With Two E's

I find myself slowly regressing into childhood. These days, it's my old Monkees tunes. Try as I might, I cannot outgrow them. OK, so I don't try that hard. Why should I, really? The music brings back a lot of good memories from my childhood, and those aren't all that easy to come by, so methinks I should hold onto the good ones tightly.

I remember how quickly those first four albums came out. Every one of them made #1, and they all came out in the same year, 1967. During that year, the albums became the Report Card prize for my music-deprived life. I always wanted the new Monkees album. I was too young to ask for the dope that would have made the songs sound better.

I made a scale-model of the Monkee Mobile from a plastic kit. Pretty cool for a 10-year old kid.

I never missed the TV show. Never. missed. it. Not only was it funny, but it had all the same music I was listening to on the radio only ... get this ... the songs were little videos. Really. Only, I don't think we called them "videos" then. We didn't have the MTV.

Remarkably, it ran only two seasons. 58 episodes. Today, it would take 4 years to make 58 episodes of a TV series. The second season was decidedly hipper, featuring Mickey in his new 'fro and the band wearing the costume of the time - the tie-dye. I wanted the clothes, but the era lacked the smooth marketing of today's Tied-Into-Supercenter television. Fat chance of finding that brown shirt with the big collar and white pinstripes or the wide black belts with the big silver buckle. And don't even think about buying a double-breasted burgundy shirt. Just watch the show, kid. I was lucky to have a Monkees lunch box.

I know they didn't play their own instruments on the first two albums, but they gradually took over the process until it collapsed in a heap with the film Head in 1968. As it turned out, Mike Nesmith is a talented songwriter, and there are a few Nesmith tunes on the first two albums. Peter is a good player, too. So much so that it started to grate on them that they couldn't express themselves musically. It only figures. Put creative people in a non-creative environment, and it's just a matter of time until they revolt. They eventually fired creator [slash] brainiac music mogul Don Kirschner, who turned around and invented The Archies, supposedly because animated musicians couldn't talk back.

I saved all my Tiger Beat magazines with The Monkees in it. They would always publish the lyrics to the songs, tons of garbage about what flavor taffy they like and such. But, remember, we only had magazines and TV - and the TV had 6 channels. We weren't as info-saturated as we are today ... OK, back to reality.
Sadly, I am to find out that Tiger Beat's main target has always been girls ranging from the age of 10 to 19. I guess it's a good thing I stopped reading it.
I joined The Monkees Fan Club and got a cool magazine that was produced by the band called Here We Are! I think that's still in a box somewhere. The other magazines, meanwhile, rest comfortably atop a plastic liner in a wetlands landfill in northern New Jersey.

I collected the gum cards, and struggled like Hell to make a complete set. I wound up with more extras than were in the set, buying them a five-cent pack at a time. The stinking things were in black and white - for Pete's sake.

Nowadays, I listen to the CDs; having relegated the old mono LP records to a box somewhere. I never knew to ask for the stereo versions of the albums, but then, my grades weren't that good anyway.
I make compilation CDs to play in the car, where I can at least feel like an adult. I've made a few of them, and they always seem to have the same selection of songs...

(Theme from) The Monkees
Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)
Take a Giant Step
Circle Sky
Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day
Tear Drop City
Daydream Believer
What Am I Doin' Hangin' Round?
Valeri
Papa Gene's Blues
Tapioca Tundra
Salesman
Cuddly Toy
The Door Into Summer
You Told Me
Sweet Young Thing
Love Is Only Sleeping
Pleasant Valley Sunday
Daily Nightly
Don't Call on Me
Listen to the Band
You Just May Be the One
Writing Wrongs
Riu Chiu
Zor and Zam
Porpoise Song (theme from Head)
For Pete's Sake

You can fit all those songs on a CD because they're all about 2 minutes long. The original albums themselves were barely over half an hour, which were perfect for our little attention-deficit-television-created heads.

Generally, my taste sways away from the hits. There were plenty of more popular songs, but the thing these have in common is that they were written by some of the most talented songwriters of the era, even though we didn't know it at the time. Carole King, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, Neil Diamond, Harry Nilsson, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil - as well as Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork.

Before we had American Idol to make celebrities, they were made by corporations and Don Kirshner. The organic way.

However, to dismiss them as the "Pre-Fab Four" is to do little justice to their musical legacy. This song, in particular. If it were performed by Jefferson Airplane or The Doors, it would be regarded as a modern classic. As it is, it is simply the first recorded use of what would be known as the Moog synthesizer, and you may have never heard it before.

November 1967. A Michael Nesmith tune..."Daily Nightly"

Darkened rolling figures move through prisms of no color.
Hand in hand, they walk the night,
But never know each other.
Passioned pastel neon lights light up the jeweled traveler
Who, lost in scenes of smoke filled dreams
Find questions, but no answers.
Startled eyes that sometimes see phantasmagoric splendor
Pirouette down palsied paths
With pennies for the vendor.
Salvation's yours for just the time it takes to pay the dancer.
And once again such anxious men
Find questions, but no answers.
The night has gone and taken it's infractions,
While saddened eyes hope there will be a next one.
Sahara signs look down upon a world that glitters glibly.
And mountain sides put arms around
The unsuspecting city.
Second hands that minds have slowed are moving even faster
Toward bringing down someone who's found
The questions but no answers.