The Monkees: Pomo Arrivistes…

Another TOP TEN POMO list by Jason Gross of Perfect Sound Forever:

1. Bugs Bunny “Rabbit Rampage” (Warner Bros, June 11, 1955)
One of Chuck Jones’s many classic cartoons with that rascally wabbit,this is also the baby of one of his long-time partners, MichaelMaltese. Here, Maltese’s background as a story board artist comesinto play as most of the action in this seven-minute cartoon involveBugs battling with an unseen artist’s paintbrush. The rabbitfrequently dashed off witty asides to the audience, letting them inon the joke with a sly nod and a wink but never before had Jones’cartoons made us feel that this was something above and beyond theusual pratfalls. Reality’s constantly yanked from Bugs as he loseshis trademark rabbit hole, gets disfigured, gets disgraced and getsturned into a grasshopper and a horse. Bugs takes the only way outhe can, grabbing a sign saying THE END. The camera pulls back and wesee the punch line: Elmer Fudd’s finally gotten his revenge on his ol’ nemesis.
2. The Monkees “Dance Monkees Dance” (NBC, December 12, 1966)
From their first season, America’s TV version of the Beatles (withan English singer though) has the boys tangled up with a crookeddance studio that tries to bilk them- this episode also featuredtheir hit “I’m A Believer” (a Neil Diamond song). While they scratchtheir heads, figuring how to weasel out of the con, Mickey Dolenzdecides they need a “brilliant idea.” To get it, he walks off of theset to find the show’s writers. The camera follows him as he walksthrough the studio, brashly trashing TV’s fourth wall. He comes intoa small room full of old, long-haired Mandarin men to plead hiscase. They type up an answer on white paper but when he gets handedit, it’s turned to yellow. Dolenz reads their answer as he returnsto the set and decides it’s garbage and tosses it away. The realwriter was James Frawley, who would go on to direct episodes of Ally McBeal.
3. Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, “Turn it Up,” from Bait andSwitch (Onion/American, 1995)
Recorded for master producer Rick Rubin’s label (which also put outJohnny Cash’s last albums), this Ohio band was head by former GreatPlains singer Ron House, a boozy literary-minded smart-ass- youwouldn’t always know it though with him howling (not singing) infront of rambling, noisy indie-rock bands. He once told me that hewas “trying to find cerebral ideas about inebriation.” The narratorof this song might just be the song itself, literally- “he” was bornat the start of the tune after all. He keeps yelling the song’s(his?) title at the listener again and again, as if to say “I’malive!” (for now at least). Whoever’s voice it is, they keeppromising to reveal their killer but the end comes before thathappens. House claims that he failed ultimately, having run out ofspace but I like to think that he (the narrator) is gone at the endbecause the song ends so he’s dead, over and out. Country great TomT. Hall, who was so obsessed about songcraft that he once called analbum (and a tune) “In Search of A Song,” would appreciate the idea (hopefully).
4. Luigi Pirandello, Six Characters in Search of An Author (1921)
Now a staple of 20th century theatre, like many pieces ahead of theirtime, this play got a mixed reaction when it premiered in Italy withthe author supposed running out of the reception to avoid apummeling. What gleefully did was not just poke fun atthe medium’s conventions but to also tear them into pieces with onlyone of its characters sporting an actual name. The rest were justlabelled “Father,” “Mother,” “Boy,” etc. as each of them pleaded tobe made into a memorable part of the action. And yes, Pirandello hada cosy relationship with Mussolini but if we’ve generally forgiventhe anti-Semitic Wagner, isn’t LP worthy of rehabilitationalso? Pomo that’s decades ahead of its time.
5. John Jesurun “Deep Sleep” (presented at La Mama, February 1986)
As part of his media triology, Jesurun’s seventy-minute Obie-winningplay had the audience surrounded by two large screens on either sideof them and actors perched in between. All kinds of bizarreinteractions would take place with one boy seemingly trapped withinthe video screen and at other times, video characters arguing withthe live actors and ordering them around. Eventually, the stageactors are sucked into the video itself (shades of David Cronenberg’s). A few years later, when the Internet started topermeate the lives of millions of people, sucking them into acyberworld, Jesurun’s bizarre world seemed eerily prophetic. See theNew York Times review here.
6. Bob Dylan “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” from Bringing It All BackHome (Columbia, March 22, 1965)
The first side of this classic album (one of his finest achievements)ends with a goofy story of madcap, slapstick antics. Maybe it’sfitting that the song begins with a false start that’s actuallyincluded on the record. Dylan jumps in, barely spitting out thefirst two lines before he breaks down into laughter as the bandmisses their cue. Someone else cracks up (producer Tom Wilson?),telling Dylan to start again, then cracks up some more and thenorders “OK… take two,” all of which takes up about the first 30seconds of the song. Next Dylan tries it again, this time with theband blasting alongside him now for a final take. Most any artistwould have otherwise cut out this bit but Dylan and Wilson decidedthe behind-the-scenes gaff belonged there. Wonder what the Columbiaheads thought when they heard this…
7. Vladimir Nabokov, Palefire (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1962)
Literary criticsm as literature, where a 999-line is poem istransformed and disfigured by its interpreter’s insane fantasies intoa 300-plus page sci-fi world. A comment on commentary? A poke atliterary estate executors (i.e. the evil, tight-fisted Stephen Joyce)?
8. Alan Resnais, Last Year At Marienbad (Argos Films, June 25, 1961)
Like Pirandello’s play, the characters here have no real names, onlyletters of the alphabet. Most of the “action” of the film is a mannamed “X” trying to convince a woman named “A” that they know eachother, even though she insists that they don’t. So who do webelieve? Is either of them a reliable source? Does it matter,especially when the scenes are so beautifully filmed at such anelegant estate? Does it also not matter because the figures arevacuous? A piece of art that presents all questions and no answersand can madden you until you realize that. Also, if a supremejackass like Michael Medved hates it so much, isn’t that anotherreason to admire the film?
9. Frank Lloyd Wright, Guggenheim Museum, New York City (1959)
A decade and a half’s work (which the great architect wouldn’t liveto see completed) on the ultimate art object — a museum itself. Afterall the bickering with the museum overseers and the city, thisrotunda became one of the most recognizable and unique buildings notjust in Gotham itself but also the entire art world, though it waslater shown up by its Spanish namesake. Credit is also due to artistNam June Paik who transformed the long, continual spiral ramp andhuge hollow center into yet another massive work of art for his2000exhibition.
10. A Tribe Called Quest “Scenario” (directed by Jim Swaffield,January 1992) and De La Soul “Ego Trippin’ (Pt. 2)” (directed by Frank Sacremento, 1993)
Two of the funniest, canniest rap videos, both intent on turning thewhole genre on its head. In the Quest video (incorrectly credited toSpike Lee many times), cartoon GUI video controls are shown as ifSwaffield is surreally mixing the images on the spot- backgroundschange with a click as do clothing and hairdos. Sacremento’s videofor DLS (who have a cameo in the Tribe video) is a pie in the face toall the gangsta rap cliches about consumer culture gone wild- showingoff curvy women, gold chains, flashy cars, etc.. Here, when we see afly ride, the caption is “it’s a rental.” When one of the singersgets a hot girl in bed, “in your dreams buddy” flashes on thescreen. At the end, a close up of another singer reveals that he’s a”stock boy at K-mart.” Brilliant. Bertolt Brecht would have been proud.