LADY G's SHAMELESS MONKEES PAGE!
Lady G was a weird adolescent back in the day. She didn't like rock 'n roll. (She liked, and still liked, folk music and the broad genre commonly referred to as classical.) She didn't date. She didn't like to hang out, get high, wear makeup ir miniskirts, or chatter mindlessly about (to her young mind) dumb stuff. She believed her otherwise politically liberal, relatively irreligious and quite distracted parents when they averred that boy who wore their hair long were just doing it to rebel against their parents and/or society, and were probably also dirty.
However, Lady G did like to draw. She wasn't (and isn't) any good at it, but she liked it nonetheless. She had spent a good deal of the fifth and sixth grades drawing (and emulating) collies. By the time she turned 15 she'd been drawing human girls for a while, specifically long-haired human girls, for the simple reason that she could not effectively draw ears.
Lady G became very weary of drawing long-haired girls.
She liked "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." and was totally enamored of Illya Kuryakin; he had long hair, so she began to draw him.
Lady G would never admit to becoming weary of anything about Illya, including of drawing him, but she did wish to branch out. She borrowed her sister's Monkees albums, despite her dislike of rock 'n roll, and began drawing Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith (Mike's hair not being so very long but conveniently covering at least part of his ears).
Something began to happen. As Lady G gazed at the pictures, in order to copy them, sometimes even resorting to tracing them and then copying the tracings and filling them in with details (she didnt fill in the direct tracings, for reasons now lost to posterity), she began to... get involved. She became curious about these young men, who didn't, after all, look dirty, or even especially rebellious.
She began to listen to the music.
Some of it, she decided, wasn't half bad!
Then, in the summer of 1967, she heard "Pleasant Valley Sunday" for the first time. Her mind was, so to speak, blown.
She began to watch the show. Her mind continued to be blown. (She laughed a lot, too, and magazine-insert-sized photos of the boys began to appear mysteriously all over her room. Whole walls vanished beneath them.)
Since then Lady G's musical tastes have expanded considerably and she has long since realized that The Monkees were not the be-all and/or end-all either of the thespian arts or of rock 'n roll (nor were they the worst in either case, and she still enjoys both the shows, whenever she can find them in obscure syndication, and, yes, even some of the music). However, she still maintains a corner of her heart in which they are enshrined, with gratitude, for several reasons:
1. When she realized her parents had been incorrect about the nature of boys with long hair, she decided to examine her other preconceptions, inherited or otherwise, and not limited to the topic of rock 'n' roll, or even music. A good deal of Lady G's current thought processes were formed at that time. Lady G eschews the concept of "philosophy of life" but if she could be said to have one (why only one?) it was formed then too.
2. The Monkees toured with Jimi Hendrix (actually he toured with them). Peter Tork was friendly with Stephen Stills (then of the magnificent Buffalo Springfield). Mickey and Mike brought Tim Buckley and Frank Zappa, respectively, onto the show. Lady G had not really been exposed to this kind of rock 'n roll. Furthermore, her radio-listening habit were changed by her liking the Monkees, and along the way she discovered quite a lot of good music, which led to the discovery of more good music, which led.... You get the picture.
3. She was distracted from the futility of her ever learning to draw ears, which might have driven her mad sans such distraction. Thus the Monkees saved her from at least one bout with madness; we will not mention any unrelated bouts.
Lady G's heart not being on public view, she thought she'd create, oh, not a shrine, exactly, but a webpage, at any rate, explaining all of the above and providing access to Monkees merchandise online, in keeping with the mostly commercial nature of GENESSA.
NOTE: I just began this page. I'm still working on the MP3s. When I'm done, I'll move them off to their own page and start on the CDs, then the LPs and 45s, VHS, DVD, collectibles, pictures, and whatever all else I find. Patience!
Enjoy!
MP3 Downloads
Davy Jones in Geneva, IL, 2006, copyright Karla Kaulfuss/Wikimedia Commons
Mickey Dolenz photographed June 2007 by David Shankbone, copyright David Shankbone/Wikimedia Commons
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