Heres a Tumblr post I wrote 2 years ago, in response to the topic being discussed that day: Reasons I Love The Monkees. This was a tough one for me. I’ve been reading all your posts all day long, and they have been beautiful and sweet and touching and heartrending and heartwarming and happy and joyful and loopy. I’m so proud of you all, and I’m so happy to have found a home in one corner of this warm, welcoming fandom. I don’t have a good answer. If it was just a TV show, it wouldn’t be enough. There are TV shows I like better. If it was just a band, it wouldn’t be enough. There are bands I like better. If it was just a TV show and a band… well, I don’t think that would be enough either. I liked the Monkees for a while in the 70’s and again in the 80’s, but I eventually drifted away. I think it must be the longevity and endurance of their stories. When Davy died earlier this year, I did a little on-line research to find out what had happened to the guys over the intervening decades. And I found out that Peter had survived oral cancer and Michael had been blind, and Micky had just kept reinventing himself; and that he was appearing in Hairspray and Peter had a rockin’ little blues band, and Davy and Micky and Peter had been out there touring as The Monkees just last summer and I had somehow missed it, but the critics said they were just as good as just as funny and just as entertaining as they ever were. And YouTube let me see some of what I had missed. And websites like PsychoJello and Naked Persimmon and the Monkees Film & TV Vault gently (and sometimes not-so-gently) brought me back up to speed. And they made me laugh and they made me cry and they told me so many things I never knew. And I finally saw Head and found out what a weird and amazing film it is, and I bought the TV show DVDs and listened to the commentary tracks and heard the actors (and others) speak in their own words for the very first time. The more I heard, and the more I saw, the more my respect for the Monkees and The Monkees grew and grew and grew. So, it’s not just a TV show. And it’s not just a band. It’s an entertainment phenomenon, and a core groups of professionals—actors, musicians, writers, directors, producers—who broke the rules and changed the game. And it’s a community of fans. Lurking around the edges of that community, I felt the stirrings of a muse that I thought had abandoned me many years ago. I started writing again. I set up a Tumblr account, because that seemed to be how the fans I respected most were communicating with each other. I had not the foggiest idea how Tumblr worked. In my very first post, with no idea how to reach anybody, I wrote this: > I’ll start posting the reviews here, and see > how it works out. I’ll probably just be flinging > thoughts out into the ether, but it’s no harm to > anyone. And if I entertain a person or two along > the way, it’s all good. Right? I still don’t know how anybody found me. But I’ve been found, by a few of you anyway, and I’m grateful to be here.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 12:47:19 +0000