37. The Monkees

Though it was only on for two seasons (which is really surprising to me as I thought it ran longer than that), “The Monkees” was an important show that had long-lasting ramifications on the television industry. Though that's not the reason why I like the show. Truthfully, I have no idea whether just preteens made up the audience or whether hippies thought it was a lame attempt of Hollywood scrubbing up the late 60s love movement for middle America (though both are probably true), but it is an enjoyable show. The show's plots aren't anything special and in most cases don't make a lot of sense, but you don't watch “The Monkees” for the plot. You watch for two reasons: the music and for the band members.

This entry isn't going to be a debate about the validity of the Monkees' music. Like many pop acts, there is some good stuff and some bad stuff, but the Monkees basically were a carbon copy of the Beatles from their Help! days. They were poppy, had a slight edge to some of their songs, but mostly sang about love and trivial subjects. The group had a lot of aid from professional song writers like Neil Diamond and Carole King, which made those subjects take on a more interesting tone. And the group also took advantage of session musicians until their musical chops were built up. However, a strict judgement on whether the music is “good”or “bad” misses the point of the show.

The point was to have a weekly show that would take suburbia into the wacky (albeit safe) lifestyle of the day's youth. Aside from a few things that never show (drug use, conjugal visits with scores of groupies, legendary battles with their producer Don Kirshner) I don't think that Mickey Dolenz, Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork or Davy Jones were playing characters that were too far off from themselves. The show was also among the first to use a lot of the slang that 60s youth was using. Most important about this is that the language didn't sound stilted or scripted. It also portrayed the youth of that time as caring and centered—having a good head on their shoulders—despite media reports that the baby boomer generation wasn't living up to their parents' generation and were shiftless and lazy.

While this probably went over the heads of older viewers—if it reached them at all—this is probably the main reason why the show resonated with a lot of young people. Here was a show with young people getting by without a care in the world. The only time that a problem did enter their world was brought in by a person outside of their “universe”, normally someone from their previous generation who didn't, or couldn't, understand the world today. The Monkees normally took care of this problem through nonviolent, and often slapstick, means which resulted not in vanquishing the foes, but turning enemies into friends.

Was that the way of the world? No. But it was a television show that never made any bones that it was more cartoon than documentary.

Despite the cartoon nature of the show, there were some serious aftershocks of “The Monkees”. For one thing, it was one of the first instances to prove the power of music on television. Yes, Ricky Nelson became a heart throb to millions of girls in the early 60s after singing a few songs on his parents' show “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet”, but the Monkees were a juggernaut that provided their audiences with new songs week after week after week. And you pair those new songs with movie shorts, interspliced with the television show (often these shorts had zero to do with the program's main plot) and kids seemed to love the song much more.

Thus, the music video was born.

And it wasn't just the music industry that was revolutionized. While “Dobbie Gillis” was the first to break down the so-called “fourth wall”—where an actor talks to the audience—the Monkees also did this and further shattered the illusion of television when the cast members would stop the action to converse with camera men and stage hands while the show was being filmed. This nonlinear form of television was also extended to drawn out dream and fantasy sequences and inserts and jump cuts. All of these innovations have had a profound impact on the television and movies that we watch even today.

No matter what the ramifications that the shows had on later television programs or any social impact that it may or may not have had, the bottom line is that “The Monkees” were a fun program. Any time you tuned in, you knew what you were going to get and that's ok. Because a show does not deviate from it's norm, that doesn't make it a bad show. This is precisely what killed the band though.

Fed up with their bubble gum image, once the show was cancelled in 1968, they along with a young actor/writer named Jack Nicholson came up with a movie called “Head”. Written over a weekend where a lot of acid was ingested, the movie's first scene opened with the band jumping off a bridge and killing themselves. It only got weirder from there. The group's core base of fans (mostly young teens) were confused as to the radical 180 degree turn the band took and rejected them.

And the group of fans that the band did want—the more serious, older hipster crowd—thought that they were a fake band that was put together by Hollywood suits. They literally were a band without an audience and with their show running (and doing well) in constant reruns, the Monkees were constantly reminded of the past and how things once were. The Monkees would break up, try solo endeavors and reunite over the next 30 years, but they always remained in America's pop culture consciousness.

For me, and other members of my generation, the Monkees were a summer TV show first and foremost, I had no idea that the group had any chart success at all. Every June, Channel 56 knew that kids were being let out for summer break and would schedule the show to run in the afternoon. And I'd be in front of the tube watching as jokes about 60s culture went flying over my head. I watched an episode recently and the group was in ghost town being held hostage by gangsters. Mickey used an old phone and was hoping to get Marshall Dillon (the erstwhile sheriff from “Gunsmoke” to help out). He got a grizzly prospector who said that there is a Dylan in town (Bob Dylan) who could write a protest song for you, but couldn't help much more than that. Interesting (and funny) juxtaposition of Bob Dylan and Marshall Dillon, but one that an eight-year-old would never get.

That's what I get when I tune into “The Monkees” now, I get to remember what it was like when I was younger and had zero responsibilities and I'm able to appreciate some witty writing. That's not a bad two-for-one combination.

