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[Music] come on children we going to learn to rock and roll professor Johnny D teaches
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the PhD rock and roll lessons for free learn your Beatles and ABCs m is for
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monkey and Mickey rock with Johnny D rock get your PhD
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monkey around and twist and shout professor Johnny Des
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music fans i am Sneaky Raul the sneakiest player in the game and I have Professor Ammeritus of Rock and Roll
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Studies from Blue Jay Way University Strawberry Fields campus he is Professor
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Johnny Day i'm not really a professor i only play one on TV that's the funny thing and I
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don't have a PhD either uh Sneaky Raul gave me the PhD but tonight we are truly
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blessed to have an actual professor with an actual PhD here tonight we have uh
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Roseanne Welch with us who has written a book which is completely up our alley because this is what we do we have spent
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every Saturday night for a very long time now and we'll probably spend every Saturday night for the rest of our lives
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giving the monkeys the credibility that they deserve and that they should have
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and so we have the perfect guest tonight who wrote the perfect book Why the Monkeys Matter by Roseanne Welch
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and uh boy this you know Roseanne well thank you Roseanne for being here this is this is really a treat for us um you
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know we're just a couple of goofy guys talking about the monkeys and and hoping people can appreciate them more but we
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actually have somebody wrote a book a professor who wrote a book about it so this is this is really good for us uh so
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I I I guess maybe the best thing to do is start where the monkeys started with you because the book is is basically
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about the television show which is what I love because that was really the impact they made socially now certainly
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the music was great and still lives to this day and we all loved it which helped draw us into the show but the
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show had so many things to say to us now I believe if I'm correct from your book that you were six years old when the
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show debuted and I was I was five oh perfect so we really have a shared
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experience of of watch at Monday nights at 7:30 boom this was uh this was
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mustsee TV so so I guess talk to us a little bit about that about being six
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years old and discovering the monkeys and what that was like for you um well I say the book as one does with a book and
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what was the fun of it was being able to do something academically about something that I had adored from my
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childhood through my college years when perhaps they'd fell a little bit out of the modern conversation and yet I had my
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albums and I was playing them in my dorm and people would be like who's that what is that talk about the monkeys before
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they got the renaissance of 1986 um I was six like we were saying and it was what was on TV and I'm an only child so
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I didn't have big brothers or big sisters and I've always said and my parents got divorced when I was six so
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I've always felt like they were the big brothers I glammed on to watching because they had a life that was fun in
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the midst of all the not fun that I was watching go on um and also I'd always dreamed about moving to LA i'm from
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Cleveland that's where I was when I was watching and Cleveland Ohio for those who aren't where is that in the States
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um and I had dreamed of coming to LA to become a TV writer which I eventually did um but I didn't do that till I got
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out of college so as a kid they were both my family that I didn't have the time and the dream of you mean you could
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live in a place in Los Angeles and be in the entertainment business and of course the joke is sometimes they were about to
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be successful but mostly they fell on the face and but they kept trying and I know that we've all read you know lots
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of interviews with Vicki who talks about that what made the show work is we don't want people who are famous that's boring
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there was a show in the 90s called Models Inc and it died really quick because there's no problem you can tell
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me a model has because she's beautiful and she's got money so shut up and leave me alone but these guys had problems and
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of course they were silly problems but you watch them work together and I think that was part of the draw too it was
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like your dream of the kind of friends you would have when you grew up and that's what it was for me because
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what it was for me is I'm seeing exactly the same thing i'm seeing the life that I want i'm seeing the life i'm even five
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well you know if you figure from 66 to 70 I'm 5 to nine years old right in there and I'm seeing the long hair
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because I'm a Beatles fan by that point you know 65 four years old three years old i'm completely in with the Beatles
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and so when the monkeys come on TV this is right up my alley so you know the
