AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

Right, now that I have the Marsha Brady’s out of my system, I may be able to let you all know about this little documentary look at the careers of Davy, Mike, Pete and Micky – or the original pre-fab four, The Monkees – without breaking out in any more hysterics. AIIIIEEEE! Well, I did say maybe – hey, at least it wasn’t as shrill that time!

Pretty much inspired lock, stock and woolly hat by The Beatles’ phenomenal success, and in particular their A Hard Day’s Night flick, The Monkees first burst onto telly screens in 1966. Ah, but what those of us who weren’t around at the time may not have realised was that they had already had chart success with the fab little pop ditty Last Train to Clarksville, which kind of confuses things – were they a band who had their own TV show or were they TV characters who had their own band? Or something like that. At any rate, it was all rather clinically conceived, with auditions held in search of “four insane boys aged 17-21�, and Tin Pan Alley-styled musical overlord Don Kirshner drafted in to have his impressive stable of songwriters provide ready made hits for these four fresh-faced young lads whose only real job spec was to be wacky and zany, and get mega ratings.

And the first year of the show saw all expectations met, with blockbuster ratings, successful tours, an alarming rate of record releases and thousands of screaming Marsha Bradys following their every public move. Ah, but then the rot started creeping in – at least as far as the producers were concerned – as their puppets started to have ambitions, just like real little boys. Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork were both trained musicians before the advent of The Monkees, and their desires to create started coming to the fore. Mickey Dolenz, whose previous claim to fame was as a child star riding an elephant also got the itch, and it seems Davy Jones (AIIEEE! and all that) then followed suit. Still, a second series followed in 1967 and then, calamity. The Monkees was cancelled.

All this and more is covered quite well in this 1998 production, especially considering the amount of information and music it manages to cram into just under one rapid-fire hour of running time. Much truly fascinating archival footage is included, from the obvious such as the intro to the TV show (with THAT awesome theme) through to behind the scenes shenanigans, TV commercials, live footage, screen tests, interviews and much more, all interspersed with modern day interviews recorded with all four members and others involved with the production. There is even a fabulous clip including Frank Zappa, who also appeared in their totally out there 1968 movie Head (which was co-written by one Jack Nicholson).

Musically it should come as no surprise that there isn’t much in the way of complete songs here, but regardless there are still decent snippets of Last Train to Clarksville, (I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone (which even the mighty Sex Pistols covered), I’m A Believer (penned by one Neil Diamond no less), No Time, Pleasant Valley Sunday and the simply gorgeous Daydream Believer (sung by Davy – AIIIEEEEEE!!!)

Come on, you should have a fair idea what to expect here, after all, there’s archival footage aplenty. Yes, things run the gamut from basically pristine (the recent interview footage) down to obscene (some of the footage from Head looks like it came to the screen via a mincer – here’s hoping when it comes to DVD in its entirety (this is called positive thinking) that it fares a LOT better). Still, some of the clips from the TV show scrub up surprisingly well, and really anybody who’d get up in arms about the sort of footage a program like this includes exhibiting grain, speckles, scratches and other faults really should take time away from the couch to go out in search of a clue. Not surprisingly it’s all in full frame, and there don’t appear to be any nasties bestowed upon proceedings by the encoding process.

Dolby Digital Stereo is what’s on offer in the audio department, although much of that which is on offer is decidedly monaural – as it was made that way. Recent interview footage sounds fabulous and nicely separated, and most of the more sizeable music clips included have obviously had music taken from stereo sources overdubbed, and they sound quite, well, fab – or, of course, pre-fab if you prefer. This does tend to affect lip synch at times, however the four weren’t exactly non-crap at miming anyway, so this should hardly impinge upon your enjoyment of proceedings.

The menu, complete with a nicely looped rendition of the theme and a circle providing us with some animated Monkee-vision, implores us to ‘explore extras’, however upon doing so at first you won’t be confronted with much to warrant getting all gussied up in the pith helmet and muttering “Crikey!� over. There are decent enough band profiles for Davy (8 pages), Mike (10 pages), Pete (9 pages) and Micky (8 pages) covering everything from pre-Monkee times up to pretty much yesterday; a dreadfully drab discography listing The Monkees’ album releases backwards, with no track listings or covers or anything, and the inescapable Umbrella Propaganda, in this case one static page flogging four of their music releases. Ah, but if you have gone to the trouble of dragging out the old compass and binoculars a bit of a trundle about parts that aren't so obvious may just reveal a few extended interviews with former Monkees. Perhaps a trip to our Easter egg section may enlighten you more?

The Monkees was quite a remarkable phenomenon in its time, and as it was pretty much a prototype for all those dreadful Popstars shows that got their vowels seriously mucked up and lumbered us with spawned from hell bland pap rather than pop, it’s testament to a certain something that it had that even today they are remembered so fondly by so many. This snappily edited documentary doesn’t answer that many questions, and certainly doesn’t dig very deep, but it is still a fascinating mini-look at the phenomenon that should have any fan, or anybody interested in the history of pop, captivated for almost an hour. And it just goes to show that manufactured pop is anything but a recent thing...

AIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!