Okay, so it’s been a minute since we had an “OG” post from the 6OGs, i.e. where we actually review 3 albums. But between our Best Ofs, QTs and other posts discussing a slew of great new records, and, well, Pat McAfee (and if you haven’t read Brian's “review” of Pat McAfee’s “record”, please stop reading this now and do that immediately; we’ll wait), it’s hard to keep up. But rest assured, we have not been monkee-ing around. We’re back to discuss three very different records, just slightly putting each of them (or their shows) down. But mostly we’re just trying to be friendly; we’re the older generation, and, yes, we’ve still got something to say, dammit. Hope you enjoy.
New Album: Role Model Hermit by Mary in the Junkyard. I spend a lot of my time searching for high-energy rock ‘n roll music - the kind that makes you want to dance, or fight. I never actually do either, except for maybe pulling out the Lawnmower or Chainsaw move at an occasional wedding, but still - I want my music to make me feel like it.
Mary in the Junkyard is something different entirely. Their thing is to generate a vibe. This week, on my beach vacation, I had the luxury of enjoying that vibe in the perfect way - not dancing, but floating in a quiet swimming pool at dusk.
The London-area trio have played together since their mid-teens, and they trust each other, their songs showing this from their perfect balance among the parts. The vibe comes together with Clari Freeman-Taylor’s subdued but transporting guitar riffs and vocals, Saya Barbaglia’s bass and viola - sometimes silky, sometimes chirpy - and David Addison on drums, usually with minimalistic arrangements that blend and support without distracting.
Clari’s voice is sweet, almost childlike, and feels somehow thin and translucent, always allowing the music to show through. It’s charged with emotion, and at times it waivers and seems on the verge of disintegrating entirely, but is just self-assured enough to stay afloat amid the music. The opening track of their debut full-length, Role Model Hermit, is a repeated mantra: “This is yours, babe, you deserve it,” perhaps meant to help them deal with the increased success of opening for Wet Leg’s 2025 tour, being on KEXP Presents, etc. But the whole album feels a bit like a mantra, a sustained push-and-pull between a natural self-doubt and a conscious effort to talk yourself into feeling self-confident.
In “Seek & Destroy,” Freeman-Taylor declares, “This world is too much for me, I’m just a baby/It’s all I can do to stay alive,” but in the very next track she celebrates a personal transformation: “I’ve spent so long in my cocoon/And now I’m fully formed.../I’ve been getting up and getting out/Working up and getting down/I’ve got new muscles all over my back/new muscles all over my back.” “New Muscles” is the spiritual and musical centerpiece of the album. Richly orchestrated, it adds high, tuned cowbells and layers of backup vocals. The viola shows its versatility, sounding like a violin and a cello in turn.
“Blood” has the champion of the aforementioned guitar riffs, giving the song constant motion. “Crash Landing” builds beautiful and forbidding layers that wash over you. It tells another nuanced story of contradiction between becoming vulnerable and protecting yourself from heartache. Look past the fantastic vocal and lyrical hook of “You opened up/You opened up like a coconu-hut” to the countering: “And I can take your mask off/But only in the dark/And you won’t takе your shoes off/In case you have to run.”
Unfortunately, it’s not all good news. With a few tracks that are less catchy and too even-keeled, Role Model Hermit doesn’t quite live up to the promise of Mary’s 2024 EP “This Old House,” whose four tracks were all as consistently creative and interesting as the standouts on this full-length. Near the end, there are 2 pieces that feel a bit like filler: “Candelabra,” which was written by CFT as a solo effort, before the formation of Mary in the Junkyard, and is recorded as solo guitar with vocals. And “Thou Shalt Sprout,” a folk tale set to Renaissance-styled music that calls back to Crane Wife-era Decembrists. Not bad songs, in themselves, but not really supporting the mission of the album.
More happily, “Mouse” is a quality closer, returning to the album’s theme of transformations (”I know that I’ve changed/I do not look the same/Mouse, seeing you now/How do I explain?”) and once again letting Clari’s voice and the supple viola carry rich emotional content.
All the highlights are covered by the (5!) singles that were released prior to the album, so this isn’t on my must-buy-vinyl list, but it’s worth a listen to immerse yourself in the wonderful sound that Mary in the Junkyard creates. In my ideal world, they would have included their excellent orphaned singles, “Drains” and “Midori,” from 2025 on this album. If you like the sound and feel of Role Model Hermit, those are well worth looking up as a companion listen. Or maybe you can hold out for the inevitable deluxe edition... (Dave)
Album from an upcoming/recent show: DOOMED! by Open Mike Eagle and Kenny Segal: “I’m Open Mike Eagle. You know, I should say my name more. Rappers usually say their name a lot.”
