Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Musing on the death of Peter Tork
In my elementary school during the mid-’70s, you either went to AM kindergarten or PM kindergarten. I was glad to go to the morning session, because that meant I’d get home to my house or my best friend Kyle’s house in time to eat lunch in front of reruns of Batman, The Brady Bunch and The Monkees.
All three of these critically-panned but much-beloved shows were simple enough for five-year-olds to enjoy. But even to my kindergarten brain, The Monkees’ humor seemed surreal and avant-garde (although I wouldn’t have used those terms then).The cognoscenti looked down on the Monkees because producers had created a prefabricated band out of four obscure people. But time has brought critical appreciation in line with the popular opinion from 1966–1968: Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork were talented comedic actors and singers who brought life to tunes from some of the most prolific pop songwriters of their day, including Neil Diamond, the team of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, and the husband-wife duo Gerry Goffin and Carole King.
When I saw that Tork died last month I immediately thought of the Monkees’ Goffin/King-penned hit “Pleasant Valley Sunday” (even though Dolenz sings lead vocals). It must be my 20 months at The Public Interest Network. Now, unlike before I worked here, I recognize the 1967 song as a great example of post-scarcity lyrics, bemoaning our societal focus on “stuff.”
The local rock group down the street
Is trying hard to learn their song
Serenade the weekend squire, who just came out to mow his lawn
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Charcoal burning everywhere
Rows of houses that are all the same
And no one seems to care
See Mrs. Gray she’s proud today because her roses are in bloom
Mr. Green he’s so serene, He’s got a t.v. in every room
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Here in status symbol land
Mothers complain about how hard life is
And the kids just don’t understand
Creature comfort goals
They only numb my soul and make it hard for me to see
My thoughts all seem to stray, to places far away
I need a change of scenery
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Charcoal burning everywhere
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Here in status symbol land
Another Pleasant Valley Sunday…
That brought to mind other songs I love that criticize our current paradigm of always needing more “stuff.” Arcade Fire shocked the music world at the 2011 Grammys, winning Album of the Year for 2010 with The Suburbs, a scathing indictment of modern ennui. My favorite lyrics are the chorus from that album’s “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)”:
Sometimes I wonder if the world’s so small/That we can never get away from the sprawl/Living in the sprawl/Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains/And there’s no end in sight/I need the darkness, someone please cut the lights
To me, Josh Tillman, better known as Father John Misty, is the pre-eminent post-scarcity songwriter today. In recent years he’s offered up these gems:
Now I’ve got all morning to obsessively accrue/A small nation of meaningful objects/And they’ve got to represent me too/By this afternoon, I’ll live in debt/By tomorrow, be replaced by children
-and-
Oh, they gave me a useless education/And a subprime loan/On a craftsman home/Keep my prescriptions filled/And now I can’t get off/But I can kind of deal/Oh, with being bored in the USA
-and-
When the historians find us we’ll be in our homes/Plugged into our hubs/Skin and bones/A frozen smile on every face/As the stories replay/This must have been a wonderful place
Father John Misty and Arcade Fire have been two of my favorite artists for a while now, but neither will ever get the streams, downloads or airplay of the Monkees (and neither has a TV show in perpetual reruns). So let’s celebrate Peter Tork for his contribution to the annals of post-scarcity messaging. And let’s hope that artists such as Father John Misty and Arcade Fire can help us convince people to shift the paradigm and end the numbing cycle of Pleasant Valley Sundays.
