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From Denver Pop Culture Con 2019.
Wherever you go, you find Monkees fans and the Denver Popular Culture Con was no different. Amid rooms full of caped crusaders and cosplay creations, I was initially not sure how many folks would attend a talk on a TV show from the 1960s – but happily I was met by a nice, engaged audience for my talk on Why the Monkees Matter – and afterward they bought books! What more could an author ask for?
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Transcript
This is a quote by Peter obviously. Who knows who’s sitting behind him? Janis Joplin. These guys were friends. So there’s also this ridiculous myth that nobody in music like The Monkees back then. That’s all not true. They lived in Laurel Canyon which is an area right above Hollywood. They had houses next to Mama Cass Elliot, Eric Clapton lived in the neighborhood and Frank Zappa buy a house there eventually. John Lennon would visit Mickey Dolenz’ home all the time because Mickey had married a woman from England and Lennon and Ringo, of The Beatles obviously, made the joke that that was the house they could go to where somebody knew how to serve tea at four o’clock. So you know they were just English guys hanging out in America. So but Peter, very much against the character he was asked to play which of course was the dummy, he was a very intellectual very smart gentleman and saw right from start that their message would actually have more power than The Beatles.
Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture
A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Acheivement in Comedy.
Capitalizing on the show’s success, the actual band formed by the actors, at their peak, sold more albums than The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined, and set the stage for other musical TV characters from The Partridge Family to Hannah Montana. In the late 1980s, the Monkees began a series of reunion tours that continued into their 50th anniversary.
This book tells the story of The Monkees and how the show changed television, introducing a new generation to the fourth-wall-breaking slapstick created by Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers.
Its creators contributed to the innovative film and television of 1970s with projects like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Laugh-In and Welcome Back, Kotter. Immense profits from the show, its music and its merchandising funded the producers’ move into films such as Head, Easy Riderand Five Easy Pieces.
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