This is more or less the first thing Open Mike said to a crowd at a recent show in Tucson, about 20 minutes into a set in which he was opening for Clipping (and following a truly bizarre dissonant cello and guitar duo called Pedestrian Deposit; sometimes I feel like I really am getting too old). Now, this is an MC who once rapped, “So just let me introduce myself/my name is Open Michael/And it’s pronounced like it was fired from a broken rifle.” So he’s not really the guy you’re thinking about to drop his name followed by “Where the ladies at? Let me hear you say ‘hey, ho, hey, ho…’.” But I guess it’s good to know at least he’s thinking about it.
Remembering that pounding his chest and saying his name is what he’s supposed to do more or less 15 years into his career helps to explain why Open Mike is where he is, and also what makes him such a unique force in hip-hop. He’s less focused on bragging about his sexual, financial, or other conquests than admitting how he’s stumbled along the way and how self-conscious he is at more or less every moment. Luckily, those admissions usually come with off-beat humor, which is what makes him an essential listen, especially if you’re in the 6OG demographic.
Writing about middle age and, more specifically, middle age emotional problems is, well, not always the most riveting or engaging material for any artist, but especially not a male rapper. Need to bleat about the heartbreak of another divorce, the challenges of finding a primary care physician, the pluses and minuses of your couples therapist, or getting used to watching movies by yourself? Hard to see the kids pulsing to those lines in the club; probably time to pick up an acoustic guitar and head to the, umm, open mic night at the local coffeehouse.
Luckily, Open Mike has instead shown us that middle age travails can also be the stuff of great hiphop. As Brian hinted at in discussing Pat McAfee’s “record” (again, if you still haven’t, I mean it — please stop reading this now and do that immediately), working through the challenges of middle age and want you want people to know about your life is a complex question. You can choose to do what McAfee did (hopefully no one else ever does that, though where will we get good material to write about if they don’t?) and churn out bro-country bravado, you can do what some older rappers do and yell at the sky about “things today ain’t what they used to be” (e.g., Chuck D’s rant about age-ism or Mike D’s coming rant about crypto), or you can just be honest. As he says on the incredibly well-titled Schrödinger’s Green Room: “I ain’t mysterious/ I’m neither hardcore nor fake serious/I make what I make, period.” As they used to say in the old school, damn straight he does.
DOOMED! is a brilliant record. Pairing up with producer Kenny Segal, it’s my favorite of his solo records since the 2020 release Anime, Trauma, and Divorce, and it shares a lot in common with that album (his collaboration with Video Dave and Still Rift as the group Previous Industries was a more recent highlight). DOOMED! and Anime are both break-up records with darker themes, mixed flows and rhythms, biting humor, and undoubtedly the only MC who consistently includes multiple references to his primary care physician and insurance plans (which he did brilliantly as well on one of his best-ever tracks, WTF is Self-Care).
Open Mike, honestly, doesn’t put on much of a show, which you can sorta tell from the picture. He serves as his own DJ live, and he brings up beats on an iPad or laptop while he works his way through his songs, without adding or amending too much. That means the lyrics have to be compelling enough to keep you focused during the set. Luckily they do just that. In “Out to Lunch,” the lead track on the album (which came a few songs into the set), the first verse alone gets your attention with lines like “I did the Roger Rabbit/Got framed” and “Used to be known for my chase/I slowed down like LeBron,” a line that got a loud laugh/cheer from the crowd, since LeBron had announced his signing with the 76ers (take that, Knicks fan Brian) just days before.
Before getting around to introducing himself, Mike worked through some older classics and then dove into several new tracks. “Unfinished Concrete Initials” has a signature Kenny Segal beat, one that makes you set to hear billy woods or ELUCID come in, rather than an MC with a more upbeat, boom-bap delivery like Open Mike. Then Mike’s bars come in, more muted than usual in volume, creating an eventual contrast when his usual style comes in. It takes a certain level of MC to take a beat that feels better for someone else and wrestle it into his own. The lyrics are tough, from the image of starting to write his name in concrete before the pipe gets stuck to lines like “Agonizing over deletions/Flushing evidence, pain is better in secret.” But the brilliance comes in not just writing sad lines but the way he can integrate scattered, random thoughts: “We should’ve taken more photos/That dude Bad Bunny’s a genius/In my daydreams your name’s curse words so I bleeped it.”
