Rays
by Michael Nesmith
Videoranch, Monterey, CA, 2006
CD, 100-059
Sales, $16.95
Distributors website: http://www.videoranch.com.
Reviewed by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher
Saginaw Valley State University
mosher@svsu.edu
Despite a 40-year musical career, every
review of Michael Nesmith will begin with
mention of his role in The Monkees,
a television comedy about the adventures
of a rock band, patterned after the Beatles'
antics in the movies, A Hard Day's
Night and Help. Towards the
end of its run, the assembled group of
photogenic young actors had developed
into a credible band, largely under the
direction of talented Mr. Nesmith, the
most serious musician among them. Nesmith
went on to write, sing, and produce numerous
solo projects. His attentiveness to Bob
Rafelson's direction of the Monkees
sitcom and movie made him appreciate and
work skillfully the medium of the comedic
music video during the early MTV era,
with his Elephant Parts.
Rays has the feel of a late-1960s
concept album, an ambitious genre that
took off after the success of the Beatles'
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
Band, and might even be said to include
the Monkees Head, soundtrack
to their full-length movie. Each such
album presented a range of musical genres
loosely in the service of a story, or
at least the shadow of one. The Asylum
Choir projects by Los Angeles session
musicians Leon Russell and Marc Benno
were among them, and session men ably
support Nesmith's vision here. Perhaps
the recent completion and touring performances
of Brian Wilson's three-decade-stuck Smile
concept album also inspired Rays.
Rays ostensibly tells of a guy
driving in his car in heavy traffic, looking
for food, then finding some sort of peace
in natural beauty. A comic by Drew Friedman,
depicting Nesmith during each decade since
the '60s, reinforces this narrative, appearing
on the cover and on the lyrics sheet.
Listenable and enjoyable, Rays
is not a big and innovative splash, but
not bad either. Some of its songs are
showy funk instrumentals, showcasing Chester
Thompson's B3 organ. "There It Is" suggests
the more spiritual Jamaican pop, like
Jimmy Cliff's "Many Rivers to Cross" or
something by the Clarendonians. The final
song "Follows the Heart" is built on a
pleasant 1930s-sounding melody, the kind
Paul McCartney appreciates; think of the
Beatles' "Good Night". Nesmith croons
reassuringly its words of acceptance and
peaceful appreciation. Yet ultimately
he goops the song up with distracting
overproduction, 50-pound slabs of synths
and excessive echo. If to be swallowed
up in production is a metaphor for the
early Monkees success that, in too
many minds, still defines Michael Nesmith,
at the wheel on this excursion out he
has only himself to blame.