Peter Tork is such a bass player, the quiet, handsome, not quite with the team bass player. It was a role he perfected in the Monkees, and a template for all future bassists, that of all the Monkees he was the least likely to have a solo career.
That has , indeed, been the case. Neither the eccentric Nesmith, nor the song and dance Jones, nor the Greatest hits machine Dolenz, Tork parlayed an innate musical ability, the man can play anything at all, into a lifelong career, starting at Sire and continuing on with Monkee reunions and garage bands, that didn't reach the heights of his fellow band memners.
Always excellent when he performs with Monkees, Tork is the most gifted musician and that’s for sure. But he has never had the voice of Jones or Nesmith, and this has proven exasperated with his head and neck cancer, now in remission, and his shyness was actually Asperger Syndrome ( a high functioning form of autism).
So while I have seen the other three Monkees solo in the past:
Dolenz – A
Nesmith – B+
Jones – B
Either timing or maybe even interest has stopped me from checking out Tork. Doubly strange since Tork was my favorite Monkee as a kid.
Peter is playing three sets, a 3pm and 8pm on Sunday May 5th, and an 8pm May 6th at the Iridium, a wonderful place to see a band. And I am thrilled, but a little nervous, to be seeing him solo. I can imagine it going any which way, a muso disaster, a poorly sung Monkees retrospective (he has been known to sing “Pleasant valley Sunday”) . But, on the other hand, “Auntie Grisalda” and “Shades Of gray” (which he didn’t sing at the December Monkees gig) seems likely and, really, the man is a great musician.
The show is called “In This Generation: My Life with The Monkees And Beyond “ and is a multimedia extravaganza of film, pictures, stories, music and songs.
Plus, it is Peter Tork, what’s not to like?