I seriously think it's time for some levity, so tonight's Saturday Night Special is this 1967 episode of "The Monkees" called "Find The Monkees."
Audition notices for a new TV show have gone out to all the popular bands of the day like The Four Martians who have come to The Monkees pad to borrow a guitar string!
Another band that got an audition notice was The Foreign Agents.
And of course, The Jolly Green Giants.
For the uninitiated, this is a spoof on the hit song by The Kingsmen of "Louie Louie" fame, who also had a hit about "The Jolly Green Giant" who just might hit you with a can of beans, and do it in less than two minutes!
This is what is commonly referred to as a four way skull session!
I used to have a red flannel shirt like this but I let Tabonga borrow it forty years ago, and that was the last time I saw it!
The big shot rude and irritable TV producer is played by none other than the amazing and hilarious Carl Ballantine, who made a damn good living from being the self-proclaimed worst magician in the world!
He goes to the Bureau of missing persons to try and find The Monkees, but the place is such a mess, the guy that works there can't even find a pencil.
Peter gets the hiccups at the worst possible moment, so the boys try and scare them out of him!
This almost worked, but not quite.................
The boys have to finally resort to calling in their audition from a phone booth!
The people wanting to use the phone booth are becoming very impatient, especially the guy in suit and the dark-rimmed glasses!
It becomes pretty obvious why he was becoming so impatient!
They try and audition as every type of group imaginable without success, which brings me to the crux of this story!
The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame recently announced their 2020 inductees that included Depeche Mode, and Whitney Houston, and despite the fact that Kiss and Abba have been inducted in the past, groups like The Monkees have been left in the dust again......................
..........because "they didn't play their own instruments" or at least that's the opinion of the editor of Rolling Stone magazine, and he's got a lot of clout!
Other notable snubs that ruffle my feathers are Link Wray, Canned Heat, Love, Procol Harum, Little Feat, Joe Cocker, Spirit, Steppenwolf, and The Seeds, just to name a few.
Mike Nesmith is too nice of a guy to say it so I'll just say it for him, How the Hell is Linda Ronstadt in the R&RHOF and the Monkees aren't when I, Mike Nesmith wrote her best song that she recorded with The Stone Poneys in 1967 called "Different Drum?"
How is that even possible?
3 comments:
Yeah, the R&RHOF stuff blows your mind - And the salt in the wound is the list of bands and people that made it into the HOF. For me, the worst is freaking KISS!!! They can KISS my ASS!! Come on man, they're nothing more than a bubble gum band. Now that I think about it, Gene Simmons is a total perv. Besides dressing up like face-painted clowns, Gene used his yucky tongue, wore a codpiece, and contorted around like a dog in heat! well, many of his devoted fans (scream!!) were teenage girls, probably as young as age 12, think about it - F the Little R&RHOF Bs -
When I think of how The Monkees and their music was such a wonderful part of our lives at that time...
I get so tired of the "Monkees were a fake musical group" tradition, and you don't have to be sensitive to do that, just TIRED of it. As one or more of them said, they were a kind of Pinocchio story, where they definitely BECAME something very real.
Tabonga and Grant are so right! To me, as a teen growing up in the mid-1960s, the Monkees were (and still are) great, and great fun as well. A buddy and I wanted to start a little garage/basement band, so we played along with Monkees records for practice! They definitely were real, and their music still is!
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