20 Facts About The Monkees

1.

For two albums, the Monkees mostly performed as a group, but within a year, each member was pursuing his own interests under the Monkees name.

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2.

The first long-playing album, The Monkees, was released a month later; it spent 13 weeks at No 1 and stayed on the Billboard charts for 78 weeks.

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3.

Unlike most television shows of the time, The Monkees episodes were written with many setups, requiring frequent breaks to prepare the set and cameras for short bursts of filming.

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4.

The four The Monkees performed all the instruments and vocals for most of the live set.

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5.

However, the Monkees had already been complaining that the music publishing company would not allow them to play their own instruments on their records or to use more of their own material.

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6.

The Monkees were annoyed at not having even been told of the release in advance, at having their opinions on the track selection ignored, at Kirshner's self-congratulatory liner notes and because of the amateurish-looking cover art, which was merely a composite of pictures of the four taken for a J C Penney clothing advertisement.

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7.

Indeed, the Monkees had not even been given a copy of the album; they had to buy it from a record store.

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8.

The Monkees wrote five of the 12 songs on the album, plus the two tracks "Band 6" and "Zilch".

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9.

The Monkees had a contractual obligation to appear in several television commercials with Bugs Bunny for Kool-Aid drink mix as well as Post cereal box singles.

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10.

Not mixed until February 19,1971, and released later that year as a single, the two remaining Monkees then lost the rights to use the name in several countries, the U S included.

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11.

In 2014, the Monkees were inducted into the Pop Music Hall of Fame at the 2014 Monkees Convention.

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12.

The Monkees released a Christmas album, Christmas Party, on October 12,2018.

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13.

The Monkees, selected specifically to appeal to the youth market as American television's response to the Beatles with their manufactured personae and carefully produced singles, are seen as an original precursor to the modern proliferation of studio and corporation-created bands.

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14.

The Monkees frequently contributed their own songwriting efforts on their albums and saw their musical skills improve.

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15.

The Monkees found unlikely fans among musicians of the punk rock period of the mid-1970s.

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16.

Whatever Jones and the Monkees were meant to be, they became creative artists in their own right, and Jones' chipper Brit-pop presence was a big reason they were able to produce work that was commercial, wholesome and yet impressively weird.

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17.

Comic book series, The Monkees, was published in the United States by Dell Comics, which ran for 17 issues from 1967 to 1969.

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18.

The aired version did differ from the DVD release, as the TV version had an extended scene with all four The Monkees meeting the Beatles, but with a shortened Cleveland concert segment.

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19.

The production is a Jukebox musical and starred Stephen Kirwan, Ben Evans, Tom Parsons and Oliver Savile as actors playing the parts of the Monkees who are hired by an unscrupulous businessman to go on a world tour pretending to be the real band.

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20.

Critics of the Monkees observed that they were simply the "Pre-Fab Four", a made-for-TV knockoff of the Beatles; however, the Beatles themselves took it in stride and even hosted a party for the Monkees when they visited England.

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