The 1960s moved very fast. The Bea­t­les start­ed 1963 as four fresh­ly scrubbed mop­tops from Liv­er­pool. By 1968 they were hairy hip­pies dab­bling in drugs and mys­ti­cism. (And writ­ing some of the best music of all time, don’t get me wrong!). Then there were the Mon­kees. Cre­at­ed by Bob Rafel­son and Bert Schnei­der in 1966 as a lov­ing homage to the Bea­t­les 1964–65 Richard Lester films, it too quick­ly changed. By 1968, the show and the band had run its course. There was already no cul­tur­al space for four lov­able…any­things. And while many ele­ments killed the opti­mism and rad­i­cal hope of the 1960s–Vietnam, bad acid, Man­son, Alta­mont–hats off to Head, the cult movie that anni­hi­lat­ed The Mon­kees as a band, the band movie as a con­cept, and the con­cept of light enter­tain­ment as being on the side of the view­er. Obscen­i­ty, who real­ly cares? asked Dylan a few years before. Pro­pa­gan­da, all is pho­ny. That’s Head.

What’s inter­est­ing about the Head sto­ry is try­ing to fig­ure out the moti­va­tions of sev­er­al of the play­ers. The Mon­kees them­selves were tired of being seen as an ersatz band, although by all accounts they were. Rafel­son and com­pa­ny audi­tioned young actors and musi­cians and assem­bled the top four into the band/TV show. Most of the songs were writ­ten by Tin Pan Alley stal­warts like Neil Dia­mond or Car­ole King, or up and com­ing artists like Har­ry Nils­son. By being a fake band for two sea­sons of their show, how­ev­er, the Mon­kees had turned into a real band. But what they were turn­ing into was not the Mon­kees that the teens loved. Who had the appetite for destruc­tion first? The mon­ster? Or the mad sci­en­tists?

Hav­ing con­quered tele­vi­sion and the radio—-the Mon­kees had kept the Bea­t­les and the Stones out of the Num­ber One posi­tion in 1966-—Rafelson sought to con­quer film, and by doing so, offer up a mea cul­pa of sorts: yes, this group was a pre­fab­ri­ca­tion. Yes, we’re going to tear it all down. Inspired by exper­i­men­tal film­mak­ers like Stan Brakhage and Ken­neth Anger, Rafel­son, the band, and up-and-com­ing actor Jack Nichol­son decamped in ear­ly 1968 to a resort motel in Ojai, CA. There they smoked a lot of weed, and record­ed hours of con­ver­sa­tions. Nichol­son and Rafel­son lat­er dosed LSD and fash­ioned the tapes into a script.

Head is con­struct­ed in vignettes, jump­ing thru gen­res like a per­son with an itchy remote con­trol fin­ger. Vin­tage movie clips and crass com­mer­cials inter­rupt the action. The television—-which both sold hap­py pro­pa­gan­da along­side har­row­ing clips from Viet­nam to Amer­i­cans every night—-is not to be trust­ed.

“The band is con­stant­ly being chased, attacked, torn apart, caged, sucked up in a giant vac­u­um and impris­oned in a big black box that reap­pears through­out the movie,” crit­ic Petra May­er wrote in 2018, look­ing back at the cult film. “They can’t escape — not with phi­los­o­phy, not with force. They nev­er escape.”

A year ear­li­er the Bea­t­les had real­ized their own trap, and escaped thru the pos­i­tive mag­ic of Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. In 1968, the Mon­kees didn’t get the lux­u­ry. Self-aware­ness and self-destruc­tion con­tin­ues as an occa­sion­al career move by unhap­py pop artists-—Pink Floyd, Prince, Garth Brooks, David Bowie-—but the Mon­kees destroyed them­selves first, and most spec­tac­u­lar­ly. Head cost $750,000 to make, and made $16,000 back.

“Most of our fans could­n’t get in because there was an age restric­tion and the intel­li­gentsia would­n’t go to see it any­way because they hat­ed the Mon­kees,” said Dolenz. Rafel­son and Nichol­son made out okay. They would go on to Easy Rid­er and estab­lish their film careers. The Mon­kees? Not as much.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, the one Mon­kee who spoke well of the film’s cult lega­cy was their most crit­i­cal mem­ber, Michael Nesmith.

“It has a life that comes from lit­er­a­ture,” he told inter­view­er Doug Gor­don. “It has a life that comes from fic­tion. It has a life that comes from fan­ta­sy and the deep troves of mak­ing up sto­ries and nar­ra­tive. But it was telling a nar­ra­tive, but the nar­ra­tive that it was telling was very, very dif­fer­ent than the one the tele­vi­sion show was.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Frank Zap­pa Play Michael Nesmith (RIP) on The Monkees–and Vice Ver­sa (1967)

Jimi Hen­drix Opens for The Mon­kees on a 1967 Tour; Then After 8 Shows, Flips Off the Crowd and Quits

Watch the Last Time Peter Tork (RIP) & The Mon­kees Played Togeth­er Dur­ing Their 1960s Hey­day: It’s a Psy­che­del­ic Freak­out