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long hair and guitars they're making music they're all living together they're having fun they're having laughs they're uh they're basically thumbming
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their nose at authority or constantly fighting it or going up against it and when you're a kid that's what you're
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seeing so you know I think that and and we'll speak to this and you can speak to this maybe now about the impact that the
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show had because it really indoctrinated a generation into that
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sort of mindset uh this wasn't for older kids older kids were on to the Beatles and stuff like that this this this
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didn't change us the monkeys didn't change us the monkeys helped create us don't you think i think in many ways
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there's a lot of discussion about how we those of us who were six and seven we're the generation below the big Beatles
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generation and we're going to be the generation that grows up and has to deal with the 70s and Watergate and all that
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stuff and sort of cynically losing our belief in how beautiful the world is supposed to be so it set us up for that
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because the writers that I dis I interviewed it's really fun to meet the writers there were about six or eight of
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the writers of the show who were around when I interviewed them about 10 years ago and they were telling me stories
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about what it was like to you know they were writing against authority so they were kind of living little cute dreams
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even though some of them had grown over the age where that was even part of their life couple of them were kind of
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in that hipster world and did kind of go to the parties Peter had and they were really that was their realm if you will
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um but they definitely knew they had to set up some authority figures and then knock them down because that's fun
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that's comedy right you want to see the underdog beat the person who has all the you know they did the thing with the bad
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guy stealing Mike's lyrics from him and they were always fighting her poor bad landlord it was it's just you need
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conflict in a show and that worked but it taught people I often say I sent my
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kid to Catholic school not because I'm Catholic but because it was good for him to learn sometimes people give you rules
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that aren't right and you need to pay attention to what those rules are right so it is it is where we learned to
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question authority that's but that's interesting because I we had Bill Chadwick on who was like the
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the fifth monkey and unfort Unfortunately we had audio problems just as I was asking him this question so
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I'll ask you because this is perfect for you okay the there's the canonized
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counterculture you know the Beatles Dylan it's like St paul and all that you know and they're like untouchable but
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you know I think the monkeys and I was asking Bill this because I think they had just as much of a hand in changing
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changing things but they're they're so reviled even now we get people that come into our chat and say "Oh they they
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suck." D but but can you just speak on even though maybe they're not acknowledged I think they were just as
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important as Dylan or the Beatles they were um because what people are failing to see is that television is
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actually more important than music at the time you had to have money to buy an album yes you could listen to the radio
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thankfully and that was great if your parents let you but TV was free and it
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walked into your house easily so that that is you know the gateway if you will
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but it was something you could count on every week they would be there and you could enjoy that and TV we still know
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this i mean Hannah Montana Miley Cyrus is brilliant today right we all know she grew up to be not everybody who was a
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Disney princess grew up like that right she has the talent but that's what you know that was the show and she sold
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albums of Hannah Montana that probably we're not going to listen to 30 years from now but the Monkeys music we still
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are because they had the magic of really great TV writers a program that won two Emmys in its first year is very hard to
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win an Emmy award that is a big compliment to a show um and and the music came in every week right we saw
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two or three songs a week which you then knew to go to ask for so it was in many ways more powerful now because the show
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ended too soon I think that's a problem but I'll bet you're like me in the 70s we watch the reruns that's where I Yeah
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that's where I saw them yes and I have met students who are in their 20s who
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have seen them on me TV they've seen them on like name all those nostalgic TV stations now they see them and and I
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found immigrant kids whose parents don't pay for cable right so the very basic
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and they've seen them on the I did a class once where I was showing an episode and talking about it it's a
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devil and Peter Torque which is a brilliantly written episode um and these two young immigrant girls in the class
