Portland, Oregon music giant,
Scott McCaughey, inducted into
the state’s Music Hall of Fame in 2022,
founder of The Young Fresh Fellows,
once an auxiliary member of R.E.M.,
frequent collaborator and friend
of Peter Buck and English rocker Robyn
Hitchcock, has been over the last few
decades writing and recording under
the band name The Minus 5.
I have a handful of CD’s by the band,
but the only vinyl I have is this strange
and wonderful tribute album to
The Monkees and some other musical
notables who I’d guess were big
influences for Scott McCaughey.
The album is called Of Monkees and
Men, and it is not an album
of cover tunes, but rather,
tribute songs about these artists,
side one dedicated solely to the
various members of The Monkees
(say it with me, Mike, Davy, Peter,
and Micky), and their longtime
songwriting team, Tommy Boyce
and Bobby Hart, while side two is
dedicated to the likes of Jimmy Silva,
Robert Ryan, Richmond Fontaine
(well known musicians and an actor),
and a childhood friend, John Weymer,
who was not a well known musician
or an actor, but rather a person who
nevertheless had a huge impact on
Scott’s musical development.
I don’t know if you’ll ever hear a song
written about a musician by another musician
as long or as detailed or as laudatory and
funny as the opening track on this album,
“Michael Nesmith.” It’s 9 minutes and 15
seconds of seemingly encyclopedic and
arcane knowledge about all things Michael
Nesmith, while Davy Jones gets 3:27 of
musical tribute with the catchy chorus of
“Davy gets the girl.” Peter Tork gets a
song about his workman-like approach
to his art and life. And Micky Dolenz gets
a song called “Micky’s A Cool Drummer.”
I mean, while Nesmith’s tribute is un-
deniably epic, each song on side one
of this album speaks about a Monkee
and their famous songwriting team
in respectful, humorous, and loving ways.
Side 2 of the album does a similar
thing with these four other influential
figures, although going in I was only
familiar with one of these individuals,
Richard Fontaine, another local Portland
musical legend about which I knew and
still know very little.
This is not my favorite album from
The Minus 5, but it is a very groovy
collection of rock songs that are
drawing on a variety of vibes, often
approximating stylistically the
subject matter for each song, i.e.
Michael Nesmith’s tune is a kind
of country jam, Davy’s tune is pure
bubble gum, and Richmond Fontaine’s
tribute is a kind of Beatle-esque
psychedelic thing. There’s no throw
away tunes on this record, appropriate,
one would guess, for an album whose
sole purpose is to honor a number
of musical heroes. But my chief
attraction to this record to begin
with is that I am also a lover of all
things Monkees–as will be revealed
after just a few more artists coming
up in the M section of the alphabet.
Notes on the vinyl edition: Of Monkees and Men, Yep Roc Records, 2016, black vinyl.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
michael jarmer 