THE MONKEES – "I'm A Believer"

My feelings about the Monkees and their music are entirely entangled with my feelings about their TV show, and childhood TV in general. Pop music wasn’t a big deal in my house growing up, and I had no real idea of the Monkees as ‘a band’, even if they played a band in the show: I just didn’t know what that might mean or what a band might do.

There was a massive gap, it seemed to me, between American shows like the Monkees, or the Banana Splits, and British programmes like Ivor The Engine, or Fingerbobs, or Bagpuss. (Of course now I know that these shows were made for very different agegroups, but they would run together during the UK school holidays so I consumed them as a whole.) I preferred the British shows, by a long way – the Monkees upset and annoyed me, their shows seemed to make no sense, and though just as plot-light were more frantic: talking about it to Pete the other day, he described the American style excellently as “nothing happens all at once”. The Monkees seemed to be always running about – I could not imagine the genial hippies who fronted or narrated Fingerbobs or Ivor running anywhere. Those presenters reminded me of my parents, who would tell me a story and then leave me to my imagination. The Monkees reminded me of my nursery school teachers, forever chivvying me to join in and have fun.

(The running about in the American shows, of course, wasn’t because American kids were much livelier than British ones: it was mostly because the budgets were bigger and so children’s programme making wasn’t confined to tiny broomcupboard studios which necessitated the crafts-and-puppets approach the UK output took.)

I went wandering down this route when I was trying to figure out why I’ve always had such a blindspot about the Monkees. “I’m A Believer” is professional, slick pop, crammed with hooks and imaginative touches – and I often love professional, slick pop. I’ve danced to this song, I’ve thrown shapes on the “I’m in love!” parts, I can listen to it now and hear some subtle, surprisingly soft vocal touches: it’s a terrific bit of craft and full of heart and enthusiasm too. I ought maybe to be right behind the Monkees as some kind of godfathers of the artificially created band. Instead, even as I enjoy the record, I can still feel my five-year-old self, nervous and uncomprehending, faced with the Monkees’ kind of televised fun and resenting it.

Score: 7

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Pete Baran

27 February 2006 17:37

What Tom doesn’t mention is my description of the shows he loved: “Nothing happens, all on screen”.

I think the Monkees are in some ways responsible for a certain type of rockism: not really their fault. Before them anything went. The idea of manufactured bands did not exist, even though they clearly did exist. The Monkees had great records which were meant to sound like the Beatles when they were good, but they were also TV kids comedians. This was probably a step too far for some pop fans, and then “seriousness” becomes an issue. I may think about this further – but its a pity they suffer by your timid five year old self.

Anonymous

27 February 2006 18:08

It’s a brilliant song. Possibly the epitome of ephemeral pop: I’d never resent this coming on in a club or on the radio, yet I can’t imagine ever wanting to own a copy for private listening.

Tommy Mack

Pete Baran

27 February 2006 18:18

I own a copy. You won’t regret it. A Monkees Best Of is an excellent buy.

Anonymous

27 February 2006 18:21

That is to say, it’s about the public, collective ‘fun’ which the infant Tom resented, rather than the private reverie he enjoyed. Some records can fulfill both purposes to greater or lesser degree, this certainly isn’t one of them (not to these ears anyway) but it does the former so well that it would be churlish to expect it to be much cop at the latter. I think a seven is about right, I probably don’t enjoy it quite as much as most of the stuff to which you’ve given an 8 or a 9.

Tom

27 February 2006 18:34

Another factor I think Pete is that by the time I did get into pop it mostly sounded very little like the Monkees.

The one Monkees record which has completely avoided being tarnished by TV association, and which I think is unabashedly glorious, is “Daydream Believer”.

Rosie

27 February 2006 18:58

I wonder how long a generation, or a cycle, is in these things?

Generation is probably wrong and mayby I was horribly precocious but I was swept up by this record, at twelve-and-a-half years old (and was madly in love with Davy Jones, of course, like everybody else), and yet it’s a million miles away from ‘House of the Rising Sun’ which had swept me up two-and-a-half years earlier and almost certainly had a much greater role in defining my long-term musical tastes.

