I bought several Monkees lps at Half Price Books the other day, because as much as I was longingly looking at certain songs on itunes, I really wanted the albums I had growing up (my insane Monkees fandom started in about 1975 when they showed an hour block of reruns on weekday afternoons. I became obsessed to the point that I convinced my dad to order me the K-tel best of two record set through the mail (advertised during commercial breaks, naturally) and then TO MY DELIGHT, got the The Monkees and More of the Monkees from my teenage cousins, who must have liked them first-run.

So like most of the records from my childhood I know every word of every song on each side of those records, to this day. For the longest time "Take A Giant Step" was this amazing cosmic message to me, and I couldn't fall asleep until that side of the record had played through to end with it.

So luckily I found both the records the other day, and was pleased with how cheap I got the two for, but of course ended up with skipping on one of my favorite songs- "Saturday's Child" (I vividly remember listening to this song while pretending to dance with Mickey Dolenz stating "I was born on a Saturday, Mickey..." because when you are seven it makes perfect sense that the band you love is going to hang out with you LISTENING TO THEIR MUSIC. For awhile, I berated myself immensely for being so naive, but later found out that it's true, when you're friends with a band, you listen to their music plenty, but it's at live shows and you dance while they're playing the songs live- you don't dance with the band members while listening to their records...)

Our cat Calico had a litter of 5 kittens that we named Mickey, Davy, Mike, Peter and Sponsor (since there wasn't a 5th Monkee).

I still love the Monkees just as much as when I was 7. I give more credit for cuteness to Davy now than I did at 7. I pretty much loved Mickey Dolenz exclusively, because he was the funniest and sang all the best songs. (Davy sang plenty of great songs, but I never could really see past "I Wanna Be Free" which was too corny and balladicious even for a 7 year old. But I love "This Just Doesn't Seem to Be My Day" and "(Look Out) Here Comes Tomorrow" as much as any other Monkees songs..) I can pretty much trace my attraction to drummers back to Mickey Dolenz, and maybe should consider a suit citing damages...

As a footnote, I must notice that while perusing Monkees clips on YouTube, I found more than one that features Rose Marie, and that's just strange...