RIP, Davy Jones

I was a pretty big Monkees fan. I will miss Davy Jones.

In my youth, I thought that the Monkees TV show was brilliant, and I'm sure I've seen every episode. I saw the group perform live (well, the sans-Michael Monkees, anyway) at Red Rocks with Weird Al back in the 80s -- talk about a Dream Team concert! And I was always jealous of the way Marcia Brady looked at Davy, and I wished that I could be as cool and hip as he was.

I tried the long-hair thing for a while. It didn't take. Too much trouble to deal with the stuff; to this day I have no idea how women (and hippies) can stand it. It really surprised me that the Persis Khambatta movement never caught on.

I did notice that many of the news stories described Davy as being the "lead singer" of the Monkees (aka "The Prefab Four"). This is probably because he played the tambourine, which is usually an indicator that you can't play a real instrument, and therefore must be a singer. But I always think of Mickey as the primary singer and foundation of the group, while Davy was just the guy who got all the girls because he could make his eyes sparkle at will.

My sister has a copy of Davy's pre-Monkees album. I listened to it many times as a kid; the guy was a talented singer before he became a TV star. Since it was recorded in England for an English audience, some of the song lyrics made no sense to me as an American kid. But that didn't keep me from enjoying the music.

I wonder if that album is rare enough to be worth some good money at this point? She won it from a KLEO radio contest. As I remember it, they were basically purging their studio of promo copies of records they no longer wanted in their library, and pretty much anybody who called in won something. My prize was a 45rpm single by Ronnie Dove -- I no longer recall the song title. I probably listened to it a handful of times before using it as a backyard frisbee until it broke. Ronnie Dove isn't exactly a household name, and the quality of the record I won didn't make much of a case for changing that. But the Davy Jones album was actually good.

When I first heard the term "Davey Jones' Locker", I assumed that someone had built a shrine around where Davy had stored his books in Junior High School. It wasn't until much later that I realized it was a nautical term that pre-dated the Monkeemobile by a century. But you know me -- I'm always happy to learn new facts.

So here's one you might not know: There was another David Jones trying to become a star around the same time as our intrepid tambourinist. But because Monkee Davy achieved notoriety first, the other guy was forced to adopt a different moniker. Which of the following fellows was that second David Jones?

A. David Gilmour
B. David Bowie
C. James Earl Jones
D. Freddie Mercury
E. Frank Zappa
F. Sting

OK, that's all for now. I'm sure the oldies stations will be playing more Monkees tunes than usual, so please take some time to enjoy some of Davy's contributions to our culture, and have a great day!