The Monkees

It’s not that my sister Claudia and I didn’t have any friends; we did. But it was just that we generally preferred to stay at home with each other and do things our friends didn’t care to do,

like type out scenes from one of the many audio tapes of Mission: Impossible! (the old 1960s TV show, not the Tom Cruise movie) that we had recorded on audio tape, or work on getting Davy Jones’ accent just right.

One year we were The Monkees for Halloween. We had been obsessed with The Monkees 1960s TV show, which had been running as “a look back in time” TV show on channel 20. It was 1986 and I’m not sure who else was watching TV 20 with Jim Gabbert in San Francisco except for us. Channel 20 was not exactly community TV, but it was local and it only played old stuff, like The Monkees, all those 1960s spy shows, and Star Trek (the original). This was before Nickelodeon, but it was essentially a poor man’s version of the same. Jim Gabbert “hosted” most of the shows, which meant the camera cut to him during breaks and he shared some trivia and ate pizza. Saturday nights there was the 50s Dance Party, with older folks in poodle skirts who apparently won lottery tickets to be on the show and got to spend an hour remembering their teenage years. We never watched that, but maybe it was those folks who were watching the channel with us.

We had been watching The Monkees for a few years and listening to all of their records. I was twelve and my sister was nine. I was in love with Mike Nesmith and Claudia was in love with Micky Dolenz. We both secretly were in love with Davy Jones too, but never admitted it because he was too pretty, and neither of us liked Peter Tork. We had built a “sound studio” in Claudia’s room by essentially sectioning off her big bay window with cardboard. We had cut a hole out at our head level and put Saran plastic wrap over it to act like a window. One of the pieces of cardboard had a flap that we could use as the door. It also had a RECORDING IN SESSION sign we had seen them use on the show. Sometimes the cardboard would sag, but we would reinforce it routinely with duct tape from our dad’s toolbox.

We had decided that a good way to make money that year would be to record our versions of all The Monkees’ albums. We had all the albums, even the obscure ones like Pisces, Aquarious, Capricorn and their new album Pool It! from their reunion tour in 1985. All we had to do was play the record on the record player and with our cassette player we would record us singing over the vocals on a blank tape.

This was 1985. Karaoke versions of songs weren’t a thing yet, nor was the internet.

It took a lot of trial and error, but eventually we got the cassette mic just the right distance away from the speakers so that you could hear the music with only our vocals. (Really, we would have killed for a karaoke machine.)

Now, all we had to do was sing each song exactly like they did, including back up vocals. We switched off songs. I ended up with most of Davy’s songs, since Claudia obviously took most of Micky’s and they were the two main singers. I got Mike’s weird songs and Claudia had to sing Peter’s weird songs which she was unhappy about. Usually, she decided to go do something else when it came time to record those.

But it has to be on the album; the album has to be complete!

No one is going to miss Shades of Grey. Mom and dad won’t care!

The reality was that our mom and dad didn’t care about the tapes at all, but we tried to sell them to them for a dollar each.

I heard part of one and it’s just you guys singing some Monkees songs. My mom wasn’t giving us a dollar.

But I sound just like Mike and Davy, and Claudia sounds just like Micky and Peter! You can play the real song and compare it – you can’t tell the difference!

What about making something original?

Mom didn’t get it. We continued to spend hours each day in the “studio” perfecting the songs, re-recording ones on which you could hear the real Micky Dolenz in the background. Soon, we had piles of audio tapes and no one to give them to. That’s when we decided to go as The Monkees for Halloween. Since we already knew all the songs by heart, it would be easy! We would go door to door in costume and perform Monkees‘ songs and then try and sell a tape.

But there were only the two of us and there were four Monkees. My sister suggested her friend Arica could be Davy because Arica was short and cute and besides she was at our house all the time anyway. We didn’t really want to get anyone else involved, so for Peter we made a cardboard cut-out to bring with us. Peter was “waving” and “smiling” and he bent awkwardly in half at the knees where there had been a fold in the cardboard box we had used; so, we constantly had to hold him up. We dyed four white shirts red and sewed six buttons on each one just like it looked on the album cover. I found a green knit hat and used concealer on half of my eyebrows to make them look like Mike’s. Claudia combed her hair like Micky’s and when Arica came over, we used some of my mom’s eyebrow pencil to draw big eyebrows on Arica to try and make her look like Davy. But Arica had blond springy hair and it wouldn’t make a nice bowl cut like Davy’s; besides, she didn’t want to talk in a cockney accent, which was not helping. My sister called her Ri, which meant she was getting exasperated.

Ri, you have to! You are Davy, so you have to talk like him!

But I sound stupid! Arica realized we were serious.

Try it again! My sister was desperate.

We got mixed reviews that Halloween. Some people said, “Oh how cool! The Monkees!” which wasn’t what we were aiming for, but at least they recognized us. We wondered if some of those people were the ones on the 50s Dance Party on TV 20. Other people, especially kids and teenagers who answered their doors, looked confused and said they didn’t know who The Monkees were. We performed a few songs but didn’t sell any tapes, not even for a dollar apiece.