LIVE: The New Candy Store Prophets at Martyrs’, Chicago, IL (3/30)
Things seemed a little out of the ordinary at Chicago nightclub Martyrs’ last Monday. A movie screen obscured the stage, and the images being projected onto it were nothing short of surreal: Micky Dolenz blowing up a Coke machine in a desert, Michael Nesmith wandering through a spooky house and finding creepy mannequin versions of his bandmates, Peter Tork punching a man in drag, Davy Jones discussing his responsibility to educate the youth of America with Frank Zappa and a talking cow. And that’s without even mentioning the image of all four Monkees dressed as dandruff on top of the head of a giant Victor Mature. The movie, of course, was the cult classic Head, and it was bookending a performance by local band, the New Candy Store Prophets.
Formed last year to perform at the Chicago CIMMFest screening of Boyce & Hart: The Guys Who Wrote ‘Em, the documentary about legendary songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, the New Candy Store Prophets are a collective of talented Chicagoland musicians who understand that liking good pop music is nothing to be ashamed of. Like the Flat Five, whose repertoire overlaps with theirs, the Prophets are all involved in other musical projects. Phil Angotti is a power-pop mainstay and frequent performer at local Beatles tributes — along with John San Juan, who also fronts local psych-pop band Hushdrops. Anthony Illarde (drums), Tim Fowler (lead guitar), and Jason Walker (bass) are all former members of Akron, OH’s Chamber Strings, and Cathy Norden (keyboards) heads up the piano program and teaches many classes, including the Psychedelic Garage Ensemble, at the Old Town School of Folk Music.
At this show, the New Candy Store Prophets performed the Monkees’ fourth record, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd., in its entirety — well, almost. “My copy skips over the crappy song at the top of side two,” San Juan joked, referring to the saccharine, modulation-happy Davy Jones showcase, “Hard to Believe.” Angotti sang exactly five words of the song — the first four, and the last one — before the band went back to playing the “good ” songs on the album. And with an album so full of good music, it was easy to forgive one omission. The band turned in fast, hard-rocking versions of classics like “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” and should-have-been-classics like “The Door Into Summer” and “Words,” with Angotti and San Juan sharing most lead vocals.
Angotti’s reedy tenor, which works so well on John Lennon songs at Beatles nights, was an equally good match for the snide “Star Collector” and the vocal gymnastics of “Daily Nightly.” He and San Juan divided vocal lines seamlessly on “Words” and “Love Is Only Sleeping,” with San Juan’s deeper voice fitting surprisingly well with “Don’t Call on Me” (originally sung by Nesmith) and the Harry Nilsson-penned “Cuddly Toy.” Casey McDonough of the Flat Five stepped in at the last minute to sing a perfect version of “What Am I Doing Hangin’ Round?” and later, the band was joined by another special guest: the Bebot synthesizer app on John San Juan’s phone, which stood in for the groundbreaking Moog synthesizer on “Daily Nightly.”
The Prophets returned after a short break to play another set of Monkees favorites, opening with the glorious “Porpoise Song,” the theme from Head, and then bouncing back and forth between the first three albums. Cathy Norden got a vocal feature on “Sweet Young Thing” and obviously relished adding the loud “GUH!” at the end of every “thing.” Casey McDonough returned to the stage to sing “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone,” and while he flubbed a few lines, the hardcore Monkees fans in the audience were singing along too loudly to notice. The band included two songs Boyce & Hart had performed themselves: “Out & About” (sung by Jason Walker), which the duo performed on an episode of I Dream of Jeannie, and the dippiest of hippie anthems, “Love Every Day.”
The show concluded with Phil Angotti singing the throat-scorching “Randy Scouse Git,” and an encore of “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You,” after which Angotti apologized for having “interrupted the narrative flow of Head” earlier — and the movie started right back up where it had left off, with Nesmith railing about how much he hates birthdays and Christmas. Unsurprisingly, most of the audience (and the band) stuck around until the end of the film. No matter how many times you’ve seen a movie or heard a song, there’s always something special about sharing those things with people who love them as much as you do. The New Candy Store Prophets understand that — and hopefully they’ll be sharing the music of the Monkees with Chicago fans again soon.
