The untimely and sad passing of Davy Jones got me thinking about how amazing it is that any conversation about the Monkees has to involve an incredibly amount of effort spent in defending why one might like them. The Prefab Four? from that kid's t.v. show? Yea, you can hum most of their songs, but that's what your weird aunt listens to. But this, even though a list of serious artists not only refused to thrown them under the bus, but had nice things to say about them -- Jerry Garcia, Frank Zappa, Neil Young, the friggin' Beatles. Sure, no one would mistake them for the Beatles, but.... so?
The endurance of the Monkees beyond their generation would seem to prove there is value in durability. My generation and I found them when they began appearing in the late 1980s on MTV and Nickelodeon -- two networks that still had some capacity to shape opinions back in the old set-top cable box days. We saw them as hokey, a bit cheesy, but catchy in a way that felt they'd been around forever. And certainly much different than anything else that would have come across our field of vision. They were for many of us, perhaps, the first hint that rock and pop music had a history, that our culture was more than what we saw around us.
And it was hard to miss that they were professionals, and seemed to have a healthy sense of perspective about what they were about. And it was terribly interesting how their SoCal cheekiness was a running theme and variation on the specific stereotypes they were supposed to fit. Davy, "the cute one," was self-deprecating, funny and too short for his designated role. Mickey, "the funny one," was the best singer, even though he was the alleged drummer. Peter was the "shy one," and always seemed sad and distracted. He and Michael Nesmith, the "smart one," perfected a kind of cool, there-but-not-there vibe that played well off the earnest eager-to-please approach of Jones and Dolenz. I think they might have invented irony as we know it.
And it interesting how int he course of their short career the music changed, going from a wholly produced canned thing to something that could credibly be called their own sound. My favorite song was a Nesmith number, "The Girl that I Knew Somewhere," from their later phase. I also remember always liking the early song "Saturday's Child," which was written by the guy from Bread and was such a session production it barely counts as a Monkees song -- Dolenz was the only Monkee credited with doing anything on the track. Its lyrics are silly, but it has a very heavy guitar riff and backup harmonies that feel like they shouldn't be in the same song. I also always liked "She" and "Words," which were intense enough that you'd think they should have come from a different band. They did have an amazing capacity to squirm away from what you thought they were about. I actually once sat through Head, their insane version of A Hard Day's Night, which zoomed straight through funny into very strange.
An important question the film raises is why it is so hard to accept them for what they were. "The prefab four," shameless Beatles knock-off aimed at cashing in on the British Invasion. All these points are conceded, but you say it like that's a bad thing... I feel bad for those that can't see how untangling all this is fun. The American entertainment establishment responding to American audiences responding to young British bands responding to American rock and roll. Or, as Mike said in Head, "You think they call us plastic now, babe, wait 'til I get through telling them how we do it."
This block is a reflection of our desperate need for authenticity in what we listen to. Why is this so important? I watched with great amusement how the Indie music community tied itself into mental gymnastics embracing, the rejecting, then howling about its "discovery" of Lana Del Rey. This much effort wasn't spent by American Stalinists trying to distance themselves from Trotsky. And really, what is this about? the outrage that this out-of-nowhere DIY shooting star with a catchy single only the cognoscenti were hip to turned out to be only a modestly talented aspiring recording artist trying a new tactic to break out, with the help of a record label! Mon dieu -- I hope these guys don't find out Jeremy Lin wasn't born on the New York Knicks.
It is a shame that in so many of our tastes and preferences we need to follow a pattern, have a familiar template in front of us to simplify the work of explaining what we are seeing for us. A neat simple story -- that the Monkees were pre-fabricated and nothing more than a guilty pleasure who had catchy songs written for them. Maybe not...
The endurance of the Monkees beyond their generation would seem to prove there is value in durability. My generation and I found them when they began appearing in the late 1980s on MTV and Nickelodeon -- two networks that still had some capacity to shape opinions back in the old set-top cable box days. We saw them as hokey, a bit cheesy, but catchy in a way that felt they'd been around forever. And certainly much different than anything else that would have come across our field of vision. They were for many of us, perhaps, the first hint that rock and pop music had a history, that our culture was more than what we saw around us.
And it was hard to miss that they were professionals, and seemed to have a healthy sense of perspective about what they were about. And it was terribly interesting how their SoCal cheekiness was a running theme and variation on the specific stereotypes they were supposed to fit. Davy, "the cute one," was self-deprecating, funny and too short for his designated role. Mickey, "the funny one," was the best singer, even though he was the alleged drummer. Peter was the "shy one," and always seemed sad and distracted. He and Michael Nesmith, the "smart one," perfected a kind of cool, there-but-not-there vibe that played well off the earnest eager-to-please approach of Jones and Dolenz. I think they might have invented irony as we know it.
And it interesting how int he course of their short career the music changed, going from a wholly produced canned thing to something that could credibly be called their own sound. My favorite song was a Nesmith number, "The Girl that I Knew Somewhere," from their later phase. I also remember always liking the early song "Saturday's Child," which was written by the guy from Bread and was such a session production it barely counts as a Monkees song -- Dolenz was the only Monkee credited with doing anything on the track. Its lyrics are silly, but it has a very heavy guitar riff and backup harmonies that feel like they shouldn't be in the same song. I also always liked "She" and "Words," which were intense enough that you'd think they should have come from a different band. They did have an amazing capacity to squirm away from what you thought they were about. I actually once sat through Head, their insane version of A Hard Day's Night, which zoomed straight through funny into very strange.
An important question the film raises is why it is so hard to accept them for what they were. "The prefab four," shameless Beatles knock-off aimed at cashing in on the British Invasion. All these points are conceded, but you say it like that's a bad thing... I feel bad for those that can't see how untangling all this is fun. The American entertainment establishment responding to American audiences responding to young British bands responding to American rock and roll. Or, as Mike said in Head, "You think they call us plastic now, babe, wait 'til I get through telling them how we do it."
This block is a reflection of our desperate need for authenticity in what we listen to. Why is this so important? I watched with great amusement how the Indie music community tied itself into mental gymnastics embracing, the rejecting, then howling about its "discovery" of Lana Del Rey. This much effort wasn't spent by American Stalinists trying to distance themselves from Trotsky. And really, what is this about? the outrage that this out-of-nowhere DIY shooting star with a catchy single only the cognoscenti were hip to turned out to be only a modestly talented aspiring recording artist trying a new tactic to break out, with the help of a record label! Mon dieu -- I hope these guys don't find out Jeremy Lin wasn't born on the New York Knicks.
It is a shame that in so many of our tastes and preferences we need to follow a pattern, have a familiar template in front of us to simplify the work of explaining what we are seeing for us. A neat simple story -- that the Monkees were pre-fabricated and nothing more than a guilty pleasure who had catchy songs written for them. Maybe not...
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