Can it really be true that Rolling Stone publisher/magnate Jann S. Wenner has personally conducted a decades-long campaign to bar The Monkees from induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

Far-from-dummy Monkee Peter Tork certainly thinks so.

"He doesn't care what the rules are and just operates how he sees fit," Tork told the New York Post in 2007. "It is an abuse of power. I don't know whether The Monkees belong in the Hall of Fame, but it's pretty clear that we're not in there because of a personal whim."

Now sure, the Monkees (along with the Beach Boys, Byrds, even Beatles, most every Motown act, etc. etc. etc.) certainly didn't play every single note on every single record they ever made. Nevertheless, in 1967 Jann and his fledgling zine were riding extremely high on the Monkee-bashing bandwagon, using the television rockstars as the best/worst examples of all that was unhip, uncool, and truth be told un-San Francisco in the world.

Fair enough. I remember it also took Rolling Stone over a decade to figure out the Ramones too.

Regarding that great big late-Sixties Monkees-used-session-musicians brew-ha-ha though, as Peter most rightfully points out "Jann seems to have taken it harder than everyone else. And now, forty years later, everybody says, 'What's the big deal? Everybody else does it.' Nobody cares now except him. He feels his moral judgment in 1967 and 1968 is supposed to serve in 2007."

Of course, looking at the big picture, such Fame Hall squirmishes mean little if anything over here in what remains of the real world. But let me just remind Mr. Wenner and countless other Monkee doubters out there – and yes, there's probably just as many in 2011 as there were in 2007, to say nothing of 1967:

Forget about who really played all those flamenco breaks on "Valleri." If you were born anywhere between the years 1955 and 1960, and consequently were just a tad too young to teethe your ears upon Pet Sounds or Revolver, like me you tuned into your local NBC-TV affiliate on the evening of September 12, 1966, sat transfixed for the next thirty minutes, and then told yourself "Hey! So THAT'S what a rock and roll band really lives, looks, sounds and acts like!" Eating communal Rice Krispies at the break of noon, practicing in front of the patio window every day instead of going to school or work, yet always making sure to keep too busy singing to put anybody (under the age of twenty-five) down.

This was vital, and in my case at least life-changing information which just couldn't be gleaned from spotting the occasional three-minute Dave Clark Five or Turtles performance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

But even more importantly – and, as it turns out, much more slyly and cleverly – what Peter alongside his pals Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz and Mike "Wool Hat" Nesmith really did during their fifty-eight half-hours on NBC was, for the very first time, bring the counter-culture boldly into the North American entertainment mainstream.

Really.

You must understand that prior to 1966, long-haired kids were only seen on television getting into no good whatsoever down some dark, garbage-strewn alley …that is until Sergeant Joe Friday rounded them up while giving a stern lecture on morality into the nearest camera.

Suddenly though, here were four seemingly happy-go-lucky kids with hair over their ears and guitars over their shoulders, without any apparent "adult supervision" such as parents or bosses in sight, living for all intents and purposes the same kind of wholesome apple-pie life as those over in Mayberry or My Three Sons. Indeed, at the end of each broadcast day Davy always got the girl, the villains always got what they deserved, and the small-screen sun inevitably set to the accompaniment of yet another ultra-groovy new Nilsson or Boyce and Hart-penned tune (…which reminds me: long before "Penny Lane" or even D.A. Pennebaker, The Monkees damn well invented MTV too) (please, try not to hold it against them).

But for all their seemingly homespun zaniness, each week the Prefab Four were in actual fact getting up to the kind of (mis)adventures even A Hard Day's Night wouldn't, or couldn't show.

Don't just take my words for it though. Even Timothy Leary, unlike his supposed contemporaries way over at Rolling Stone, immediately saw between the cathode lines. And I quote (from Dr. Leary's own The Politics of Ecstasy): "The Monkees' television show. Oh, you thought that it was silly teenage entertainment? Don't be fooled. While it lasted, it was a classic Sufi put on. An early-Christian electronic satire. A mystic magic show. A jolly Buddha laugh at hypocrisy.

"At early evening kiddie-time on Monday the Monkees would rush through a parody drama, burlesquing the very shows that glue Mom and Dad to the set during prime time. Spoofing the movies and the violence and the down-heavy-conflict-emotion themes that fascinate the middle-aged. And woven into the fast-moving psychedelic stream of action were the prophetic, holy, challenging words. Micky was rapping quickly, dropping literary names, making scholarly references: then the sudden psychedelic switch of the reality channel. He looked straight at the camera, right into your living room, and up-levelled the comedy by saying: 'Pretty good talking for a long-haired weirdo, huh, Mr. and Mrs. America?' And then ZAP, flash. Back to the innocuous comedy."

And here I was as a wee tyke thinking I was just watching a live-action Rocky & Bullwinkle with amplifiers every week!

And now, many thanks to our heroes at Eagle Rock Entertainment, you need no longer roam the nether regions of your satellite dish or settle for dicey VHS-generation YouTube uploads to hear and see what all the fuss was truly about. For once again, the entire series of Monkeeshows, along with their even-seeing-isn't-quite-believing 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee television spectacular – plus a slew of Kellogg's cereal commercials just to put everything in their proper hysterical perspective – have all been lovingly packaged anew into two (count 'em!) deluxe DVD box sets.

Once again we can watch Mike trading places – and prosthetic noses – with Frank Zappa before running for Mayor (and issuing forth a most somber soliloquy which seems even more relevant to today's socio-political atmosphere). We can see Peter bargaining to regain his musical soul from a metaphorically-steeped record-biz Beelzebub, and Micky battling the evil Wizard Glick and his far from subliminal television-brainwash machine (in an episode the fuzzy-headed Monkee, by the way, also directed).

And Davy? He gets the girl(s). And also taught Axl Rose how to dance, need I remind anyone.

It's all wacky and definitely wild throughout, you bet. But it's particularly surprising how extremely fast-paced and ingeniously edited these half-hours are, and in Series Two especially each show began doing, saying – and showing – things on the family tube that were absolutely unseen and unheard of across the pre-Python/Saturday Night Live landscape.

Plus the music throughout is top-notch, it should go without mentioning. Even the sequences where Liberace takes a sledge hammer to a grand piano.

