The town of Clarksville—yea,
the entire world—is a sadder, quieter and somewhat taller place today due to the tragic loss
of yet another iconic legend of the music industry. I refer of course to the passing of one David
Thomas “Davy” Jones of The Monkees at the age of 66.
Known as Davy to his legion fans or “that talentless limey midget” to those with an appreciation of music, Jones
was to The Monkees what Paul McCartney was to The Beatles: the cute one, the
frontman, the heart-throb, the one who was way too old to be wearing that haircut.
While it’s true that Jones did not possess Sir Paul’s prodigious talent
(or anyone else’s for that matter,) he managed to lend an air of dialectal sophistication
to a rag-tag band of pantomiming rocker wannabes by virtue of the well known fact
that anyone with a British accent is by defaut considered
to be cool and cultured by the American public.
No frontman in the history of modern music could brandish a
set of maracas like Davy Jones, nor sway to the beat of his own bitchin’ tunes
with quite the same fervent panache, reminiscent not so much of the immortal Michael
Jackson in his prime but rather of Michael J. Fox after a long night of angel dust and nipple-tasering.
They say that such tragedies come in threes. The world can ill afford to lose yet another
supernova in the pop music firmament yet I fear this is precisely what lies in
store. First Whitney Houston, now Davy Jones. I sure as hell hope someone’s keeping an eye
on Leif Garrett.
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| One down, three to go... |
