Friday, September 17, 2010

Magnetic South

My next album from 1970 is Mike Nesmith's Magnetic South



Some people claim (as I'm claiming right now) that Mike Nesmith is the true father of country rock. I used to say that Gene Clark's first solo LP was the first country rock album, but Nesmith did "Papa Gene's Blues" on the first Monkees LP, many months before that.

And continued to do country-rock songs for years after that. Nez released two albums in 1970 (Magnetic South and Loose Salute) which I've got on a 2-fer CD, but the former album seems to be a lot stronger than the latter one. It has a handful of songs that Nesmith wrote for the Monkees that they never put out, and his contributions were the best things on those post-'67 Monkees albums.

Here's a latter day performance of his big hit single "Joanne"



Did you know that Mickey and Davey released a "Monkees" album in 1970 with Jeff Barry & Andy Kim after Pete & Mike left the band? It's called Changes, and not surprisingly, it's .. not very good.

2 comments:

Ian Gordon Craig said...

"the true father of country rock" was Don Everly.

Steve said...

Does that make Phil the "true uncle" of country rock.