{"id":808,"date":"2017-07-28T13:02:40","date_gmt":"2017-07-28T17:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/?p=808"},"modified":"2017-07-28T13:02:40","modified_gmt":"2017-07-28T17:02:40","slug":"micky-dolenz-and-mark-lindsay-getting-some-kicks-out-of-monkeying-around","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/micky-dolenz-and-mark-lindsay-getting-some-kicks-out-of-monkeying-around\/","title":{"rendered":"Micky Dolenz and Mark Lindsay getting some kicks out of monkeying around"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mark<\/a>

Mark Lindsay, left, of Paul Revere and the Raiders, and Mickey Dolenz of the Monkees performed the “50 Summers of Love” show July 27, 2017, at the Mayo Center for Performing Arts in Morristown, N.J.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)<\/p><\/div>\n

The Monkees had gone on a press junket to England in early 1967 and the Beatles had welcomed them by hosting a party at the Speakeasy Club – known as \u201cThe Speak\u201d – in London.<\/p>\n

The party had left such an impression on Micky Dolenz that the following morning, the Monkees\u2019 drummer decided to write a song about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just sitting in my hotel room with a guitar and I started writing a sort of stream of consciousness about my experiences over there. All the people and references in that song are somebody that I knew,\u201d said Dolenz in a recent interview. \u201cThe Four Kings of EMI are sitting stately on the floor – that was because the Beatles had the Sgt. Pepper album.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dolenz called the song \u201cRandy Scouse Git,\u201d a phrase he had picked up from watching the English television sitcom Till Death Us Do Part<\/em>, the British version – and inspiration for – the hit U.S. TV show, All in the Family<\/em>, about the life of working-class bigot Archie Bunker and his family, which ran from 1971 to 1979.<\/p>\n

\"Mark<\/a>

Mark Lindsay
(Photo by Mike Morsch)<\/p><\/div>\n

The father character in Till Death Us Do Part<\/em> calls his son-in-law a \u201crandy scouse git.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I didn\u2019t know what it meant, I just thought it was funny. It sounded funny. So I named the song that,\u201d said Dolenz.<\/p>\n

The song \u201cRandy Scouse Git\u201d would appear on the Monkees third studio album Headquarters<\/em>, which was released on May 22, 1967, the week before the Beatles released their eighth studio album, Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Headquarters<\/em> – the first album on which the Monkees played their own instruments and wrote some of the tracks – had gone to No. 1 on the charts for that first week, only to be replaced at No. 1 by Sgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band<\/em> the next week. The two albums wold be No. 1 and No. 2 respectively for the next 11 weeks in 1967.<\/p>\n

But RCA Records in England would not release \u201cRandy Scouse Git\u201d as a single in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey got in touch with me and said, \u2018We want to release this as a single in the U.K., but you have to change the title.\u2019 And I said, \u2018What? Why?\u2019 They said, \u2018Because it\u2019s rude.\u2019 I said, \u2018Wait a minute, I saw it on British television, on the BBC,\u2019\u201d said Dolenz. \u2018But it\u2019s rude, you can\u2019t use that title, you have to change it to an alternate title.\u2019 And so in England, the record is called \u2018Alternate Title.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Micky<\/a>

Micky Dolenz
(Photo by Mike Morsch)<\/p><\/div>\n

Unbeknownst to Dolenz at the time was that a \u201crandy scouse git\u201d translates into \u201chorny Liverpudlian jerk\u201d in England, the \u201cscouse\u201d being a derogatory term for someone from Liverpool.<\/p>\n

The song was released as \u201cAlternative Title\u201d in the U.K. and went to No. 2 on the singles chart.<\/p>\n

The inclusion of \u201cRandy Scouse Git\u201d in the setlist was one of the highlights of the 50 Summers of Love<\/em> show July 27 at the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, N.J.<\/p>\n

(This is the 50th anniversary of the “Summer of Love,” where an eclectic group of approximately 100,000 – mostly young hippies – converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco.)<\/p>\n

The show stars Dolenz and Mark Lindsay, lead singer for Paul Revere and the Raiders. The two have known each other for more than 50 years and have put together a mostly unscripted performance reminiscent of the ad-libbed Rat Pack shows that Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. performed at Las Vegas nightclubs in the early 1960s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have always wanted to do a show a little bit more like the Rat Pack if you will, where we come out together and stay onstage together rather than do one person\u2019s set and then the next person\u2019s set,\u201d said Dolenz.<\/p>\n

The Morristown gig was the second stop in the tour, which opened July 14 in San Diego, California. Dolenz and Lindsay took turns singing the Monkees and Raiders songs, combined vocals on several others, and worked in a good dose of comedy, which both said going in they thought would be an important aspect of the shows.<\/p>\n

\u201cMark is very, very funny and has a very clever sense of humor. It\u2019s very similar to mine. So when we started working together and doing things, we immediately fell into a really interesting, fun kind of chemistry,\u201d said Dolenz. \u201cBesides the fact that he\u2019s a great singer, of course. We just really hit it off on the comedy end of it, which I love.\u201d<\/p>\n

It seems apparent that the two genuinely do like each other, and that comes across on stage. The ad-libbing works as well because the little flubs, both in the banter between the two singers or from a missed word or cue, give the performance a realistic and human quality that lends a certain charm to the proceedings.<\/p>\n

There are currently only six more scheduled shows through early November on the 50 Summers of Love<\/em> tour, which includes stops in New York, Louisiana, Minnesota, Illinois and Missouri.<\/p>\n

Lindsay and Dolenz are both talented and entertaining, and the show\u2019s premise provides for a relaxing and fun evening of music. It would be nice to see more dates added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Monkees had gone on a press junket to England in early 1967 and the Beatles had welcomed them by hosting a party at the Speakeasy Club – known as \u201cThe Speak\u201d – in London. The party had left such an impression on Micky Dolenz that the following morning, the Monkees\u2019 drummer decided to write […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[13,165,173],"class_list":["post-808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tvdbook","tag-50-summers-of-love","tag-mark-lindsay","tag-micky-dolenz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}