Yuku free message boards

Davy Jones in Concert: October 28, 2006
Half Hollow Hills [High School] Performing Arts Center
Dix Hills, New York

First Don K. Reed introduced Davy
Then Davys band started playing Listen To The Band and introduced Davy again.
Davy came out and the band switched into Im A Believer.

Set List:

1) Im A Believer
2) Valleri
3) Papa Genes Blues
4) Its Nice To Be With You
5) Wasted Days And Wasted Nights
6) Let Them Be Little
7) She Hangs Out
8) Little Bit Me, Little Bit You
9) Girl
10) Is You Is Or Is You Aint My Baby
11) Steppin Stone
12) Daydream Believer

My husband and I had the most amazing front row seats, which we just lucked into by chance! Davys performance was part of an Oldies show, which also featured Ron Dante (The Archies), Sonny Geraci, "Lightning" Lou Christie, and Johnny Maestro & The Brooklyn Bridge. Don K. Reed (the former WCBS FM DJ who did the middle-of-the-night Doo-wop show) was the emcee for the entire evening. There was an intermission in the middle and Davy opened the second half of the show (scheduled on at 8:45 PM. Davys website had said he was scheduled at 8:00, but Teresa from LAR Enterprises had informed me on Friday that he wouldnt go on until 8:45), followed by Johnny Maestro, who closed the show. We werent able to get there until the intermission time. Id known we would probably miss at least the first hour, because we we couldnt leave home before 7 PM (which is when it was scheduled to start), but I had hoped wed be able to see at least one of the other acts before intermission. As things turned out, we werent able to get out until close to 7:30 and so didnt get there until about 8:30, but it ended up being a case of what my father calls when bad things lead to good things. We found the place, parked the car, and had rather a long walk back to the entrance because we were so late. There were a lot of different doors, and I wasnt sure which one was the entrance, so I asked a couple who had apparently just left the building. They showed us which door was the entrance and then said, Hey, would you like front row seats? We were like, huh? They said that they had really come for Sonny Geraci and Ron Dante, and they were going home and would happily let us have their great seats! I said, Are you sure? and they were. They didnt want any money for them or anything they were just being generous and kind! What a great start to the evening! All seats were one price, and I had already paid for mine (which were in row O and being held at the door. I hadnt even reserved them until Friday morning, because even up until the last minute I really wasnt sure if Id be able to work out all the details, like babysitting, being able to leave in time to get there for Davy, even though I knew Id have to miss part of the show, etc., etc. ), so I didnt feel guilty about it. But just in case, I double checked with the person who was holding our tickets for us (Teresa) to make sure it was okay.

There was a whole merchandise table set up with Davy stuff during the intermission, and I bought all 3 CDs (Just Me 2, Daydream Believin, and Davy Jones Live!!!) and 2 books (The ..Mutant Monkees.. one and Daydream Believin) which were available! I asked the people who were staffing the table if Davy was going to do a meet-and-greet later, and they said he might, but they werent sure. (As it turned out, he didnt, which was a disappointment, but I had a great time, anyway!) I think it was Teresa, who was the one in charge of the tickets for LAR Enterprises (and the same person who'd helped me on the phone), who told me that the BBC was there filming that night! Well, once I had bought my Davy stuff, we went in and found our row A seats #9 & 10, on the right side of the auditorium and right up next to the stage! The band was set up near the rear of the stage, which was kind of far away, but during Davys performance he was all over the stage and coming right up to the edge to interact with the fans. When he was on my side of the stage and right in front of me, he was only about 3 feet away from me! I could make out every feature and emotion on his face as he sang and told his stories. It was amazing! He looks fantastic, and he sounded absolutely spot-on fabulous in every song! Over the last few days Ive been listening to the CDs I bought, and he truly sounded even better in concert that night than he did on the CDs! --And lest you think that I was so caught up in the moment that it just seemed that way to me, you should know that my husband thought so too and hes an amateur musician/singer who generally listens to music with a pretty critical ear. Too bad they werent recording it for another CD. He was amazing! I hope at least some of it really will be shown on that BBC special.

Davy went from Im A Believer into Valleri. I was sitting in the front row, grinning like a goofball for all I was worth and bouncing up and down in my seat with excitement! He came over to my side of the stage, looked straight at me and pointed at me when he sang, shes the same little girl who used to hang around my door I smiled back at him really big and gave a little wave, and he continued looking at me as he pantomimed an hour-glass figure with his hands and sang, but she sure looks different than the way she looked before. You know, it would have been nice to have gotten to the show in time to hear the other acts, but we never would have gotten those front row seats if we had been on time, and I never would have had the amazing experience of having Davy sing to me! It was so special, and I will never forget it! Even though I didnt get to meet him, that moment made any other disappointments totally minor! Throughout the entire show I couldnt stop smiling and looking at him, and I couldnt stop moving either whether it was clapping and bopping to the faster songs or swaying to the slow ones. Id think he couldnt have helped but notice how much I was enjoying the show! I got a few pictures but couldnt bear to put the camera between me and him when he was right in front of me, so none of them captured just how close he sometimes was to me!