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were the only ones in a class of like 30 who knew who they were and watching something they already knew in front of
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their peers who didn't made them cool and it was fun to see the monkeys make them cool it was very fun wow
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yeah and so you know but the really the impact really was and because they were
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there every week this was it was relentless the monkeys were there every week for two years at 7 and I mean
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relentless in a good way yes yeah you know they were in your living room every Monday night at 7:30 for two years and
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then after that they go to Saturday mornings so maybe they grab even maybe younger kids that are now watching
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Saturday morning so now when it's like 68 69 70 and they're on Saturday
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mornings maybe five and six year olds are are catching them now so they're so they're they're they're going along with
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it too so the impact was massive because the Beatles were on TV rarely i was well
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aware of when the Beatles were on TV and I won't bore you now but I can name exactly in the 60s when the Beatles were
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on TV it was that few uh and then and the impact that they had of course was
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monumental that which is why the monkeys exist but you know when you talk about Dylan and the Beatles and all of these
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people that are sort of culturally um important at the time
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the monkeys had more access to more as you were saying they had more access to more people over a greater period of
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time so whether people realize their impact or not subliminally it's there
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don't you think i mean it has to be there it's there well first of all it's there in music because think about all
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the songwriters that they got started right their first song so right away you have that in the music in the TV world I
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go into the book on all kinds of things that wouldn't exist on TV that got started you know all the quick cuts and
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the fun direction normally a show will have in those days 30 camera changes
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inside a half an hour and they would do 85 and that that movement and craziness that was kind of the birth of we've seen
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that all you know any kind of show that engages flashbacks where they pull you know someone was exploding with anger
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and you'd see an exploding building all that stuff was stuff they put together they were just kind of having fun and of
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course now I'm talking about the directors and the writers all as a group because all that stuff was written it's really cute when people think that folks
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make up stuff on the set they would take ideas if the guys came up with something but that was before you started shooting
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because you have to put the camera somewhere you have to plot out your day you have to make a certain number of pages a day so there was spontaneity but
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for instance there's a great bit I always remember the name of the episode where they're talking about not liking an episode and Mickey says "We have to
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talk to the writers." And he goes into a section of the set that says the writers and he opens a room and there's these
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now probably wouldn't be acceptable but Chinese laundry men typing away and they're meant to be the writers and
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Mickey grabs a piece of paper and goes this is terrible and walks away right you don't make that up you had to hire
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those guys you had to get the type like that's not spontaneous but it looks like it is because the the feeling of it all
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from all the young writers gave you that so they gave early start to a lot of songwriters and early start to a lot of
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TV writers that both changed both of those elements ments of entertainment across the next 20 years can we uh I've
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got a question and I want to acknowledge the chat but can we tell everybody where they can find your book and where they
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can find you if they want more information on you sure sure obviously as you held up the book is in Amazon
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it's from McFarland which is a small publisher in North Carolina so they have their own website too if people want to
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avoid Amazon and you can also order it from my website it's rosanwelch.com it's
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a god of a lot of other stuff because I've written many books on popular culture and films and I'm a Doctor Who fan so I have I have my my book cover on
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my mug and here's my I must I know you have to have both so I have a lot of stuff like that on
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the website but the book is available in them and probably lots of other used book things online now amazing okay
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everybody please get the book i want to highlight the chat i'll ask a question professor and I'll kick it back to you
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uh Miss Arcadian mentioned the the editing with the quick quick cuts what you were just talking about she saw them
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first on Antenna channel 17.2 i don't know what that is
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is that an American TV probably yeah it's one of those we have a million
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nostalgia station we do yeah okay and uh Stephen who is a OG monkey maniac uh he
