My earliest memories of purposefully listening to music was listening to the Monkees through their television show, which was broadcast from Chicago's WFLD-TV during my "nap time" when I was in kindergarten. After my nap time on a given day, I would go into my room and find the songs, that were played in that episode, on my mother's LP records and play them on my toy record player. While the songs played, I would reenact the episode through my toys, Fisher Price's little people.
I basically adopted my mother's Monkees LPs since then, but the frivolity of my young age and the rough stylus of my toy record player badly scratched those records. They were prized possessions. When I upgraded my toy record player to a component stereo system around 1986, the same year of the Monkees' 20th anniversary reunion tour, I bought three of the four albums in a series of the Monkees Greatest Hits, released by a burgeoning record label from Arista called Rhino.
Through the Monkees and my constant playing of their records, I learned a lot about how the quality of records affected the quality of the sound. I also learned from a poorly connected speaker wire that was reconnected a year or so later, the interesting concept of stereo sound. I couldn't believe how much of a song was missing with one speaker disconnected.
Through their television show, I learned the important relationship between background music and mood. Because I played their music a lot as a child, the Monkees' music will always remind me of my early childhood. I also realize how important this affected my relationship with my parents as my mother was a Monkees fan and my father was/is an audiophile. Although my mother encouraged my listening to the Monkees, it was my father who engaged my interest in listening to music and stereo systems.
As a young child, the Monkees acted as role models for me as I wanted to have a similar lifestyle to them as a young adult. And this is why I started listening to them again in 1993. I was about to turn 18, and I wanted to grant my childhood wishes. During my last semester in high school, I began to reminisce about my early childhood and tried to project those dreams to my plans in college.
Now looking back at my college years, I'd say my lifestyle with a certain gang of my friends did resemble that of the Monkees. Although we did not become rich and famous, the memories of our fun as undergraduates are much brighter than my memories of watching the Monkees. I consider that as a mission accomplished, especially that the latter was an actual lived experience.
I stopped listening to the Monkees as the strength of my college friendships peaked in 1997. In fact, most of us were members of a club my friend, and now wife, founded called the Polish Fans of Mickey Dolenz. Now that I had real friends and one permanent friend-for-life, I no longer needed the Monkees as models for creating friendships. Yes, I am aware that the Monkees' friendships were initially contrived, but you could some friendships start contrived anyway.
In 1998, it was finally time for me to mature. The Monkees really didn't model maturity. And my music tastes really changed in the year I proposed marriage to my best friend and traveled to Japan to start my career in teaching English as a Second Language. So now, I only listen to the Monkees when I want to conjure up memories from early childhood and early adulthood. There is one song that represents the relationship between my wife, the Monkees, and myself, and that is the one below.
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