Tapioca Tundra
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| "Tapioca Tundra" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Single by The Monkees | ||||
| from the album The Birds, the Bees and the Monkees | ||||
| A-side | "Valleri" | |||
| Released | February 16, 1968 | |||
| Recorded | November 11, 1967 | |||
| Studio | RCA Victor Studios, Hollywood, CA | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 3:03 | |||
| Label | Colgems | |||
| Songwriter | Michael Nesmith | |||
| Producer | The Monkees | |||
| The Monkees singles chronology | ||||
| ||||
| Official audio | ||||
| "Tapioca Tundra" on YouTube | ||||
"Tapioca Tundra" is a 1968 song written by Michael Nesmith and originally performed by the Monkees.
The lyrics of "Tapioca Tundra" poetically describe how a writer of poetry or prose loses control of a work's meaning and impact once consumed by its audience. Michael Nesmith described his songwriting style for "Tapioca Tundra" as poetry set to music. "One of the ways I got into songwriting was to find poems by great poets and see if I could put them to music," he said in an interview. "At the time that 'Tapioca Tundra' and 'Daily Nightly' came along, I had been writing my own poetry for a while. ... They weren't really designed as songs at all."[1]
A handwritten early version of the poem on which the lyrics were based was printed in the July 1967 issue of Tiger Beat magazine, for which Nesmith served as guest editor.[2][1]
The Monkees
Released as the B-side of "Valleri", "Tapioca Tundra" was the first of the Monkees' singles to feature a lead vocal by Nesmith and it was his biggest hit as a songwriter for the Monkees. The song also appeared on the Monkees' fifth studio album, The Birds, the Bees & the Monkees.[1] Despite being a B-side, it was a top 40 hit in the United States, reaching #34 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.[3][4] It also shared the #1 position with its A-side for one week in April on Canada's RPM chart.[5]
Charts
| Country | Chart (1968) | Peak position |
|---|---|---|
| US | Billboard Hot 100[3] | 34 |
| Cashbox[6] | 47 | |
| Record World[7] | 38 | |
| Canada | The RPM 100[5] | 1A |
| CHUM Hit Parade[8] | 5A | |
Other versions
Later in 1968, an instrumental version of "Tapioca Tundra" appeared as the B-side of "Don't Cry Now" by Michael Nesmith's side project, the Wichita Train Whistle.[9] Both sides of the single appeared on the album The Wichita Train Whistle Sings. The Wichita Train Whistle project was an attempt by Nesmith at orchestral arrangements of his compositions with a large group of session musicians, with the help of arranger Shorty Rogers, in the vein of other composer-arrangers such as Henry Mancini.[10]
In 1971 Nesmith re-recorded the song with the First National Band, though vocals were never finished for the track. The instrumental was released on Different Drum: The Lost RCA Victor Recordings in 2021.[11]
Japanese jazz drummer Takeuchi Wasaburō teamed with Tokyo College of Music vocal group School Mates on a 1969 album of Monkees cover songs, a majority of them from The Birds, the Bees & the Monkees, including "Tapioca Tundra".[12]
