Varsity Strings

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Zachariah The First Electric Western

OK, so is this the coolest movie of all time? Why doesn't anybody tell me about these things? Are we just supposed to find out by ourselves? And doesn't this guy look like Curly Max, pre-haircut?

Here's the movie ad -

I'm going out to learn how to play a Strat while riding a horse now. Adios!

Thursday, March 1, 2012

My Mom Goes Back To College

My mom came to my undergraduate chemistry class today. The professor said he needed someone to experiment on. Here she is!

This is the experiment she has to do. It involves acid. It's really dangerous, which they didn't tell my mom or else it wouldn't have been as fun.

This is what happened:

Here's the big explanation:

This is where things start going wrong ...

My professor gave her this bumper sticker anyway for being such a good sport!

Thursday, February 23, 2012

What happens when you pay the best songwriters of the 60's to write outrageously inventive songs for a hand-picked group of young performers who also happen to be great vocalists and published musicians themselves? Then train them with a New York cabaret improvisational comedy pioneer, film the result with French New Wave film techniques, and spend most of the time shooting at beaches and amusement parks in San Diego?

The Monkees.

GO MICKY!!!

The ultimate rock group.

The Nez, real life inventor of MTV, country rock pioneer,
originator of mail order video, film producer,
and owner of one of the first Gretsch 12 string electric guitars.

Micky, the best vocalist of the 1960's, Broadway and British TV series producer,
owner and manager of swing revival haven The Derby Club...

Micky's sister, Coco!

Micky's wife! She's a British high-fashion model!

No kidding, here she is, Samantha Juste! The Flower Power Girl!

See?

Really! Here they are on their Hawaiian Honeymoon!

At one point the Monkees (originally out of work musicians and actors) were touring as rock stars playing stadium gigs while acting as themselves as - get this - out of work musicians auditioning to star in a new TV show - on the #1 show on TV that nobody over the age of 16 seemed to understand while writing their own songs and being dumped on by the press for not playing their own instruments after playing one of the first Moog synthesizers ever made on their 4th album of hit songs. These guys outsold the Beatles AND the Rolling Stones. Part of the confusion was that they played and improvised as themselves under their own names, based on their own characters, in fact the show was sold to NBC based on their audition tapes as themselves, so they continued to talk directly to the camera during the show and then, afterwards, the most popular part of all episodes were the interviews at the very end where each Monkee stepped out of character (which was their own to begin with) and told you exactly what they thought of current events, which is what the show was doing all along...

making this the very first ad-libbed reality TV show.

AND - keep in mind that none of this was supposed to be serious; it was an incredibly funny satire of commercialism, conformity, television, the music business itself and the uptight standards of the older generation.

Here's the Nez with his pal George Harrison.