Music Video: "Eldorado to the Moon"

Michael Nesmith - "Eldorado to the Moon"
Since YouTube has suddenly cracked down on downloading even low-res versions of their videos, and have made it impossible for someone like me to view any videos, this is probably the last one I'll ever post. So thanks a lot, YouTube, you elitist bastards. I'll never link to or mention you again, and once these two video posts scroll off the front page, I'm going to delete them. ---- ---.

A long time ago, it seems, there were some musical radio programs that came on every week that I enjoyed. So I would tape them and then listen to the tapes several times throughout the week until the next show rolled around. It was very convenient because they all aired on Saturday night or Sunday. If I heard a song that I particularly liked, and especially if I thought it was a song that I had very little likelihood of hearing on the radio again, I would transfer it to a keeper tape. One of these programs was called "Sunday Night Session," which I believe still airs Sunday nights on KSTX (the local public radio station). This program focuses on "Texas music," that is, music made by someone who was born in, or lives in, or at least is based in Texas. And that is the only qualification, so there was still a wide variety of music played.

Eldorado to the Moon (by Nesmith--who was born and grew up in Texas) is one of those that I liked immediately and put it on a keeper tape. I came across the tape a while back and ripped it to mp3, so the sound quality is not CD-quality, but it's still good. It has more of that jukebox-in-the-corner-of-the-oldest-Dairy-Queen-in-town kind of sound. So I looked it up on YouTube and found this very cool video. In the general process of reading about Nesmith, I found that he was an early pioneer of using videos to promote songs, and his work was largely responsible for the creation of MTV. (Note to everyone less than 20 years old: MTV used to show nothing but music videos, 24 hours a day. That's what that old Dire Straits song is about. They weren't singing "I want my MTV" because they wanted to see The Real World).

I haven't been able to ascertain exactly when this song was recorded or released, but it was included on the 1989 album The Newer Stuff. So give it a watch/listen.