Sometimes this blog will just be something like "Have you seen Crosseyed and Painless?"

 I first saw this video on Talking Heads' VHS compilation Storytelling Giant and I'm pretty sure I stopped sitting out dances soon after. Voluntarily walking onto a dancefloor and moving on the spot had never been something I'd associated with myself before, it seemed too serious and difficult, like sport. I'm not really sure what these dancers were doing that felt so different, but I loved the undercover melodrama of it, the Tex Averish sneakiness, and although I couldn't copy the moves I could happily overact to an improvised internal monlogue in time with some music, which is what I began doing after seeing this, and have been doing ever since. It's choreographed by Toni Basil.

 And like Toni, I've still got it.

 P.S. Full Shakespeare is still happening, but other than a link in my profile and maybe a weekly round-up I'm going to start letting the blog, youtube and instagram accounts do their own thing a bit more from now on. I'll still plug stuff here, I just don't want to get tunnel vision, and I want to let my eyes dart. So today's video is still uploading, but Sunday's can be watched here (controversially The Taming of the Shrew starts a hole act earlier than Act One). I hope like Ms. Basil you're all using it and not losing it out there.

"Must come down for interview"

"Be strong and silent.. Now be a girl... Mike, they're the same thing."
 "Well, I mean that's your hang up, man."

 It's fascinating watching the power dynamic at work in this call for "4 insane boys" to leave their mod hang-out "Ben Frank's" and screen test to be a Monkee on the set of a TV show apparently called "The Farmers Daughter". When is it not interesting watching a power dynamic at work though? This is magic.

 Charles Manson was in prison at the time these tests were made in 1966, so his audition for the Monkees is just an urban myth. (But he did collaborate with the Beach Boys.) And according to Bob Rafaelson the "Must come down" in the ad was "a sly reference to being high". Here's Davey Jones and Toni Basil in an astonishing musical number from "Head" which wouldn't seem out of place in "Bojack Horseman". "Head", I've just learnt, was made in 1968. Two years after the screen tests. I don't think I realised their span was so short. That is insane.

"A song and dance? You must be joking"