The Monkees (TV series)/Trivia

• Actor Allusion:
  • Micky sings the theme from Circus Boy, the series he starred in as a child, in "Monkees at the Circus".
  • After The Monkees, Dolenz was cast as Wally, the drummer of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids -- who bore a passing resemblance to Dolenz.
  • Joey Forman guest starred in "Monkee Chow Mein" as The Dragonman, a parody of Forman's character Harry Hoo from Get Smart.
• Channel Hop: The show originally ran on NBC. The Saturday morning reruns were broadcast on both CBS (1969-72) and ABC (1972-73). Then came syndication, the 1986 MTV run, Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite in the late 80's and 90's, more syndication, and as of 2010 Antenna TV...
• Creative Differences:
  • One reason that the group didn't last long past the end of the TV series was that the four members brought radically different musical preferences to the table. Tork was a folk singer, Jones favored showtunes and ballads, Nesmith favored either country-rock or straight-up country, and Dolenz was into rock and soul.
  • By the time the band recorded its fifth album, The Birds, the Bees, and The Monkees, the group had completely abandoned recording together. Each member chose his own songs and produced his own sessions with his own musicians of choice, then the results were pooled and the best songs chosen for the album.
• Creator Backlash: None of the four were pleased with the album More of the Monkees, and Mike Nesmith especially has never had a kind word to say about it. The album was compiled without any input from the group and released behind their back; reportedly, the band didn't find out about its existence until one of them saw it in the record store. Additionally, the album contained a few tracks which they felt were substandard. They also hated the cover shot, which featured them in what they considered to be extremely tacky JCPenney clothing.
• The Danza: Each character was essentially a Flanderized version of the actor, with the exception of Peter, who played The Ditz on the show. However, they did all use their own names.
• Dawson Casting: Some episodes indicate that the boys are supposed to be teenagers. Davy was 20 at the time filming began, Micky was 21, Mike was 23, and Peter was 24.
• Defictionalization: One of the most wildly successful examples.
• Directed by Cast Member: Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork directed TV episodes. Dolenz later had some success as a TV director in Britain.
• Edited for Syndication:
  • The CBS/ABC reruns replaced some songs with tracks from the band's current releases.
  • When the show went into syndication, MTV and Nick at Nite kept the episodes intact, for the most part, but local stations tended to cut out stuff. The interview tags were always the first thing to go, and sometimes even a song would be cut if it was featured separately rather than integrated into the body of the episode.
  • More recent syndication packages have avoided the deletion of songs and interviews by Ramping; that is, randomly speeding up the film and songs to save time... except this gets extremely ANNOYING.
• Executive Meddling: Largely the story behind the assembling of the group's second album, More of the Monkees. Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, producers of the first album, recorded what they believed was to be the follow-up to the group's debut, not knowing that Don Kirshner was having the boys record lots of tracks with other writers and producers as well. Kirshner then assembled his own version of the album and released it behind everyone's back. Only two of the tracks Boyce and Hart recorded were included.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: The group was not only allowed, but encouraged to improvise, and gaps were often left in the script to facilitate this, especially where Micky Dolenz was concerned.
• Hitless Hit Album: Headquarters, which had no singles released in America ("Randy Scouse Git"/"Alternate Title" was a hit in England).
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Reruns of Monkees episodes often replaced the songs from those episodes with more current ones in order to promote the band's most recent releases. Some songs were replaced multiple times. The syndication versions sometimes have the original songs and sometimes have the replaced songs, with no real pattern to it. Thus while all Monkees episodes are currently available on DVD with original songs intact, there are some fans who insist on trying to obtain copies of every variation of each episode they can, leading to a thriving tape trading market.
• Marathon Running:
  • MTV ran a 24-hour marathon called Pleasant Valley Sunday on Sunday, February 23, 1986. The reaction was so positive that they ran a few more weekend marathons along with daily airings of the show through the rest of the year. Pleasant Valley Sunday is considered to be the event that launched their 1986 comeback.
  • Antenna TV aired every episode back-to-back followed by Head on March 3-4 2012 in honor of Davy Jones' passing.
• Missing Episode: The 2-part Japanese special The Monkees In Japan. A concert performance from their Far East tour only aired once in October 1968, and hasn't been seen since. However, the audio from both parts can be heard in the bootleg Made In Japan.
• Name's the Same: The Monkees' Davy Jones is not a character from nautical folklore or Pirates of the Caribbean. However, he was responsible for another Davy Jones changing his name to David Bowie.
  • This was referenced in the episode "Hitting the High Seas". The ship's captain learns that one of the boys is named Davy Jones and assumes he is the descendant of the famous character from folklore - Micky quickly plays into it: "...and when he's 25, he inherits the Locker!".
  • This was also referenced in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Spongebob Vs. The Big One", in which Davy guest stars.
  • Also referenced in an episode of the '90s remake of the Pink Panther cartoon (in which the title character was voiced by Matt Frewer). The episode had a pirate theme, so upon being threatened with being sent to Davy Jones' locker, the Panther deadpanned, "wasn't he the lead singer of The Monkees?"
• The Other Darrin: Frank Zappa (as Mike) interviews Mike (as Frank Zappa).
• Screwed by the Network: No one was happy with the band's post-series TV special 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee, least of all NBC, which buried it opposite the 1969 Oscars. On top of the hopeless scheduling, the network also managed to broadcast the show's segments out of order. No one noticed or cared, save for the boys themselves (especially Mike Nesmith, who was livid about the screw-up).
• Throw It In:
  • The song "Gonna Buy Me a Dog" from the first album was intended to be a quirky novelty tune to wrap up the album on a light-hearted note. However, Micky and Davy found the song corny rather than funny, and used one take to goof off and just basically make fun of the song. This version was the one that got released.
  • The band included "Band 6" and "Zilch" (both of which were short clips of the boys cutting up in the studio) in the final track listing for Headquarters to add to the off-the-wall, spontaneous atmosphere of the project.
  • Ad-libs and outtakes were frequently left in the finished product. This was designed to be a part of the show from the very beginning; when they were casting the series, the producers made certain to hire actors with strong improvisational skills.
• Word of God:
  • "For Pete's Sake" may have been written by Peter, but it was Mike who named it.
  • "Mijacogeo" is a Shout-Out to the first names of Micky's immediate family: Micky, his mother Janelle, sister Coco and father George. The name "Frodis" came to him in a dream.