Anyway, I did say I think we’d crossed a watershed and this was something new. From here on I think the singles charts will be more Monkees and less Beatles. I’d have said that The Monkees were the earliest of teh Boy Bands too, except that we’ve already had The Bachelors who were propbably more Westlife than Westlife. And this is the real beginning of the link between pop music and the Entertainment Industry, is it not? The Monkees were actors not musos – except for Mike Nesmith who wasn’t really happy with the setup anyway – and were there to look pretty more than anything else.

I agree that Daydream Believe is a terrific song but this weren’t half bad either. Though in the end I preferred Robert Wyatt’s version from the early 1970s, which is officially The Last Single I Ever Bought!

Ian

27 February 2006 19:47

A 10, surely?

(and so is “Daydream Believer”)

Anonymous

28 February 2006 01:33

Your tastes as a five-year-old were AWFUL, Tom.

Tom

28 February 2006 08:42

And they haven’t improved much!

There’ll be more on kids TV, and the gentle-hippie brand of kids TV I did like, when we get to 1970 or so.

CarsmileSteve

28 February 2006 10:16

much like in a comedy show (in fact, i may have first seen it on the monkees), i am imagining a five-year old tom watching fingerbobs with an beard and tom glasses…

the red hand gang was better than the monkees anyway…

Tom

28 February 2006 10:21

Yoffie had a great beard!

You are right about the RHG.

Anonymous

28 February 2006 10:22

Did you like the Banana Splitz, Tom? (Or even… ANIMAL KWACKERS??)

Tom

28 February 2006 10:25

BS – no, I loved the theme tune and the costumes but the antics never did it for me.

AK – don’t remember.

Anonymous

28 February 2006 10:31

“The American style” wackiness is of course a pastiche of Dick Lester/Beatles movies. Which the yank Lester picked up from… The Goons. Who in a funny way, are also the precursors of the genial hippies and surrealism of Postgate.
ST

Tom

28 February 2006 10:35

Yup, I know the genealogy (and there were Lester-ish UK kids progs too, like Why Don’t You, though that had a somewhat didactic tone). But I’ve never actually seen any Dick Lester Beatles films so I didn’t mention them.

Alan

28 February 2006 11:03

The Double Deckers was quite self consciously going for that American oddness and export market. “Clothes by JC Penney”!? was there ever a JCP in britain?

CarsmileSteve

28 February 2006 13:40

you are OBSESSED man.

i have owned JC Penney shirts from charity shops. whilst i don’t think they had shops, i think they sold in concessions in dept stores (this is a guess).

Anonymous

28 February 2006 15:13

TOM ?

You’ve never seen ” A Hard Day’s Night ” ?

Anonymous

28 February 2006 15:21

Interesting thing about many of the Monkees hits were that thye were written by Neil Diamond.

And the TV Show was just a serialized Hard Days Night. Can you think of any other reason for such tosh ?

Anonymous

28 February 2006 18:50

I agree with Pete Baran that the Monkees were the moment when seriousness became an issue. This notion – that music designed to be fun and catchy and popular is Evil, while music that eschews an audience while puffing itself up with aspirations to deep meaning is Good – has been maybe the worst thing about rock for the last umpteen decades. I would suggest that, while it may have made a high-profile public nuisance of itself for the first time on the occasion of the Monkees’ success, the idea of Popular Equals Immoral had previously snuck into rock music via the Greenwich Village folkies of the early 1960s. Since as a group these performers were most notable for introducing the songs of Bob Dylan to a wide audience, it seems to me that the supposed line in the sand would place the Dylan proxies on one side and the Brill Building singers, writers, musicians, and producers on the other, with the latter’s last gasp of mass popularity being the Monkees and their less difficult cartoon substitutes, the Archies. The irony is that Dylan himself – or at least one of his selves, the one from 1965-66 – had no trouble at all with the idea of popularity. It’s no coincidence that that’s by far my favorite version of Dylan. Nor that the performer, Kurt Cobain, who took the notion of popularity amounting to a character flaw to its pathetic endgame so completely got on my last nerve.

