Omorka's Lair

Haven't listened to the Plastic Symphony EP in ages (It's really two solo singles from 1965 that someone squished into an EP sometime in the CD era). Aw, Micky, honey, what are you doing? Poor thing sounds like he's scared to actually try to sing it straight, so he's doing his "goofy voices" thing instead. If this is what he sounded like before Boyce and Hart got hold of him, I understand now how the Missing Links could possibly fire one of the great pop voices. (And, because I don't have shuffle on at the moment, iTunes transitions into his cover of "Good Morning, Good Morning" from Remember, and oh, gods, if there were ever an argument for mature experience over youthful enthusiasm . . . .)

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This is the final disc in the first season, and it's only two episodes long, one of which is the "concert video" episode. However, there are plenty of extras and three commentary tracks (all on that latter episode) to talk about, so here we go :


Season 1 Disc 6 Episode 31: The Monkees At The Movies

Synopsis: After a movie producer mistakes the boys' hotfoot from stepping off a beach blanket into hot sand for a new dance step, the Monkees are offered roles in his new beach party movie, starring the teen idol sensation Frankie Catalina (played by Bobby Sherman, who did actually become a teen idol later on). The boys turn him down until he mentions the salary - $30 a day - at which they jump into their trunks and grab surfboards. On set the next day, they're snubbed by the star, who threatens to have them fired and insults them when they don't let him hog the ball in a beach volleyball game. The Monkees proceed to prank the heck out of him; the producer, his assistant, and the star watch the dailies, which turn into a romp, and Frankie quits the picture in disgust. The boys then set up Davy to become the star by "selling" him to the producer (involving another romp and Micky impersonating a DJ); it works, but Davy promptly lets stardom go to his head, and they once again upstage him at beach volleyball, ending with him tied up in the net. Davy quits the movie business, and the guys sing "Valleri."

This one is actually a lot better than it sounds. There isn't a villain per se; both the producer and Frankie act as antagonists, but they're not out to scam anyone, just to fulfill their own agendas. Mike and Peter don't get a lot of lines, but they both get hysterical bits of business and a decent amount of screen time. The four boys have several scenes of lightning-fast ensemble work that goes swimmingly. For something that sounds like it was stitched together from the bits of previous plots, it actually comes off as remarkably fresh - the Marx Brothers updated to the Beach Blanket Bingo era.

I seem to recall Bobby Sherman being on the original list of 400 auditionees for the four mains, although I could be wrong about that.

Mike's prank on Sherman is to mess around with the speed of a record he's lip-syncing to. Bit close to the bone, there - but Mike's gleeful expressions are hysterical.

The second romp is a mini-story in itself - Micky, in black hat, waxed fake mustache, and classic villain style, ties Peter to a railroad track and then drives a train towards him, with Mike as the engineer. Davy, in white hat, arrives to do battle with the villain and his minion; Davy and Micky have a punch-out on top of the train, then he defeats Mike to stop the train. He leaps down to untie Peter, who, in the middle of the standard heroine's thanks, conks Davy out and ties him to the track instead; as he leaves, you see that Peter is now twirling a waxed mustache of his own. "Last Train to Clarksville" is playing under the entire sequence, so there's no dialogue, and it's all rather silent-movie-esque. Peter and Micky, in particular, turn in delightful little performances, and the hero's welcome at the end (before the face-heel turn on Peter's part) could be read as a bit of Peter/Davy if one were so inclined.

At one point the Monkees draw straws to determine which one gets pitched to the director as the next hero. They actually grab four pieces of paper and draw pictures of straws; Davy draws the short one. Micky's is incredibly messy - and he was the architecture student!

During the "pitch," Mike and Peter are sitting on the beach; Mike has a copy of Davy's pre-Monkees solo album, and Peter is offering various collections of other artists in trade. (Every band Peter mentions is one that a modern audience will still recognize, with the possible exception of the Lovin' Spoonful, which I got in the '80s but I suspect my kids now might not; someone made some really good calls there.)

Micky does a turn as "Crazy Micky the D," a fake DJ, as part of pitching Davy to the producer; he does a remarkably good morning-zoo-style DJ impression. They go through snippets of three songs, which all have the same lyrics but different tempos and chords, with Davy singing and Mike playing guitar.

When Davy quits the lead role, he says "It's not good for my character." The last two words are then repeated several times as flashes of various 'characters' Davy has either played or impersonated over the series so far go past on the screen.

