Monkees celebrate 45th anniversary with tour visiting Pompano 

 

 

Strains of “Cheer up, sleepy Jean, Oh what can it mean, to a daydream believer and a homecoming queen,” will echo through the air in Pompano Beach Sunday.

A mere 45 years after The Monkees’ television show hit our black-and-white television sets and our obsession with four long-haired musicians became mainstream, three of the original members are touring again. Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork bring An Evening with The Monkees: The 45th Anniversary Tour to the Pompano Beach Amphitheater.

Don’t discount this band as bubblegum. Of course it’s hard to recall how much this band really accomplished. The hugely popular show ran from 1966 to 1968, but during that two year period, the band had the biggest charting song of 1967 — “I’m a Believer” — and scored five Top Five hits. They released four albums in two years, including More of the Monkees, which spent 70 weeks on the Billboard charts and sold more than 5 million copies. The Monkees were the first music artists to win two Emmy Awards, but the musical comedy was cancelled after 58 episodes.

Thanks to MTV and Nickelodeon, Monkee-mania was rekindled when, in 1986, a Monkees TV show marathon was broadcast on the relatively new MTV video music channel. Nickelodeon began to rerun the series daily and the band’s original albums began selling again.

Seems like we still can’t enough of the guys. Their tour launches on Friday in Atlanta, and rolls through 27 cities before concluding July 15 in Los Angeles. These shows are the first live performances by the band in a full decade, and, for the first time ever on stage, you’ll hear songs from their cult classic movie, Head.

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