Michael Nesmith and The First National Band’s Magnetic South: Things Don’t Start Just to End

Anyone retrospectively approaching Mike Nesmith’s first recording with The First National Band likely knows 2 things: 1. he’s an ex-Monkee who wrote “Different Drum” (made forever famous by Linda Rondstadt and the Stone Poneys) 2. he somehow fit into the country-rock idiom of the late-’60s/early-’70s. What you may not know, however, is that no amount or arrangement of written word can explain or prepare you for the phenomenal mainlining of eclecticism you’re about to receive.

“Calico Girlfriend” opens the record with a tightly-played, upbeat Sir Douglas Quintet-like Tex-Mex fiesta, followed almost immediately by the party-killing “Nine Times Blue”, one of the most heart-plucking, soul-crushing songs of regret ever recorded in under 1:20. That sadness soon morphs into the country-funk of “Little Red Rider” before the introductory schizo-tonk song-trio finally lets up. “The Crippled Lion” and “Joanne” (a #21 pop-single) sweetly finish out the first side (even on CD, the original LP sides are clearly designated by the transitional “First National Rag”), allowing the listener a much needed preparatory breath in anticipation of the blue yodel sucker-punch, “Mama Nantucket”. Nesmith switches yodeling styles for his best Hank Williams on “The Keys to the Car” and then throws all the Monkee s**t out the window as he watches “Hollywood” fade in his rear view mirror. “The One Rose (That’s Left In My Heart)” squeezes in one more wonderfully-drippy country number and sails The First National Band straight into their perfectly re-appropriated version of “Beyond the Blue Horizon”.

Magnetic South is the big, wide country music heard floating through the bubblegum bars of Nesmith’s ’60s-teen-television prison. We’re all lucky he escaped.