The last few minutes of the show are another interview segment; Davy tells a story about his brother-in-law, a British policeman, capturing a burglar while wearing a Monkees sweatshirt, and then Bob asks them about the rumors about them not playing their own instruments, which causes Peter and Micky to grumble and Mike to point out, "I'm about to go onstage in front of 15,000 people; if I don't play my own instruments, I'm in a lot of trouble!" Which leads to the next episode quite nicely.


Season 1 Disc 6 Episode 32: The Monkees On Tour

There's a brief opening segment that is not on any of the usual sets: Davy is sitting in a rocking chair, thanking the fans for their support over the first season. The other three, wearing fake beards (over real facial hair, at least in Micky and Peter's cases!) show up and hustle him out as Davy explains that this episode follows them through a typical day on tour.

The rest of the episode is documentary-style, and the boys are mostly out-of-character. Screaming fans meet them at the airport, despite it being well after dark; they wave across the fences before the limo arrives to spirit them to a hotel. The next morning, Mike, Peter, and Davy clown around in the hotel restaurant before sending Peter to go wake Micky up (cut to shot of Micky in bed with his hair everygoddamnwhere). Davy, shirtless, harasses a swan. Micky goes out and meets some fans, acting the part of an automatic autograph robot. Davy, Micky, & Peter go for a brief horseback ride at a ranch; Micky does so sans shoes, for some reason, and afterwards we get a shot of him putting bandaids on his feet. Meanwhile, Mike helps the handlers prep the Monkeemobile, which he, Micky, and Davy take to a local radio station, where they take over (we get a shot of the DJ tied up and grinning; presumably that's solely for promo photo ops and our cameraman's benefit). There's something akin to a romp in which Mike fools around in a mall, Micky rollerskates near the hotel, and Davy drives a motorbike around near the ranch. Finally, the boys arrive at the concert venue to the sound of 14,000 screaming teen girls and perform - a short set of their big hits, followed by four solo numbers backed by Boyce and the opening band, followed by another set of them as a four-piece. The performances are interrupted with brief little contemplative moments with each Monkee alone. Immediately afterwards, we see the limo spirit them out as fans press against the glass, presumably to the airport. As they speed off, we get a montage of earlier bits set to "I'm a Believer," and finally Mike back at the radio station thanking various bands, ending with the Beatles.

This episode has three commentary tracks. The first one is from Bobby Hart, the second from Peter Tork, and the third from Michael Nesmith.

Hart's commentary is mostly about the transition from "four guys running ragged trying to film TV shows and sing on two albums" to "four guys playing on stage together," and how his studio group, the Candy Store Prophets, opened for this show and backed up the boys on their solo sets (he points out a couple of times where he appears in the background). This episode would have been filmed right around when Kirshner had just outmaneuvered Boyce and Hart for control of the production aspect of the musical side, and would have aired after Nesmith punched a wall and Kirshner was ousted ("Little Bit Me, Little Bit You," the song that got Kirshner in hot water, was one of the romps in the previous episode). There's a cute anecdote about how Davy would have the backing band's restaurant bills charged to him (since otherwise the studio would make the backing band pay their own way!) and another about "One-Take Dolenz".

Nesmith's commentary is mostly about the difference between playing a club gig and playing an arena show, and the pressures of being four guys playing a band on TV suddenly having to play together as a band on stage.

The contrast between Nesmith's commentary and Tork's is . . . instructive. Tork tells what is in the bare facts the same story, about going from playing pass-the-hat club gigs to playing arenas, but his narrative is about four guys who always had the potential to be a great band finally becoming one. Given that these commentaries were recorded after Justus and the disintegration of the '97 tour but well before the 2011 tour, I think that says a lot about what Mike and Peter really wanted out of the Monkees as a phenomenon. Mike wanted to act in the show, play his own goddamned instruments on the records, and use that as a springboard for his own songwriting, producing, and performing. Peter wanted the four of them to be the band they were acting as, together. My speculation is that this is the fundamental difference in outlook that it took Mike's journey through darkness via cataracts (and possibly also Davy's death, although some of the early 2012 interviews seem to suggest Mike was contemplating returning for at least some tour dates before Dark Leap Day) to overcome.

Tork is also a much more entertaining commentator overall, partly because he's much more willing to talk about what the other guys were doing. And, uh, because I agree with most of what he says when he gives his opinions. For example, he points out that the set-up of the group for the "Words" video is the way he would have set the group up permanently if it had been up to him. Which I said three posts ago. And he has another comment about Dolenz having one of the great pop voices. But even if he didn't agree with me so much, I think I'd like Tork's "commentary voice" better anyway - he reacts more to what's going on onscreen, to the point of noticing that Mike is holding a rifle left-handed in one scene and then realizing the shot must be left-right reversed.