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talks about the show emphasized values like friendship loyalty kindness and the monkeykey's image and refusal of alcohol
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and smoking were particularly admirable yes absolutely you know was admirable
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for being in 1967 if you look at the dance parties they had at their little pad there were
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African-American kids at those parties hey now that's a good point that's a good point that is huge in 1967 that is
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huge you're not going to find that on Azie and Harriet you're not going to find that on other TV shows you're not
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they're not and those those friends aren't going to come over but in every one of their parties there there's at least one African-American couple you've
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touched on that a little bit previously but yeah but the show itself regardless of what they taught us and
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showed us the show itself just as a TV show structured as a TV show was incredibly groundbreaking it really was
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and again you're right because it was the show just like their music because this was a this was a put together this
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was a project this wasn't a band in their garage and then they went this was a project which involved tons and tons
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of people the music as well as the TV show and all of those people collaborated to make this incredible
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thing known as the monkeys but the TV show itself was incredibly groundbreaking and you sort of mentioned
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in your book how this sort of morphs into Laughin like Laughin came on the tales of this would laugh and exist if
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it wasn't for the monkeys oh and the Smother's brothers are going to show up and that whole attitude well and Coslo
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Johnson is one of the writers of the Monkeys who then went on to and he won an Emmy for writing for Laughing when
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the show was that's where he moved to and we have Trievis Silverin who went on to the Mur Tyler Moore show and she won Emmys for that show so all these folks
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are like learning the TV craft many of them very young the run the showrunners
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if you will were Gerald Gardner and D Caruso who came off of Get Smart which had that same flip and cute young
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attitude so all of them were going to move on to to affect other TV shows that are bigger and go on to all kinds of
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acclaim the monkeys would have continued and should have continued if the network had been so stupid because they wanted
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as many people know to turn it themselves into a variety show and then they would do some sketches and they
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would do music and someone at the network said "Nobody's going to watch a variety show built around a rock and roll band." And of course the next year
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Sunny Sher came on air so it was like nobody had the foresight because you already had the the train was moving in
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this wonderful direction and you could have morphed into that and run for a good three or four years and of course not like Sunny and Sher they wouldn't
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have gotten divorced or maybe they would have or maybe they would have maybe they would have but you
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know maybe you could have lost one of them but yeah so so it was a often networks make stupid mistakes there was
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a movie excuse me a TV show in their 90s called My So-Called Life by Winnie Holtzman who's created Wicked for us
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right and it only had one season and it was canceled and then the next season the network actually apologized and said
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"That's probably one of the bigger mistakes we've made." So they make mistakes they don't see things they
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don't see the future and the mistake that maybe NBC made is the fact that I think you do touch on this in your book
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is the fact that first of all all the writers producers directors the monkeys and everybody involved felt they had the
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freedom to do all this stuff because they had the viewers so once you got the viewers but but they sort of as you
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pointed out they kind of they made points and did stuff under the radar because probably the powers that be they
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didn't they didn't either didn't know what they were seeing or didn't care it's just some stupid kid show and
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they're goofing around so they probably didn't pay a lot of attention to the monkey TV show and so they were able to
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slip in a lot of stuff oh come on the caper for heaven's sakes it's a giant
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marijuana plant we all know that that nobody saw that that blows smoke out that makes you want to lay in the grass
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and be cool i mean nobody who was doing censoring of the networks was young
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enough to even understand what that was a reference to but the audience did and they knew that instead of being talked
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down to they were being talked up to nice i just want to acknowledge Maria
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maria is a mega monkey maniac she says "The monkeys showed us you could be kind funny goofy and still be cool." which is
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very true now I'm going to polarize all the Monkeys fans here but I bang on
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about the patriarchy so if you want to say pass on this just say pass okay go but I I think the way the monkeys played
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their characters it was very big you know sensitive or or whatever but don't
