I'm A Bereaver...

The news that Davy Jones, who is best known for his work with the pre-fabricated TV band The Monkees, had passed away this week saddened me, but also brought back a lot of good memories. Like The Beatles, The Monkees had broken up the month I was born, in April of 1970, but thanks to reruns of the band's television series from the 60's, my friends and I were all Monkees fans in the 70's. Sure, the whole reason The Monkees had come into existence in the first place was to cash in on Beatlemania, but during and after the TV show, Jones, Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz, and Michael Nesmith all came into their own as an actual band.

Once I discovered the music of The Monkees, I would run home from school each day and play the band's greatest hits album on my parent's stereo. Being that it was the 70's, of course I was listening to it on 8-track tape. My sister and I used to fight over what songs we got to hear first. I was a fan of the theme song and "Pleasant Valley Sunday," while sis was a "I'm a Believer" kind of girl.

I personally always thought that Nesmith or Dolenz would go first. Dolenz always seemed like the least healthy member of the band, although perhaps he just had a wide face. On the TV show Nesmith frequently looked like he would have rather been anywhere other than where he was, and as we found out after the fact that was actually the case. He rarely participated in the reunion tours that popped up from time to time over the years.

But no, it was Jones that left us first, and the music world is a little less happy without him. No one left to cheer up Sleepy Jean, or to sing about how he wants to be free. I think I'll search Hulu or Netflix and see if the old TV show is available online. My five-year old would probably get a kick out of it, even more than four decades after the fact.

Oh, and to further drive home the whole Monkees vs. Beatles folklore, when The Beatles played in America for the first time, on the Ed Sullivan Show in February of 1964, one of the other acts on Sullivan's variety show was a performance by the Broadway cast of "Oliver!" The part of the Artful Dodger was played by 19-year-old Davy Jones.