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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
In the 80s, they get a star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood for the television show. Not for the music — which is interesting. You can have a star for or five different things — radio, TV, film, vaudeville — whatnot. So this is pretty cool. So that’s all of them showing up. That’s when they decide to do the re-touring. They’re still obviously famous and this year they just came out with an Archie comic that blended The Monkees into it and, of course, The Archies are big again now because of what TV show? Riverdale! So all of a sudden everything is going in circles and the sixties karma get popular again and I often say to younger audiences when I talk to them. They may never have heard of The Monkees but they know one of The Monkees’ songs by heart because they saw this movie and you start singing it and they all I know it. I didn’t know that it was a Monkees song. Again, who wrote that song? Close. They’re major songwriters for them. Yeah, Neil Diamond. That’s a Neil Diamond song and in concert recently people have asked him to sing it and he says No, that’s Mickey Dolenz’ song. I wrote it but it doesn’t belong to me anymore. Again a musician complimenting another musician. They do take each other seriously.
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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