“Don’t Go Look” has a beat that feels fuzzy and, if you can say this about a beat, has this sense that it’s out of focus. Again, signature Kenny Segal but less so Open Mike. But that’s where the honesty comes in, along with the somewhat out of place cultural and sports references: “Dumb questions with worse answers/Sellin’ dreams and buyin’ Pampers/Bad Bunnies and sex panthers/Some dude that looked like Kam Chancellor.” And while a younger MC — or, honestly, most men — would blame the woman for the break-up and all of his problems, Mike takes it inward: “Lord, give me the strength not to go see/I think I got what I want/I’m pretty sure I got what I asked for.”
The record has plenty of other great moments. “The Many Hustles of My Lonely Time Traveling Uncle” is a refreshing breather from the relationship talk that will certainly take you back, as Mike regales us with tales of a ne’er-do-well relative who tried every hustle: “In the eighties, a Mercedes, from holding various Beanie Babies/Comic book collecting, I love her, always hunt for number ones with polychrome covers/I did the wop and the robot, was first on the block with a raspberry Blow Pop/Had the CD changer, Billy Joel’s Stranger, Blahzay’s Danger/Platinum nativity scene, cash in the manger/Dry-cleaned hankies of all five Power Rangers.”
“Science Fiction/Fantasy” analyzes the failed marriage through the lens of concepts like gravitational pull and the quiet of space. “She Swear I’m Colorblind” is a slower, almost plodding track, where the horns feel like heavy sighs or burdened exhales. Just when you are feeling weighed down by the vibe, billy woods comes in as only he can: “Miranda might go silent.” Later, in “Sweetheart Jail,” Mike comes back to that reference: “Your sweetheart’s sitting in a jail/That you made (You haven’t read the Miranda Rights).”
The title track is the perfect example. In the first part, he tries to make light of all of it:
“I broke up with my therapist, she used to repeat herself but wasn’t aware of it”
“Check-in, where we at?/On my last nerve/Gotta stop kickin’ it, diagnosed bone-spurs/When my marriage ended, I had to break up with my primary care physician ‘cause I was on her insurance
“I’ve been a beggar and I’ve been a chooser/shootin’ my shot like the end of Hoosiers”
And then he comes back in to own up to how he really feels:
I’m just bullshittin’, this shit really sucks/This breakup shit is ass, this shit is truly ass--it’s ass/That shit about breakin’ up with my primary care physician?/That shit was ass, it was not good, it was fucked up/Breakups are fucked up, fuck what--the rest of what I said”
In the world of the 30-and-40-something MCs in a certain corner of the underground — like billy woods, ELUCID, Quelle Chris, Yr Old Droog, ShrapKnel — Open Mike has always felt like a core part of it, but also distinct. All of those other MCs will throw in a funny line here and there, but Open Mike is rooted in humor. The humor can well be dark at times, but the humor is the point. It’s what he wraps himself in but also realizes it’s what he needs to own up to. Perhaps that’s what he’s meant by the Open in Open Mike. Either way, hopefully you’ll remember his name. (Brad)
Album being rediscovered (at least 10 years old): Headquarters by The Monkees. A family beach trip can sometimes be considered a vacation in name only. The logistics, the planning, making sure everyone under the age of 18 is entertained.
You’re three days into the trip before you realize that neither your about-to-be-in-high-school son, nor his two friends who joined him on this trip, put sheets on their beds. Sheets that your wife dutifully packed and handed to them on arrival at this condo right on the beach. Three pubescent boys sharing a room and sleeping on bare mattresses in a rental property. Yuck. Get me outta here.
Thankfully when your children are older – this wonderful but apparently disgusting young man is, in fact, the youngest of our three children – there are more opportunities for Mom and Dad to escape and have some adult fun. Sometimes this means enjoying a cocktail or three at a beach bar, eating extremely unhealthy food and people-watching. Sometimes this means an evening stop at an off-the-boardwalk upscale bar/restaurant where you get to make new friends by inserting yourselves into a discussion about whether Nirvana is a Gen X or Millenial band (I believe we were proven right on the former). And if you’re me, and you’re lucky, sometimes this means popping into the local record store.
