Good-bye, Davy Jones

Actually, when I was a kid in the 60's watching "The Monkees" on network TV, I had a thing for Peter Tork, mainly because I'm a sucker for cute, goofy guys with awkward posture and inexplicable musical ability. But I was very sad nonetheless to hear of Davy Jone's sudden and unexpected passing at the tender age of 66. Hell, he was the youngest of the Monkees and, hands down, the best tambourine player of the lot. Plus he was a Brit, which made him especially cool and somewhat desirable despite his extremely short stature (did he really start out as a jockey? Mein gott!). Bottom line, with his demise, all hopes of a Monkees reunion are dead as well, which brings us to the sub-arc of this post. The remaining Beatles.

For the last couple of years, I've been going around asking people who they think will be "the last Beatle standing...Paul McCartney or Ringo Starr?" My money had always been on Sir Paul. Not because I don't like Ringo (who could not like Ringo?), but because Sir Paul just seems so bloody vain, which, I hasten to add, is not necessarily a bad thing and takes nothing at all away from the fact that not only is he is without question one of the most prolific and influential artists to ever infiltrate the radio airwaves, he is also (without question) one of the most self-aware. He loved the Beatles, loved being a Beatle, and has devoted the remainder of his life to keeping himself and his music (and that of his former band) in the public eye. Guys like that don't just keel over on sidewalks (i.e. Andrew Beitbart), they simply fade away. Plus he's a vegetarian and lives in England, far away from the crush of American unhealthiness and stress that in many ways led to the premature deaths of the Angry Beatle (John) and the Quiet Beatle (George). Which brings us back to Davy Jones.

Davy Jones' death created yet another hole in the delicate web of reference points which connects current society to the recent pop culture past. Isn't it already bad enough that the majority of today's shallow youth have no real concept of music before hiphop? No real sense of the musical antecedents to which today's youthful "stars" owe their style, not to mention fame? After all, if it hadn't been for Frank Sinatra or Bobby Darin, there very likely wouldn't have been any Davy Jones, just as, without the Beatles, there would have been no Monkees. It's all connected. And with Jones' demise, there's one less thread with which to make that all-important connection. So, while we mourn his death as we would that of any decent human being who happened to be wealthy and famous for his role in shaping a successful if largely manufactured pop band, we mourn as well the snuffing out of a valuable and important reference point from an era in which it was all right to be a "Daydream Believer" because daydream believin' was possible in a world where there was a TV show about four guys living together in a California beach house who sang songs that were almost all written by Neil Diamond.

Skol. xoxoxxoxoxoxoxxxoxoxxooxo