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you think I've always thought they kind of made it okay or cool for a man not to
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have that toxic masculinity where you always have to be h you know can you
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I'll just ask your opinion and can you speak on that i love to speak on that topic there's an entire chapter in here
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on feminism in the monkeys which you would not and frankly when I went to study it because of course love the show
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went to look at it with the brain of a professor actually does have a PhD in in
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American social history which means the the history of real people in the 20th century um so I went to look at it and I
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thought "Oh I'm going to be a little bummed." Because frankly I was a pretty good Big Bang Theory fan right until I
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watched how they kind of mess with the female characters and they all became kind of annoying and and and they kind
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of ruined them and I thought "Oh god I'm going to go back to the monkeys and find out that all the women on the show were
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this bubbleheaded nonsense." And then it turned out in all of the episodes of the
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show anytime they met a girl she had a job and she was about something right
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the girl who turns down Mickey because he's too weak is actually reading Foust for heaven's sake she's looking for a
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brainy guy and he was too busy trying to be strong right so that was his mistake um but in the very first episode that
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people know the pilot um it's a princess okay she's a princess but a princess has a job have you seen Roman Holiday she
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turns down Gary Cooper to go do her duty to her people that is exactly what happened in that cute little pilot all
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right so we're giggling but in fact she turns down Dave Jones who all the girls
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wanted to do her duty to her people her job is important to her so I I often say
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did I somehow soak in the fact that if I wanted to marry a monkey I had to be a woman with a job and a purpose i don't
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know wow wow i don't know but also yes
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to the patriarchy of course they were artists and artists have to be people with feelings because how can you write
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a song if you don't have feelings so whether or not we knew about that I mean you got to think about who were the
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other men on TV at the time of course we had some I don't know how toxic they were then um we gotten more toxic over
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the years but it was really beautiful that they cared and when they had a girlfriend
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they were good to her and that is also something important for people to see absolutely well while we got you here
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professor if you don't mind can you tell me can you explain what Head was all about because I'm lost
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um I think even they can't because they admit they were high when they wrote it
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and Jack Nicholson was high when he wrote it and you know who knew what was going to happen in his life um you know
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they were just blending together a bunch of sketches which the TV which the TV
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show turning into a um variety show would have done they would have taken those little bits and pieces the bit
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with the Coke machine in the middle of Vietnam War and all that that would have been perfect on TV crammed together in
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one movie you know in France that's considered like the big serialist like the best American seralist film wow wow
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oh the French understand it we're not three of head and Jerry Lewis
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is weird but yes so I I think yes that's what it was um should it have had an editor should it have had someone who
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really did a polish on it probably because it hurt them as we know because
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it didn't make money and that was not a good thing right you need as you were saying earlier when you had audience and
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money you could do whatever you want you lose one of those or both of those and goodbye
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do you I hate to ask kind of a divisive question but but the professor and I
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have noticed with the beetle community there's a there's it's hard to get into it and they're very you know it's a it's
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a fortress but have you caught flack for daring to validate the monkeys at all
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from from beetle people i don't know that I've gotten much flack about it i've had some people in the academic
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world kind of giggle at me in fact when I I wanted to do the book I looked around and I saw that there were some
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other books from bigger publishers that were focusing on a single TV show i mean I I teas pulled this out of my shelf
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there's a book on Bewitched okay there's a book on Hogan's Heroes i said to myself why didn't this company have a
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book on the monkeys and they didn't think they were important enough and I thought that and I love Bewitched right
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it was the same time I grew up with Bewitched as well and there were some things you can say about it i mean Paul Lynn was probably the first gay man we