Come 1968 however, all that was left for The Monkees was to star in the greatest rock 'n' roll film ever made (it's called Head, by the way) before paving the TV way for various Partridges, Banana Splits, and even their old nemesis Don Kirshner's Rock Concert. Lest we never forget Mike Nesmith's landmark Elephant and Television Parts series as well, full of the visionary and pioneering work he continues to this very date right there on his own Video Ranch Dot Com.

But for now, you better get ready to take a giant step back; back to the very beginning. To 7:30 pm, September 12, 1966. Disc 1, Episode 1 of Season 1 of The Monkees. Why, it really is more fun than a barrelful of, well, old Rolling Stone magazines.

IRWIN CHUSID (author, Songs In The Key Of Z): Outsider music is a slippery genre. It’s musicians who tend to be self-taught, untrained, working certainly way outside the channels of mainstream music. There are very important qualifications: They are sincere about it. They mean it. They’re not doing it to be funny. They’re not doing it to be outrageous. This is a sincere musical expression. Wild Man Fischer in many ways is a poster child for outsider music.

MARK MOTHERSBAUGH (Devo): At his best, he’s mainlined right into this creative kind of subconscious. It’s coming from a pure place.

DENNIS P. EICHHORN (tour manager; Real Stuff Comics creator): I’ve seen him really work a crowd and have every single one of them responding to him positively. When he’s performing and when he’s got the pep, he’s one of the greatest entertainers you’d ever see in your life.

IRWIN CHUSID: The appeal of Larry’s music is that it’s real. You’re hearing something that is the musical vision of one singular human being that really comes from the heart and soul of an individual.

SOLOMON BURKE (King of Rock & Soul and Larry’s initial mentor): A very, extremely talented young man.

LARRY: I just think I’m the best rock singer in the world.

DAVID FISCHER (Larry’s older brother): I still don’t think he’s a good singer. I might be wrong.

* * * * * * * * * *

LARRY: You know what happened to my career? Nothing. I have nothing, you know? Once in a while I go out and sing, but that’s very rare. I’m too scared of the music business. And I’m too scared of all the people in it. Is that sad or what?

“DERAILROADED”:
I have been derailroaded / Derailroaded by everybody / I have been sent off the track / To wander like a fool / They are liars, and they are thieves / And they left me to stand around / Like a derailroaded fool

LARRY: That’s what the show-business people are like. They love to torture their entertainers. Those fuckers in show business, you know? They turned me into the psycho I’ve become.

BILLY MUMY (producer, Pronounced Normal, Nothing Scary): It’s unfortunate that Larry has not had more commercial success with his music. But Larry is a manic-depressive paranoid schizophrenic. And that is an interesting mixture of energy.

DR. LOUIS SASS (Professor of Clinical Psychology, Rutgers University): A person with schizophrenia is characterized by delusions. Hallucinations. Usually auditory hallucinations. A lot of it has to do with a feeling of conspiracies being directed at you. Everyone’s out to get you.

LARRY: I’m scared. There’s people after me. I don’t know who’s involved. I just don’t know who’s involved. It’s been a nightmare. All kinds of things have happened to me. Things that you would not believe.

“THE WILD MAN FISCHER STORY”:
In the year of 1962 / I got thrown out of school / In the year of 1963 / I was committed to a mental institution / In the year of 1964 / I was released from the mental institution / In the year of 1966 / I was committed to the mental institution again

LARRY: Well, my life has not been all that pleasant. My father died when I was young and my mother didn’t love me, or didn’t care about me. She used to make me eat on the sink. They made me stand up and eat on the sink. My mother didn’t love me.

GAIL ZAPPA: The thing about Los Angeles – there are a lot of freaks here. Freaks are people that have figured out a way to, in spite of society, express themselves. And so Larry is just another one of the freaks.

“WHY I AM NORMAL”:
I would say I’m a normal, everyday person, you know? I like girls. I like to eat at restaurants. I like sports cars. I like motorcycles. I’d like to get married one day, have kids. You know, raise a normal family. My mother always used to, you know, wonder about me. She wondered what I was gonna do when I got older. I said Mother, don’t worry about me. I’ll get a job! I’ll go straight!

LARRY: The first audition I went on was for Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. And I got it.

DAN ROWAN (Laugh-In episode # 16, 1968):
Now that he’s been exposed on national TV, don’t you think he’ll fly to stardom?

FRANK ZAPPA (producer, An Evening with Wild Man Fischer): I thought that from the very first day that I met him, somebody should make an album about Wild Man Fischer.

LARRY: Frank Zappa told me that he could make me a rock star. And if Frank Zappa told you that, wouldn’t you think you might be able to become a rock star?

FRANK ZAPPA: But when you’re working with someone like Wild Man Fischer, the problems that arise become too much to bear.

“DO THE WILDMAN”:
There’s a new dance goin’ round the land / Come on everybody, do the Wild Man / Throw your arms up, pretend you’re a child / That’s it now, you’re getting wild

FRANK ZAPPA: One thing that you must remember about Wild Man Fischer is that he actually is a wild person. And, uh, Larry is dangerous.

LARRY: He loved it. He said that if he ever had a son, he wanted his son to be just like me. I swear to God he said that.

FRANK ZAPPA: I spent three months working on the Wild Man Fischer album. And at the end of that time not only was I accused of robbing Wild Man Fischer and cheating Wild Man Fischer and abusing him – most of this from Wild Man Fischer himself – but the album itself did not sell a large amount of copies.

“THE WILD MAN FISCHER STORY”:
In the year of 1968 / Have I made a mistake? / Will I end up a bum? / Will I end up a crumb? / Will I end up in hell? / Will I end up in jail? / Will I end up in Jesus? / Will I end up in trees? / Will I end up rich, rich, rich, rich? / Wild Man Fischer / Wild Man Fischer / Merry-go, Merry-go, Merry-go-round / boop boop boop…

LARRY: Well, I never became a rock star. Frank Zappa fired me. That’s it.

“FRANK”:
Frank’s got money in the bank / Frank’s got women he can spank / Frank owns my publishing rights / You could say he’s on my mind / Think about him all the time…

LARRY: You got to have three things: You got to have talent. You got to have luck. And you got to have persistence.

