Hey, Hey

I don’t have many vivid memories of the 60s.  I can’t honestly say I remember Neil Armstrong walking on the moon.  I only have vague memories of my younger sister being born and those memories are mixed with dreams.  My first memories, and yes, they are pretty fuzzy, mostly involve The Monkees. 

I was only a toddler when The Monkees premiered on NBC.  My parents enjoyed music and I guess that’s what led them to watch the show, but I apparently loved it from the time I could talk.  My father always enjoys telling of how I loved Davy Jones, and how Dad would call him names, especially “the little wart,” to see tiny me get indignant and stomp my foot.  I had some kind of teenybopper magazine when I was 2 or 3 and I’m told I took it to bed with me and Mom and Dad would hear me from the hallway saying “Micky,” or “Davy,” followed by something unintelligible.  Whether I was talking to them or about them isn’t clear.  I loved them all.  Davy, Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith, and Peter Tork were The Monkees.  They were my idols and my friends.  I’ve had many dreams through the years about hanging around with them, and riding in the Monkeemobile.

I don’t remember watching the series as it aired in prime time, but fuzzy memory number one involves a special titled “33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee” that aired after the series went off the air.  I’m not positive how we knew the show was going to air, but the information most likely came from TV Guide, to which my parents probably have one of the longest standing subscriptions in the U.S.  I recall having taken every toy out my toy box for some reason and creating a big mess.  I was told I had to clean up said mess before I could watch TV.  I was very upset, but got it cleaned up in time and I remember watching the show and eating my dinner on a TV tray, which was not common practice in our home.  For years, I had some odd memories of the guys entering the show in some kind of plastic tubes.  In later years, I thought I must have made that up, but when I saw a VHS of the show, I found that I’d remembered at least partially correctly.
 

The next memory comes from a year later, after Peter had left the band.  I was the flower girl in a wedding in Louisville and spent the night there with my grandparents (my family lived in Shelbyville).  The next day, Na Naw and Ta Taw and I went to Pineville, Kentucky where Ta Taw’s mother and twin sisters lived.  I knew that the Monkees were supposed to be on Laugh-In that night and was very excited to watch the show.  Grandma, the aunts and Na Naw and Ta Taw all wanted to watch Lawrence Welk, however.  Even at 4, I think I had an inkling that this was not cool.  I remember crying and falling asleep on a couch; I do think I was probably a little homesick at being away for 2 nights in a row, and not just upset over not seeing The Monkees.  I also for some reason believe that the episode of Laugh-In was a rerun, and I’d already seen it, but as is proven over and over, children enjoy repetition.  Besides, we’re talking about The Monkees, and this was in the days before DVRS, DVDs, or even VHS tapes.  You watched a show when it aired, or you didn't see it at all. 

My best memories of watching The Monkees were on Saturday mornings.  My first album that was not a Disney or other children’s LP was The Birds, The Bees and The Monkees.  I still have it but the cover is pretty ragged, as it was well-loved by a little girl.  The vinyl was fairly heavy and is in pretty good shape, considering.  On my 6^th birthday, one of my favorite gifts (other than a Dawn doll) was Barrel Full of Monkees.  I still have that double album of greatest hits, too.  Wikipedia says it was released in March of 1971, but that cannot be correct.  My memory is NOT fuzzy about getting that album on my birthday, which was in FEBRUARY.  20 great songs are on that album, which was the best I had until getting the Listen to the Band CD box set in the late 80s. 

The Monkees TV show was ahead of its time, breaking the 4^th wall, using weird video cuts, and having avant garde guest stars like Frank Zappa.  It received Emmy Awards for Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Achievement in 1967.  That was all way over the head of a preschooler.  I liked the bright colors, the six-button shirts, the crazy romps, and cute Davy Jones.  And the pop music.  I have loved pop music, always.  My mother insists that she turned on the radio when I was 2 years old, and I said, “that’s Frank Sinatra” and she realized I was right.  When I was still little, I heard the song Tracy on the radio, and thought the DJ said it was sung by The Monkees, which made me so very happy.  In later years, I found that he’d said The Cuff Links.  Not the same thing at all, but Ron Dante, the lead singer of The Cuff Links, fits into a later musical chapter of my formative years.

