The Prison - A Book With A Soundtrack
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The Prison - A Book With A Soundtrack
''The Prison - A Book with a Soundtrack'' (or simply ''The Prison'') is Michael Nesmith's seventh solo album of his post-Monkees career and his first to be released under his own record label, Pacific Arts. It includes a novella meant to be read while listening to the album as its "soundtrack". Nesmith recorded a companion novella/album entitled '' The Garden'', released in 1994. According to Nesmith's website (Videoranch), a third installment titled ''The Ocean'' has been released and completes the Infinitia trilogy ''The Prison'' and ''The Garden'' were re-released together on CD in 2004 by Video Ranch. Critical reception Allmusic called ''The Prison'' "a brilliant multimedia concept marrying the personal and inner visual experience of Michael "Papa Nez" Nesmith's novella with the aural medium of an equally original soundtrack." Robert Christgau called it a "ghastly boxed audio-allegory-with-book." Remixes "The Prison" was dramatically remixed by Michael Nesmith for CD relea ...
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Michael Nesmith
Robert Michael Nesmith or Mike Nesmith, (December 30, 1942 – December 10, 2021) was an American musician, songwriter, and actor. He was best known as a member of the pop rock band the Monkees and co-star of the TV series ''The Monkees'' (1966–1968). His songwriting credits include "Different Drum," which became a hit for Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys. After the break-up of the Monkees, Nesmith continued his successful songwriting and performing career, first with the seminal country rock group the First National Band, with whom he had a top-40 hit, " Joanne", and then as a solo artist. He often played a custom-built Gretsch 12-string electric with the Monkees and afterwards. Nesmith founded Pacific Arts, a multimedia production and distribution company, in 1974, through which he helped pioneer the music video format. He created one of the first American television programs dedicated to music videos, ''PopClips'', which aired on Nickelodeon in 1980. He was asked to he ...
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Rock (music)
Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States and United Kingdom.W. E. Studwell and D. F. Lonergan, ''The Classic Rock and Roll Reader: Rock Music from its Beginnings to the mid-1970s'' (Abingdon: Routledge, 1999), p.xi It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the blues and rhythm and blues genres of African-American music and from country music. Rock also drew strongly from a number of other genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical, and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock has centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar, drums, and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a time signature using a verse–chorus form, but ...
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Country Music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, old-time, and American folk music forms including Appalachian, Cajun, Creole, and the cowboy Western music styles of Hawaiian, New Mexico, Red Dirt, Tejano, and Texas country. Country music often consists of ballads and honky-tonk dance tunes with generally simple form, folk lyrics, and harmonies often accompanied by string instruments such as electric and acoustic guitars, steel guitars (such as pedal steels and dobros), banjos, and fiddles as well as harmonicas. Blues modes have been used extensively throughout its recorded history. The term ''country music'' gained popularity in the 1940s in preference to '' hillbilly music'', with "country music" being used today to describe many styles and subgenres. It came to encomp ...
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Pacific Arts Corporation
The Pacific Arts Corporation, Inc. is a company formed by Michael Nesmith circa 1974 to manage and develop media projects. History Pacific Arts Corporation, Inc. began as Pacific Arts Productions, Inc. when incorporated on October 18, 1974, as a California corporation by Michael Nesmith (incorporated by Nesmith's accountant, Howard Leitner of Leitner, Zander, Sniderman & Co., Los Angeles). The first product released under Pacific Arts Productions was under the subsidy of the Pacific Arts Records label in September 1974 of Nesmith's own concept album, '' The Prison''. Between 1974 and 1981, Pacific Arts Productions created a large library of various musical artists and built its own independent record distribution system. Nesmith considered Pacific Arts an umbrella corporation over two major divisions: TV and records. It was during this time that Nesmith began to develop music videos, produce ''PopClips'' (the predecessor for MTV), and ideas for a non-theatrical home video busi ...
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Pretty Much Your Standard Ranch Stash
''Pretty Much Your Standard Ranch Stash'' is American singer-songwriter Michael Nesmith's sixth album of his post-Monkees career. Released in September 1973, it was his final album for RCA Records and did not chart. "Some of Shelly's Blues" was written by Nesmith as a potential Monkees release during his 1968 Nashville sessions. That version remained unissued until the 1990s. "Some of Shelly's Blues" was also recorded previously by both the Stone Poneys and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on their 1970 album ''Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy''. The song "Winonah" marks the first time Nesmith co-wrote a song with collaborating songwriters since the Monkees song "The Kind of Girl I Could Love" (featured on the album ''More of the Monkees''). On the cover of the album, in small print, are the words "buy this record". On the CD, the words have been altered to "buy this compact disc". ''Pretty Much Your Standard Ranch Stash'' was Nesmith's final album for RCA Records. The album, was later ...
