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RIP - Davey Jones

The 'cute' Monkee -- from Ed Morrisey at Pajamas Media:

How Davy Jones Changed the World
I still find it hard to believe that Davy Jones, the teen idol star of TV’s The Monkees died today at age 66 of a heart attack. Given that Mick Jagger is still going strong, and while Keith Richards appears to have morphed into Treebeard at some point over the last decade, he recently concluded a tour to promote his best-selling autobiography, 66 isn’t that old for today’s geriatric rock stars – particularly if Jones had stuck with the milk diet implied by the Monkees’ first sponsor, Kellogg’s Cereal.

I wouldn’t go as far as Kathy Shaidle’s claim that they were “better than The Beatles,” but certainly the latter group’s prefab imitators had their moments. In their early days, with Don Kirshner leading their sessions, they had the pick of New York’s Brill Building songwriters, such as Neil Diamond, Carole King, and Gerry Goffin. In their second season, after they fired Kirshner, the hits slowed down, but their quirky attempts at psychedelia were some of their most fascinating songs, along with Mike Nesmith’s proto-country rock experiments, which anticipated ‘70s groups like The Eagles by a good five to ten years. (Nesmith’s experiments in music video in the following decade would be dubbed by some as a direct precursor to ‘80s phenomenon MTV.)

You could make a case that 1966 was a seminal year in boomer pop culture. A young person could turn on the TV and flip through the dial to find:

•Star Trek
•Mission: Impossible
•Batman
•The Green Hornet
•I Spy
•The Avengers
•The Wild, Wild West
•And of course, The Monkees

Those shows would be the backbone of syndicated rerun packages for the next quarter century, and most would also be developed into at least one motion picture, and for the first three, entire franchises that continue to this day.

That show was on regular rotation in my teens. A couple of commentors brought up the missing shows in the roster: Man from U.N.C.L.E., Lost in Space, and of course, IRWIN ALLEN's Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea and Time Tunnel. I am still waiting for my jetpack. Dammit -- they promised me a jetpack. With fricken' laser beams... Posted by DaveH at February 29, 2012 11:00 PM