Matthew Flinders Girls High, Geelong, 1977

For a brief period in the late 1970s, a local high school hall was a concert venue. For Marcia Hines, for Michael Nesmith. Maybe a few others too.

The former Monkee had played rather grander venues, but he seemed pretty comfortable up there on the graduation stage. I was just a few rows from the front. Stage right, near the guitarist, Al Perkins.

Perkins spent one song (maybe a slowed -down version of Shelly’s Blues) fiddling with his amp, adjusting things, trying to work things out. At the end of the song Perkins nodded to Nesmith. Nesmith turned to the audience: “Well, let’s do that song again, with Al back onboard!”

A novice concert-goer, I thought bands were supposed to be spot-on all the time. No hiccups. No mistakes. No admissions of errors or technical glitches. The relaxed nature of the gig was happily disarming.

Nesmith carried this approach into the concert album he recorded on that tour at The Palais, in Melbourne. In his liner notes he recalls: “After the show we all sat outside in the recording truck and listened back to what we had done. It was better than we had hoped, and worse…some of the things were too awful to let go by. For instance, on the last verse of Shelly’s Blues I sang so terribly off pitch that I couldn’t stand it. And the very last note I sang on that song, just crawled right out of the woodwork. So I re-did that live in a studio so it’s at least listenable…”

The album’s not perfect, but that’s part of its charm. (A critic complained that you could hear the trams rumbling outside along The Esplanade.)

People are not perfect. Musicians are not perfect. Recordings are not perfect.

It’s this humility that drew me to Nesmith. Plus Propinquity, Joanne, Silver Moon, Roll With The Flow, Calico Girlfriend, Different Drum…

Nesmith’s final show was less than a month ago, when he and fellow former Monkee drummer Mickey Dolenz ended a farewell tour at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on November 14.

Farewell, Michael Nesmith.

Stereo Story #642


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Vin is founding editor of Stereo Stories and director/MC of Stereo Stories In Concert.