How a Fake Car­toon Band Made “Sug­ar Sug­ar” the Biggest Sell­ing Hit Sin­gle of 1969

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

From Play­ing for Change comes this: “When The Lev­ee Breaks is a pow­er­ful, thought-pro­vok­ing and emo­tion­al­ly-charged clas­sic by Led Zep­pelin, from their Led Zep­pelin IV album. The song is a rework of the 1929 release by Kansas Joe McCoy and Mem­phis Min­nie about the Great Mis­sis­sip­pi Flood of 1927; the most destruc­tive riv­er flood­ing in U.S. his­to­ry.” In the accom­pa­ny­ing video above, we can see pow­er­ful scenes from the Kat­ri­na Flood of 2005–and Jones get­ting accom­pa­nied by “Stephen Perkins of Jane’s Addic­tion, Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks and over 20 musi­cians and dancers from sev­en dif­fer­ent coun­tries.”

Find more Play­ing for Change per­for­mances in the Relat­eds below.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

“Stand By Me” Sung By Musi­cians Around the World

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played By Musi­cians Around the World (with Cameos by David Cros­by, Jim­my Buf­fett & Bill Kreutz­mann)

Musi­cians Around the World Play The Band’s Clas­sic Song, “The Weight,” with Help from Rob­bie Robert­son and Ringo Starr

The Riot Grrrl move­ment feels like one of the last real rev­o­lu­tions in rock and punk, and not just because of its fem­i­nist, anti-cap­i­tal­ist pol­i­tics. As Poly­phon­ic out­lines in his short music his­to­ry video, Riot Grrrl was one of the last times any­thing major hap­pened in rock music before the inter­net. And it’s espe­cial­ly thrilling because it all start­ed with *zines*.

Women in the punk scene had a right to com­plain. Bands and their fans were very male, and sex­u­al harass­ment was chron­ic at shows, leav­ing most women stand­ing at the back of the crowd. Some zines even spelled it out: “Punks Are Not Girls,” says one.

Alien­at­ed from the scene but still fans at heart, Tobi Vail and Kath­leen Han­na, already pro­duc­ing their own fem­i­nist zines, joined forces to release “Biki­ni Kill” a gath­er­ing of lyrics, essays, con­fes­sion­als, appro­pri­at­ed quotes, plugs for Vail’s oth­er zine “Jig­saw”, and a sense that some­thing was hap­pen­ing. Some­thing was chang­ing in rock cul­ture. Kim Deal of the Pix­ies and Kim Gor­don of Son­ic Youth were heroes, Poly Styrene of X‑Ray Spex was a leg­end, and Yoko Ono “paved the way in more ways than one for us angry grrl rock­ers.” Anoth­er zine, “Girl Germs,” was cre­at­ed by Alli­son Wolfe and Mol­ly Neu­man.

Biki­ni Kill the zine led to Biki­ni Kill the band in 1990, and their song “Rebel Girl” became an anthem of a new fem­i­nist rock move­ment focused main­ly in the Pacif­ic North­west, around the same time as grunge.

Wolfe and Neu­man, joined by Erin Smith, formed Brat­mo­bile in 1991. K Records founder Calvin John­son had asked them to play sup­port for Biki­ni Kill, and out of necessity—Wolfe first admit­ted they were a “fake band”—they grabbed rehearsal space and became a “real” band on the spot. “Some­thing in me clicked,” Wolfe said. “Like, okay, if most boy punk rock bands just lis­ten to the Ramones and that’s how they write their songs, then we’ll do the oppo­site and I won’t lis­ten to any Ramones and that way we’ll sound dif­fer­ent.”

The bur­geon­ing scene need­ed a man­i­festo, and it got one in “Biki­ni Kill” issue #2. The Riot Grrrl Man­i­festo staked out a space that was against “racism, able-bod­ieism, ageism, speciesism, clas­sism, thin­ism, sex­ism, anti-semi­tism and het­ero­sex­ism” as well as “cap­i­tal­ism in all its forms.” It ends with: “BECAUSE I believe with my whole­heart­mind­body that girls con­sti­tute a rev­o­lu­tion­ary soul force that can, and will change the world for real.”

The man­i­festo (and the very healthy Pacif­ic North­west live scene) spawned a move­ment, even bring­ing with it bands that had been around pre­vi­ous­ly, like L7. Riot Grrrl set out to ele­vate women’s voic­es and music, with­out capit­u­lat­ing to male stan­dards, and return to the DIY and col­lec­tive ener­gy of the ear­ly punk scene. It also brought fem­i­nist the­o­ry out of the col­leges and onto the stage, and with it queer the­o­ry and dia­log about trau­ma, rape, and abuse—everything main­stream cul­ture would rather not talk about. Like the orig­i­nal punk scene in the 1970s, it burned bright­ly and flamed out. But it inspired gen­er­a­tions of bands, from Sleater-Kin­ney to White Lung, as well as non-rock music like the Elec­tro­clash move­ment.