Fans who have been to many of Davys shows probably remember all his jokes and stories better than I do, and I had heard enough about some of them or heard and/or seen them in recorded performances to be familiar with several of them myself before this concert. Still, Im writing this as much for my own memorys sake as to share with other fans, so I hope nobody will mind if I sometimes go into detail about his jokes, stories and general patter.

During one of the first few songs, one of the women who was sitting near me (and whom I met and talked to later, after the show) went up and handed Davy some flowers. He accepted them quite graciously, but there was no kissing or handholding. Actually, I was surprised (and just a bit disappointed considering what good seats I had!) that he didnt do any of that at this show. Id thought that he usually does. After the first two songs, he made a comment something like: They dont write songs like that anymore. Two songs down and were only 3 minutes into the show! Thats the way they used to write them. It must have driven the disc jockeys crazy when Bob Dylan came along! He also apologized for being late and told the joke about the policeman stopping him. [The joke is that the officer said, why didnt you pull over when I first tried to stop you? and Davy responded, well, my wife ran off with a policeman, and I was afraid you were bringing her back.] He asked, Are there any Monkees fans here tonight? and got some pretty good cheers. He did a few beats of the monkey dance and then held his back as if hed thrown it out with the dancing. He paid homage to Mike Nesmiths songwriting talent before launching into Papa Genes Blues. This song included a maraca solo, and he did quite a bit of patter about that (not easy to play those maracas, you know) and about being listed 3 separate times on David Lettermans top 10 Tambourine players list!

After the song he told the old actors home joke (the nurse version) and talked about the other Monkees a little bit. As his introduction to Its Nice To Be With You, he mentioned what all of their characters were like on the TV show and commented that he liked getting to sing some lovely ballads/love songs. Then he dedicated Wasted Days and Wasted Nights to the memory of Freddy Fender and sang that. From the way he introduced it, he made it sound as if it was something he and the band had just decided to do because of Freddys recent passing, but when I got home I realized that it was also on his Live!!! CD. Could it be that they hadnt done it in a while but decided to revive it in Freddys memory?

He said one of his famous lines with a nod to those whod heard it before: Those of you who know me know that I have four daughters all girls. When you have sons you worry, but when you have daughters you pray. He went on to say that he believes that each man has a father inside him, and each woman has a mother inside her, but it takes a child to bring it out, and that was his introduction to Let Them Be Little. I have to admit I get pretty emotional about that song. It's such a beautiful reminder to parents to savor all the special and ordinary moments of their children's lives!

He talked some more about how the other Monkees are doing that theyre all doing great and doing their own thing and how times have changed a lot since the 60s. He said his standard line about how they say that if you can remember the 60s you werent really there. He talked about his daughters and their age range from 18 to 38 and joked that his wifes method of birth control was to put a 1,000-lb. weight against the door. He joked about it being hard to get into the bathroom at his house with all those girls around and told a longish story I hadnt heard before about Annabel plucking her eyebrows. I thought it was funny, because he said, shes got these beautiful, bushy eyebrows. I cant imagine why shed want to pluck them out. Then after she plucks them all out again and draws them back in a half inch higher than they were before, she always seems to look surprised! Hi Dad! (And Davy sort of raises his own big, beautiful, bushy eyebrows in surprised fashion to illustrate this! ) He talked about how she tells him hes so uncool so 60s but said, well, I cant help it. I am or something like that.

Then he asked, Do you remember that little dance move I used to do? Well, I still do it. He begins the move as the band begins She Hangs Out. No mention of Axl Rose this time, though. After She Hangs Out came A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You. He used the maracas for those and did it sort of Mexican-style, shouting Andale, andale and such. At one point Aviva Maloney (the saxophone player) came over and pinched his bottom!

He talked about the various TV roles he has played and TV shows he has been in, including Scooby Doo Meets Davy Jones (I nearly reached the top with that one. I thought that was funny in the sense of an its not exactly Shakespeare kind of thing, but my husband thought he might also have been commenting on not even getting top billing over a cartoon dog! Lol.), Boy Meets World, My Two Dads, and Sabrina, The Teenage Witch. (I didnt know about that one!) Ive done em all, he says. He says people come up to him on the street and ask him, Do you know who you are? and half the time they think hes Mike Douglas (which is okay. I wonder if he meant Michael Douglas. I think that makes more sense.) or Desi Arnaz. I hope they mean Junior, quips Davy. Another famous line: I used to be a heart throb. Now Im a coronary. He said he even wears glasses. Of course all this was a lead-in to Marcia, Marcia, Marcia and the Brady Bunch episode he did. (He joked that he and Marcia Brady were married and raising a family in Ohio!) and the song, Girl. After the song he said, Thank you very much, Elvis style!

