everyone knows Repo Man. it’s great. I had no idea Nesmith was affiliated with it, but obviously that tracks.
Tapeheads, however, I don’t hear a lot of talk about, but it’s one of my favorites; one of the movies I was stoked to find as a used-for-sale vhs when I was a teen at our discount supermarket and have watched countless times. Straight away in the opening credits: “a Michael Nesmith production.” it’s great for the myriad cameos alone, including Jello Biafra as a G-man.
as a young kid, Mtv re-ran The Monkees, and I liked it. but it seemed obvious even to a dumb little kid like me that it was just a (more) middle-america-friendly rip-off of the Beatles for the idiot box. however, my local station re-ran those shows as a marathon recently and they actually hold up as their own thing, particularly after the first season. despite being a “fake” band, whichever people they got to write those songs were pretty good. I mean, later hearing Minor Threat cover “Steppin’ Stone” was pretty eye-opening. And Nesmith, widely thought to be the “cool” one, with the least-staged personality (by me, too) wrote a fair number of those tunes.
He was one of the good guys, for sure.
