Mike Nesmith - Elephant Parts (1981) **UPDATE**

While reading the obituaries for the late, great Mike Nesmith I saw mention of a film that he produced in 1981 called 'Elephant Parts', which was apparently a precursor of what was to become MTV in the future, combining as it did music videos of some of his songs with comedy sketches and parodies of adverts. The most notable sketches are 'Elvis Drugs', 'Neighborhood Nuclear Superiority', 'Mariachi Translations', and some bits with a lounge singer, as well as a game show called 'Name That Drug'. The musical videos include 'Magic', 'Cruisin'', 'Light', 'Tonight'. and 'Rio', and director Bill Dear and Nesmith were doing music videos before people even knew what they were, approaching them as mini-movies. 'Elephant Parts' won the first Grammy in the Music Video category, with Billboard's review saying it was "the cleverest exercise in original video programming to date." I tried to find a copy online with no success, but most of the individual parts had been uploaded to Youtube, so I've pieced it all back together so that we can see that Nesmith had lost none of his comic timing or musical genius even later in his career. The final video was a little bit shorter than the advertised running time, as there seemed to be sketch or two missing, so I owe eternal thanks to Mike Solof for providing me with a VHS rip of the complete video, so you can now enjoy the whole thing. 

The title 'Elephant Parts' refers to the parable of the blind men and an elephant where each man comes to a different conclusion about what an elephant is due to them touching only one part.