YMMV / Michael Nesmith

• Acclaimed Flop: His early RCA solo albums all got great reviews. Even Rolling Stone, which absolutely loathed The Monkees, liked them. But "Joanne" was his only Top 40 hit, and its album Magnetic South, which limped to #143 on the Billboard Top 200 album chart, was his highest charting album.
• Adaptation Displacement: Arguably, the entire concept of MTV did this to Nesmith's original concept of "music television", roughly outlined in Elephant Parts. Let's just say he wasn't all that enthused with the end result.
• Awesome Music: The entirety of his country epoch, reaching an apex with the TFNB album trilogy. For specific examples, there's "Joanne", "Silver Moon", "Texas Morning", "Only Bound", "Mama Nantucket"... let's just say there's a lot more good than bad.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Red Rhodes! Already a legend on the West Coast Country Music scene, he was drafted for the First National Band in 1970 and stuck around over multiple projects for the next several decades. Rhodes' pedal steel guitar was an indelible part of Nesmith's sound, culminating with the And The Hits Just Keep on Comin' album, which was just Nesmith and Rhodes, and is often considered Nesmith's greatest work.
• Epic Riff: "Nevada Fighter", "Circle Sky", "Harmony Constant", "Flying", "Calico Girlfriend"... the list goes on. But particularly his soundtrack for Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann and its adrenaline-drenched epic synth riffs.
• Growing the Beard: Around the end of the '60s as a mature songwriter. Rather literally, too.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Australia loves Michael Nesmith! His singles charted highly there, and his first live album was recorded at the Palais Theatre in Melbourne. He is also loved in New Zealand (where "Joanne" was a #1 hit) and the United Kingdom.
• Most Wonderful Sound: When Red Rhodes plays his magic steel. Mike's words.
• Older Than They Think: 11 years before "Cruisin' ", the names "Lucy and Ramona" were mentioned in the country hit "The Name of the Game Was Love" by Hank Snow.
• Tear Jerker: His ballads, almost all of which are written from experience. "Nine Times Blue" gets the, umm, gold for real life subtext.
  "...And now I feel like such a fool, for making you crawl back to me. But you did it with such love, that you're standing far above me and all I did to you, I'm sorry now, what can I do?"
• Values Resonance:
  • It might not be a hundred years from '78 just yet, if you crack open Nez's "Capsule", you'll find it's exactly as applicable today as it was back then, if not even moreso... that is, if you can decipher the lyrics.
  • No matter your political persuasion, "The Candidate" still rings true:
    Sailing ships of state and ignoring navigation laws
    Through the sea of man, the captains, mad with power, pause
    And congratulate themselves on their virtuous and noble cause
    Which must surely save the world and alter time

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