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allowed into our homes and didn't know it and that that's huge okay I'll give you points for that but a whole book um
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so then I found another publisher because I just decided well darn it there has to be a book about the monkeys
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so out of that I've had some friends you know say some teasing things but you can't always write about the Civil War i
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mean you know after a while it's been done um and it was really nice to have
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my take on them to give my validity to them and that some high school kid or
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college kid who's writing a paper is going to stumble on this book and go "Wait you mean I can take them seriously
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oh let me see why." And that makes me very happy nice what you got professor
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yeah and the book and I just want to people know you know this isn't a book of like you know they auditioned here
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they met here this is when the first episode was shot this is a book about the impact of the television show and
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usually and and Rosanne I'll be honest with you usually books like this somebody has a germ of an idea and
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they've got to flesh out a whole book and so it tends to get you may know what I'm talking about and it or or self-help
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books or something which could be done in one page but you need you need 200 pages and so to flesh it out so honestly
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coming into this book I'm like "Okay she's going to have an idea about you know their their impact on society and
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she's just going to have to make it into a book it's probably an essay make it into a book." But that's not correct
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that's not correct at all there is content through this entire book and there's and you approach it from
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different angles from authority to feminis feminism uh ethnicity uh uh the
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impact on us as kids i mean it this is really anybody that that that is thinking of buying this book definitely
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should because this is is this is fascinating you you have a broad you
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have a broad sweep here uh of covering uh this this TV show and again it just
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looks like a goofy little TV show from the 60s but it's far more it's far more than a goofy little TV show from the 60s
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and and so and you mentioned the Civil War well the Vietnam War was going on at the time which is probably the biggest
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thing happening in our country that our country was dealing with while the monkeys were on TV and it it it affected
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kids like me because uh Raul and I were also monster kids so
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because we were into basically pop culture kids so we were into everything TV movies music sports whatever was
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happening we're we're sponges for this stuff and on the back of Famous Monsters of Filmland
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the the film magazine there was often times this thing about you know if you're 10 years old now this is what's
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going to happen to you when you're 18 so they were sort of instilling in us like wow this is coming down the road for us
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and plus I was a kid who was into sports so I would watch the evening news to get
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the sports report right so I'm watching the evening news to get to the 20 minutes after the hour for sports and
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I'm seeing Vietnam on TV even so when I'm seven eight nine years old I'm seeing this and I'm knowing because I
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haven't known my life without this war so I'm just figuring this is intended
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for me as well so I Yes they made points and you made some points in the book of
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things they examples you gave of of them uh you know making points about the war
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well one of the biggest things was the fact that every now and then it's pity there's really only about 15 12 to 15 of
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those after episode interviews and those were also unique because it was a chance
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to see them as who they really were not the characters to understand the difference obviously that Peter wasn't
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the goofball he was actually this very philosophical intelligent guy um but those were moments where they asked them
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things like I remember the bit about um Davey having to say "No one will take me seriously because I'm not 21 i can't
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vote because this is before we move the voting age to 18 which happens tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart wrote a song about
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that to push that legislation so talk about affecting the country they wrote a song um that I talk about and you can
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find online um I think it's called Let Us Vote um and so all of them having
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that conversation you know and they talk about why they're they talked about one of the riots the Sunset riots here in
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Los Angeles and that kids were rioting about curfew and again kids is such a strange word because we think kids means
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you know you're a pre-teen but they were considered kids at 18 and 19 because they weren't fullgrown
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adults yet and that's an interesting aspect of our culture to see you know you look at them now also my students
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will look at them now and think they're so skinny like nobody's got abs nobody's been to the gym i was well it's only 20