I’ve written previously about hitting up record stores on my travels. Shout out to Extended Play in Rehoboth Beach! One lazy late, slightly buzzed afternoon I spent way too much time there combing through the bargain and used records, and in the end spent way too much money because I couldn’t resist grabbing that reissue of Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet. But I was heartened to see a good number of young people checking out the vinyl and I came away with some used gems at reasonable prices – Mendocino by The Sir Douglas Quintet, ZZ Top’s Fandango!, and of course I snatched up Warren Zevon’s Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School for $10.
Those three albums are great (and my love for Zevon is well-documented and unparalleled by anyone not named Letterman). But the real bargain, the McDonald’s Value Meal of this shopping spree, was picking up The Monkees’ third album, Headquarters. If you can think of a better use for $4, I’d like to hear it.
For most people reading this Substack, The Monkees need little-to-no introduction. Mike Nesmith, Davy Jones, Mickey Dolenz, Peter Tork. “The Prefab Four.” Daydream Believer. Last Train to Clarksville. TV show ran from 1966-1968 and was then revived by MTV in 1986. As with reruns of the Adam West Batman show, the return of The Monkees allowed Gen X kids the opportunity live out the experiences of their Boomer parents getting high while watching these shows. (Side note: this is what passed for parent-teen bonding in the ‘80s.)
Headquarters, however, might require some more context. The Monkees did not play instruments or write most of the songs on their first two albums. Brill Building songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart wrote most of the songs, while Neil Sedaka, Carole King, Neil Diamond, and Carole Bayer Sager were among the team of songwriters that contributed to the first two records (they weren’t all named Neil or Carole). The only Monkee to receive a solo songwriting credit on either record was Mike Nesmith, who contributed “Papa Gene’s Blues” to 1966’s The Monkees and “Mary, Mary” to 1967’s More of The Monkees (the latter of which, having already been covered by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and later adapted into a Run-DMC song of the same name, likely added to Nesmith’s Liquid Paper inheritance).
Disputes with manager/producer Don Kirshner – likely fueled by the mockery The Monkees received for their minimal involvement in the first two albums – led to the band getting full creative control over their third album, 1967’s Headquarters. This meant the band played instruments on almost all of the tracks (except “Shades of Gray”) and wrote half of the songs (they continued to utilize outside songwriters on seven of the 14 songs).
Headquarters was released on May 22, 1967, and it was a hit. It eventually went to #1 on the charts. A week later, however, it was supplanted by a little record called Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The two bands then occupied the top two spots on the charts for the next 11 weeks – The Beatles at #1 and their TV doppelgangers at #2.
The Monkees obviously present a fascinating story, but how should Headquarters be remembered as a standalone album?
The Monkees are a band known more for their pop hits, although later reappraisals have been kinder to the band and their pop culture influence. Many of The Monkees’ well-known hits that preceded Headquarters were crafted without their participation beyond vocals. The most popular song from the album was “Randy Scouse Git,” which reached #2 in the UK but failed to chart in the US and likely wouldn’t be mentioned if you asked anyone over age 50 to name five Monkees songs. Even the next two Monkees albums – 1967’s Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. and 1968’s The Birds, the Bees & the Monkees – included “Pleasant Valley Sunday” on the former and “Daydream Believer” on the latter. So, again, how should Headquarters be remembered?
OK, let’s start by dispensing with the obvious – the creation of The Monkees was a cynical exercise in co-opting youth culture. Plain and simple. From The Archies to The Monkees to ‘80s bubblegum pop to hip hop to post-grunge to boy bands to garage rock to K-pop, older music execs have consistently found a way to repackage a sanded-down version of something young people already liked. If they didn’t, they would cease to be music execs. But that doesn’t mean the musicians themselves – in this case, The Monkees – are necessarily culpable (an occasional Milli Vanilli or Vanilla Ice notwithstanding). Therefore, Headquarters can be discussed on its own artistic merit rather than as part of a continuum of record company and TV network greed.
Because the members of The Monkees didn’t come together organically, they each brought a different musical sensibility and their first project with full control predictably lacked cohesion. With hindsight, this lack of a unified vision makes Headquarters interesting if not always effective.
The album opens with the Nesmith-penned-and-sung “You Told Me,” a Merseybeat-style song of failed love (“You told me you’d always stay, you told me / You told me you’d never stray, you told me”) with a guitar intro that, if you squint really hard, maybe, possibly, could have had some influence on Pete Townshend when writing the opening acoustic chords to “Pinball Wizard.” This is followed by “If I Spend My Life With You,” written by Boyce and Hart with Dolenz on vocals. It’s largely acoustic and the first of several tracks on Headquarters with a twangy country-rock tone that Nesmith brought to the sessions (at least on songs he didn’t sing) and that balances out Tork’s folk-rock tendencies.
