Micky Dolenz ‘King for a Day’
A Monkee will pay tribute to a King this summer — Carole King, that is.
Micky Dolenz, the Monkees’ self-described “wacky drummer,” will release “King For a Day” on Aug. 24, featuring his versions of 15 songs written or co-written by the recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, whose contributions to the Monkees legacy includes the hit “Pleasant Valley Sunday.” “It’s a very exciting project,” Dolenz tells Billboard.com. “She wrote so many different types of tunes. If you look at my album, things from ‘Crying in the Rain’ to ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’ to ‘Upon the Roof,’ the spectrum is as wide as you can possibly get. One of her great strengths is she can just write an any genre, any sort of mood and any sensibility.”
Among the other songs Dolenz and his producer — Beach Boys and Brian Wilson collaborator Jeff Foskett — chose for “King For a Day” are “Sweet Seasons,” “Point of No Return,” “Go Away Little Girl,” “It Might as Well Rain Until September,” the Righteous Brothers’ “Just Once in My Life” as a duet with Bill Medley and “I Feel the Earth Move” with “Hannah Montana” co-star Emily Osment. “We did want to mix it up a bit,” Dolenz explains. “Every single cut is not necessarily one of the big, Top 10 hits.”
Dolenz also opted to include a new version of “Sometime in the Morning,” another of the songs King wrote for the Monkees. “I’ve done it on stage a million times in the classic Monkees version,” he says, “but sitting at home just doodling around on the guitar, I came up with this kind of bluegrass, Cajun version, quite a different rhythm and a little bit faster.”
Dolenz says that, depending on time, he might including some of the “King For a Day” songs in his sets on this summer’s Happy Together Tour, though he says most of his performances will be dedicated to “all the Monkees greatest hits, in their entirety, the way people remember them.” As for a another Monkees reunion — the group has been dormant since about 2001 — Dolenz, who will be part of a U.K. tour in the musical “Hairspray” later this year, says “I’ve learned to never say never.”
“Every year, at least two or three times, somebody’ll bring it up or somebody will call and ask if I’m interested,” he explains. “You see, in the case of the Monkees, unlike the Beatles with Apple or the (Rolling) Stones with their management company, since the TV show went off the air there’s never been a Monkee management or a Monkee office or a Monkee business. Every once in awhile someone will come along and track us all down individually and say, ‘Do you want to go back and get together?’
“So my stock answer is, ‘You never know.’ It could happen tomorrow. It could never happen again. It’s just one of those things.”
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Hall of Fame honors Nesmith, who’s always ahead of his time
Michael Nesmith is receiving the Warren Skaaren Lifetime Achievement Award at the 10th annual Texas Film Hall of Fame Awards tonight . This is an award for, as one might imagine, lifetime contribution to movie and film culture.
But in Nesmith’s case, it might as well be an award for Most Unlikely Career Arc and Ability to Possibly See the Future.
Even setting aside his recording career with the Monkees and after and his role producing such iconic movies as “Repo Man,” it’s a kind of amazing how much Nesmith did before a whole lot of people thought it seemed like a good idea.
He learned all about entrepreneurship when his mother invented what became Liquid Paper when Nesmith was 13 and built it up into a multimillion-dollar company.
Music on television? He did that twice, once with the Monkees, then again when he invented cable TV show Pop Clips for Nickelodeon, which was sold to Time Warner/Amex and became MTV.
Peter Tork on the Strange Dave Show
Peter on the Strange Dave Show. About a minute and a half in, he quickly informs Dave:
“I’m not going to answer how the Monkees got started. That’s on every web site, any wikipedia, anything anything anybody can tell ya, except me right now. And, Um, do you still talk to the other guys? I’m not going to answer that one. And wheres the Monkeemobile? I’m not gonna answer that one. Uh.. And wheres your hat?”
Don’t blame you on any of them Peter, especially the last one!
Michael Nesmith to receive award
Michael Nesmith, born in Houston, will receive the Warren Skaaren Lifetime Achievement Award. Nesmith is perhaps best known for his work with The Monkees band and TV show but has made significant contributions in film, television and music. He served as executive producer of the cult films REPO MAN, TAPEHEADS and TIMERIDER. In 1980, he developed “Pop Clips,” which became the inspiration for MTV and his video, “Cruisin” became the first video on the network. The next year, he won the first Grammy Award given for Video of the Year for his hour-long “Elephant Parts.” Nesmith served on the board of trustees for the American Film Institute for ten years. World-renowned American artist Edward Ruscha will be on hand to present the award to Nesmith.
