Just like that, it’s that time again, where the holiday season is upon us and the mad scrambles down store aisles to find just the right gifts for friends and loved ones commences. It’s a yearly ritual that always seems to come sooner than later. It’s also a sign that the year is coming to a close, and of course there’s no question that 2016 will remain in memory and history as one of the most turbulent, challenging, and painful times ever seen. It is for that reason that the holiday time should hold even extra special positive emotional weight, as community and solidarity run high among people during this time, acting as sort of metaphoric concrete that fills in the gaps that division among many created. And music too, is an eternal, external, and ultimately internal healing agent for the soul, regardless if times are happy or sad, joyous or maudlin. Music also reflects those aforementioned emotions and more. Here’s some of the best released this past year that will for sure excite even the most hardened by the whirlwind of the times and warm someone’s soul like kindling a hearth on the coldest December nights.
Check out our 2016 Holiday Geek Gift Guide for Music…
This piece is going to discuss Head, the only theatrical film by the famous 1960s pop group The Monkees. But, in order to do that, I need to put a little bit of the flavor and attitude of the times that led to such a colorful, wild and loose project, into proper perspective, if I may.
If the 1960s were indicative of anything, it was risk. Obviously it’s impossible to condense such a turbulent, vivid, alive decade as the 1960s into one bite-size word, but if one was challenged to do so, the word “risk” would certainly be a top contender.
We all know about the main iconic images of the 1960s in terms of that risk factor: a young president in John F. Kennedy, who came in a whirlwind election and was blown away just as fast that Dallas afternoon in November 1963, the same with his brother Robert, and Martin Luther King in 1968; Vietnam and Civil unrest, bombings and riots, globally, it seemed the 1960s were submerged in a water tank, with its inhabitants barely coming up for air.
The seventh episode of The Geeks Of Doom Round Up is here, and Andy takes a look at the trailer for Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope, a documentary by Morgan Spurlock, which focuses on the annual San Diego Comic-Con. For our music selection this week, Greg remembers Ronnie Montrose from Montrose and Gamma who passed away this weekend, and in tribute plays “Space Station #5”
Later, we also pay tribute to more of our heroes who passed away this week. Ralph McQuarrie, legendary concept artist whose visions helped determine the look and feel of the Original Star Wars Trilogy, died this weekend – a heavy loss to fans everywhere. Davy Jones of The Monkees also passed away, and we close out the show with a tribute to him.
Davy Jones, singer and frontman of The Monkees, died this morning after suffering a heart attack, according to ABC News. He was 66.
According to Rolling Stone magazine, Jones had complained of chest pains last night and was admitted to a hospital this morning in Stuart, FL. The BBC reports that Jones died in his sleep at his home in Indiantown, FL, after suffering a massive heart attack.
No other details are known as this time, but the Martin County, FL, medical examiner’s office will be conducting an investigation, though they said in a statement to ABC News that “there does not appear to be any suspicious circumstances” surrounding the singer’s death.
Students of the Unusual™ comic cover used with permission of 3BoysProductions
The Mercuri Bros.™ comic cover used with permission of Prodigal Son Press