GAIL ZAPPA: I never thought that he would have a real career. And I see him now, and he looks like a very, very exhausted version of that person that I knew then. He’s almost identical.

* * * * * * * * * *

LARRY: Want to hear how I started a multimillion-dollar empire? “Go To Rhino Records” – you ever heard that song before?

“GO TO RHINO RECORDS”:
Go to Rhino Records / On Westwood Boulevard / Go to Rhino Records / On Westwood Boulevard / You can get Herb Alpert / And Jackie Lomax / For 40 cents / Da-doo, Da-doo

LARRY: That’s the first song that was ever done for Rhino Records. I started a multimillion-dollar company! I became Rhino Records’ mascot! Think about it.

“THE BOUILLABAISSE”:
Don’t ever forget the money / Don’t ever forget the money…

DAVID FISCHER: Larry never seemed to have any money, no matter how many albums the guy was doing. It was beyond me. If they do an album on somebody and if it’s not successful, why are you doing another? And what was he supposed to get out of it? I mean, he certainly was very upset and bitter about it.

“IT’S A MONEY WORLD”:
It’s a money world / It’s a money world…

LARRY: Show business is really hard. You really can’t trust that very many people. Rhino Records, and most people, have taken advantage of me. Here’s a song I wrote about the music business:

“DERAILROADED”:
Money occupies your mind / Money can buy your songs / Money is all you buy / It’s a money world / I wish there was no such thing as money

AGREEMENT DATED 12/1/83:
“This is to prove that Larry Fischer received $750.00, (seven hundred & fifty dollars), as an advance for his album called Nothing Scary. (signed) Larry Fischer.”

“DON’T BE A SINGER”:
All you’ll ever meet are cheaters and liars / Liars and thieves / And robbers and swindlers / That’s all you’ll ever meet, that’s all you’ll ever see / Don’t be a singer

LARRY: I don’t want to be a rock singer no more. It’s a horrifying experience. It’s a nightmare. It’s not as good as you think it is. People use singers.

LARRY (letter to Dennis Eichhorn):
“Dear Denny, I like you. You are a nice guy. You know, I quit show business. I hate show business. It’s full of crooks. And you’re one of them. A nice crook. Your friend, Larry.”

MARK MOTHERSBAUGH: He’d call me up and go “Mark, I’m quitting show biz. Do you blame me?” I’d go “No, I don’t blame you. It’s an awful business.” He would quit show business about two or three times a week.

“IT’S A HARD BUSINESS” (recorded with Rosemary Clooney):
Rosemary, I’m thinking of quitting this impossible business / Oh really, Larry? I hope not / It’s just too hard / It’s a hard business / Please tell me that you agree / It’s a hard business / It’s hard for you and hard for me / It’s a hard business / Reaching way down in your soul / It’s a hard business / Singing jazz or rock ‘n’ roll

* * * * * * * * * *

LARRY: The main reason I got into the music business was to impress my family, earn a living, complete my dream. But I knew I would never be able to tour. I’m too paranoid.

RUDY RAY MOORE (The Avenging Disco Godfather): This is the way I would interpretate [sic] that particular phrase of “derailroaded”: The railroad carries a train, and the train has come off of the tracks and fell over. And where am I going from here? Sounds like a sad story.

“ONE OF A KIND MIND”:
My mind is one of a kind / And if you ever come across a mind like mine / Make sure you dig it, and dig it for gold / Because my mind is one of a kind / Right?

DR. LOUIS SASS: I think there are a lot of different reasons why people are drawn to Larry’s music. One of them is a little bit like the reason why people a century or two ago would go sometimes to the asylums to look at the patients. It’s a kind of voyeurism to stare at this person who seems so weird and so uninhibited. But a second reason, of course, is that we’re really moved by what he says and the story that he tells of his life and of his sufferings.

MARK MOTHERSBAUGH: He’s a force of nature. He’s like a poet. He’s a bard in the best of ways, I think. If he grew up in Mongolia, he might have been considered a shaman. And everything that he is and does would be tolerated.

LARRY: I guess I’m getting older now. I can’t be a musician/singer anymore. I’m too old. I want to be a musician/singer. I want to make everybody happy.

“DO YOU EVER HAVE A GOAL IN LIFE”:
My goal in life was to become a singer / But it didn’t come true / I think / I don’t know / Who cares? / Bye-bye

* * * * * * * * * *

All of the above dialogue and lyric are taken from Josh Rubin’s stellar documentary Derailroaded: Inside The Mind of Larry “Wild Man” Fischer, newly available on DVD from MVD Visual.

Lawrence Wayne Fischer passed away on June 16, 2011

For an album that received such a lukewarm-at-best reception upon its initial release (even the almighty Rolling Stone used the words “overdone blues cliché” whilst making snide comparisons to Tommy James), the tenth album produced by Keith Richards and company – “The fact is that Mick spent most of his time away 'cause Bianca was pregnant; you know, royalty is having a baby. So what am I supposed to do?” the human guitar griped in 1979, “I'M supposed to be making an album!” – has certainly enjoyed a critical reappraisal and then some over the ensuing thirty-nine years. Why, even the proud papa Jagger who in ‘72 complained “This new album is fucking mad. It's very rock and roll. I didn't want it to be like that. I mean, I'm very bored with rock and roll,” today insists the recording of Exile On Main St. “was a wonderful period; a very creative period.”

And of course R. Stone now places those very same blues clichés near the tip-top of most every Greatest Album Of All Time list it regularly publishes in between all the sneaker and suntan crème ads.

Now, the (in)famous Exile has been fully refurbished, re-struck, and reconstituted through and through by a crack crew of audio surgeons headed by honorary Glimmer Twin Don Was, digitally polished to an immaculate sheen, “correcting” the original soupy subterranean mixes (“The cymbals sound like dustbin lids” Mick again complained as “Tumbling Dice” was first being readied for release) so as not to have the album stand as too sore a sonic thumb alongside Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, I suppose. Personally, I much prefer dustbins to “Just Dance” ...but I digress.

