MICHAEL NESMITH & THE FIRST NATIONAL BAND
     
First National Home

Beyond The Blue Horizon...

Michael Nesmith

John Kuehne

Orville 'Red' Rhodes

Johnny Ware

Reviews

Favorite Links

  
THE FIRST NATIONAL BAND
Hello! Hi! If ye're just passing through this will all look a bit empty...that's because it is. I've been occasionally working on my other site 'The Rubber Pasty Sea' since April and now that it is at least half-finished, I decided that it was perhaps time to begin working on a pet project of mine: A website dedicated to Michael Nesmith and The First National Band. Their music is a personal favourite of mine and I felt that in terms of both biography and internet sites they have been poorly represented. Mike himself is at last recieving the respect he deserves via the internet with some good sites. But as of yet the First National Band has not. This site is only just beginning and so will have the dreaded emptyness and 'Under Construction' notices for some time to come. But, bear with me and all will be resolved in due course.
While you're waiting perhaps you might like to read the small note below or even visit the Rubber Pasty Sea...(the latter depends on how bored you are).




While you're waiting...

Who or what was the First National Band??
Inevitably this question has to be asked and I will have ot answer it (sigh!)...The First National Band are now recognised as being one of the earliest pioneers of the 'country-rock' sound along with The Flying Burrito Brothers in the early seventies. Michael Nesmith was a teenybop idol called Mike Nesmith in a certain manufactured sixties group (whose name I refuse to mention) with some success. But Mike was destined for greater things as few teenyboppers were aware of his musical and songwriting abilities (which are phenomenal, by the way). He deserved credit, recognition. He deserved critical praise. He deserved to be called by his full christian name. The group he was in sank to the level they were destined for by doing 'Kool-Aid' commercials and that was when Mike knew he had to get out.

Free at last he became Michael Nesmith and joined John Ware and John London (Kuehne) in the First National Band. Once Orville J. Rhodes joined them they were all set to rock the country scene. However, two years and three superb albums later the band split and recieved little or no recognition from the public. While the other three drifted back to session music, Nez went on to greater things in his life, which the public continued to ignore. His solo country work and his dealings in the video/arts market has only recently been re-discovered along with the classic 1970-71 years.

This ignorance has been made all the tragic by the fact that only Nesmith and Ware are still alive today. The First National Band never reunited and now will never play again. Magnetic South, Loose Salute and Nevada Fighter are all that we have to tell us what the First National Band sounds like. I, for one, certainly wouldn't of minded going to see them live. Yet, it's a rich legacy that's been left all the same and it's about time that they were brought into the sort of public attention they've been so long kept out of.

That's why this website was set up...


ARDL. October 2000.