Read a zine from the time, or lis­ten to the lyrics of Riot Grrrl bands and you will hear the same dis­course, and rec­og­nize the same tac­tics, as today. In some ways it feels even more rad­i­cal now-—that hum­ble, pho­to­copied zines could affect a whole scene and not be atom­ized by social media.

To delve deep­er, check out the New York Times’ Riot Grrl Essen­tial Lis­ten­ing Guide.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All 80 Issues of the Influ­en­tial Zine Punk Plan­et Are Now Online & Ready for Down­load at the Inter­net Archive

Down­load 834 Rad­i­cal Zines From a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Online Archive: Glob­al­iza­tion, Punk Music, the Indus­tri­al Prison Com­plex & More

How Nirvana’s Icon­ic “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Came to Be: An Ani­mat­ed Video Nar­rat­ed by T‑Bone Bur­nett Tells the True Sto­ry

33 Songs That Doc­u­ment the His­to­ry of Fem­i­nist Punk (1975–2015): A Playlist Curat­ed by Pitch­fork

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Pub­lic Domain Day is not just about the famous works that get released—-this year Mil­ne’s Win­nie-the-Pooh and Hemingway’s The Sun Also Ris­es were the best known-—but the archives that sud­den­ly open up when any poten­tial argu­ment over copy­right bypass­es its sell-by date.

For exam­ple, Harvard’s Loeb Music Library has just released a selec­tion from its 600-vol­ume 78rpm col­lec­tion of Arab and Arab-Amer­i­can music from the ear­ly 20th Cen­tu­ry. The Library’s col­lec­tion spans rough­ly 1903 to the 1950s and is not just a record of the aes­thet­ics and the time of the Nah­dah Era (the Arab Renais­sance), but it also serves as a his­to­ry of the still-young music indus­try. Among the RCA, Colum­bia, and Vic­tor labels, you will also find many inde­pen­dent (and boot­leg!) labels.

Harvard’s web­site notes:

Arab record com­pa­nies, such as Baidaphon and Cairophon, are only a few among many oth­er Amer­i­can (Colum­bia, Vic­tor), Euro­pean (Odeon, Orfeon), and Arab-Amer­i­can com­pa­nies (Al-Chark, Alam­phon) that record­ed and released these notable Arab voic­es. Songs and per­form­ers from Egypt, Syr­ia, Lebanon, Pales­tine, Iraq and Al-Maghrib exhib­it the rich tra­di­tion of Ara­bic musi­cal forms, name­ly the art of al-mawwāl (vocal impro­vi­sa­tion), qaṣī­dah (sung poems), muwashshaḥ (Andalu­sian sung poet­ry), ṭaqṭūqah (pop songs) and taqsīm (instru­men­tal impro­vi­sa­tion. Reli­gious chants are also an impor­tant piece of the Ara­bic musi­cal tra­di­tion. The col­lec­tion includes Qur’anic recita­tion of Al-shaykh Ṭāhā Al-Fash­nī and a rare record of a woman reciter Wadū­dah Al-Minyalawī along­side Chris­t­ian hymns of Father Gigis ʻAzīz Al-Jiz­zīnī.

A selec­tion of record­ings are avail­able here for both online lis­ten­ing and down­load, using the Aviary Plat­form.

All this is hap­pen­ing due to the Music Mod­ern­iza­tion Act of 2018, which dif­fers in its pub­lic-domain release dates by a few years com­pared to print and film. Accord­ing to Cit­i­zen DJ, a web­site we told you about sev­er­al years ago, “all sound record­ings pub­lished before Jan­u­ary 1, 1923 entered the pub­lic domain on Jan­u­ary 1, 2022.”

The trick of course is get­ting access to all of these record­ings. The Library of Con­gress runs a site called The Nation­al Juke­box, with access to thou­sands of 78rpm records from Vic­tor and Colum­bia labels. That allows you to lis­ten but not down­load.

The Asso­ci­a­tion for Record­ed Sound Col­lec­tions also has a page not­ing “Ten Notable Pre-1923 Record­ings”, which ben­e­fits from its cura­tion. It fea­tures impor­tant ear­ly works like Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues,” one of the most pop­u­lar “race records” (i.e. vocal blues sung by Black per­form­ers) of 1920; Enri­co Caruso’s “Vesti La Giub­ba,” which fea­tures the tenor at the height of his career; and Vess L. Ossman’s record­ing of Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag,” which helped pop­u­lar­ize the com­pos­er. Also see our recent post: 400,000+ Sound Record­ings Made Before 1923 Have Entered the Pub­lic Domain.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s Enter­ing the Pub­lic Domain in 2022: The Sun Also Ris­es, Win­nie-the-Pooh, Buster Keaton Come­dies & More

Meet the Oud, the “King of All Instru­ments” Whose Ori­gins Stretch Back 3500 Years Ago to Ancient Per­sia

The Great Gats­by Is Now in the Pub­lic Domain and There’s a New Graph­ic Nov­el

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.