Osler's Razor

Davey Jones died this week.

He was a member of the Monkees, which was a truly bizarre musical phenomena of the mid-1960's. The band was created to be in a tv show, and the band members were recruited through ads in Variety. In short, they were a fake band that was terrible even at lip-synching (see the video above), yet had some really good music written in their name by people like Neil Diamond, Carole King, and Harry Nilsson.

Here's the wonderful part, though: Even though they started out as fake musicians, they apparently worked pretty hard to make themselves into real ones. It was like a hippy version of Pinnochio. After two years, they were touring while playing their own instruments, and their 1968 album, Headquarters, was actually pretty good. In 1968 they also made the truly bizarre and interesting movie, Head. Head was produced by a very young Jack Nicholson and included appearances by Ronald Reagan, Toni Basil, Dennis Hopper, Victor Mature, Annette Funicello, stripper Carol Doda, Frank Zappa, Terri Garr, Green Bay Packer great Ray Nitschke, the Rockettes, and boxer Sonny Liston. Really. How can you not love that?

So, let's haiku about the Monkees, or at least something kinda related to them (I'll give you some latitude).

Here is mine:

I gotta admire
That they didn't want to be fake;
Pretty rare today.

Now it is your turn-- 5 syllables for the first line, then 7, then 5 again. I'll award the winner the traditional prize: Their bio in this space on Monday.