Here We Come...

Walkin' down the street...Today in rock history, the last episode of The Monkees TV show was broadcast in 1968. It was their 58th show filmed in a little over 2 years. The series, starring Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork, was officially cancelled (as was Batman), by the hosting network a few months later. Tork would be the first to leave the group, later that same year, and his face would be conspicuously absent on the cover of the group’s next album," Instant Replay." I was always a big Monkees fan. You have to remember that they were big in my formative years - age 15 to 17 - and they appeared on Saturday morning TV, just like the cartoons I always watched when I was younger. It was probably just as well that they got cancelled - they were getting pretty weird there toward the end, no longer the cute little living dolls that we counted on to make us laugh every Saturday morning. Mickey had curled his hair and was probably smoking dope between takes in his dressing room, Nesmith was getting sick of it all, Davy had taken tambourine-shaking to the limit, and Peter - well, Peter was still goofy, it's true. So let's take a look back at the Monkees in their prime, and you can see why they were called "The Pre-Fab Four" before anyone had heard of "The Rutles." Thanks as always to www.garylessard.com for the info, and keep on rockin!