Meanwhile, as part of this gala Exile resurrection comes an accompanying behind-the-scenes documentary film, Stones In Exile, which gathers together all five circa-early-Seventies Stones within a wealth of vintage studio (meaning the basement of Richards’ villa on the French Riviera, where most of the album’s basic tracks were recorded) and on-stage footage (via the post-Exile tour film Ladies and Gentlemen… The Rolling Stones). Why, even snippets from the beyond-cult 1972 road-film-from-hell Cocksucker Blues are cunningly slipped between shots of various waterskiing and overdubbing Brits-in-, yes, exile.

Not so surprisingly however, some subjects (such as the rampant drug use which eventually resulted in Keith’s total submission to heroin) are only delicately alluded to, whilst other key players in the scenario – houseguest Gram Parsons, most obviously, who schooled Monsieur Richards especially in nuances of the country blues which permeate the entire Exile album – are ignored altogether. Plus the Stones In Exile bonus footage could have been much better filled with, say, a complete study of the original, highly innovative Main St. record cover shoot by Cocksucker director Robert Frank, as opposed to rambling heads the likes of Caleb Followill and Sheryl Crow.

Still, the contemporary footage of Mick Jagger and the immaculate-as-ever Charlie Watts wandering around Olympic recording studios and Jagger’s former Stargroves estate – sites of the initial Exile sessions – are both fascinating and entertaining …in a Sunshine Boys sort of way (if you get my octogenarian drift). Naturally Keith Richards appears throughout the proceedings in ghostly stark black-and-white, the multitude struggles of ’72 still etched deep into his face, whilst good ol’ Bill Wyman remains ever the Stone Alone with the most revealing, reproachful, yet detailed reminisces of the bunch (a man still upset, it seems, at not being able to locate a proper brew of British tea in the south of France, for example).

So while I may indeed have my doubts over the, um, validity of a vintage-2010 Exile On Main St. album per se, this Stones In Exile film, far on the other hand, is a perfectly under-polished production which more than succeeds in placing one square down the very depths of Keith Richards’ basement during the festering summer of ‘71 …yes, with all the horror and gorgeous excess – not to mention utterly magnificent, guttural music – such a locale entails.

And somehow, still, continues to inspire.

Long before the Valley Girls, Jewish princesses, mud sharks, dental floss, yellow snow and, tragically, the cancer which claimed him in 1993, there was simply Francis Vincent Zappa, a young kid with an above-eclectic record collection who escaped the confines of Lancaster, California to arrive in Hollywood with his “rockin’ teen combo” The Mothers of Invention in 1965. His career on stage and disc thereafter caused countless unsuspecting youngsters such as myself to immediately set aside their Monkees albums in order that we could join our newest mentor upon this most adventurous of all, as it turns out, musical path.

But exactly how did this seemingly unassuming composer/guitarist with a penchant for sinister footwear become one of the most musically and socially iconoclastic participants of the 1960s; an era seemingly awash in just such creatures? A fascinating new documentary from Sexy Intellectual, Frank Zappa: The Freak-Out List, uses the 179 names listed within the original 1966 issue of the Mothers’ debut album Freak Out! as a guide to explaining, well, why the music therein sounded the way it did.

As in, sounded like NOTHING ELSE released that year …or ever since, for that matter.

Setting aside the litany of Zappa’s friends, teachers, business associates and various showbiz personalities (such as Lenny Bruce and John Wayne) to concentrate instead on the seventy-one musical figures listed (which Frank said at the time “have contributed materially in many ways to make our music what it is; please do not hold it against them”), The Freak-Out List and its superb cast of interviewees – including three former Mothers and the University of Southampton’s Professor of Music David Nicholls – duly cite the connections between, for example, Bob Dylan and “Trouble Every Day,” not to mention The Cadillacs and the Cruising with Ruben and the Jets album …yet I’m still not exactly sure why Frank dedicated one of Freak Out’s most alarming numbers, “Help I’m A Rock,” to Elvis Presley (though I have my theories).

It is in its detailed examinations of the classical composers and rhythm ‘n’ blues musicians however, who first awoke young Frank to the possibilities of a life and career submerged in musical exploration, which truly give this film the meat of its matter. Of course the quote “The present day composer refuses to die!” will be familiar to anyone who read the fine print inside the Mothers’ key early albums. But as The Freak-Out List explains, the man who first uttered those defiant words in 1921, French composer Edgard Varèse, remained a major influence upon, and inspiration to, Frank Zappa throughout his life.

Since first reading his name in a 1953 Look Magazine article and subsequently unearthing his Complete Works Volume 1 album, Zappa took to Varèse’s above-free-form, percussion-based experimental/electronic work, referencing and returning to it often for the remainder of his life. In fact, so utterly besotted was he with the man, the young Zappa convinced his parents to allow him a long-distance phone call to the composer as a fifteenth birthday present. (Most unfortunately, the two never actually met: Edgard passed away just months before the Freak Out! album was released).

Likewise we learn of, and actually hear via side-by-side audio/visual clips, the above-obvious influence of Arnold Schoenberg’s “Accompaniment to a Film Score” on Zappa’s very own film scores, and precisely how snatches of Holst and Stravinsky end up weaved into the Mothers’ Absolutely Free album of 1967. Why, as Frank himself told the likely bemused readers of Hit Parader magazine that year, “buy everything that you can by Igor Stravinsky and dance to it.” Hotcha!

Zappa biographer Ben Watson rightfully warns us, however, that such “spot-the-musical-quote” playing misses the point. One should instead concentrate on “how Frank makes you think about classical music” while you’re trying to get jiggy with, say, “Invocation and Ritual Dance of the Young Pumpkin.”

Now, on the all-important flip side of The Freak-Out List lie the many doo-wop and r ’n’ b artists Frank was also seriously grooving to, as he mastered drums then guitar in his very first Lancaster desert garage bands (…when he wasn’t locked in his room composing film scores, that is). For instance, it is impossible to hear any of Zappa’s multitude guitar solos, recorded or otherwise, without being directed straight back to the magnificent Johnny “Guitar” Watson, and The Freak-Out List presents joyous, yet ultimately heartbreaking footage of the two’s final musical get-together chez Zappa.

