Davy Jones, R.I.P.

I'm cashing in my cool chips. I'm a huge Monkees fan. Yes, I know they were never a "real" band, and I really only saw them second fan via Nickelodeon's repeated airings. I'm a card-carrying member of the Monkees fan club (really!) and their 1986 reunion tour was my first concert (and apparently I'm not the only one ). Weird Al, whom at the time I found vaguely disturbing, opened. For those keeping score, Mike Nesmith, the one conspicuously absent from the reunion tours, is my "intellectual" favorite, while Peter Tork is my "sentimental" favorite. Needless to say, I'm incredibly sorry to hear that Davy Jones, the cute one who played the tambourine and won Marcia Brady's heart,  died yesterday of a heart attack at age 66:

Jones was born in Manchester, England and started acting as a child. In 1964 he had the misfortune of appearing in the cast of Oliver! on the same episode where the Beatles made their debut. The next year he was cast in The Monkees, a comedy show/band inspired by the success of the Beatles. They were an instant hit in the ratings and the record shops, scoring massive singles with "Last Train To Clarksville," "I'm A Believer," "Stepping Stone" and "Pleasant Valley Sunday." Jones – who played tambourine in the band – was the lead vocalist on the classics "Daydream Believer" and "I Wanna Be Free." At the peak of their popularity in 1967 they sold more albums than the Beatles. (Rolling Stone)

To be honest, I'm a little surprised by the outpouring of grief from women in their thirties and early forties. The Monkees were part of my mother's generation, and, I thought, my dirty little secret when everyone else was into Madonna or Bon Jovi. But then I remembered how often they were on TV in the mid-to-late eighties, an era didn't really have a lot of boy bands or teen idols. Of course we channeled them from another era. R.I.P. Davy.