MUSIC
THE MONKEES ★★★½
Palais Theatre, December 7
The Monkees were always loveable scamps foremost. Sure they followed their Fab handbook into sober psychedelic adulthood, but musical genius was second to the promise of eternal sun-drenched teenaged tomfoolery with a big, hand-waving pop chorus.
Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz made good on all of this with undimmed elation on their 50th anniversary tour. Non-stop classic TV footage made the physical absence of Davy Jones (recently departed) and Mike Nesmith ("other projects") almost irrelevant as their all-American musical comedy took a feel-good bow.
The first half was sometimes shaky, Dolenz wobbling through the melodic challenges of Saturday's Child and timid backing harmonies flattening Neil Diamond's A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You. Still, funny how a bit of vintage Screen Gems horseplay can keep spirits soaring.
On the beach, on railway tracks, on motor scooters, horses, unicycles and pulling zany faces in a snappy montage of crafty edits, the legend was alive as it ever was, and there were plenty more hits to come.
Porpoise Song presaged a trippier Act Two, taken up a notch by the five-piece band led by guitarist Wayne Avers. Dolenz did some drumming, and Tork took star turns on banjo and ragtime guitar as they bounced winsome old-timer one-liners between them.
A couple of tunes from their new album, *Good Times!* felt miraculously up to the legacy, but the highlight was always going to be "brother Davy" reappearing by the magic of television for *Daydream Believer*. The fact that his sadly missed face brought nothing but joy spoke volumes.