– Mike Nesmith Band – In Concert – Royal Theatre, Drury Lane – London – December 31, 1975 – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
Mike Nesmith this weekend, from a concert recorded in London on December 31, 1975.
Took a little doing, at first, to shed the image of The Quiet Monkee and strike out on his own shortly after the demise The Monkees. While most went off to achieve a modicum of success during the years after, Mike Nesmith became a firmly entrenched cornerstone in what would become the Country-Rock genre of the early 1970s. Already a successful songwriter before The Monkees, penning such pivotal hits as Different Drum for the Stone Poneys, helping launch Linda Ronstadt’s career. It was a relatively easy transition from a member of what was often jokingly referred to as The Pre-Fab Four to a serious solo artist and writer, and later Music Video pioneer and pretty much a household name all through the 70s and well into the 80s and beyond.
Mike Nesmith won the first Grammy Award presented for (long-form) Music Video in 1982 for his hour-long Elephant Parts. He also had a short-lived series (1984-5) on NBC inspired by the video called Michael Nesmith in Television Parts. Television Parts included many other artists who were unknown at the time, but went on to become major stars in their own right: Jay Leno, Jerry Seinfeld, Garry Shandling, Whoopi Goldberg,[7] and Arsenio Hall. The concept of the show was to have comics render their stand-up routines into short comedy films much like the ones in Elephant Parts. Nesmith assembled writers Jack Handey, William Martin, John Levenstein, and Michael Kaplan, along with directors William Dear (who had directed Elephant Parts) and Alan Myerson, as well as producer Ward Sylvester to create the show. The half-hour show ran for 5 episodes in the summer of 1985 on NBC Thursday nights in prime time.
For a reminder of his post-Monkees period during the First National and Second National Band period, here is a concert from London in 1975 to give you some idea what he was up to.