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years after a war and people weren't eating all kinds of corn syrup yet apparently so nobody was heavy and and
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nobody thought they had to go and get like you know massive abs and look like Brad Pitt who didn't exist yet even
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Robert Redford didn't have abs for heaven's sakes because they're very skinny and and kids notice that right away they don't their physique is not
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what one assumes today i I just want to acknowledge the chat miss Arcadian just
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bought your book Miss Welch so that's cool thank you uh Johnny Vintage says "If there was no monkeys there would be
28:11
no bugaloos." Another show that I loved uh Sid Marty Croft absolutely um Oh yeah
28:19
i wanted to ask Handler oh yes absolutely but to to get a little slightly personal
28:26
now we'll tell you ours the monkey song that just cuts right to our heart i cry every time I hear the porpus song i
28:32
don't know why it just it gets me for for Professor D is Shades of Gray it
28:38
gets gray since and it's interesting we talk about being five and six years old like we were shades of Gray I'm 6 years
28:44
old in 1967 when that comes out on the Headquarters album and it it hit me at 6
28:50
years old Shades of Gray for some reason this is why we we do this the monkeys are very very deep in our DNA and in our
28:57
souls because at six years old I'm I I The coolest thing about it was the back
29:03
of the album cover they're in a recording studio you know with jeans jeans exactly and and they're unshaven
29:09
and like that's what I want so the TV show was cool to see them but the TV show wasn't the best part for me for me
29:15
the music was the best part um but at even at that age I understood Shades of
29:22
Gray for some reason i understood that I'm going to be this age at some point and this is going to resonate deeply
29:29
with me so I think where where we're all trying to go to is there a monkey song that that that gets to you like that oh
29:36
of course um I will I will tag on to I have a favorite that I'll get to in two seconds but I will tag on to Shades of
29:42
Gray same thing i sometimes will play that that romp for students because I want them to talk about it of course
29:48
that it really resonated when you watch them all do it in their reunion tours you know the last so many years and it
29:54
was Peter and Mickey singing it just the beauty of that um it's a brilliant song
29:59
it's something poetic because there's that idea of what you said we can imagine wait we will be older and then
30:05
older again and then older again right and that is that's the artistry of it
30:11
making you recognize our humanity and our shared humanity because that will happen to all of us right um but I will
30:18
say my favorite of all that I could play over and over again and often do hit the replay in my car when I'm driving um is
30:24
sometime in the morning i think that is the most romantic most beautifully performed and written song of all
30:32
roseanne that is number two for me but it might be number one and and seriously
30:38
because even more than Shades of Gray nothing reminds me of my childhood nothing reminds me of being five years
30:45
old because I was five when I got more of the monkeys so Oh yes nothing reminds me more of being a child than sometime
30:53
in the morning and so to the point where there were years that would go by I wouldn't listen to it because I didn't
31:01
want to diminish the impact of this song on me so it's amazing you said sometime
31:07
in the morning because my two are shades of gray and sometime in the morning as well oh very much so you know we all
31:12
sing Daydream Believer that's just fun right that's a great fun song but but yeah there's a feeling in Sometime in
31:18
the morning which you know Jerry Carol King and Jerry Goff brilliant what would
31:24
you say to that this might make you feel good Miss Welch uh Maria Mega Monkey Maniac Maria says "Thank you so much
31:30
Rosanne for writing this book thank you for pushing to get it published you have validated me and I appreciate it." So
31:36
that's about the best thing you can hear really that is beautiful and that is tends to be often what I do here which
31:42
is beautiful because we all know that this is a piece of quality and for some reason culture decided that wasn't
31:48
whoever the culture definers were at the moment they had to you know have something to pick on um and it's it's
31:54
absurd and stupid um I mentioned the Parkish family nothing wrong with them love them david Cassidy should have been
32:00
a musical star in Broadway really like he born in the wrong era that's where he belonged and we weren't yet doing the musical stuff um but that's it like a
32:08
couple of good songs and it was a fake show and the characters are fake and they're not a real family and it doesn't doesn't really hold up it's cute but
32:14
it's not socially significant you got You got You got two guys that might
32:20
differ a little with you on that one i was trying to keep my face straight i couldn't keep it straight i I understand
32:26
what No but I understand what you're saying i mean I I love David Cassidy and I love the Partridge family and I love
32:32
his music i was fortunate enough to meet him a few times love it love it love it but I I saw him do Joseph The Amazing
32:39
this is what I'm saying i saw him do Joseph on stage that's why I think he should have been on Broadway you're
32:45
probably right you're probably But uh but I I but I understand what you're saying your point is Yeah the the the
32:52
sociological impact of the monkeys existed it didn't with the Partridge family the Partridge family was just
32:58
pure fun and joy correct exactly and I totally enjoy them but yes I don't think I could find a whole That would be an
33:04
essay that I That would that'd be a tough book so Jeff uh welcome Jeff Allen he says
33:11
"The Monkeys are still groundbreaking he turned his girlfriend onto the Monkeys in the last two weeks she bought the
33:16
band's first five albums." That's awesome that's great that's brilliant stephen also loves Sid and Marty Croft
33:22
we got to do a Sid and Marty Croft one day professor totally quite fun quite fun wow what What an amazing thing it's
33:29
nice to see the monkeys get treated seriously uh you know even as a young
33:35
kid I remember my cousin who was older than me snickering when he saw Keep Off the Grass the sign oh yeah and I didn't
33:42
I didn't get it i didn't understand what the What's he laughing about but yeah I mean there was so many little things so
33:48
many little things oh yeah oh yeah and then I think it's the pilot too there's a bit where there's a sign that just
33:53
says a space hole that's it it is a hole it is standing in
34:00