A historical footnote: the Monkees’ first single, “Last Train to Clarksville,” hit #1 on the American charts before their TV show aired its first episode. This is not to argue that the show wasn’t crucial to their chart success, but it might explain why I never think of their music in connection with their show, despite having watched the show every week when I was a kid: ultimately, the only thing that lasts is what’s in the grooves. (Or, nowadays, in the binary code.)

wwolfe

Anonymous

1 March 2006 01:46

Doctor Mod says:

The Monkees, I think, were a decent enough band (even when they actually did play there own instruments), but had the misfortune of being the end product of a typically American all-things-to-all-people commercial scheme in the form of entertainment. They were the pre-fab four as opposed to the Fab Four, but they came along just at the time it became evident that the Beatles were no longer “cute.” Thus they filled a certain need the public had for “cute” teenybop attractions in their music and in their programme. The attempts to rip-off A Hard Day’s Night are more than evident in their TV series–but it goes without saying that they fell quite short of the mark in attempting to replace the Beatles. (Indeed, the landscape is littered with the corpses of those who foolishly tried to do just that.)

Despite all that, the song is, as Tom says, certainly a well-crafted piece of pop work that beats much of what was produced in 1966-67, and the lads were surely not without talent. I don’t know if any of them actually played any instrument(s) on the recording–but the unrelenting and infectuous optimism of the vocals is surely worth at least a bit of applause.

[But now that you mention it, I suppose most of us who have been born since the television age began were probably traumtised by that medium at some tender age. Personally, I was given nightmares by a number of Disney films. So much for wholesome entertainment.]

Mark Gamon

1 March 2006 11:12

Throwing shapes????? Teehee…

Can’t think of a THING to say about the Monkees. They were made up, they made some pop trash we love because we were young, they went away.

Or they almost did. Check out Michael Nesmith’s country records from the 70s, and you’ll find out what happens when the record company isn’t dragging the talent in whatever direction it deems profitable. I remember Newmith being interviewed on Newsight (or its equivalent) shortly after the Monkees broke up. They had the decency to play a few bars, and he was in tears.

Which kind of sums up what the Monkees product stood for.

Chris Brown

1 March 2006 23:49

To quote David Gedge, who is of course a small footnote in chart history himself: “I’d like to be controversial and say they were better than the Beatles, but of course they weren’t. They were really great before they started to write their own songs, though.”

My mum was a Monkees fan, so when they repeated the TV series in my childhood, she insisted we watch it. I didn’t really understand it to be honest, but I liked the car and there were some great tunes too; ‘Daydream Believer’ was back in the charts at the time, and for some reason I quite liked ‘DW Washburn’.

Random free-association memory: my Mum telling my Dad what ‘Alternate Title’ was really called. Or at least, telling him that the initials were “RSG” but refusing to go further until my brother and I had gone to bed. I did find out eventually though, don’t worry.

Frank Kogan

3 March 2006 16:12

One thing no one has mentioned, maybe it being only true in the U.S., but…

“I’m a Believer” was one side of what was a TWO-SIDED SINGLE, the other side getting a lot of airplay (though not as much as “Believer”), which probably helped propel the record to number one and keep it there for seven weeks. And unlike “Believer,” the flip was not particularly modeled on the Beatles (or to the extent it was, it was the Beatles of “You Can’t Do That” and “Day Tripper”). In fact, it used what was becoming a standard formula in the U.S.: instrumentals taken from Yardbirds (or Animals or Kinks or Them), vocal attack taken from Jagger. Dolenz was weak as Jagger, of course, but that didn’t undercut the impact of the overall sound, which was hard and angry. Or at least it was for a 12 year old listening through the ears of 1966, and I guarantee you that I did not feel an ontological difference between “Steppin’ Stone” and “Hanky Panky,” “Mother’s Little Helper,” “96 Tears,” “When I Was Young,” “Too Much to Dream,” “Get Me to the World On Time,” “Pushin’ Too Hard,” “Psychotic Reaction,” etc. etc. etc. Also – Rosie take note – the chord pattern for “Steppin’ Stone” (with one variation, “Steppin’ Stone” starting on a major chord where its models started on a minor) is taken from the Yardbirds’ “For Your Love” and the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun.” Also, it’d be wrong to set up “Believer” and “Steppin’ Stone” as some kind of Ying and Yang, “I’m a Believer” vs. “I’m NOT a Believer,” seeing as how “I’m a Believer” contains within itself the same tension, what the narrator used to feel before his conversion:

