(Guest review by Gary
Pig Gold) (Eagle RockEntertainment) Can it really be true that Rolling Stone publisher/magnate Jann S. Wenner has personally
conducted a decades-long campaign to bar The Monkees from induction into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
Far-from-dummy Monkee Peter Tork certainly thinks so.
"He doesn't care what the rules are and just operates
how he sees fit," Tork told the New
York Post in 2007. "It is an abuse of power. I don't know whether The
Monkees belong in the Hall of Fame, but it's pretty clear that we're not in
there because of a personal whim."
Now sure, the Monkees (along with the Beach Boys, Byrds,
even Beatles, most every Motown act, etc. etc. etc.) certainly didn't play
every single note on every single record they ever made. Nevertheless, in 1967
Jann and his fledgling zine were riding extremely high on the Monkee-bashing
bandwagon, using the television rockstars as the best/worst examples of all
that was unhip, uncool, and truth be told un-San Francisco in the world.
Fair enough. I remember it also took Rolling Stone over a decade to figure out the Ramones too.
Regarding that great big late-Sixties
Monkees-used-session-musicians brew-ha-ha though, as Peter most rightfully
points out "Jann seems to have taken it harder than everyone else. And
now, forty years later, everybody says, 'What's the big deal? Everybody else
does it.' Nobody cares now except him. He feels his moral judgment in 1967 and
1968 is supposed to serve in 2007."
Of course, looking at the big picture, such Fame Hall
squirmishes mean little if anything over here in what remains of the real world.
But let me just remind Mr. Wenner and countless other Monkee doubters out there
– and yes, there's probably just as many in 2013 as there were in 2007, to say
nothing of 1967:
Forget about who
really played all those flamenco breaks on "Valleri." If you were born anywhere between the
years 1955 and 1960, and consequently were just a tad too young to teethe your
ears upon Pet Sounds or Revolver, like me you tuned into your
local NBC-TV affiliate on the evening of September 12, 1966, sat transfixed for
the next thirty minutes, and then told yourself "Hey! So THAT'S what a
rock and roll band really lives,
looks, sounds and acts like!" Eating communal Rice Krispies at the break
of noon, practicing in front of the patio window every day instead of going to
school or work, yet always making sure to keep too busy singing to put anybody
(under the age of twenty-five) down.
This was vital, and in my case at least life-changing
information which just couldn't be gleaned from spotting the occasional
three-minute Dave Clark Five or Turtles performance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
But even more importantly – and, as it turns out, much more
slyly and cleverly – what Peter alongside his pals Davy Jones (RIP), Micky
Dolenz and Mike "Wool Hat" Nesmith (who I just saw in concert just
last night… fantastic, need I say any more?) really did during their fifty-eight half-hours on NBC was, for the
very first time, bring the counter-culture boldly into the North American
entertainment mainstream.
Really.
You must understand that prior to 1966, long-haired kids
were only seen on television getting into no good whatsoever down some dark,
garbage-strewn alley …that is until Sergeant Joe Friday rounded them up while
giving a stern lecture on morality into the nearest camera.
Suddenly though, here were four seemingly happy-go-lucky
kids with hair over their ears and guitars over their shoulders, without any
apparent "adult supervision" such as parents or bosses in sight,
living for all intents and purposes the same kind of wholesome apple-pie life
as those over in Mayberry or My Three
Sons. Indeed, at the end of each broadcast day Davy always got the girl,
the villains always got what they
deserved, and the small-screen sun inevitably set to the accompaniment of yet
another ultra-groovy new Nilsson or Boyce and Hart-penned tune (…which reminds
me: long before "Penny Lane" or even D.A. Pennebaker, The Monkees
damn well invented MTV too) (please, try not to hold it against them).
But for all their seemingly homespun zaniness, each week the
Prefab Four were in actual fact getting up to the kind of (mis)adventures even A Hard Day's Night wouldn't, or couldn't
show.
Don't just take my words for it though. Even Timothy Leary,
unlike his supposed contemporaries way over at Rolling Stone, immediately saw between the cathode lines. And I
quote (from Dr. Leary's own The Politics
of Ecstasy): "The Monkees'
television show. Oh, you thought that it was silly teenage entertainment? Don't
be fooled. While it lasted, it was a classic Sufi put on. An early-Christian
electronic satire. A mystic magic show. A jolly Buddha laugh at hypocrisy.
"At early evening kiddie-time on Monday the Monkees
would rush through a parody drama, burlesquing the very shows that glue Mom and
Dad to the set during prime time. Spoofing the movies and the violence and the
down-heavy-conflict-emotion themes that fascinate the middle-aged. And woven
into the fast-moving psychedelic stream of action were the prophetic, holy,
challenging words. Micky was rapping quickly, dropping literary names, making
scholarly references: then the sudden psychedelic switch of the reality
channel. He looked straight at the camera, right into your living room, and
up-levelled the comedy by saying: 'Pretty good talking for a long-haired
weirdo, huh, Mr. and Mrs. America?' And then ZAP, flash. Back to the innocuous
comedy."
And here I was as a wee tyke thinking I was just watching a
live-action Rocky & Bullwinkle
with amplifiers every week!
And now, many thanks to our heroes at Eagle Rock Entertainment,
you need no longer roam the nether regions of your satellite dish or settle for
dicey VHS-generation YouTube uploads to hear and see what all the fuss was truly about. For once again, the entire series of Monkeeshows, along with
their even-seeing-isn't-quite-believing 33
1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee television spectacular – plus a slew of
Kellogg's cereal commercials just to put everything in their proper hysterical
perspective – have all been lovingly packaged anew into two (count 'em!) deluxe
DVD box sets.
Once again we can watch Mike trading places – and prosthetic
noses – with Frank Zappa before running for Mayor (and issuing forth a most
somber soliloquy which seems even more relevant to today's socio-political
atmosphere). We can see Peter bargaining to regain his musical soul from a
metaphorically-steeped record-biz Beelzebub, and Micky battling the evil Wizard
Glick and his far from subliminal television-brainwash machine (in an episode
the fuzzy-headed Monkee, by the way, also directed).
And Davy? He gets the girl(s). And also taught Axl Rose how
to dance, need I remind anyone.
It's all wacky and definitely wild throughout, you bet. But
it's particularly surprising how extremely fast-paced and ingeniously edited
these half-hours are, and in Series Two especially each show began doing,
saying – and showing – things on the family tube that were absolutely unseen
and unheard of across the pre-Python/SNL
landscape.
Plus the music throughout is top-notch, it should go without
mentioning. Even the sequences where Liberace takes a sledge hammer to a grand
piano.
Come 1968 however, all that was left for The Monkees was to
star in the greatest rock 'n' roll film ever made (it's called Head, by the way) before paving the TV
way for various Partridges, Banana Splits, and even their old nemesis Don
Kirshner's Rock Concert. Lest we
never forget Michael Nesmith's landmark Elephant
and Television Parts series as well,
full of the visionary and pioneering work he continues to this very date right
there on his own Video Ranch Dot Com.
But for now, you better get ready to take a giant step back;
back to the very beginning. To 7:30 pm, September 12, 1966. Disc 1, Episode 1
of Season 1 of The Monkees. Why, it really is
more fun than a barrelful of, well, old Rolling
Stone magazines.
