the monkees, 2021

NOTE: The Monkees, live at the Paramount Theater in Huntington, NY, October 28, 2021 

On my own I wouldn't have bothered getting tickets to see The Monkees on their farewell tour. Davy Jones and Peter Tork are dead, leaving Mike Nesmith and Micky Dolenz to carry on. And they're both in their upper '70s. If I had to choose two of the four to perform a show it would have been Dolenz and Nesmith, so there's that. But I still didn't have high hopes.

But friends decided that they were going and asked if Blair and I were interested. So that kind of made it a horse of a different color.

But the show was actually quite good. That was due in large part to a band of really great musicians I'd never heard of (and whose names I don't remember). OK, I'd heard of one of them -- Coco Dolenz, Micky's sister was there for backup vocals and percussion. At any rate, the band did a really good job with the material. As one would expect, the emphasis was on the hits. But they also played some of the lesser-known tracks including "Goin' Down," "Auntie's Municipal Court" and "Tapioca Tundra." That last one was, technically, a hit but is little-remembered. One special treat was "Different Drum," a hit for Linda Ronstadt that Nesmith wrote.

Nesmith and Dolenz were simply vocalists, leaving the instrumentation to the band.^* And that's one of the differences between this tour and what I've seen of recent tours. I don't know this is the first tour in which the Monkees themselves are just the vocalists (and I'm not interested enough in the matter to research). But a quick search for footage of past tours on Youtube shows me that as recently as 2019 Dolenz and Nesmith were playing guitar onstage. Incidentally, I can see that the band on that tour featured at least some of the same musicians as on this.

Which, of course, raises the question of why they're not playing more instruments. [MAJOR DISCLAIMER HERE: I HAVE NO INSIDER KNOWLEDGE, AND THIS IS PURELY SUPPOSITION BASED ON WHAT I SAW] Based on the way Nesmith shuffled weakly onto the stage, at times seemed to have trouble controlling his hands, and seemed to have trouble standing (among other things I saw), I strongly suspect he has Parkinson's disease. And if not parkinson's he clearly has some other physically debilitating problem. I don't believe he had the physical wherewithal to play a guitar. Mickey, by contrast, was vigorous and youthful, clearly enjoying himself as master showman and belting out tunes. But it would have looked odd for him to be playing a guitar while Nesmith wasn't. Nesmith looked old weak by comparison, and at times he appeared to be having trouble even singing.

But the fans in attendance -- myself included -- were inclined to overlook any physical shortcomings. Perhaps because we were just happy to see these two performing the old favorites, and to sing along. And perhaps because this is very likely the last time we'll see The Monkees in any plural form. 

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^*In the interests of full disclosure, Dolenz did play tambourine at times, and he played timpani for the opening of "Randy Scouse Git."