The Monkees

The recent death of former Monkees singer, songwriter and guitarist Mike Nesmith has motivated me to take a look back on that band. Overall I had mixed feelings about The Monkees because even as a young teenager I was aware of their completely made of nature of their band, their music, almost everything about them was bullshit except... it worked. The television show was funny. The music was mostly good. You just needed to get past the fake nature of their made for TV act. It was also weird how the TV people assigned the instruments. It as all so seemingly random.

The group was conceived by some Hollywood producers as a music based situation comedy with lots of slapstick modeled after the early Beatles movies A Hard Day's Night and Help. The TV show aired from 1966 to 1968. It was on in our house every week and I probably saw most of those shows. Well, at least the first year or so. Initially the actors didn't have anything to do with the music which was written and performed by studio musicians but eventually they got control of the music.

I did buy some of their singles back in 1966. There were certainly a part of my teenage years. By 1967 there was a lot of anti-Monkees sentiment out there because people had learned about faux nature of the band. There were too many good real bands out there for people to be hoodwinked by some Hollywood make believe band. Sure, the TV show was funny but why would anyone want to go to a Monkees concert. I thought it was very funny when Jimi Hendrix toured with them as their opening act. That was a crazy publicity stunt and got some early exposure for Hendrix... as if he needed it.

However, Michael Nesmith was a true talent. His solo albums were all very good and he was instrumental in the creation of country rock and what would later be known as cosmic cowboy music. In 2017 I read his wonderful autobiography Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff. 

Michael Nesmith had well over twenty well received solo albums throughout his career. I have a couple of his compilation albums.

The Monkees had six albums between 1966 and 1968. 

I have a few of their albums in my collection:

• The Monkees, 1966
• More of the Monkees, 1966
• Headquarters, 1967
• Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones LTD, 1967
• The Birds, The Bees, and The Monkees, 1968
• Head, 1968
• The Monkees Anthology, 1998
• The Monkees 50, 2016
• Good Times!, 2016