What?s the use in trying
All you get is pain

Such stuff, which pop music conveyed then and conveys now – love or pain (which pretty easily morphed into “love is pain,” in fact that’s exactly what it is in the “before” part of “I’m a Believer”) – had a not necessarily great effect on my budding sense of what romance was to be.

Frank Kogan

3 March 2006 17:47

A few more thoughts, in response to what’s been written above: In general, a fan of music doesn’t go for only one sound, and a performer doesn’t go for only one audience. The Monkees weren’t just selling the cutes (nor was pop music then, nor is pop music now). But specifically, the Monkees weren’t just selling to the “pop” audience rather than the “rock” audience, which hadn’t split yet anyway, and maybe never really split. Michael’s character on the show definitely had an angry edge, and Michael was the one band member who was contributing Monkees songs from the start. Interesting aside: Track nine on last year’s Tommy Boy Presents Hip Hop Roots is the Monkees’ Nesmith-penned “Mary Mary.” So not only did the Monkees create a punk-rock classic, they created a hip-hop classic too. David Hoop quotes Bambaataa talking about how in the ’70s he (Bambaataa) would mix break beats from “Mary Mary” into his set – “just the beat part where they’d go ‘Mary Mary'” – and the dancers would be throwing down and screaming and dancing crazy, and then he’d tell people what he’d played, and they’d say, “You liar. I didn’t dance to no Monkees.” In any event, there is often the idea of a cool vs. square split, or rock vs. pop, or punk vs. mainstream, or poptimists vs. the square old indie rockers (suckers, notice that it’s the poptimists in the old rock role). This idea has an effect on the music, but the music and the listeners never actually abide by the split, which cannot be maintained. Partly this is because the idea of transgressing against pop is a pop idea, and the cool kids are simultaneously trying to transgress by being trashy and trying to seriously transgress, which means they always have to keep running back to pop in order to find their transgressive trashiness. But more fundamentally, musicians and fans are all coming from the same culture and dealing with the same stuff. I’ve been playing Kelly Clarkson and the Hold Steady back-to-back last week, and this isn’t because I’m “eclectic” or “omnivorous” in my tastes but because Kelly Clarkson and Craig Finn are crying in the night ’cause of the same damn thing, so the two records feed and enrich each other. Back to the Monkees: Once on the show they showed clips of the individual Monkees back when they were being interviewed for their jobs, and Michael was being actively hostile to the interviewer, simply not cooperating, and that must have been one of the reasons they chose him. And Peter’s role had two meanings: he’s either the stupid one or he’s the stoned one, depending on how you look at it.

The show itself, at least for its first year before the creativity dried up, was hilarious and was unlike any previous TV show, and in some ways took the Lester films farther. Their basic plots were standard enough – usually “we are four young nonconformist friends who stick with each other” – the nonconformity never really being spelled out (no more than the theme song, wherein they declared themselves the young generation with something to say, ever actually said anything), but the details would head towards lunacy. I remember once the lads are romping around on the beach, leaping over sand dunes, and the last one, Peter, is about to leap, and suddenly it’s not sand on the other side, but a sheer cliff. And even better, there was the episode where Davey has something he has to stay home for, and the other fellows, having to go out and realizing that Davey is Davey and likely therefore to wander away if left on his own, handcuff his leg to a chair so he’ll stay put. But after they leave, a party invitation is delivered to Davey, so he takes off anyway, dragging the chair along with him. The guys come home, find both Davey and chair missing, and run up and down the city streets looking for him. Suddenly they sight him from the back, in the distance, a guy with a chair trailing along in his gait. So they run up to him, pull him by the shoulder, say “Hey Davey,” and oops! It’s not Davey but some other guy who also happens to be wandering around the same city on the same day with a chair chained to his leg. “Sorry,” they tell him, and run off and find Davey.

