Day 82: Daydream Believer

The past two weeks have been mostly music by some pretty strange bands. Ween, the Residents, or the Butthole Surfers are not for everyone. I think I need to cleanse my palate. Miles listened to a wide range of music. He did not listen to Ween, the Residents, and the Butthole Surfers all the time. He had varied tastes that ranged pretty far.

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Miles and I did some fun things, silly things.  One day in the summer of 2013, we went to Beaverton, Pennsylvania, to celebrate the life of Davy Jones, a member of the Monkees and long-time Central Pennsylvania resident.

I am not sure how Davy Jones—an Englishman—ended up in Beaverton, just a few miles from Lewisburg. He had a horse farm there and spent many summers tending his horses and fixing up his house, an old church he was renovating into a home.

I think the Monkees don’t get the respect they deserve.  Yes, they were created by Hollywood for a tv show.  They were not the Beatles.  They were an imitation of the Beatles, designed purely to market to teen girls.  But they also had some of the best song writers writing songs for them– Neil Diamond, Gerry Coffin and Carole King, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.  It is true that the Monkees were part of a massive PR machine, but that machine worked really well.  The Monkees recorded some great songs.

In the heat of the Beaverton Fair Grounds, Miles and I crowded the stage with his friend Duncan to watch Davy Jones’s daughters unveil the Davy Jones statue.  It sculptor, some guy from Altoona, went on and on about how he really wasn’t a Monkees fan to be honest and the piece did not quite turn out the way he wanted it to and Mr. Jones’s daughter are really very attractive.  When he finally stopped talking, they unveiled the statue and everybody in the crowd sang Daydream Believer, led by Davy’s old backing band in a rousing rendition that induced many tears. I talked to folks from all over the world who gathered there in Beaverton to celebrate the Monkees.  A guy drove all night from Alabama.  A woman came in for the weekend from England.  A team from Texas entered the bed race at the local drag strip.  They defeated a team from Canada.

Like what you like.

Day 2: Porpoise Song

We recovered everything from Miles’s car and among his belongings was a mix CD that a friend made for him.  I am not sure who made him the CD, but it was somebody from the Film Por Vida network.

Miles developed a lot of friendships through Film Por Vida.  Miles was a photographer and he exchanged prints of pictures he took and developed in the dark room on his own.  Film Por Vida is a great idea, and it enabled him to correspond with photographers all over the world.

Jai Tanju, the founder of the network, created a nice post in memory of Miles.  I am so grateful for the network.  Many people have sent photos to us in Miles’s memory, and I sent out the stack of photos he had prepared to send himself but never mailed.  We still get pictures in the mail.

This is one of my favorite songs from the mix CD.  When we held a memorial service for Miles in Lewisburg, we played some songs over the theater sound system as part of a mix I compiled.  The song has a pleasant elegiac tone and chorus.  I like the Monkees, and I tried to get Miles to listen to them but I am not sure they caught on with him just yet.  Throughout the year, I will share other songs we played at the memorial service, including the ones his friends played live.