Elephant Parts - Overview

Overview

There are various comedy sketches between musical numbers: The most notable sketches are "Elvis Drugs", "Neighborhood Nuclear Superiority", "The Tragically Hip" (which was the inspiration for the name of the Canadian band and was featured as a pretaped sketch on a season six episode of Saturday Night Live), "Large Detroit Car Company", "Mariachi Translations", recurring comic blackouts that ended with the catchphrase "Just to prove a point!", and several series of bits with a lounge singer and a pirate, as well as a game show called "Name That Drug". The musical videos include Magic, Cruisin', Light, Tonight, and Rio.

Throughout Elephant Parts, Nesmith makes fun of his own works, with segments including a parody of his song "Joanne" called "Rodan", and comic promos for his albums Infinite Rider on the Big Dogma and Live at the Palais. Although Nesmith's solo career is punned or highlighted, he doesn't make any reference or mention of The Monkees.

Elephant Parts won the first Grammy in the Music Video category, and was later followed by two TV series: PopClips for Nickelodeon (released in 1980), and Television Parts for NBC in 1985. Nickelodeon's parent company, Warner Cable, wanted to buy outright the PopClips copyright to be expanded into an all-music video channel, but after Nesmith declined the offer, Warner Cable started work on what would become MTV.