Hey, Hey, it's time to monkee around!

Today I'm celebrating The Monkees!

On this date in 1968, the 58th and final episode of The Monkees TV show was aired. The Monkees TV Show premiered in September 1966 on NBC. It was an off-the-wall, wacky comedy show about a 4-piece rock band and was patterned after The Beatles' movie A Hard Days Night. The TV show portrayed four hip young men who lived together, gave each other understanding and love, and went around saving everybody. The four actors recruited for the show, Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork and David Jones, had all individually performed musically prior to the show. They were trained in both improvisational comedy and stage presence as a group so that they could look and act like a cohesive band. Each band member was given a different personality to portray: Dolenz, the funny one; Tork, the naive one; Nesmith, the smart and serious one; and Jones, the cute one. Here's a video from YouTube of the theme song of The Monkees show:

As posted on YouTube by OrangeTabbyCat3

The actors of The Monkees provided primarily vocals and did not play their instruments on early albums. The Monkees aroused fierce controversy. Some considered The Monkees as a "manufactured group" and a fraud. While the Beatles had been called the "Fab Four" (fab short for fabulous), The Monkees were often called the "Pre-Fab four" (pre-fab short for pre-fabricated as a made-for-TV knockoff of The Beatles). I was happy to learn that the Beatles took the success of The Monkees in stride and reportedly were fans of the show. The actors were criticized for not playing their own music (even though other bands used session players while recording), but they were not allowed. They eventually won the battle and even toured, playing all of the music themselves. The line between fiction and reality was often blurred to their fans though.

The Monkees television show and the music of the band was a huge success. The Monkees television show used techniques rarely seen on episodic television, including talking to the camera, fantasy sequences, abrupt inserts, vignettes which now look very much like music videos, and 'extras' added to the end of the show. The Monkees won two Emmy Awards in 1967: Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy. The music of The Monkees was extremely successful, with the first four albums released reaching #1 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart. Four singles released reached #1-#3 positions on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966-68 and seven reached #1-#3 positions on Cashbox for that time period. At the end of the second season, production ceased and without the TV show for promotion and few friends in the music industry (due to what some describe as their easy fame), the group members went their separate ways. In 1986, after an MTV run of 24 hours of Monkees TV episodes, the band revived, created a reunion record and toured (minus one member), and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame before breaking up again.

Some argue that The Monkees was influential in the 1960s in the idea of music video promotion, marketing of TV show products to pre-teen audiences, and opened the door to multimedia. While some consider the music of The Monkees as manufactured, many others fondly remember The Monkees from their childhood and teen years. In the end, I think you'd agree that The Monkees was indeed a real working band, provided quality music, provided comedy in a format that had never been tried before, and was wildly successful.

Today, I've enjoyed reflecting on The Monkees and the crush I once had on Davy Jones. ; )


Image credit: The Monkees and Monkeemobile pics from Wikipedia
Reference: Wikipedia article on The Monkees and The Monkees Home Page