front of a hole allowed to do that on television and again why the sensors didn't suddenly go "Oh that's one of
34:07
those license plates you see in LA and you go oh they shouldn't have that on license plate."
34:13
Well we can tell you Rosanne what has happened here and and thank you so much for this and thank you so much thank you
34:19
very much i'll say it as well but what has happened here and what we have realized and and and maybe this will warm your
34:25
heart as well is you know we started this show to talk about music in general
34:31
you know I'm a big Beatle fan and and and R's a big Kiss fan and we just just to talk about music in general but we
34:38
started going through and talking about all the Monkey albums and we did them in chronological order and then in doing
34:43
that we saw that a community was starting to build around it and then we started talking to monkey fans and we
34:50
have more monkey fans to come and we hope we'll always be talking to monkey fans and monkey topics and and and uh
34:56
and what we found is there there are people that understand that appreciate
35:02
love and understand the monkeys and it means the monkeys mean the world to them and so that's been the joy for us we
35:09
were just happy to just sit here and talk about the monkeys even if nobody watched or cared but we found that
35:14
people care and that we and we're we're buil we're building a community and we're finding more people and we're
35:20
making more friends all the time by doing it well I'll tell you what one of the best things when I was writing it
35:25
was very the very thing as a kid the dream was to grow up and see them in concert and then of course they broke up
35:30
and then I in 1986 when they did the first re you know return basically the 20 anniversary uh
35:38
in Cleveland they did a practice concert at the Cleveland Playhouse where my my
35:43
fiance to be husband um was working that we got free tickets to go to the afterparty and I have a photograph of
35:50
myself and Mickey and myself and Davey and the fact that we got to go to do my
35:55
childhood dream which was to attend one of their concerts was amazing and Sean
36:01
um not Sean Pen Pen Penn of Pen and Teller whose first name I can't remember
36:07
said that in an interview that I I found in all my research where he said this was my childhood dream come true I must
36:14
attend them And it's just a beautiful thing to have seen that circle of the
36:19
story go all through and I took my 11-year-old to see them on one of their later tours like in I don't know like
36:26
2005 or something and having sitting there with my kid watching the monkeys was incredible and it's amazing to me
36:32
and a lot of people that I know as well that we actually grew up to meet monkeys
36:37
and talk to monkeys and be around monkeys still is not lost on me how amazing that is when I because I'm still
36:43
that 5-year-old kid when I'm around them and and you know and of course to have the the honor of of talking to Bill
36:49
Chadwick here recently and getting to know Bill you know and and I've gotten to know Bill it's it's it's really it's
36:55
been a journey it's been a life journey for me i mean from the time I was 5 years old I didn't see the first episode
37:01
i saw the second episode which is interesting because you mentioned Gilligan's Island in your book yes which
37:07
is as as a as I went through grammar school and maybe junior high Gilligans Island of course would be on after
37:13
school when we got home that's what the TV was back then and I would watch it and it's kind of a cra well it's not kind of a crappy show it's a crappy show
37:19
but I would wonder why because I watched every show when I was a kid i wonder why I wondered why I didn't watch Gilligans
37:26
Island it wasn't until years later that I realized oh it was on Monday nights at 7:30 and there's nothing going to keep
37:33
me from watching the Monkeys on Monday nights at 7:30 exactly that's so funny this is a big It was a big question and
37:39
there's actually I was just reading a book the other day of collections of famous writers and uh um I have to think
37:45
of her name but an Asian-American writer wrote about watching Gilgens Island and as immigrants and it made them feel
37:52
comfortable because they were lost in a place they didn't understand and so did she feel so we we bring lots of
37:57
different things to what we experience i um I always say this and then I tease kids my favorite Ralph Waldo Emerson
38:03
quote and it's the only one I know so it's not like I'm a Ralph Waldo Emerson expert but his quote was "It takes the
38:10
good reader to make the good book." And of course what he just means is we bring ourselves in our background so whatever
38:16
drew you to the monkeys you wanted to be a a performer when you grew up i wanted Big Brothers and you know all that we
38:22
brought ourselves to it and it gave something that we needed at that time yes yes yes wow i would like to
38:29
encourage everyone if you're a Monkeys fan check out this book get it uh you
38:35
couldn't have been nicer to us Miss Welch and let let me ask you if the Monkeys
38:41
if the if you could take them and drop them in another TV show of the 70s
38:48
what would it be well of course the world did that for me by putting Dave in the Brady Bunch sure
38:54
yeah yeah so it was done it was done
39:00
they made the choice i'd have to really think you know they don't belong in Hogan's Heroes
39:05
they could have shown up in Bewitched true and Boyce and Hart were on
39:11
Bewitched so sure they could Yeah they could have lived down the street yeah oh that would that's actually I'll have to
39:17
think about that that'd be a good fanfic i I loved it when Mor was on Happy Days
39:23
that couple of times that's where he was born yeah exactly exactly yeah wow so
39:28
professor do you wanna Yeah uh Rosanne I can't thank you enough i can't thank you
39:33
enough for writing the book i can't thank you enough for that book being out there i can't thank you enough for being here on the show this was this and and
39:40
maybe you'll come back we talk about monkeys here if there's a monkey or something we'd love to have you back
39:47
i'll put you on the spot Miss Welch i'll put you on the spot can we do a Doctor Who episode please i would love to talk
39:53
about Doctor Who i do Doctor Who book i' I've only been chapters in them but yes
39:59
if you want to talk about Doctor Who I'm there awesome but thank you everyone for listening it was really lovely it's
40:05
always fun to talk about our boys our boys yeah yeah well thank you very much for being here and everybody uh please
40:11
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40:17
called Retro Prism is our new name and so please subscribe to the channel
40:22
please uh because we'll have a lot of music we'll have a lot of monkeying around and so everybody knows and we try
40:28
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40:34
monkeys just like we did tonight so uh we will see you next time
40:40
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