According to Wikipedia, reruns of The Monkees ran on CBS Saturday mornings from 1969 to 1972, and then on ABC from 1972 to 1973.  I remember watching the show on WHAS (Channel 11 in Louisville, KY, the CBS affiliate until 1990), but don’t remember it emigrating to WLKY (Channel 32).  My memories were that The Monkees were replaced by Lancelot Link, a live action show featuring chimps, with dubbed-in lines.  This is probably not accurate, but I always blamed Lancelot Link for bumping The Monkees, so I didn’t appreciate the bubblegum music in that show that I might have normally enjoyed.  Yes, I like bubblegum.  No, The Monkees are not bubblegum.  That is a LONG discussion for another time.

In the 70s, reruns of The Monkees would sporadically pop up on TV stations, usually independent stations, during the day.  But the show experienced its true rebirth on MTV when a marathon aired in 1986.  Subsequently, Peter, Micky and Davy reunited, had a Top 20 song (well, Davy wasn’t on the song) and a new album, and Mike even joined them for some live concerts (that I didn’t see).  Columbia Pictures decided to capitalize on The Monkees new-found popularity and created a new series The New Monkees, which failed pretty quickly.  I vaguely remember seeing part of maybe one of those shows, and hating it.  I own that show’s album, picked up on the cheap after the show aired.  I’m pretty sure I’ve never listened to it.

I watched the reruns of The Monkees whenever I could.  I have VHS tapes with many of the episodes that aired in the 80s.  Of course, I have both seasons of the show on DVD now (a Christmas gift from my husband in 2003, the year they were released).  I‘ve held on to the tapes just for curiosities like old MTV promos and fun items like tampon commercials featuring Courtney Cox.  I had a very good memory for the plots of the shows and enjoyed them in reruns as much as, if not more than, I did when I was 4 or 5.  I understood the humor better as an adult, and appreciated the fine pop tunes more, too.  In the mid-80s it suddenly hit me that The Monkees were closer to my parents’ ages than they were to mine.  In the 80s, I was the age that the boys were when they filmed the shows. That was sobering.  Several years later, a day came when I realized that two of The Beatles were dead, and there would be a day when one of The Monkees would pass away.  I still assumed they would be quite old and it was very far away.

In 1994, a touring production of Grease came to Louisville and I was doing the morning show at Lite 106.9 (WVEZ), and had press passes.  Davy played Vince Fontaine during that run of the show.  He was walking through the audience and my boyfriend (now husband) encouraged me to try to meet him.  I didn’t, because I didn’t want to ruin my illusion.  To the perpetually 6-years-old portion of my brain, Davy will always be 20 years old, and looking younger than that due to his diminutive stature and seemingly hairless face.  He seemed to age more quickly than the rest of the guys after the show ended.  Mike had always seemed to be more adult, and he was married during the show, although I’m sure I didn’t know that at the time.  Peter and Micky also seemed somewhat older, although Micky was born the same year as Davy.  Seeing Davy in Grease playing a middle-aged DJ who flirts with high school girls bothered me a little, so I enjoyed the show from a distance.

I enjoyed the show from a larger distance when I saw The Monkees (Davy, Micky and Peter) after a Redbirds game in 1997.  It was a fun show, although I don’t have many specific memories other than wishing Mike would have been with them to make the concert feel more complete.  I do remember thinking they looked and sounded quite fine on all of their many hits.

Those same three (no Mike again, of course) began a tour in 2011.  I wanted to see them and I read reviews saying they were better than they had any right to be.  That tour ended early, with “business” mentioned as the reason for the stoppage.  I had fears that Peter was ill, as he had been diagnosed with a rare form of head and neck cancer in 2009.  It seems now that it actually was business, or possibly fighting amongst the guys.  I regretted not having seen one of those shows, especially a few months later.