I don’t know if Nicholson was involved in any of the scriptwriting, but the show was a Bob Rafelson production and definitely tried for a genial hipness.

Frank Kogan

3 March 2006 18:18

I also agree with wwolfe about the Monkees’ first single getting over on its music without the help of the show, so it was already a hit when the show went on the air (and I thought it was a great song, sounding like “Paperback Writer” but outdoing it “Writer” in intensity) (or, to my ears, since “Writer” had fallen off the charts right before I resumed listening to Top 40 in mid ’66, “Paperback Writer” when I heard it was something the Monkees had subsequently done better; I don’t think I’d feel that way now, but I don’t actually own either of those songs). But “Last Train to Clarksville” didn’t reach number one until the show had been on the air for several weeks. There was a lot of amazing competition. Here are the American number ones from when I started listening mid July ’66 up through Frank & Nancy in April 1967: “Hanky Panky,” “Wild Thing,” “Summer In the City,” “Sunshine Superman,” “You Can’t Hurry Love,” “Cherish,” “Reach Out I’ll Be There,” “96 Tears,” “Last Train to Clarksville,” “Poor Side of Town” (Johnny Rivers, and I don’t remember this at all), “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” “Winchester Cathedral,” “Good Vibrations,” “Winchester Cathedral” (return), “I’m a Believer”/”Steppin’ Stone,” “Kind of a Drag,” “Ruby Tuesday” (which went to number one as a B side, because most stations wouldn’t touch the A, but the A probably helped sell the record), “Love Is Here and Now You’re Gone,” “Penny Lane”/”Strawberry Fields,” “Happy Together,” “Somethin’ Stupid.” 1966, The Year That Punk Broke (though really the initial break comes in late ’64 when Stones and Animals start getting serious airplay). By the way, moving farther in 1967, the U.S. number ones don’t have the falloff in quality that you guys keep forecasting for Britain.

Chris Brown

3 March 2006 19:26

I think quite a few people here are singing from the same hymn sheet here: the pop/rock divide is perceived more than it actually happens in real life – although it does seem to affect the media, which gives it a knock-on effect of its own.
The relevance of the Monkees I think is that folklore seems to view them as the start of manufactured bands, and that cuts both ways – people who want to argue against anti-pop predjudice can and do point to them as a great advert for the idea.
But of course they weren’t really the first manufactured pop act – if anything, almost the exact opposite is true. Rebellion has always been part of the process anyway, of course.

You’re right about ‘Stepping Stone’ which my book says got to 20 in the US charts. It wasn’t listed on the UK chart, but obviously became well-enough known to inspire plenty of covers. Mickey Dolenz directed the video of PJ & Duncan’s version, you know.

Anonymous

3 March 2006 21:23

From frank kogan: “…the idea of transgressing against pop is a pop idea.”

I love that. That’s one of those ideas that floats around in your head for a long time in a muddled state and then someone else says it exactly right and the light bulb goes on.

“Poor Side of Town” was a ballad – possibly Johnny Rivers’ only hit that he wrote himself – that starts with him singing, “Doo doo doo wah, shooby doowee. (Which looks like Sinatra in print, but doesn’t sound like him as Johnny delivers it.) The real hook is a neat little guitar lick, but I don’t know how to present a typed facsimile.

