Davy Jones: 30 December 1945 - 29 February 2012
Thursday, March 1st, 2012 01:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanOf course now, as I get round to blogging it, the death of Davy Jones is old news, but I felt the need to flag it up.
The Monkees were, and are, the only manufactured band that I have ever had a positive opinion of. There’s a number of reasons for this:
Firstly, when they were launched, I was far too young to know any better and by the time I did, they were securely fixed into my nostalgia circuits.
Beyond that, however, is the fact that though they started out as actors playing pop stars, whose music was performed by session artists, they improved, became musicians in their own right and, before the band (or group as they would have been in those days)finally split, they had managed to assert a certain level of creative control over their own output, rather than simply regurgitating what the TV studios wanted.
They managed to put out a number of albums that were critically well-received, but which didn’t sell in the huge numbers their earlier work did, though a lot of the material is still available on various ‘best of’ compilations, which are very much worth a listen.
In particular, I’d love to see their film, Head , which deals with the nature of free-will and is, in some ways, a deconstruction of their TV image.
The Monkees were, and are, the only manufactured band that I have ever had a positive opinion of. There’s a number of reasons for this:
Firstly, when they were launched, I was far too young to know any better and by the time I did, they were securely fixed into my nostalgia circuits.
Beyond that, however, is the fact that though they started out as actors playing pop stars, whose music was performed by session artists, they improved, became musicians in their own right and, before the band (or group as they would have been in those days)finally split, they had managed to assert a certain level of creative control over their own output, rather than simply regurgitating what the TV studios wanted.
They managed to put out a number of albums that were critically well-received, but which didn’t sell in the huge numbers their earlier work did, though a lot of the material is still available on various ‘best of’ compilations, which are very much worth a listen.
In particular, I’d love to see their film, Head , which deals with the nature of free-will and is, in some ways, a deconstruction of their TV image.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-03-01 03:49 pm (UTC)