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I earlier reviewed the
Michael Nesmith - Live at the Britt Festival
DVD, and decided to go ahead and add the double CD to my collection. Here is what I wrote:
Papa Nes is in top form and his backup band is terrific. He starts off the concert with "Two Different Roads," a track from his 1972 RCA album, AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMIN'. He then surprises everyone with a lively performance of "Papa Gene's Blues," from The Monkees' first album. Next is "Propinquity (I've Just Begun to Care)," a song that was recorded during the Monkee days, but went unreleased until 1996's
Missing Links, Volume 3
; Nesmith's solo rendition was issued on his 1971 First National Band album, NEVADA FIGHTER. After introducing the band, Michael then performs another unreleased Monkees song, "Some of Shelly's Blues," which was issued on
Missing Links Volume 2
in 1990; Nesmith did a solo version on his final RCA album, PRETTY MUCH YOUR STANDARD RANCH STASH, issued in 1973. He then performs his biggest First National Band hit, "Joanne," from his 1970 debut FNB album, MAGNETIC SOUTH. The next three songs, "Tomorrow and Me," "The Upside of Goodbye," and "Harmony Constant," are all from AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMIN'. The last RCA-era track is the group's second hit, "Silver Moon," taken from the second FNB album, 1970's LOOSE SALUTE.
As I noted in a previous review, the best versions of these RCA albums are the imported "two-fers" from Camden Deluxe. They can be found
here
,
here
, and
here
.
Nes closes the first half of the concert with a comedy piece called "5 Second Concerts," from his short-lived NBC-TV series, TELEVISION PARTS, which has yet to be issued on DVD, though a made-for-home-video sequel has (
Television Parts Home Companion
). A collaboration with his pianist John Hobbs, it consists of three short medleys: "Moonlight and Day Sonata," "Jaws the Knife," and "There's No Business Like Star Wars."
The second half of the concert (CD2) consists of six songs from the recently recorded album
Tropical Campfires
: "Yellow Butterfly," "Moon over the Rio Grande," "Juliana," "Laugh Kills Lonesome," "I Am Not That," and "Rising in Love." The audience's enthusiastic reaction to these tracks surprised Nes, given their unfamiliarity with the songs, as the album had only been out for a short time. Nesmith than closes the concert with an uptempo version of 1977's hit "Rio," which the audience probably recognized from his
Elephant Parts [VHS
]; the DVD format did not exist at the time. For the encore, Nes returns with an acoustic version of "one of the early ones that I didn't sing," "Different Drum," Linda Ronstadt's first hit with The Stone Poneys from 1967, recorded by Michael himself on AND THE HITS JUST KEEP ON COMIN'. The CD closes with the TROPICAL CAMPFIRES version of "I Am Not That."
The Edsel Records compilation
Rio: The Best of Michael Nesmith
has 11 of the 18 songs from the concert, all from the first half of the show, although "Different Drum," for unknown reasons, is added at the beginning of the set. Except for "Rising in Love," all of the other songs in the show appear on RIO in their original studio versions.
While I still prefer the DVD, which has the entire uninterrupted concert, with excellent picture quality and 5.1 surround sound, it is hard to find. The CD is more than a worthy substitute, for it is the best Nesmith concert ever. Nesmith's earlier live album, LIVE AT THE PALAIS, is long out of print, and cannot be found anywhere on CD; even eBay only has the vinyl LP. And Nesmith's Videoranch Web site only has that album available as a digital download, although the Videoranch people will download the tracks to a made-to-order custom CD at your request, which I did. THE AMAZING ZIG-ZAG CONCERT, which features an excellent acoustic Nesmith live performance from 1974 with the late Orville "Red" Rhodes (consisting of mostly RCA-era material except for "Marie's Theme" from THE PRISON), is still available, but only as a very expensive 5-CD box set. (I also asked the Videoranch folks to download disc 5 of ZIG-ZAG (the Nesmith disc) to a custom CD, and to my pleasant surprise, they did it, so my Nesmith collection is now complete).
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