50. SuperRock

I would bet that a majority of people who are reading this probably had never heard of this show before and that's not surprising. Usually when I write one of these entries I do a bit of Internet research on Wikipedia or Google, but I haven't been able to find anything about this show, so there will be no title card graphic today.

During the early to mid 1990s, MTV was in its genesis of getting more and more segmented both musically and how they programmed their channel. The sad state of affairs that MTV is in today (no music, crappy reality show after crappy reality show) is the direct result of the people that complain about the sad state of affairs that MTV is in. When MTV first hit the airwaves, it was literally like radio on television, pretty much wall-to-wall videos with some band interviews and some general information from one of the five VJs about the artists.

First the channel became a phenomena with the youth of America with some thinking that it was a passing fad. Once MTV proved it had staying power, the advertising and marketing executives descended on the channel and came up with an idea on how to make money off MTV's youthful audience. It's basic targeted advertising, their rational was that it was difficult to market a product where the audience was an unknown. Put it this way if you run a block of videos that has Pat Benatar, Michael Jackson, Journey and W.A.S.P. in it, who knows who's watching. It could be a heavy metal fan, a pop fan, etc. However, if you bundle these genres up you have a good idea of what your audience is going to be.

That is how shows like “Club MTV”, “Yo! MTV Raps” and “Headbangers Ball” came to exist. Many of the same commercials ran during these shows, but others were specifically targeted toward the demographic of each program and that was determined by the normal guidelines: race, gender, income bracket. Not surprisingly, these shows were hits. Instead of waiting two hours with the slight hope of watching the latest Public Enemy or Slaughter video, you could just tune into one of the shows and check them out.

Also around this time, (the late 80s) MTV started experimenting with non-music shows. The first that I can remember was “Remote Control”, which was a brilliant game show that combined humor with useless trivia. I loved it and it turned out that it was one of the biggest hits on MTV. As most successful business are wont to do, MTV built on their success and produced other shows that became just as successful like “The Real World”, “Beavis and Butthead”, “The State”, “Singled Out”. Unlike today, these shows were sprinkled through their lineup and while some were aired ad nauseam during marathons, the music was still the backbone of the channel. This all changed in the late 90s when MTV turned their back on music and became a youth-culture channel, but that is another story for another day.

During this time where MTV is going through its growing pains, a new type of music is coming to the scene: alternative. By about 1993, alternative had grown to become the most popular type of rock (causing some to ask what was the alternative to alternative music) and MTV quickly jumped on and exploited this trend too, by having two late-night shows centered around alternative rock. One was the daily “Alternative Nation” which starred the annoying alterna-chick Kennedy. The show pretty much played the staples of the day, the more mainstream alternative stuff: Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Live, Soundgarden, etc. During Sunday nights, MTV allowed the real alt stuff to come out with “120 Minutes”. This was two hours of the videos that were a little off-centered or from England that “serious” music fans really liked.

This brings us to the subject of today's blog, “SuperRock”. Unlike “Alternative Nation” and “120 Minutes” and MTV's entire programming philosophy, “SuperRock” was much different. To me, SR was a throwback to the days of early FM radio, where you could literally hear anything. Not that I was around to hear the early days of FM, but I've read stories of Boston's WBCN playing a rock song, followed by a classical piece, followed by a blues album in the span of 20 minutes. SR wasn't that extreme, but it was the one place where diversity was worshipped.

Most of the videos were of the alternative type; but there was a bunch of rap, older stuff and hard rock mixed in. It was the prototype for the iPod shuffle setting. One minute you'd see Eric B and Rakim and then you'd see Biohazard followed by Alice In Chains and then a cut from the Beastie Boy's “Paul's Boutique”.

Another aspect that made this show unique was that there were no VJs yammering at you or trying to impress you with their obnoxious antics. By this time in MTV's history, VJs began to think that they were the talent and that the videos interrupted what they had to say—you can probably blame this phenomena on Pauly Shore. In any event, this and “Unplugged” were probably the last shows on MTV where the music was actually the focus.

Aside from the “randomness” of the play list, seeing videos from two or three years prior was a novelty. There weren't music sharing sites or iTunes where you could download a song that popped into your head. If you didn't have the tape or CD, you were out of luck. Not so with “SuperRock”, one of the videos that I remember them playing was Urban Dance Squad's “A Deeper Shade of Soul”, which has always been a favorite of mine.

The main downfall of the program was that the show was on at a really crappy time: Saturdays at midnight so there wasn't an audience for it. Anyone who'd be into a show like this was probably at a bar or at a party or simply not in front of their televisions. And after 12 weeks, it died a quick death—the death knell was that it was preempted for an MTV special of Madonna's release of her shit album “Bedtime Stories”. After that, SR never returned. Chalk that up as another crime Madonna has perpetrated on the American pop culture landscape.

Inevitably, “SuperRock” was a half decade ahead of its time. If the show was shelved for five more years (it was first broadcast in the winter of 1994) I am confident that it would've been a hit. The late 1990s were the hay days of the rap-rock cross over and with the seemingly randomness of the playlists—rock spliced with rap—it probably would've been something.