The three surviving Monkees, Mickey Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork will be regrouping for a fourteen date tour along the East Coast and into the Mid-West:
5/22 HAMPTON, NHÂ Â Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom
5/23Â ATLANTIC CITY, NJÂ Â Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa
5/24 NEWARK, NJÂ New Jersey PAC
5/25 HUNTINGTON, NYÂ The Paramount
5/27Â BETHLEHEM (PHIL.), PAÂ Sands Bethlehem Event Center
5/28Â GREENSBURG (PITT.), PAÂ The Palace Theater
5/30 DETROIT, MIÂ Fox Theater
5/31 MERRILLVILLE, INÂ Â Star Plaza Theater
6/1Â MILWAUKEE, WIÂ Riverside Theater
6/2Â MINNEAPOLIS, MNÂ Weesner Family Amphitheater
6/4Â KANSAS CITY, MOÂ Uptown Theater
6/5Â ST. LOUIS, MOÂ Fox Theater
6/6 CINCINNATI, OHÂ PNC Pavilion at Riverbend Music Center
6/7Â NORTHFIELD/CLEVELAND, OHÂ Hard Rock Live
A sweet, nostalgic trip to the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s
It’s hard to believe that it’s been more than two decades since Ronnie Milsap’s twenty year run of chart-topping success (including 35 #1s) finally faded. He’s continued to record albums and release occasional singles, branching out from mainstream country into standards, gospel, and with his latest release, oldies. Milsap visited his pop music roots before with 1985’s Lost in the Fifties Tonight, and that album’s #1 title song (which played off the Five Satins’ 1956 doo-wop hit “In the Still of the Night”) is reprised here as the album closer. The opening title tune provides another slice of nostalgia with its memories of teenage years, lush harmony vocals and a honking sax solo.
Olivia Newton-John on the doorstep of stardom in 1970
This 1970 soundtrack to a blink-and-you-missed-it Don Kirshner-produced film would likely have remained a quick blip on the pop landscape, had the like-named group, film and soundtrack not featured a young Olivia Newton-John. At the time of the film’s release, John was still a year away from breaking through internationally with the Dylan-penned “If Not for You,” but she already had plenty of experience under her belt. She’d recorded a terrific cover of Jackie DeShannon’s “Till You Say You’ll Be Mine” and was gaining notice from club performances when Kirshner (who’d found success assembling the Archies and Cuff Links after being booted as the Monkees’ producer) brought her into the group.
The film was part of a deal Kirshner struck with James Bond producer Harry Saltzman, and after funding troubles sank the picture’s prospects, it was shelved shortly after release. The soundtrack album was released concurrently on RCA, but given the film’s vanishing act, the vinyl quickly followed suit. The group released a follow-up single and B-side on Decca, but Newton-John was soon off to the beginning of her superstar solo career. Real Gone’s first-ever reissue of the soundtrack, struck from the original master tape, includes the album’s original dozen tracks.
The film stars Toomorrow as the only band with the “curative vibrations” that can save an alien race dying from a lack of emotion. The screenplay is filled with late ’60s tropes, faux hipster dialog and science fiction cliches, which, of course, makes it worth screening. But the project seems to have really been a launching pad for the group, as had been the Monkees television show and the Archies’ animated series; unfortunately, there was no commercial lift-off. The soundtrack, written and produced by veteran pop songsmiths Mark Barkan (“She’s a Fool,” “Pretty Flamingo,” “The Tra La La Song”) and Ritchie Adams (“Tossin’ and Turnin'”), is an amalgam of bubblegum sounds that include pop, soul and lite psych, hints of folk and country, and is threaded lightly with primitive synth.
This 1970 anthology, reissued on CD for the first time, is a one-of-a-kind time-capsule of the Mamas and the Papas. In addition to their first six Top 10 hits, the track list adds non-charting singles, B-sides and album tracks, carefully selected and ordered to show off the many sides of the group’s talent. In addition to the harmonies that graced the radio, there’s also the tight jazz work of “Once Was a Time I Thought,” thoughtful originals and keenly interpreted covers. Knitting it all together, and elevating this collection above a simple recitation of hits, are interview clips with John Phillips and Cass Elliot interspersed among the tracks. Their dialog reflects on the group, their producer, sessions and songs, and though the spoken words overlap the instrumental lead-ins of a few tracks, they’re surprisingly unobtrusive.
Several of the original tracks are also enhanced with bits of session chatter, vocal outtakes and rehearsals, providing listeners a few moments in the studio. The songs are organized as a musical program, rather a strict chronological run-through, which gives the set a holistic, album-like flow that’s unusual for an anthology. Though released after the group split in 1969, the tracks only cover through 1967’s Deliver; nothing from 1968’s The Papas and the Mamas (and their 1971 contractual obligation release, People Like Us) is included, which leaves out Elliot’s solo-career launching “Dream a Little Dream of Me.” But even without the last chapter and afterward, this set does an excellent job of telling the group’s story.
Modern pop, but with a breakdown that somehow manages to echo Buffalo Springfield. Perhaps the band’s promo blurb says it best:
Little Children’s auditory sustenance fully personifies the essence of modern pop music’s history. No genre goes unexplored or escapes its distinctive formation!  Essentially, Little Children has established an original and sensational standard within music’s modern empire.
“Walk Within†contains all of the delicate ingredients that characterize an upcoming milestone: sincerity, clarity and energy, all the while retaining the essential passion that tugs at your heartstrings and reaches deep into your bones.
Ultimately “Walk Within†reminds us that it is indeed 2014 and the auditory continuation of music by its example is invigorating, striking and irrefutable.
Then again, maybe it’s better to just listen to their fantastic new single.
This Boston quartet, led by singer-songwriter and orchestrator Ben Talmi, has been seeded with the orchestral rock DNA of ELO, and grown under the golden hooks and harmonies of 1960s sunshine pop. But these sonic nods to earlier times aren’t mere nostalgia, as they’re updated with modern-pop melodies that suggest Blind Pilot, Keane and others, and complex arrangements that drink from the same production fountain as Sufjan Stevens and the Explorer’s Club. The lead off, “No One’s Waiting,” is a masterpiece whose brooding introduction feints in the same direction as Eric Carmen’s “Sunrise” before kicking into gear with swirling strings and a soaring vocal that hangs the title on a perfect melodic hook. Talmi’s layered vocals interlace with violins and cellos as the four-piece rocks the song to a thrilling conclusion.
It’s one thing to have a talented and sympathetic orchestrator decorate your songs, but quite another to have the orchestration composed in the songwriter’s head. Think Brian Wilson rather than George Martin. Talmi’s songs are built from words, rhymes, melodies, meters and vocals, but it’s the way they interplay with the rock instruments, and the rock instruments interplay with the strings and brass that gives these songs both their delicacy and power. Art Decade is a top notch modern-rock band on their own, but when supplemented by the orchestral elements, they gain a thrilling extra dimension. The songs draw impressions with poetic imagery and vocal tone, and highlight emotional moments with the arrangements.
