Stan Mikita was a Slovak-born Canadian hockey player. A really good hockey player. He led the NHL in scoring several times and would eventually wind up enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame. Since he retired back in 1980, he is perhaps best known to my fellow Generation Xers for 'Stand Mikita's Donuts', a fictional coffee and doughnut franchise from the Wayne's World cinematic universe and obvious spoof of Canada's famous Tim Horton's chains. (For my part, I associate him more as being one of a handful of notable celebs with whom I share a birthday. Philosopher John Stewart Mill and singers Joe Cocker, Cher, Israel "Bruddah Iz" Kamakawiwo'ole and Nick Heyward are the others)
An oft-told story about Mikita is about his supposed change of heart from frequently penalized roughian to gentleman of the game. It is said that his young daughter had been watching him play on TV and later asked her daddy why he spent so much of the game "sitting down". It then dawned on Mikita that being in the penalty box for so long wasn't helping his team. In a remarkably short period of time his penalty minutes dropped off a cliff. He would soon end up winning the Lady Byng Trophy as the NHL's most gentlemanly player.
The story doesn't end there though. Mikita played his entire career for the Chicago Blackhawks, a talented but underachieving club for much of the sixties. He along with Bobby Hull, Glenn Hall and Pierre Pilote gave them a formidable top four but they routinely ended up getting bounced out of the playoffs by the more disciplined Toronto Maple Leafs, the deeper Montreal Canadiens or the tougher Detroit Red Wings. While it's certainly true that Mikita's habit of taking too many penalities hadn't helped the Blackhawks' cause, the playoff upsets continued even with his more well-mannered style of play. Gradually, his penalty minutes began to go back up, albeit not to the same grotesque extent of his early career.
I bring up this anecdotes because I think it illustrates how easy it can be to fall back into old habits. The Monkees had been formed as a vehicle for a sitcom as well as having records released in their name — but with a mandate that while Mickey Dolenz, Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork would handle vocal duties, the musicianship would be kept mainly to studio pros. This worked a charm until the quartet staged a successful coup, wresting control away from the suits and giving them free reign over their singles and albums. Yet, this bid for self-sufficiency that they had fought so hard for wasn't to last: by the beginning of 1968, they once again began to rely more and more on sessioners. In effect, they group who had been belittled for not playing on their hits had reverted back to once again not playing on the few remaining hits they had left in the tank.
(I say "they" but it's worth noting that The Monkees' sixth and final Canadian number one features just a quarter of their membership. Davy Jones appears on lead vocals and that's where it begin and ends as far as Prefab Four involvement)
Reverting really is the name of the game on "Valleri" as well as on its accompanying album The Birds, the Bees and the Monkees. (The previously released "Daydream Believer" is the only one of its twelve tracks to include all four members and only one other track — "Auntie's Municipal Court" — has even two of them together; Peter Tork, in a move which foreshadowed his departure from the group at the end of the year, doesn't appear at all beyond his "Daydream Believer" piano part) In addition to the use of outside musicians, their penultimate Canadian hit marked the return of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart to The Monkees' camp. (Though not as forgettable, its rather irritating follow-up "W.D. Washburn" somehow made it all the way to number two at the start of the summer) Yet despite having recently been at number one on the RPM hit parade with the perfect pop of "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight", the pair failed to gift their favourite act anything close what they had saved for themselves. Even when held up against a brainless trifle like "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You", "Valleri" still comes across as underwritten and insubstantial.
Davy Jones was never the finest singer in The Monkees — though he also wasn't the worst (sorry Peter) — but he could typically be relied upon to add some charm. Not here though. His role appears to have been reduced to shouting over the racket. In turn, the noise seems to be there just to cover up for the fact that the song is so slight. Two verses of trite sentiment (even though the second verse hints at an Ugly Duckling-esque tale which Boyce and Hart neglected to elaborate on) and a chorus repeated ad infinitum. The studio musicians more than earn their modest session fees but that's about the best thing I can say about this real nothing burger of a single.
So that brings an end to The Monkees story on this blog. While a top chart act for only around a year-and-a-half, they sure packed a lot into their time on top. In addition to their hit TV series (which had only just been cancelled), they had two standout chart toppers, two more that were above average and a pair that basically sucked. Not exactly models of consistency but they nevertheless did quite a bit better than most would have predicted. Plus, they experienced an entire lifespan of your normal pop group in such a short period of time. And they were pop puppets who took back control, only for them to relinquish it when they couldn't or wouldn't handle it themselves. They were pioneers for all future manufactured groups who aspired to creativity and independence but who wound up in over their heads. And people say The Velvet Underground were influential.
Score: 2
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