Roxanne Tellier: MonkeeMania! Part Deux

Critics called them “The Pre-Fab Four,” but a generation of little girls understood. Those of us coming into puberty, who had been just a little too young to have had fantasies about The Beatles, now had our very own super group. The Monkees were cute! They were funny! And really – could this quartet be more non-threatening? The worse that could happen would be that Davy might not get the girl … but he always did.

My best friends and I would loll around for hours, listening to their latest record, buying every copy of 16 Magazine and TIGER beat with a picture of one of the boys on the cover, and of course, watching the show every Sunday night. We’d squeal on the phone about their rumoured escapades, and dream of some day meeting a real live Monkee.

Roxanne Tellier: MonkeeMania!

Ramping up to the 50^th anniversary of The Beatles February 9, 1964  appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, it’s easy to forget that one of the other acts on that same show, on that same evening, featured a slight, young “Artful Dodger” – one David Jones, aged 19, belting out a song from the hit Broadway play Oliver! During that performance Jones sang “I’d Do Anything” with the entire cast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKpLngN6CPE

JAIMIE VERNON: POP’S QUEST FOR IMMORTALITY

A little bit of my childhood died this week when Davy Jones of the Monkees passed away of a heart attack. And it died for a lot of people, unfortunately. It was another reminder that pop culture and reality is being dismantled one memory at a time by the grim reaper. And we cried. But do we cry for Davy or ourselves? Maybe a bit of both, I suppose.

“Let us die young or let us live forever
We don’t have the power but we never say never
Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip
The music’s for the sad men….”

Geoff Pevere: Monkee Love

When she heard the news Davy Jones had died, my daughter rang me from work. I can’t tell you how cool this was. She’s twenty-four and she’s always understood that a formative event in the obsessional unhinging of her old man was the first airing of The Monkees in 1966. Whatever the old man had become, and whatever pop culturally-prone material of his had managed to splash over from one generation to the next, was somehow accounted for by that fact. Somehow.