Elsewhere, we’re shown how no less a kindred musical spirit as Miles Davis, and his In A Silent Way album in particular, helped create a context for Zappa’s landmark “jazz-rock” (as it would be pigeon-holed today) Hot Rats. Yes, although he once (in)famously claimed “Jazz isn’t dead; it just smells funny,” Frank obviously kept his fair share of Eric Dolphy records alongside the Varèse, and co-operated so fully – and so successfully – in jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty’s King Kong project that Ponty ended up as an actual Mother himself for two entire tours.

So, then: Dozens of albums, hundreds of compositions, and thousands of performances later, we still may not be able to get a sufficient grip around the art, or as some would say artifice, of Frank Zappa. But ever since leaving on what was called his final tour, just before 6 pm on Saturday, December 4, 1993, all we have left are his dedicated scholars, followers, and now films such as The Freak-Out List (plus Sexy Intellectual’s companion DVD Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention In The 1960s) to guide us towards our understanding and appreciation of a figure so prolific, so public, yet so baffling.

In an interview with Jazz & Pop magazine in 1967, Zappa explained “that whole Freak Out! album is to be as accessible as possible to the people who wanted to take the time to make it accessible. That list of names in there, if anybody were to research it, it would probably help them a great deal.”

As always, however, just don’t hold it against them.

Attention, Lost Groovers everywhere:

Your assignment today is to gather together in one medium-sized concert facility, for one evening only, one dozen of the world’s most popular entertainers. Age, style, size, corporate affiliation and particularly musical pigeonhole is to be strictly of no concern whatsoever. Each act just has to have had a heck of a lot of their songs downloaded, perhaps maybe even sold, over the past calendar year or so.

Then, with a bare minimum of rehearsal or directorial guidelines of any sort – and an equally bare-boned budget to boot – a two-hour concert has to sequenced, scored, choreographed and executed upon a single stage utilizing all these chosen singers, dancers and accompanists, the entire proceedings recorded and video’d completely live, music and vocals, without re-takes, and the resultant miles of tape then edited, printed, promoted and distributed for public viewing into theatres.

Oh. And this all has to be completed within the period of a mere fourteen days, from show-date to release-date, by the way.

Finished laughing? Of course in a 21st century scheme of things such an endeavor would scarcely get past the imagining stage I agree, quickly dismissed out-of-hand (not to mention out-of-mind) as completely unfeasible; one legal, logistical – not to mention ego-tistical – nightmare of gargantuan proportions.

But, in that strange and distant galaxy known as The Sixties, where anything seemed possible, everything was tried at least once, and “no” was a word only uttered when speaking to people over thirty, undertakings of such grand socio-musical import were thought no more impractical than, say, making orange juice out of freeze-dried crystals then flying with them all the way to the moon and back.

What is hard to believe, however, is that one such concert event filmed inside the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on the night of October 29, 1964 in front of a few hundred local high school students should not only survive to be released on DVD, but that its one hundred and twelve monochrome minutes remain as utterly entertaining, and downright engrossing, all these forty-five years later.

The TAMI Show: Collector’s Edition, now finally available from our friends over at Shout! Factory is, you see, simply so, so much more than merely Monterey Pop without the lysergic, Woodstock without the mudslides or, yes, Altamont minus pool cues and homicide victims. True, one could consider this film as “just” the single most frantically paced, ultra-high-decibel time capsule of an extraordinary era ever preserved on disc. Or even, as Quentin Tarantino most assuredly claims, “in the top three of all rock movies.”

I will go all that one further, however: The TAMI Show (as in Teenage Awards Music International, by the way) is absolutely essential viewing to anyone and everyone who consider themselves fans, followers, and/or students of popular music.

Period.

Allow me to elaborate. The dozen acts, co-hosts Jan and Dean sing whilst skateboarding across the opening credits, did indeed come “From All Over The World.” Not to mention everywhere across the musical map as well: Kicked off by “the guy who started it all” as Jan (no relation) Berry announces, Chuck Berry duck-walks us all the way from St. Louis to New York City, where the about-to-be- renovated Brill Building sound is sung most proudly and loudly by none other than Lesley Gore (whose proto-feminist lyrics and attitude herein should have all you brand new Runaways fans repositioning the birth of grrrl-rock once and for all).

The magnificent Motor City is then represented by Smokey Robinson – pay particular attention to his Miracles’ dance-steps during “Mickey’s Monkey” – along with superstars-in-waiting Marvin Gaye (who performs two songs soon to be recorded by a waiting-in-the-wings Rolling Stones) and The Supremes (poised to leave behind forever their branding as “those no-hit Supremes” with an historic string of global million-sellers). Meanwhile, England swings Santa Monica via Billy J. Kramer with his Dakotas plus Gerry and the Pacemakers (…four of impresario Brian Epstein’s other clients unfortunately occupied overseas at this point in time, putting finishing touches onto Beatles For Sale it seems).

Why, even what we now know and love as that runt of the musical litter, Garage Rock, is represented by none other than the aptly-named Barbarians and their, I kid you not, one-handed drummist Victor “Moulty” Moulton. Plus special note must here be made of The Beach Boys’ four-song set, propelled practically through the roof by their drummer Dennis, as this particular footage was removed from most every existing print of The TAMI Show soon after release and has only now been fully reinstated in all its harmony-drenched, sun-kissed, Surf City splendor.

And then! As impossible to pin down geographically – not to mention musically or even vocally – as he remained for the rest of his career comes the one, the only, the hardest- working James Brown.

Now it’s been said before, but I’ll just have to say it again (and again and again): His performance in The TAMI Show remains one of the most jaw-dropping, above-kinetic, gut-and-thigh-ripping performances ever executed. EVER. Anytime, any place, by any one. Everything you may have heard about this man and these particular eighteen minutes (e.g., “the single greatest rock ‘n’ roll performance ever captured on film”: Rick Rubin) is absolutely, one-thousand-per-cent true. Just look at it yourself if you don’t believe me …or everyone else who has ever seen it.

Somehow, those newly-rolling, original Stones – with Brian Jones and even Bill Wyman’s vocal mic present – arose to the task of following Butane James that fateful night, and their performance closed the event, and the film, with a mixture of pure, simply pimply beat ‘n’ soul which wins over even many of the pole-axed teens who’d just survived James Brown’s set.

