of the curve in the music that he helped create.
 
Two singles that demonstrate this are the last two 45s I am going to discuss today, and they really are two works to behold, and I am lucky to have found them.
 
The first is “Don’t Cry Now”/Tapioca Tundra,” which came out in 1968 as part of Nesmith’s “Wichita Train Whistle Sings” LP, which was to Nesmith what “Wonderwall Music” was to George Harrison, a vanity project that demands at least one listening, and then gets put back into your stack of records, not to be listened to again until the next time, far into the future.

 
The Nesmith LP is simply a collection of songs that he wrote—both Monkees songs and tunes that never made the cut during those years—that get the big band treatment, but when I say “big band,” I mean some of the best session musicians in Nashville at the time.
 
The album and single are all instrumentals, and offer incredibly different takes on some familiar Monkees tunes as well as obscurities.
 
Again, on the promo single, I found the B side much better than the A side, but the single and LP are not anything that I can listen to every once in a while … maybe every few years or so.
 
Rumor had it that Nesmith’s accountants suggested he record this LP as a tax write-off, but whether that is true of not, he went whole hog trying to make this something completely different, and boy, did he ever!
 
And then we have Nesmith after the Monkees, staying on the country rock kick that he virtually invented himself with “Silver Moon"/””Lady of the Valley,” which I already have in various permutations in my collection, but this one is a Japanese single.

 
The tunes on the single continue Nesmith’s jump into something that would not really hit it big for a few years, but if acts like the Eagles needed a template for their success, this single would probably satisfy that need, with the singer’s maple syrup-drenched vocals highlighting two very good songs.
 
And not to dismiss them so quickly, but the First National Band—made up of several Nashville veterans including Red Rhodes—is top notch.
 
So there you have it, five very interesting singles that I purchased with my “Hanukkah Gelt” that really added a lot to my record collection.
 
They might not be everybody’s cups of tea, but for me, each one of these additions added a little sweetness to what I already have, helping me through a time in my life when things have just gone a bit haywire as we head into the new year.