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From A Radio Engine To The Photon Wing
''From a Radio Engine to the Photon Wing'' was released in 1977 and is the ninth album by Michael Nesmith and eighth studio album as a singer/songwriter during his post-Monkees career. The album was Nesmith's second with vocals released on his own label, Pacific Arts. The song "Love's First Kiss" is rare example of Nesmith collaborating with other songwriters to compose a song. One single was released from the album in the US and worldwide, " Rio". Because of the length of the song, approximately three minutes were edited out of the song for the release of the single. Additionally, Nesmith recorded a promotional video for the track, "Rio", which was created by Nesmith, William Dear, and William E. Martin. In other areas of the world where "Rio" gained chart success (such as England and Australia), a follow-up single, "Navajo Trail" b/w "Love's First Kiss", was issued. Track listing All songs by Michael Nesmith except where noted. # "Rio" – 7:02 # "Casablanca Moonlight" – ...
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Monkees
The Monkees were an American rock and pop band, formed in Los Angeles in 1966, whose lineup consisted of the American actor/musicians Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork alongside English actor/singer Davy Jones. The group was conceived in 1965 by television producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider for the situation comedy series of the same name. Music credited to the band was released on LP, as well as being included in the show, which aired from 1966 to 1968. While the sitcom was a mostly straightforward affair, the music production generated tension and controversy almost from the beginning. Music supervisor Don Kirshner was dissatisfied with the quartet's musical abilities, and he limited their involvement during the recording process, relying instead on professional songwriters and studio musicians. This arrangement yielded multiple hit albums and singles, but it did not sit well with the band members, who were facing a public backlash for not playing on the ...
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Pacific Arts
The Pacific Arts Corporation, Inc. is a company formed by Michael Nesmith circa 1974 to manage and develop media projects. History Pacific Arts Corporation, Inc. began as Pacific Arts Productions, Inc. when incorporated on October 18, 1974, as a California corporation by Michael Nesmith (incorporated by Nesmith's accountant, Howard Leitner of Leitner, Zander, Sniderman & Co., Los Angeles). The first product released under Pacific Arts Productions was under the subsidy of the Pacific Arts Records label in September 1974 of Nesmith's own concept album, '' The Prison''. Between 1974 and 1981, Pacific Arts Productions created a large library of various musical artists and built its own independent record distribution system. Nesmith considered Pacific Arts an umbrella corporation over two major divisions: TV and records. It was during this time that Nesmith began to develop music videos, produce '' PopClips'' (the predecessor for MTV), and ideas for a non-theatrical home video bu ...
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The Garden (Michael Nesmith Album)
''The Garden'' is Michael Nesmith's 11th full studio album and was released in September 1994. ''The Garden'' is a companion release to Nesmith's 1974 album/book, '' The Prison''. Both ''The Garden'' and ''The Prison'' are written to have the music complement a novel included in the release (also written by Nesmith). ''The Prison'' and ''The Garden'' were re-released together on CD in 2004 by Video Ranch. The idea is for listeners to read the novel while simultaneously listening to the recording. Even though ''The Garden'' was released on Nesmith's record company, Rio Records, the novella/album concept was the driving force behind Nesmith's multimedia company Pacific Arts. In the liner notes, Nesmith states ''The Garden'' is not a sequel in the strictest sense of the term — meaning that there isn't a true continuation of the narrative which began in ''The Prison''. Instead, they are correlated thematically and stylistically as both are presented in a linear and consecutive appr ...
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Allmusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the database was first made available on the Internet in 1994. AllMusic is owned by RhythmOne. History AllMusic was launched as ''All Music Guide'' by Michael Erlewine, a "compulsive archivist, noted astrologer, Buddhist scholar and musician". He became interested in using computers for his astrological work in the mid-1970s and founded a software company, Matrix, in 1977. In the early 1990s, as CDs replaced LPs as the dominant format for recorded music, Erlewine purchased what he thought was a CD of early recordings by Little Richard. After buying it he discovered it was a "flaccid latter-day rehash". Frustrated with the labeling, he researched using metadata to create a music guide. In 1990, in Big Rapids, Michigan, he founded ''All Music Guide' ...
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Robert Christgau
Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became an early proponent of musical movements such as hip hop, riot grrrl, and the import of African popular music in the West. Christgau spent 37 years as the chief music critic and senior editor for ''The Village Voice'', during which time he created and oversaw the annual Pazz & Jop critics poll. He has also covered popular music for ''Esquire'', ''Creem'', ''Newsday'', ''Playboy'', ''Rolling Stone'', ''Billboard'', NPR, ''Blender'', and ''MSN Music'', and was a visiting arts teacher at New York University. CNN senior writer Jamie Allen has called Christgau "the E. F. Hutton of the music world – when he talks, people listen." Christgau is best known for his terse, letter-graded capsule album reviews, composed in a concentrat ...
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ITunes
iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital multimedia, on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating systems, and can be used to rip songs from CDs, as well as play content with the use of dynamic, smart playlists. Options for sound optimizations exist, as well as ways to wirelessly share the iTunes library. Originally announced by Apple CEO Steve Jobs on January 9, 2001, iTunes' original and main focus was music, with a library offering organization and storage of Mac users' music collections. With the 2003 addition of the iTunes Store for purchasing and downloading digital music, and a version of the program for Windows, it became a ubiquitous tool for managing music and configuring other features on Apple's line of iPod media players, which extended to the iPh ...
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