He talked about his childhood a little bit his mum and dad, sisters, his involvement with horses. He mentioned being on Long Gisland and quipped about starting to talk like the locals after being there only a couple of days. Then he introduced the band, saving Loafy (Dave Alexander, the keyboard player. I had been very excited when I first thought I recognized him setting up. I'd seen him in Micky's band a couple of times and had a chance to talk to him a bit after Micky's B.B. King's show. I knew that he used to play in Davy's band also but hadn't for a while, so I was very happy to see him again -- and with Davy, too! ) for last. He commented that Dave had been away for a while, but now hes back, and he brought him up front and posed with him in front of the audience, noting the difference in size between the two of them and joking about classic example of ate his vegetables [Loafy], -- didnt eat his vegetables [himself]. He talked about how talented Dave is at various things, including impressions, and they did the Archie and Edith Bunker bit with Davy as Archie and Loafy as Edith. I had heard about it before but never seen it or heard it, so I really got a kick out of seeing them do this bit on stage! (Later I realized that this bit, and also several of the jokes and stories and quite a bit of the general patter, were all on the Davy Jones Live!!! CD as well. Im really happy about that, though, because it helps me to relive the memory better.)

After that, he talked about his mother a little bit and then sang Is You Is Or Is You Aint . [Edithsidebottom will know why I was especially happy to finally see him do this song! ] Next, he did Steppin Stone and finally, Daydream Believer. He said that even though hes sung this song so many times, it always makes him happy. He asked the audience to sing along when he cues them, and he let us all sing without him on one of the final choruses. Id say we sounded pretty good, too! When he started Daydream Believer I knew that was going to be the final song, and I have to admit that I was quite disappointed that this wonderful show was ending already! I also was very surprised, because Id figured hed save Daydream Believer for an encore, but as it turned out, he didnt do an encore -- despite the fact that we gave him a standing ovation and I, for one (and I sure wasnt the only one!) cheered for more. He said good night with the same, beautiful words he used to end the concert that was partially shown in the TVLand special. Im assuming thats his standard closing. He also reminded us to stay right where we were since there was more great show coming up (Johnny Maestro and The Brooklyn Bridge), so I figured that if he was going to do a meet-and-greet it would be after the whole concert was over. By the time the show was over, though, even his merchandise table was gone.

Don K. Reed came on between acts. He mentioned that he had interviewed Davy once during the filming of Head in 1968 and had reminded Davy of that fact that evening. He also referred to his days working with Micky during the final months of CBS FM and talked about how unfair it was that they had this big, wonderful 100th Show celebration and then basically said to Micky, Congratulations on your 100th show. Youre fired. This has been a major sore point with me since it happened as well, so I really appreciated the fact that Don talked about that!

Johnny Maestro And The Brooklyn Bridge were terrific, but since they came on after Davy, their performance was somewhat anticlimactic for me. I still thoroughly enjoyed it, though. I like a lot of Johnny Maestros songs both from The Brooklyn Bridge and from The Crests, and he did some covers that he sung excellently as well! He did a perfect version of his own Worst That Could Happen as well as a flawless rendition of Unchained Melody hitting every note just right! I was very impressed at how perfectly his voice has held up after all these years, and the backing singers were good too, but for the most part they just stayed in the band area, which was pretty far back on the stage no dancing around the stage and getting close to the audience the way Davy did. And hey lets face it, as good as Johnny Maestro is, hes no Davy Jones! I didnt write down their whole set list, but some of the songs included in their part of the show were 16 Candles, My Juanita, Step By Step, "The Angels Listened In," "Welcome Me Love," "Blessed Is The Rain," Unchained Melody, Gimme Some Lovin,and some Dion songs, including Runaround Sue and The Wanderer. (I thought they'd said that some of his backup singers were original members of Dion And The Belmonts and had joined The Brooklyn Bridge after that group broke up, but I just looked at their website, and it says that two of them were back-up singers for Dion after he left the Belmonts.) They ended with Worst That Could Happen and came back to do Youll Never Walk Alone as an encore.

I wish that Davy had been the closing act so that he could have done more songs and an encore perhaps even a meet-and-greet, but I still had a wonderful time and thoroughly enjoyed both acts! I was surprised and just a bit disappointed that Davy didnt do I Wanna Be Free or Ill Love You Forever. I also would have loved to see him do Bright Side Of The Road, as I really fell in love with that song when I heard him do it on the XM broadcast of his B.B. Kings show from last year. (I had really wanted to go to that show, but my husband was away that weekend, and I didnt feel right asking someone to babysit so I could go out by myself.) Even though I didnt get to see 3 Monkees within 3 months (as I would have if Id gone to that B.B. Kings show last November -- and which would have been amazingly cool! ), I still think its cool that I got to see 3 separate Monkees in concert (plus Micky in Pippin!) within exactly one year since I saw Micky in concert on October 29, 2005, then Peter in December, and then Davy on October 28, 2006!

The fan that gave Davy the flowers was also planning to go to Front Street next weekend. I wonder if any of you Monkeelanders will meet her there! She said she was at B.B. Kings last year too and showed me a picture of herself handing Davy an early birthday present. I wonder if the BBC will be at Front Street as well. I sure hope we'll all get to see that BBC Monkees program when it's completed! I didn't really even notice them filming there, but my husband said he'd noticed them off to the right during the first few songs. I guess I only had eyes for Davy!