On February 29^th 2012, I came to dislike Leap Day.  I found out from Facebook that Davy Jones had died of a heart attack.  He was 66.  Friends and family sent me condolence messages.  It really was a kind of rite of passage for me.  My first crush, gone.  As an adult, I’ve come to realize that if I’d come to The Monkees later, Davy probably wouldn’t have been my favorite.  Not that I would have even had to choose, but Micky Dolenz is one of the best pop singers ever, and seriously underrated.  I always thought he was the funniest, even as a kid.  But they were all pretty gifted comedians.  Mike is a fine songwriter, and had a decent music career going before he was cast in the show.  Even though he and Peter lacked acting experience, they were funny and appealing, and possessed good comic timing.  Peter plays multiple instruments well and is also a fine songwriter.  Davy wrote fewer songs than the rest.  He was a showman, as opposed to a rocker.  He was nominated for a Tony for his portrayal of The Artful Dodger in Oliver! in 1964.  He was a teen idol.  And he was adorable.  Watch any episode of The Monkees and see for yourself.

I was glad and sad to hear the surviving Monkees were going to tour in 2012.  They did several dates, and I considered flying somewhere to see them, but couldn’t really justify the expenditure.  When I saw they’d decided to do more shows this year and would be in Nashville, less than 3 hours from me, I knew I had to go.  But as a lot of people have said, it would certainly have been nice if they have reunited for a full-fledged tour before, when all 4 guys could have done it.  Mike has never needed the money, with his inheritance (his mother created Liquid Paper), and his much greater solo success.  It’s understandable to a degree;  I’m sure it would be hard to spend most of your life defined by something you did for about 4 years, especially for someone like him, whose video innovations preceded MTV and helped to inspire that network.  But those few years meant a great deal to many people.  Despite all the digs at the “Prefab 4” and the fact that they didn’t play all the instruments on all their albums, there is no denying that they made a lot of great pop music.  Whether by choice or by dictation from record labels and TV show producers, they performed some of the best-remembered and most-played songs of the 60s.  There are many current petitions to induct them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  Whether or not the politics of that particular institution allow them in, which is highly doubtful, they will always have their place in pop music, and it is a place they earned, regardless of their origin.

There are times when musicians should call it a day.  But as long as someone sounds good and feels good about what they’re doing, they might as well go on doing it.   A couple of years ago when I heard Glen Campbell was going on tour after his Alzheimer’s diagnosis, I questioned his family’s choice.  I wondered if they were just trotting the guy out to make a few bucks.  But I heard some clips from a new album on NPR and realized he sounded marvelous.  I actually saw a show in Louisville last year and he sounded fantastic.  Not fantastic for a 76-year-old man.  Just fantastic.  His guitar playing had lost its sharpness, his daughter had to remind him he didn’t need a capo for a particular song and he obviously used a teleprompter for lyrics, but he still did an excellent show.  And given the choice between sitting on a porch waiting for that horrible curtain to be drawn across my brain and playing some more shows, I’d choose the shows any day.  Of course, I’d love to be singing and playing for any audience, so maybe I’m not the most objective observer.  My thought on this is, if you can, get together and play.

The Monkees sound good.  Really good.  Micky is 68 and his voice still sounds great on all those hits.  I believe everything he sang in Nashville on July 24^th was done in the original key.  If it wasn’t, it was close.  I’m always prepared for artists to lower the pitch of songs so they can hit the notes, but I only felt that might have been the case on a couple of Mike’s songs.  Singing was never Peter’s strong suit, but I think he sounds better now than he did in the 60s.  His speaking voice is a bit raspy, possibly due to his previous illness.  Mike sounds the same as ever, and seemed to enjoy himself during the show.  My husband quipped that he had put Liquid Paper on his hair.  Yes, they all look older, yet youthful and energetic.  All three played guitar at the beginning.  Peter also played banjo and keyboard, and Micky of course, played the drums during the second set of songs.  He had played guitar prior to being cast as the drummer on the show, at which point he had to learn to play drums.  He learned pretty well.  The show lasted about 2 hours, consisted of about 30 songs (when most of your songs are 2-3 minutes, you play a lot of them at a show), and was highly entertaining.  As Mike says in the song Listen to the Band, “Now weren’t they good?  They made me happy.”  They always will.