Hey, hey, he's a Monkee! Always and forever
Review by Steve Smith, Lake Forest, CA, August 14, 2005
The city of Lake Forest, located inland from Irvine, ended its free three-show 2005 Concerts In The Park season at Pittsford Park early Sunday evening with the man singer/dancer/choreographer Toni Basil sang about in her 1982 #1 hit, ?Hey Mickey.? You got it; it was Micky Dolenz of the Monkees.
This was the fourth of only six concert appearances for Dolenz all year. Appearing with Dolenz during the 19-song, 70-minute set was a five-piece band as well as his sister, Coco, who sang lead on the inclusion of Del Shannon's "Runaway."
While concentrating thankfully mostly on his songs from the hit group that sprang from the group's hit TV show, the now-60-year old decked out in tan dress slacks and a multi-colored Hawaiian shirt and fedora also sang a couple songs that originally featured his fellow simians on lead vocals, including "Daydream Believer," which was sung by Davy Jones.
He added a couple Monkees songs written by his pals but on which he sang lead ("The Girl I Knew Somewhere" by Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork's "For Pete's Sake," which was used as their show,s theme song during its second season). Clearly a fan of Nesmith,s songwriting skills, Dolenz also sang :Different Drum," which Nesmith wrote that launched the career of Linda Ronstadt in 1967 when she fronted the Stone Ponys.
Dolenz also dug out "Goin? Down," a fun little scatty jazz ditty he wrote in London in 1967 after visiting Abbey Road Studios and attending the Beatles a recording session for "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band." The Beatles were working on John Lennon's bone-crunching "Good Morning Good Morning" that night and Dolenz pulled out a less hard-edged version in tribute on Sunday in what was probably the evening's biggest surprise. Hey, give the man a Bonus Point or two for doing it at all.
The Monkees toured America in 1967 and by then they?d become proficient enough to actually play their own instruments. In one of the great mismatches in the history of sound, a promoter or producer who surely was eating acid each and every morning as though they were bowls of Count Chocula signed as their opening act - Jimi Hendrix. Believe it.
In an amusing bit, Dolenz ran through Hendrix's biggest hit, "Purple Haze," which is about LSD, while approximating the sound of thousands of teen and pre-teenage girls screaming for Davy.
But it must be noted that he omitted several of the more popular songs that he fronted vocally, including "Words," "Take A Giant Step," "Mary, Mary" and Carole King and Gerry Goffin's deeply psychedelic and hugely Beatlesque "Porpoise Song (Theme from "Head").
Dolenz has been in show business all his life. He initially found fame in 1956, appearing for three seasons on TV as "Circus Boy," a popular Western adventure series. After the run of "The Monkees," he recorded a series of solo albums that failed to sell and found work doing voices for Hanna-Barbera cartoons, such as "Phunky Phantom" and as heroic racecar driver, "Devlin." Beginning in the late ?70s, he moved to London where he spent the next fifteen years directing shows for British television, returning to the states for occasional Monkee business. He was the main director for the show "Boy Meets World" for American television in the '90s.
Over the years, he and the other Monkees teamed up and toured together in one form or another (and also with Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, who wrote many of their songs). In 1996, all four Monkees got together to write, produce, arrange and they were the only performers on the album, "Justus."
In June, Dolenz was laid off after only six months as the morning DJ on WCBS-FM, a classic Oldies station in New York when the station adapted the new DJ-less "Jack Radio" format. In 2003-04, he appeared in Elton John's opera, "Aida" on Broadway. His last television appearance was in the summer of 2002, when he guest starred as "the Vicar" on "As The World Turns."
But Micky Dolenz is once and for always a Monkee. There was a time when, as so many have, he grew to hate the thing that made him famous. However, over the years, he now realizes how very fortunate he was to be a Monkee and it's written all over his face in performance.
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