Finally, cue the entire cast and assembled dancers (watch closely for a very young Teri Garr!) back onstage to frug a mighty big storm up around Jagger and Richard(s) and, scarcely two hours after it all began, the curtain drops.

So, just another night of music, mayhem, and undeniable magic out in L.A. during the fall of ’64, right? But what novice director Steve Binder and his crew captured, and what today is immaculately preserved upon The TAMI Show DVD, is busting-full of rich musical (I repeat: James Brown) and cinematic (Diana Ross’ eyes literally filling the screen during “Where Did Our Love Go”) moments which have been oft-shot by everyone from Pennebaker to Scorcese since, but never truly duplicated. For what TAMI managed to mount and maintain all those years ago irrefutably remains the highest of bars for concert events, and films thereof, to reach even today.

It may, sorrowfully, have taken nearly half a century to make it into our homes, but this film has not returned anew one single frame, nor scream, too soon.

Trust me:

You have never seen, nor heard, ANYTHING quite like this before.....

“No more Beatles! No more Stones! We just want the Viletones!” went the cry of true teen angst ‘round my Toronto neighborhood circa the Summer of Hate, 1977. And, memories of my favorite punk-rock combo from a misspent youth notwithstanding, I do find myself feeling very much the same these thirty-three-and-a-third revolutions later as big Beatle box sets and Rolling Stone re-issues continue to dominate our collective, sonic rear-view.

Of course I can still thrill to a remastered (mono!) “She Loves You” as much as the next boomer, and glimpsing Hendrix backstage inside that Get Yer Ya-Ya’s anniversary bundle will always raise a grin or two. But surely, surely there must have been something going on during those scant weeks between 1963 and 1969 when Lennon, McCartney, Jagger and/or Richard compositions weren’t sitting atop the world’s hit parades.

Surely!

Well, finally, someone – namely those utterly fab folk over at Reelin’ In The Years – have seen fit to shed light upon some of the other mop-tops whose sounds and styles filled our six-transistors and Sunday evening Ed Sullivan shows. Yes, the first four editions of what’s promised to be an entire British Invasion series of DVD’s are, you bet, here at last, spotlighting Dusty Springfield, Herman’s Hermits, Gerry and the Pacemakers and the Small Faces.

And what audio/visual treats these discs are! Meticulously researched and packaged, expertly restored and annotated and whenever possible hosted by many of the actual participants themselves, the songs and stories flow in never less than quick, LOUD frenzies so perfectly reminiscent of those once-Swinging Sixties themselves.

So, wherever to start then? How about Gerry Marsden fondly recalling the very birth of the Liverpool Sound in the kind of detailed – sometimes most candidly so – way no Beatles Anthology would ever dare to. Or a self-admittedly “numb” Dusty Springfield deplaning into Australia only to be accused of being “kooky” and a spokesperson for “the hippie philosophy”?

Elsewhere, not at all coincidentally perhaps, we discover the hitherto-unknown connection between comedian/philosopher Lord Buckley’s spiritual Nazz and the Small Faces’ ritual Methedrine, plus learn that it was in fact Peter Noone’s seemingly innocent rhythm section who schooled Keith Moon in the fine art of Holiday Inn “redecorating”: why, watch closely and you’ll even spot actual Super 8 footage of pool-side, long underwear-festooned Who/Hermits hi-jinks deep within the Bonus Footage!

Such meaty beaty Bacchanalian moments aside however, this is one British Invasion which truly concentrates, as all such documentaries should but seldom do, on the MUSIC. And there are literally hours of vintage performance clips filling these discs, immaculately reproduced and shown complete and uncut, with nary a single word of needless graphic or narration dubbed over the guitar solos for once. Plus, not just the usual stream of oft-recycled Shindig and Sullivan snips either: The producers have obviously gone to incredible lengths to scour the globe in search of seldom, if ever seen footage of, for example, Herman’s Hermits on Norwegian television or Gerry’s Pacemakers in Liverpool’s Cavern shooting their very own Ferry Cross The Mersey (…now, when does THAT film finally appear on DVD?!!)

Interestingly though, from the wealth of treasures spread across these discs, I was most pleasantly shocked to witness downright incendiary footage of the Small Faces’ Marquee Club debut, March of 1966. While for all the world looking, dressing, and acting like little more than a Cockney Monkees with cooler hair, trapped from the get-go inside these lads was apparently a solid, fighting-tough beat ‘n’ soul combo whose only Caucasian rivals at the time would have been those Young Rascals themselves. Who knew? (and then stay closely tuned for an extensive Colour Me Pop performance of their masterwork Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake complete with “Happiness” Stanley Unwin’s narration, I kid you not).

“None of us knew how good and how ahead of our time we were,” Small Face Kenney Jones admits herein, and that statement could rightfully serve as the modus operandi behind this entire series. Because, you see, The British Invasion, for the very first time ever, delves so very deeply into the hitherto-unexplored “second tier” of mid-Sixties U.K. talent, and in doing so paints most vividly an indelible picture of the era’s myriad musical and social upheavals. And in a way you just won’t get from any existing thumbnail study or PBS pledge special, needless to say.

Dusty Springfield: Once Upon a Time, Herman’s Hermits: Listen People, Gerry and the Pacemakers: It’s Gonna Be All Right and Small Faces: All Or Nothing are available separately or, even better, housed together with two and a half full hours of additional Bonus Disc interview and performance footage as a five-DVD collector’s set. Either way you take them, each deserve to be seen and heard repeatedly by any Merseybeating fan or serious student of rock ‘n’ roll …or even for someone who just needs to know the correct way to toss a cherry bomb down a Holiday Inn toilet.

It’s all here.

Still in a most list-ful mood, but this round-up certainly wasn’t a very easy one to compile, I’ll have everyone know. The pickin’s were extremely, uh, thin, to say the very least.

Nevertheless (or should I say Nevermind)…..

Number One: Mark Johnson - 12 in a room (1992)
Powerful pop most firmly rooted within the Brill Building anteroom.

Two: Cowsills - Global (1998)
America’s once-and-forever First Family of Song leave no Partridge unspurned.

