I guess I'll start with the sad stuff first. Although I don't currently have The Monkees on the My Favorite Artists list, if you'd have asked 12-year-old me, they'd have been the only band on that list. In the raging battles that took place in my grammar school of "Which band is better, The Monkees or The Beatles?", I was firmly in camp Monkees. I would defend myself by pointing out that The Beatles weren't in their best period right then, pumping out singles like "Hello, Goodbye" and "Lady Madonna", but the truth is, I don't think I really need a defense -- yeah, I recognize that The Beatles are far more important to the history of music, and that they reached artistic heights The Monkees could only dream of. But in my heart, I still prefer The Monkees. And the heart loves what the heart loves.
Of all of The Monkees, Mike Nesmith was clearly my favorite (with Mickey Dolenz running second.) On their TV show, Davey was the teen heartthrob, Mickey was the funny one, Peter was the stupid one, but Mike was the sincere one. He was also the best songwriter in the band (although the majority of The Monkees' best known songs were written by excellent outside writers like Carole King and Neil Diamond.) I loved a lot of the songs that Mike was the lead singer on, like "What Am I Doing Hanging Round?" and "The Door Into Summer." And I'll always have very fond memories of a Frank Walker open mic gig on a night where the only two people in the audience were Valerie Griggs and myself (I think it was a bad-weather night), where we turned Frank into our own personal jukebox by requesting one Mike Nesmith song after another. Good times! (Frank was loving it, too!)
I thought about catching The Monkees live over the years, but it was very seldom in my adulthood that the four of them toured together, and the tickets always seemed to be a little overpriced. (And because he'd gotten fairly wealthy due to his mother having invented Liquid Paper, Mike was the one most often missing.) But Denise caught the last two surviving Monkees, Mickey and Mike, just last month at The Paramount, and she said that while Mickey was still hanging in their pretty good, Mike was looking kind of long in the tooth. I made an unfortunately prescient joke at that time that on their next tour, it would probably just be "The Monkee". I'm sad that I was right.
So Rest in Peace, Mike Nesmith. You've given a lot of people, including myself, a great deal of musical enjoyment over the years. The Monkees never really got the respect I think they deserved. But they had many fans who loved them.
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As the year is winding down and I'm trying to finish off listening to and rating all of my 2021 music so I can do my Best Of lists, I can tell you I consider it good year, but not a great year, for music. The truth is there were quite a few LPs that I liked, but none so far that I've ranked higher than 3.5 out of 5 stars.
But I can see that I'm going to have no problem filling out a Top Ten list, and have a decent number of respectable also-rans as well.
Here are some albums that I don't think are going to make my Top Ten list, although one or two of them theoretically still could. I've got three or four albums left to listen to this year, and then I'm going to give the Top 20 or one more listen, so maybe one of these guys will have a chance to jump up. However, none of them are in my Top 11 right now, so I feel fairly confident they're not going to jump up two spots to make my Top Ten.
Ad Infinitum - Chapter II: Legacy - I kept my promise this year to keep exploring symphonic metal music. This is the second studio LP by this really top-notch Swiss symphonic metal band.
Sting - The Bridge - This is probably Sting's best album in the last decade or so. For those of you who thought he was through - well, he's not. There are mysterious songs, songs of love and betrayal - this one's got everything. The main single, "If It's Love", is kind of a paint-by-numbers love song, but most of the rest of it is quite good.
Lindsey Buckingham - Lindsey Buckingham - Here's another old-timer who needed to show he still has something left in the tank. I suspect he was a little embarrassed at being canned by Fleetwood Mac the year before the pandemic hit, and this is his "I'll show them!" LP. He did a pretty impressive job. It's the only Lindsey Buckingham solo album ever that almost made my Top Ten list.
As December Falls - Happier. - This British pop punk band wins my Paramore-Album-of-the-Year award. They totally hearken back to Paramore's glory days, before Zac and Josh Ferro left the band, almost slavishly so. Some have criticized them for copying the Paramore pop punk sound closely. As for me, I'm just glad to have an album like this again, and if Hayley and her boys are no longer capable of giving it to me, I'll take it where I can get it.
Chvrches - Screen Violence - I seem to be in the minority, at least on the Sputnik Music website, in that I don't like this one quite as much as their 2018 effort, Love Is Dead. But it's still pretty great, and their collaboration with The Cure's Robert Smith on "How Not to Drown" is epic.
Gary Numan - Intruder - This LP continues in the same strong industrial vein as 2017's Savage (Songs From a Broken World). The only difference is this time, there's no one standout track to match up with that album's "My Name Is Ruin", which is why it will land just a little short of My Top Ten list. It's still plenty worthwhile, though.
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Lastly, I wrote a month or two ago about my own response to the pandemic in relation to the March '80s Cruise out of Orlando that Denise and I are booked on. Well, I've not only decided to go full steam ahead with that cruise - if the pandemic doesn't cancel it, I'm gonna go for it - but I've also booked us on another cruise in May out of Cape Liberty in New Jersey.
I've been wanting to try out a cruise from Celebrity Cruise Lines - I'm older now, and I'd like to try a slightly more upscale (and less child-friendly) cruise experience. So we're going on a 9-night cruise that will take us up to Newport, Rhode Island, then swing us down to Charleston, South Carolina for a couple of days, and then sail out to Bermuda before returning to New Jersey.
I've never been to South Carolina, and in case of any medical situations, I like the idea that we spend most of the time in US waters. If nothing else, at least it will get me out of the house for awhile, am I right?
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I'm hoping to get in one more post this week before Christmas, as I'm really just about ready to write that Go-Go's article. So I'm going to hold off on wishing you guys a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays until then.
