Davy Jones RIP

[PowerButchi]

In all fairness, June's just a kid. He doesn't know any better.

[Halitosis Romantic]

The last 2 posts were spot on but I can see where June is coming from, the Monkees were what Surf and Rosey said but I think June was trying to say they didn't have anything to do with the youth movement of freedom and anti establishment that was more important to the 60s than anything.

 

The Monkees as characters were all about that, they were just a mainstream distillation of these ideas. However, they took it further by fighting to take control of the project - you've gotta see Head to see how far out they went.

 

 

In all fairness, June's just a kid. He doesn't know any better.

 

I forget that sometimes. He'll grow and learn, and one day he'll be a punter, like the best of us.

[Bellenda Carlisle]

The last 2 posts were spot on but I can see where June is coming from, the Monkees were what Surf and Rosey said but I think June was trying to say they didn't have anything to do with the youth movement of freedom and anti establishment that was more important to the 60s than anything.

 

The Monkees as characters were all about that, they were just a mainstream distillation of these ideas.

 

Nice retort, I wasn't looking at it like that at all, makes you think - does a mainstream distillation of something deserve to be given the same importance as the real thing?

 

Don't get me wrong, I love the Monkees, I just think the genuine counter culture movement in the 60s was an amazing event of extreme importance that I'm sure at the time had it's fair share of bandwagon jumpers

[Loki]

What WAS the genuine counter-culture of the 60s though? It's extremely had to pin down like that, it was a whole bunch of disparate political and ideological movements which all sort of hit at the same time. The Monkees had more in common with the Hippies than the Hippies did the Black Power movement, for example.

[Chest Rockwell]

I don't know whether you'd want to call it a distillation or a watering down but as a general principle - absolutely. Nothing goes from an underground phenomenon to massive mainstream appeal without undergoing this kinda change but both forms are just as culturally relevant.

 

The question at heart is whether or not you believe bigger is inherently better, which is something we're generally conditioned to accept as a given.

[Halitosis Romantic]

Maybe not in terms of what we call (in great big capital letters, preferably several stories high) "GREAT ART" - The Monkees are NOT the Beatles, but then the Beatles are not Beethoven, and so on. They reflected the 60s as a time of non-conformism, and energy, and yeah, bright primary colors, whilst staying within a commercial framework for the first period of their existence. What Flaming June never seems to grasp is that artistic merit, like giving a song or a band five big fat Meltzeresque stars, doesn't sum it all up. A lot of people will connect with the mainstream - it's not that they're sheep, it's that it's there, it's consumable, and it takes those big ideas and makes them palatable. That's why it's mainstream - doesn't mean that it's shit, and just because it's a commercial product, doesn't mean that that's its only function.

 

And what if it was? That reflects something in itself - it's got to capture something of the zeitgeist, to appeal to the youth of that era. Take a look at the Adam West Batman - coming right off of Pop Art, and Susan Sontag's "Notes on Camp", it took the signifiers and the signified in terms of the switched on generation, and sold them right back as high camp. Like the Monkees, it was so of its era that it died out fairly rapidly, but that goes to prove how well it captured that time.

 

When they went off of TV, the Monkees were exercising their counterculture tendencies - like Troy Donahue living on a bench, or Jack Nicholson smoking dope with Fonda and Hopper, it was the mainstream coming right off the rails.

 

Also, nice choons.

[Big Jock Knew]

Not so keen on The Monkees because it annoys me that "I'm A Believer" is sometimes seen as their song instead of Neil Diamond's. Same with "Red, Red Wine" and UB40. Neil Diamond is awesome.

[Loki]

Yeah, and that fucking Jimi Hendrix, nicking All Along The Watchtower from Bob Dylan.

[Surf Digby]

Yeah, and that fucking Jimi Hendrix, nicking All Along The Watchtower from Bob Dylan.

And Bob didn't even want it back after Jimi had finished with it.

[Big Jock Knew]

Yeah, and that fucking Jimi Hendrix, nicking All Along The Watchtower from Bob Dylan.

 

Not the point I was making at all. Just saying that the Diamond is awesome.

[ColinBollocks]

Really, if that form of counter-culture resonates it's always going to get packaged and sold to the masses by 'the man'. Rock and roll, folk, punk, disco, hip hop, grunge etc... That's just the way it goes. Some great artists have benefited from this over the years - like the man in my sig (Leonard Cohen), there is chance that he'd have never got a record contract with a good label if folk weren't looking for 'new Bob Dylan', especially given his age. Cohen is another example of a man who has used several outside factors to help his music, he's even used the words of other poets in his songs. Does that damage the quality of his superlative work?! No.