It’s very interesting that you compare “Clarksville” to “Paperback Writer.” I heard a radio interview with Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart and one of them said that he was in his car one night when he heard the last few notes of the new Beatles’ single, “Paperback Writer,” fading into the distance on his car radio. He thought it had a great riff. but he mis-heard the lyric as “Last train something-something.” So he and his partner took that initial inspiration and wrote “Clarskville.” (That place name turned out to be the name of a major embarcation point for soldiers headed to Vietnam, giving it another layer of meaning that I assume the writers hadn’t anticipated.)

wwolfe

Anthony

7 March 2006 11:11

theres a fantastic, camp tv movie made about the boys from a couple years back, that seems a super annuated, coded discussion of the pop vs rock, art vs commerce fights of the 90s, that tried to make the monkees great misunderstood romantic heros, well worth finding

Anthony

7 March 2006 11:14

(i mean by that last comment, is that the monkees have since their beginning been a sort of litmus test for poptism)

Lena

28 September 2006 00:26

All I have to say here is, transatlantic #1, y’all, and also…

I’ve heard the live Robert Wyatt version and it ROCKS.

Lena

28 September 2006 00:30

Les

5 October 2007 01:37

get a life!

Marcello Carlin

5 October 2007 06:47

look behind the bins. you might have put it there by mistake.

Conrad

18 March 2009 16:32

Yes!

grimley

25 September 2009 12:43

First single I ever bought and won a bet with my brother who bought Penny Lane as to what would get to Number one. Sadly cracked it in a game of elephant football in our living room.
Great pop record as was Daydream Believer (what number is this 7a) and The girl I met somewhere being a great b side as well.

Waldo

18 November 2009 19:54

Yes, this was a great record and I was an avid watcher of the show back in the day. grimley at # 36 mentions “7a”, which Davy follows up with “it’s because I’m short, I know”, thereby opening “Daydream Believer”, which got stuck at number two. As indeed did the wonderful “Alternate Title”, which Micky D wanted to call “Randy Scouse Git”. That pesky Tony Blair gets links in everywhere, doesn’t he?

Martin F.

22 October 2010 02:48

On a site chock-full of lovely writing, this is some lovely, *lovely* writing.

wichita lineman

22 February 2011 14:13

Last night’s 1 Show featured the Monkees and LAWRENCE FROM FELT/DENIM (being interviewed by Gyles Brandreth). And some otters. And a feature on Barrow in Furness which I’ve always been rather intrigued by…

As for the Monkees’ tv show, it was frequently inspired and subtly subversive as F Kogan has suggested. The episode where they destroy the ‘fake’ beach movie pop star has multiple layers of authenticity-questioning complexity (especially as the actor was Bobby Sherman, who three years later superceded them as a pre-teen pin-up).

They were actors playing a group who wanted to be The Beatles in a tv show. They didn’t want to be The Beatles themselves.

punctum

22 February 2011 14:37

What the heck is LAWRENCE OUT OF FELT/DENIM/GO-KART MOZART up to these days?

Cumbrian

22 February 2011 14:43

And why are you so intrigued by Barrow in Furness? Having been there, several times, I can assure you that there is not much there worth the intrigue. Unless you have a special connection to the place, I suppose…

Mark G

22 February 2011 17:10

#40, busy wearing a truly bizarre furry hat, it seems.

wichita lineman

23 February 2011 00:10

Re 40: Well, he’s apparently finished a new album (though it’s not mixed yet), and is the subject of Lawrence Of Belgravia which (though it’s not edited yet) should be in the London Film Festival this year.

Barrow in Furness – it’s a big town, on a peninsula, which – Cumbrians aside – no one in Britain ever visits. Oh, and its name does remind me of Witchfinder General.

swanstep

23 February 2011 03:26

Great record this one – I guess it has to be an 8 or 9, but it’s so very hard to assign a number to something that’s just kind of been in the air one’s whole life. Surprised to discover that this is the Monkees only UK #1, they had bunches elsewhere, and certainly both Clarkesville and Daydream seems to me to belong with the top tier of who/beatles/stones singles (for a long time as a kid I thought Clarkesville was by the Beatles!).