Three: Brian Wilson - Sweet Insanity (1991)
Just to make sure the Nineties weren’t ALL Pet Sounds re-issues.

Four: Dave Rave Group - Valentino’s Pirates (1992)
Wherein the former Soviet Union signs its first Western act, then promptly dissolves.

Five: Johnny Cash - American Recordings (1994)
Rick Rubin produces a Johnny we thought only Sam Phillips could.

Six: Tiny Tim - Rock (1993)
Includes possibly definitive readings of “Eve of Destruction” and “Rebel Yell,” I kid you not.

Seven: Puffy - Jet CD (1998)
Oh-so-effortlessly crosses ABBA, Sabbath, and Who’s Next …and all by way of Jellyfish.

Eight: Monkees - Justus (1996)
Those Prefabs go out on a very high note (which, I’ll have you know, they played ALL BY THEMSELVES).

Nine: Shane Faubert - San Blass (1993)
Former head Cheepskate most definitely goes for baroque.

Ten: NRBQ - You Gotta Be Loose (1998)
Proof very positive: The greatest live r-n-r band In The World.

Eleven: Evaporators - I Gotta Rash (1998)
Before Ali G, Baba Booey, and most definitely Tenacious D.

Twelve: Neil Young - Arc (1991)
Truly too cool – not to mention loud – for (many) words.

Thirteen: Go-Nuts - The World’s Greatest Super Hero Snak Rock And Gorilla Entertainment Revue (1997)
For once, the title says it all.

Fourteen: High Llamas - Gideon Gaye (1994)
More than filling that cavernous sonic gap between SMiLE and the XTC reunion.

Fifteen: Blue Shadows - Lucky To Me (1995)
Hank Williams visits The Cavern by way of Big Pink.

Sixteen: Mojo Nixon - Gadzooks!!! (1997)
Includes “Bring Me The Head of David Geffen” …and then some.

Seventeen: James Richard Oliver -
The Mud, The Blood and The Beer (1998)
alt. Country with a capital “Oh!”

Eighteen: Chesterfield Kings -
Surfin’ Rampage (1997)
Upstate New York’s finest give their Stones cloning a rest whilst hanging all ten.

Nineteen: Jandek - Twelfth Apostle (1993)
So many Jandek albums; so little space.

Despite an alarming amount of critical mass to (and by) the contrary, there truly was much, much more worth hearing this decade just past than those big Big Star, Beatle, Bob Dylan and even Neil Young box sets.

No, really!

So then, strictly alphabetically speaking as always, here’s what I spent much of January 1, 2000 through December 31, 2009 listening very closely to…..

Apartment - Sparkle Bicycle
Waikiki Record (2008)

Tatsuya Namai’s radiant pop of the Daniel Johnston-meets-Shonen Knife variety.

Alex Brennan - The Last Smile Of The Pied Piper
xtoalex@hotmail.com (2004)

Hopefully Mr. Brennan will be duly hired to give the Beach Boys’ catalog that Beatles Love treatment when the time inevitably arrives.

Lindsey Buckingham - Under The Skin
Reprise Records (2006)

Once insane, always insane.

Candypants - Candypants
Sympathy For The Record Industry (2000)

Ronnie Spector fronts Elvis’ Attractions …and THEN some!

Casper and the Cookies - The Optimist’s Club
Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records (2006)

What Jason NeSmith and Kay Stanton did on their holidays in New York City.

Cheap Trick - Rockford
Big3 Records (2006)

Remarkably sounding better – and louder – than ever.

Dennis Diken with Bell Sound - Late Music
Cryptovision Records (2009)

The album Brian Wilson has been trying to make since at least 1986.

Johnny Dowd - Wire Flowers: More Songs from the Wrong Side of Memphis
Munich Records (2003)

A sonic sequel to one of the Nineties’ undeniably greatest albums …and artists.

Bob Dylan - Modern Times
Sony/BMG Music Entertainment (2006)

Edges out Christmas In The Heart by a mere Santa whisker.

Electric Prunes - Feedback
PruneTwang (2006)

Proving you can have your re-heated soufflé and eat it, too.

Tom Jones - Mr. Jones
V2 Music (2003)

Wherein Atomic Jones meets Wyclef Jean …by way of “Black Betty” !

Bill Lloyd - Back To Even
New Boss Sounds (2004)

Fifteen more examples of most potently powerful pop, Nashville-style.

Lolas - Like The Sun
Jam Recordings (2007)

Tim Boykin and his ever-bright l-o-l-a Lolas honestly do make the kind of records you still think Paul McCartney does.

Jack Pedler - Jack Pedler
Race Records (2001)

The sound of the hardest-working drummer in Canada loading all six strings.

The Playmates - Sad Refrain
K.O.G.A. Records (2002)

Forever more than happy to play the Stones against their countrywomen Puffy (AmiYumi)’s Beatles.

Raquel’s Boys - Music For The Girl You Love
Jam Recordings (2004)

Just as if Bobby Fuller and those once Flamin’ Groovies were never ever extinguished.

Jason Ringenberg - A Day At The Farm with Farmer Jason
Yep Roc Records (2003)

The definitive alternative to alternative country.

Simply Saucer - Cyborgs Revisited
Sonic Unyon Recording Company (2003)

The nice, nice noise that simply continues to keep on giving.

Frank Lee Sprague - Merseybeat
Wichita Falls Records (2005)

Exactly as if Brian Epstein had never entered The Cavern.

Tan Sleeve - White Lie Castle
Cheft Worldwide (2000)

Wherein George Harrison and even F. Zappa receive the Bacharach and David by way of Todd Rundgren treatment.

Teenage Head - Teenage Head with Marky Ramone
Sonic Unyon Recording Company (2008)

Canada’s Ramones finally reunited with their very-long-lost brudder.

now,

Bring On the Twenty-Oh-Teens !!!

Being eight years old in the Toronto suburbs of 1963, I was at the perfect age – and in the perfect place – to, yes, Meet the Beatles. Because by the time “those four youngsters from Liverpool” hit the Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February 64, my friends and I had already spent the past six months familiarizing ourselves with John, Paul, George and Ringo’s initial A-sides via Ontario’s mighty 1050 CHUM-AM Radio.

