The Davy Jones tribute continues. We musn’t forget him!

Today’s post is likely old news to you, our sophisticated readers, but we’d like to take a second to give “Head,” the Monkees’ 1968 film, major props.

The movie is amazing. In it, the pre-Fab Four, with the help of Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Frank Zappa, and others, methodically decimate their clean-cut imagine, giving us a strange, pop-art fever dream-rumination on fame, disposable consumerist culture, and yes, the Vietnam war.

And the music is amazing.

The opening sequence is brilliant (you have to see the whole movie to get the whole circuitous vibe); in it, the Monkees more or less commit (commercial?) suicide by jumping off a bridge, thereby triggering one of the most psychedelic multi-sensory experiences I’ve ever seen (with the exception of Phish in Burlington ’92.) Check it:

The boys drown to the tune of the “Porpoise Song.” Written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin – one of the few Brill Building talents to seamless transition from the girl group era to the “60′s”* – and produced by Jack Neitzche, the song kills. Mickey provides his typically brilliant vocals (Bob Pollard called him, rightfully, the “Greatest American male vocalist ever”) and then Davy chimes in, wailing “Goodbye, goodbyeeee!!!” propelling us into the stratosphere!

Best lyric: “Clicks / clacks / Riding the backs of giraffes for laughs is all right for a while.”

* Check out Carole’s demo of the tune, plus this, this, and this.