Anyhow, three subsidiary points. (i) As a kid I thought that Peter from The Monkees *was* Tim Brooke-Taylor from The Goodies. Make of that what you will! (ii)I like a lot of what Frank Koganbot says above about the Monkees overall. It’s true, for example, that growing up in New Zealand the whole Flying Nun scene was kind of VU mixed with Steppin’ Stone (and no one can tell me that Pattie Smith didn’t get a big chunk of Rock ‘n’ Roll N*gger from SS). (iii) The missing link between monkees and banana splits is, of course Lancelot Link.

Mutley

23 February 2011 11:49

Re 43:For fans of Barrow-in-Furness and early post-war culture I would recommend the various published diaries (collected by the Mass Observation project) of Nella Last, housewife and mother, and resident of B-in-F, covering World War II and the post-war period up to around 1953.

enitharmon

23 February 2011 12:10

Oi! What’s wrong with Barrow-in-Furness?

Some very good people (cough) were born in Barrow and some of us (cough) have seen fit to return there in our semi-retirement to be close to the mountains and the sea.

Not that we want to encourage loads of people to come and visit, you understand. Our eleven miles of safe, flat, sandy beach punctuated by dunes and rock pools remains unspoilt by hordes of grockles even on the warmest of summer days, the mountain vistas are stunning, we can feast on the world’s best fish and chips as purveyed by Andy’s of Hastings Street, and the world’s best meat and potato pies by Green’s of Jarrow Street, and we are sustained by a host of top-notch microbreweries. With secrets like these, you’d want to deter the hordes don’t you think?

Where else would the municipal statuary include the finest stand-off half rugby has ever produced, and the captain of the greatest club side in the history of football?

wichita lineman

23 February 2011 16:17

Re 44: Ah yes, I can see the Tork/TBT thing. Mickey Dolenz looks exactly like a Banana Split (did he single-handedly invent the Link/Splits antics?) who has just stepped on a shovel.

No mention yet of the Porpoise Song, the Monkees’ first flop, but a beautiful, genuinely psychedelic single. And the ‘video’ in Head is something else – incl. mermaids, suicide, and one of the largest suspension bridges in the world.

Jimmy the Swede

23 February 2011 17:23

Yes, Dolenz is the spit of one of the Banana Splits. And Bingo is his name-o! As he mentioned on the show, Micky is currently in Eastbourne starring in “Hairspray”. A couple of weeks ago he turned up in a pub run by a good friend of mine and had a roast beef dinner. The guy is a never off duty fruit loop.

Barrow is well worth a visit. I went up there a couple of years ago on a joint venture to make contact with Rosie and to see Eastbourne Borough lose. Mine host took me on a long sea front walk. The scenary was breathtaking.

Cumbrian

23 February 2011 17:50

#46.

Nowt wrong with BiF. But all the things you’ve mentioned can be matched (at least qualitiatively if not exactly) by many other places. It’s a nice enough town, pleasant enough to retire to. Like a lot of places in Cumbria (or indeed the North, many parts of Scotland and Wales) as it goes. So pleasant, yes – intriguing, not really, imo.

And which stand off are we talking about? As far as I am aware, Dan Carter was born in New Zealand, which takes care of Union and Darren Lockyer and Wally Lewis are from Oz, taking care of League.

Elsa

23 February 2011 18:27

“Stepping Stone” was not introduced by the Monkees. It had been on a Paul Revere & the Raiders album six months earlier, sounding rather more ferocious.

wpDiscuz

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One of the lesser chart toppers of 1980. Never a song I’m keen on listening to, and tend to skip…
Mr Bubs on BLONDIE – "Atomic"17 November 2024
The nuclear threat wasn’t so widespread in 1980, compared to the 1983/84 era, when it really became unavoidable, via tv…
Mr Bubs on BLONDIE – "Atomic"17 November 2024
1980 seems to be the first year when nuclear war anxiety creeps into the U.K. music scene. Kate Bush, The…
Mr Bubs on KENNY ROGERS – "Coward Of The County"17 November 2024
I cannot understand how The Whispers failed to beat this, or how Madness couldn’t hang on( maybe that was on…

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THE MONKEES – "I'm A Believer"

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PETULA CLARK – "This Is My Song"

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