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Micky Dolenz to Join HAIRSPRAY
The producers of “HAIRSPRAY” are delighted to announce that Micky Dolenz is to join the cast as loveable, ever-so-slightly crazy-joke shop owner Wilbur Turnblad in the hit musical, currently running at London’s Shaftesbury Theatre on Tuesday 2 February 2010. Micky is joined by Brian Conley, reprising the role of Wilbur’s larger than life wife Edna Turnblad and Chloe Hart, who continues her run as their daughter, the show’s heroine Tracy.
Micky Dolenz is an actor, musician, writer and director. Starting out as a child star on US television in Circus Boy, he shot to fame in the globally successful, Emmy Award winning NBC television show The Monkees. Playing a band in the show, the actors were also hugely successful as a chart group with international hits including I’m A Believer, Last Train To Clarksville and Daydream Believer. Since the band, he has guested in many television shows, provided voiceover for countless animated series and written, produced and directed for television, notably in the UK as lead producer/director on the hit children’s show Metal Mickey. He has also appeared in Elton John and Tim Rice’s AIDA on Broadway and on stage in the USA in Pippin’, Grease and A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. In the early 1980s, Dolenz directed a stage version of Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone in the West End, the cast of which included a then unknown 14-year-old Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Micky says of “HAIRSPRAY”, “I remember going to the original premiere of the movie in the 80′s. I loved the piece then and I love it now. Having four daughters, I can certainly relate to Wilbur’s love and support for his little girl.”
Monkee Singer Davy Jones Marries Actress 31 Years Younger
Hey hey he’s a married Monkee.
Davy Jones, the lead singer of the 1960s made-for-TV group the Monkees just married a woman who wasn’t even born when his show was on the air, RadarOnline.com has learned.
The lead singer of hits including Last Train To Clarksville and I’m a Believer tied the knot August 30 at Miami home of his bride’s parents.
Jones is 63 and new wife Jessica Pacheco is 32.
He has four daughters but they did not attend the wedding, sources told RadarOnline.com.
Jessica is an actress on Telemundo, starring in Dame Chocolate.
And no, none of the other Monkees were at the wedding. Apparently Peter Tork, Mickey Dolenz and Mike Nesmith were not invited. Apparently they were too busy singing to put anybody down.
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Wife of Monkees star faces 15 years in jail after guilty plea
The wife of the Monkees star Micky Dolenz is facing up to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to a housing benefits scam.
Donna Quinter, 54, has been accused by US authorities of illegally obtaining housing benefits worth more than £80,000.
The former flight attendant, who lives in a £1.5m home in California, failed to tell housing authorities in New York she no longer lived in a subsidised flat in the city.
She also allowed a friend to live in the Upper East Side apartment while still claiming benefits since 2003.
The rent subsidies are meant for low income families to help them afford homes in New York City.
To be eligible for the payments tenants have to prove they live in the city all year round and are not high earners.
But after a lengthy investigation housing chiefs discovered Miss Quinter was a full-time resident in California.
She had been receiving up to £1,600 a month in handouts for the two-bedroom flat.
Her husband, the drummer for the 1960s group The Monkees, has refused to comment over the fraud charges.
The couple were married in 2002. She is his third wife.
Rose Gill Hearn, commissioner of the New York department of investigation, said: “This tenant, with a residence in California, also enjoyed a great deal on a terrific apartment in Manhattan, courtesy of a public housing subsidy that she obtained by fraud, according to the criminal complaint.
“Law abiding New Yorkers struggling to pay their rents and mortgages cannot afford to subsidise cheaters who abuse public housing resources to support privileged lifestyles.”
By Paul Thompson
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Peter Tork’s Cancer, In His Own Words
Late last year, after a few months of my not swallowing in a normal way, a friend mentioned that my voice sounded funny, kind of squawky and nasal. I’d meant to get it checked out, but her observation pushed me to doing something about it sooner rather than later. I went to an ear, nose and throat doctor, who sprayed my nostrils with anesthetic and sent a length of fiber-optic cable up my nose and down my throat. He came back with bad news. There was a growth on the lower region of my tongue. He suspected squamous cell carcinoma.