“Band 6” is an instrumental jam credited to the four members of The Monkees. Not so much a song as a 39-second interlude consisting of country-rock guitar noodling, Mickey Dolenz figuring out a drum part, and in-studio chatter. It feels strategically-placed to make The Monkees seem like an actual band. If the decision to include “Band 6” had been made by Kirshner or someone else at the record company, I’d deride it as a cynical ploy. Since it came from the musicians themselves it instead comes off as endearing.
“You Just May Be The One” is another Nesmith Merseybeat track, a well-written pop-rock song that today would likely earn the backhanded compliment of “Temu Beatles.” That said, Nesmith’s guitar playing backed by the rhythm section of Tork and Dolenz represents the type of music that would go on to influence a multitude of power pop bands over the next several decades.
The Davy Jones-sung “Forget That Girl” is, not surprisingly, more of a straight pop song. Transport this song 10 years into the future and Jones’ whispery vocals over pseudo-Bossa nova rhythm and Southern California strumming wouldn’t seem out of place on a late ‘70s hit that later found itself on the Yacht Rock station. Equally poppy is Jones’ “I Can’t Get Her Off My Mind,” except here the song is candy-coated and finger-snapping and head-bopping side-to-side. All that’s missing is Marcia Brady.
Jones and Tork share vocals on “Shades of Gray,” swapping verses. The music combines elements of chamber pop and country-rock, with the lyrics an attempt at seriousness and nuance (“I remember when the answers seemed so clear/We had never lived with doubt or tasted fear/It was easy then to tell truth from lies/Selling out from compromise”). It’s a little forced and might have been in Spinal Tap’s crosshairs when they wrote “(Listen to the) Flower People.”
“For Pete’s Sake” – which became the TV show’s closing theme in its second season – is written by Tork, features Dolenz on vocals, and is a bouncy pop-rock number that expresses ‘60s optimism and, with the benefit of a ton of hindsight, ‘60s self-absorption (“In this generation/We will make the world shine”). Little did they know.
“Sunny Girlfriend” finally shows Nesmith channeling The Byrds on a song that he sings. “Zilch” is another interlude and its biggest claim to fame is influencing Del Tha Funky Homosapien’s “Mistadobolina.” “Mr. Webster,” written by Boyce and Hart and sung by Dolenz, is a British Invasion-meets-SoCal track about a man who “worked at the bank for 40 years,” “thwarted 27 robberies” without getting a raise, and robbed the bank upon his retirement party.
Headquarters closes with the aforementioned “Randy Scouse Git,” which stands out precisely because of how bizarre it is. The verses are bouncy and describe and upscale party featuring, among others, the actual Fab Four (“It’s too easy humming songs to a girl in a yellow dress / It’s been a long time since the party and the room is in a mess / The four kings of E.M.I. are sitting stately on the floor / There are birds out on the sidewalk and a valet at the door”). The chorus, however, is a blistering and fiery freak-out and has no connection to the rest of the song (“Why don’t you be like me? / Why don’t you stop and see? / Why don’t you hate who I hate, kill who I kill to be free?”). Is it possible The Monkees actually invented loud-quiet-loud? Only kidding. Kind of.
So how should Headquarters be remembered, focusing solely on the music? It’s an imperfect album but an admirable effort by The Monkees to show that they could be a real band. Several of the tracks – particularly “You Just May Be The One” and “For Pete’s Sake” – stand with any of the band’s more famous hit singles. “Randy Scouse Git” is a bonkers experiment that found an audience in the UK. And “Sunny Girlfriend” showed that The Monkees had the potential, not to mention the awareness of certain changing styles, to move past pop-rock into more country-rock styles.
Unfortunately, Headquarters had the misfortune to be culturally overtaken not just by a better album, but by an album that, for a long time, was considered to be the greatest of all time (and still is by many). Does this mean that, if not for Sgt. Pepper, we’d remember Headquarters as a masterpiece? Probably not. But the towering presence of The Beatles’ achievement likely prevented some of the songs on Headquarters from gaining more of a following, rendering the album more of a footnote than a stepping stone in the band’s development.
The Monkees deserved their post-MTV critical reappraisal, not all of which can be chalked up solely to Boomer nostalgia. Similarly, Headquarters has its charms and deserves a revisit by anyone with an interest in ‘60s pop-rock. It certainly merited $4 at a Rehoboth Beach record store. (Brian)