In other words then, the British Beat had no reason to invade Canada. It was invited.

Unlike with our big neighbors to the immediate south you see, each of the Beatles’ earliest discs garnered automatic release on Capitol Records of Canada, beginning right at the beginning with “Love Me Do” in February of ’63 (the version with Ringo on drums, by the way!), and the Canadian Beatle Discography boasts many other rare slices of vintage vinyl totally unique to the genre, and as a result extremely collectable.

For example, the Canadian Beatlemania! album not only sported an identical cover and track line-up, but was released the very same week With the Beatles was in the UK (making it the first Beatle album released anywhere within North America), and its twelve-inch Capitol Canada follow-up, the Twist and Shout album – # 1 on the Canadian charts for ten weeks in early ’64 – was in fact the very first “big record” I ever had the pleasure to have owned.

And what a remarkable record it was: Fourteen action-packed tracks featuring all four – “count ‘em”! – of the band’s first UK 45 top-sides, plus a generous helping of Cavern-baked covers from their homeland debut album Please Please Me. Being too young then to know, and still too young to care if nary a Beatle wrote each and every note or lyric herein, Carole King’s “Chains” stacked so easily around Len/Mac’s similarly George Harri-sung “Do You Want To Know A Secret,” Bacharach and David’s “Baby, It’s You” seamlessly followed John and Paul’s “P.S. I Love You” on T & S Side 2, and the magnificent Arthur Alexander’s “Anna (Go to Him),” which kicked off this entire collection, continues to this day to hold more than its own against any Beatle composition you or even I could mention.

And while Lennon’s wholly larynx-bursting “Twist and Shout” completed the first Beatle album in Great Britain, the ever-inventive Canadian Capitol chose to close its namesake long-player with none other than – wait for it – “She Loves You.” Take that, Sir George Martin! (and tell Dave Dexter, Jr. the news.)

Meanwhile in the seven-inch division, “Please Please Me” actually hit the CFGP Top Forty in Grande Prairie, Alberta in April of ’63, while two of Capitol Canada’s most unique couplings, “All My Loving”/”This Boy” and “Roll Over Beethoven”/”Please Mister Postman,” sold sufficient (smuggled) copies to reach even the American Hot One Hundred a year later. Also, the U.S. Tollie label “Twist and Shout”/”There’s a Place” 45, which soared to Billboard # 2 in April of 1964, was an identically-formed Canadian Capitol Top Ten much, much earlier.

Plus, may I just add that every single one of the above-mentioned original deep-grooved, meticulously mastered Canadian (mono!) pressings put their U.S. counterparts – not to mention even the latest CD incarnations, truth to tell – to total, unequivocal sonic shame. Really!

The moral of this absolutely Fab story then? Good music IS good music, and shall forever remain so, regardless of the size, format, packaging, advertising budget or even country-of-origin of the item in hand.

And of course, any discussion of Lost Grooves that doesn’t contain multiple uses of the word “Beatle” is a discussion I just must immediately bow out from.

P.S., and in closing: Is it only me, or is the Beatles Rock Band animation a tad cheesier than even that of the old Beatles cartoon series?

Believe it or not, the very first "real" concert I was ever allowed to attend as a wee Canadian tyke was The Jimi Hendrix Experience at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens, May 3, 1969. 



I'd already been a fervent fan for a couple of years, having spent most of my Grade 8 art class making swirly sketches of Jimi in charcoal. Plus the Are You Experienced? album was right up there – almost – with Monkees Headquarters on my 1967 Most-Played List.


Fast-forwarding, Christmastime '68 was spent, between runs down the local tobogganing hill, digging all eight vinyl sides of The White Album AND Electric Ladyland and, most likely as a direct result, my gym-class rhythm section and I were just starting to assemble our very own semi-power trio when word filtered along the groupvine that the Experience were planning to stop by our very neighborhood in a few months as part of their possibly-Farewell World Tour.



In a word then? WOW.



My most-trusted pal Ric scored two tickets in the Gardens' nosebleed section and I fibbed to my parents that we were off to a hootenanny (!) for the evening. Yet no sooner had we approached the venue that word began a'buzzin' that our hero had just been busted for carrying a batch of non- pharmaceutical mood enhancers into Toronto Airport. Hmmm…

Undaunted, we climbed skyward to our seats, sat on sonic needles and pins-ah through both opening acts (the pretty cool Cat Mother & the All Night Newsboys, whose big hit "Good Old Rock n Roll" my little band was already struggling to learn, followed by none other than, uh, Fat Mattress) til the one and only Jimi Himself sauntered on stage, miraculously only a few minutes late.



Now considering all the man had already been through that day I guess it was no real surprise the evening's set consisted of mainly down-cast tunes a la "Red House," though Jimi did graciously treat the teenage throng with a quick encore full of that fabled, fiery Foxey Purpleness of yore.

And then, suddenly, he was gone. Experience and all.

James Marshall Hendrix returned to town briefly that December however, just long enough to be completely exonerated of all narco-charges ("Canada has just given me the greatest Christmas present ever!" he exclaimed to the Toronto Daily Star), but I suppose one could question if, or why, that life lesson ultimately went unheeded. And I suppose it does say something that out of all the delicately detailed minutiae forever etched upon my grey matter concerning that momentous concert forty long, long Toronto May’s ago, I can still most vividly recall EXACTLY what Jimi was wearing (all Harlem-Asbury chic all the way!), what I was wearing even (don't ask), the appropriately brilliant weather, the commuter train Ric and I snuck on after we told our parental units we'd just be folking around ...hell, I even remember the proto-Bowzer moves Cat Mother & Co. deployed whilst performing their one hit wonder!



But do I recall a single sliver of the sounds and/or stylings of the Noel Redding-fronted Fat Mattress performance of that same, utterly magical night? No sir, I do not. Which reminds me: Mr. Redding himself passed onward and upward to that great big Gardens in the sky six years ago May 11th.

And the moral, perhaps, to this all? Well, I still find myself revisiting Electric Ladyland on almost as regular a basis as I do the Monkees’ Headquarters. So you see some things, I guess, shall never change.