The four "introspective" segments are mildly interesting; Tork's commentary suggests that they're set up (by Rafaelson) but not scripted - he was given a general topic, but improvised what he actually said. Micky's is about building something of his own, to last; Tork points out that Dolenz was in architecture school before he auditioned, not wanting to bet the house on making it in show business. He also mentions the gyrocopter, wondering how Dolenz was going to get it out of the basement if he ever finished it (in the autobiography, Dolenz claims he did finish it and even got it airborne once, although he is mute on the question of basement removal and transport).

Due to the audience screaming at full volume through the entire show and the recording equipment not really being meant for miking an arena, the actual stage show is damn near inaudible; apparently there had to be some extra massaging to get even the level of audibility we have, although the fansites are divided on whether this was taken from the next (and last) show on this tour in San Francisco, or done via some minimal ADR in the studio. The audible bits we hear suggest that most of the announcer/comedic stage banter bits fell to Micky and Mike, while one particular quick-change bit (running off stage in a full suit and tie, changing into a completely different outfit while Micky and Mike are goofing around with the end of "Mary, Mary," and returning to the stage with a tuned banjo) falls to Peter. I guess Davy just had to look good.


Season 1 Disc 6: Extras

The final disc has several extras in addition to the three commentaries: a set of promo photos and other promotional documents, several commercials (mostly for Kellogg's cereals, Rice Crispies in particular), and the pilot as it existed on second audience viewing - after the addition of Mike and Davy's screen tests, but before the four guys had gotten into a studio.

The promo photos are fun, and include a list of actors who auditioned for various parts in the pilot (there are actresses listed as well as actors, so it's not just the four mains). Micky is listed as Micky Braddock, not Dolenz. (I think Mike was listed as Nesmith rather than Blessing, but that might be worth my checking again.)

The commercials are not well preserved; they all have color problems, and not all in the same direction. The first two have some fairly funny bits of business; the rest, not so much, although Micky and Peter are doing their best not to just straight-up chew scenery. The last one is a commercial for the show itself, and uses four execrable caricatures of the actors - only Mike is recognizable without the instrument, and I suspect even that would be questionable minus the hat. (Many fanartists have complained that Micky is hard to draw, especially straight-haired Micky; I suspect the caricature artist would agree, as he's the least recognizable of the four.)

The second-cut pilot is - well, let me go ahead and say up front that I completely understand why they recut it a third time and saved it for Episode 10 instead of showing it as Episode 1, continuity problems with Micky's hair and the Monkeemobile aside. It has pacing problems. The interviewer segment at the beginning still doesn't work and needs to be tightened up a lot more. We see a little more of the getting-to-the-music-store sequence than we did in Ep. 10; Mike drives in on the motorized skateboard and collides with Micky, carrying a stack of drum cases. We still don't get to see Peter arrive by surfboard; here, he pops out of a manhole and applauds the pratfall. We also don't get to see Davy's arrival (presumably that and the surfboard sequence were cut to allow for the screen tests).

This version of the pilot features Boyce & Hart's originals for the theme song, "I Wanna Be Free," and "Let's Dance On." I will go ahead and state for the record that the timing for their version of the theme song feels off to me, although long familiarity with the final version would probably make any other version sound weird. I still think the changes made, both musically (evening out and speeding up the tempo, mostly) and vocally, are a vast improvement. They do "I Wanna Be Free" at both tempos, but both tempos are faster than the versions we eventually hear in Ep. 10, the slow Boyce & Hart version isn't the full song, and Davy's vocals are far more ballad-y in both as well. (Overall, I'd say my favorite is the uptempo version with the Davy vocal.) The "Let's Dance On" we hear is clearly a demo, and feels really rough; unlike the previous song, it's slower than the eventual Monkee version (which makes the insipidness of the lyrics that much more obvious).

Micky is credited as Micky Braddock again here. I wonder whether he or his agent finally decided that Dolenz was going to be okay, and when in the process that happened? In the autobio, he only mentions that it was before the first single (which was itself before the first episode aired).

This particular print apparently belongs to Hart himself, who loaned it to Rhino for the original Season 1 box set (of which mine is a reissue). Fandom scuttlebutt claims that there is one existing print of the first-cut pilot, the one without the screen tests and with the extra bits (including Peter's arrival via surfboard) still in, and several people have viewed it, but it's also in private hands and thus hasn't ever been made commercially available.


One pretty good episode and one that's outside of continuity for my purposes. Overall, Season 1 had some surprisingly strong episodes, but only a handful I could point to and say they're among my favorites. I said before that I remember Season 2 being better; next time we'll see whether my memory betrayed me or not.