I don’t count myself as being afraid to die, but the news hit me like a fist to the chest.
A subsequent biopsy and pathology exam showed that I had adenoid cystic carcinoma.
Adenoid cystic carcinoma, ACC to the cognoscenti, is a relatively rare cancer, usually occurring in the salivary glands. Mine occurred on the lower part of my tongue; that’s even rarer. I wound up in New York at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where one Dr. Jatin Shah told me I should get surgery as soon as possible. I thought about it a second and said I wasn’t doing anything that afternoon….
Dr. Shah laughed and amended: as soon as practicable. That turned out to be the following Wednesday, which was March 4. I woke up from that surgery with another tube up my nose and down my throat — this one for feeding me. About three months later I began a follow-up course of radiation at a high-tech hospital in Boston, where they rev up a cyclotron and pipe protons down the hall and through a giant metal tube into my throat. (Remember electrons, neutrons and protons? Those.)
My friend Therra Gwyn, who is also my editor and publicist, suggested that if the news of my cancer seeped out without my having a say in it, it would most likely get so distorted that there’d be 30 stories out there, none of them with more than a tangential relationship with the actuality. Better she said — and I agreed — to tell the story myself, as best I could. Besides making sure the record was straight, telling the story out loud on a Web site and Facebook page might help the world (or that part of it that was interested) relax some fears about cancer in general and might boost attention to adenoid cystic carcinoma in particular. Also, it might just help me keep a right-sized attitude about life and myself. Otherwise, you know, it’d be like: I’m a celebrity, get me offa this planet! Can’t have that.
As of this writing, I’m just beginning to feel the effects of the second course of radiation, a bit of soreness on the tongue, some unpleasant effects when swallowing. So far, not too bad.
I have a couple of performance dates lined up, which I’ve opted not to cancel. I know I’m taking a chance here, because one of the side effects of the radiation is supposed to be hoarseness. The radiologist told me, “Well, you play guitar and you sing. Perhaps you won’t sing, but maybe you’ll play guitar a lot more.”
I recovered very quickly after my surgery, and I’ve been hoping that my better-than-average constitution will keep the worst effects of radiation at bay. My voice and energy still seem to be in decent shape, so maybe I can pull these gigs off after all. Just in case, though, I’ve invited some friends to join me, including my friend Lauren, a world-class slide guitar player. People will be so dazzled by her that they won’t notice whether I’m doing well. I’m also bringing in belly dancers, and I’m expecting a fly-over by the Royal Canadian Air Force. Maybe elephants.
I mean to do those shows.
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Tork diagnosed with cancer
Peter Tork, a former member of the 1960s pop group the Monkees, says he has a rare form of head and neck cancer, but the prognosis is good.
The 67-year-old Tork had surgery Wednesday in New York. His spokeswoman says he is doing well and will begin radiation treatment after a short recovery period.
He announced on his Web site Tuesday that he has been diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma on the lower region of his tongue. He says it’s an uncommon but slow-growing type of cancer, and it hasn’t spread beyond the initial site.
From 1966 to 1968, the Monkees had a popular TV show and three No. 1 hits, “Last Train To Clarksville,” “I’m A Believer” and “Daydream Believer.”
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The Week In Radio: How The Monkees kick-started Easy Rider
The one thing conspiracy theorists get right is that history is never quite as simple as it seems; there’s always something – some happenstance, a hidden motive – rumbling under the surface. A couple of instances of this cropped up yesterday. Movie Outcasts: the Making of ‘Easy Rider’ (Radio 4) showed how Seventies counterculture and modern Hollywood were, in fact, by-products of the success of The Monkees, whose drummer, Mickey Dolenz, got to narrate.
The Monkees – both band and TV series – were created by Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider. Aided by the fact that, as one interviewee put it: “Hollywood was always trying to figure out how to get the kids back,” they parlayed that success into film careers, starting with two films: first, Head, a surrealist antiwar comedy directed by Rafelson and starring The Monkees, which was a semi-legendary flop (though Rafelson’s career survived enough for him to make films such as Five Easy Pieces). The second, Easy Rider, was produced by Schneider and directed by Dennis Hopper, who co-starred with Peter Fonda.
