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On a Chicago's oldies station, I heard a commercial for a concert with the Missing Links. This is a Monkees tribute band, what? I'd never heard of one for them before. I'd heard of tribute bands for other groups, locally. A band that played Santana music was a favorite of mine, called the Soundz of Santana. But I never heard of one for the Monkees. I was quite curious to hear how they sounded. So I figured since the Monkees weren't going to go on tour as a band, I'd go hear them!

They were to be playing at Brookfield Zoo on August 12th, 2006. The zoo had a promo that summer, a different animal was a star each week. The week of Aug 6-12 featured monkeys, lol. So the zoo booked the Missing Links on Saturday the 12th! My oldest son came with me. We took the South Shore to the city, and then caught the Metra to Brookfield. Several other passengers walked through a nice tree lined section of town with us, which had arrows pointing the way to the zoo. Once we got to the area the concert was being held, an older man nearby me said that Peter had been to the 11 o'clock performance. Rats! I missed it! The man said he might be back for the 2 o'clock who knows.

The Missing Links arrived in a limo. They were dressed in the 8-button shirts the Monkees wore in the first season, red ones. A small crowd gathered around them as they posed for pictures. Pretty neat, I told my son. One even wore a wool hat like Mike did. Everyone soon began moving to the stage area for the concert. These Missing Links were pretty good! Played the songs true to the record. An intermission came. When they came back on the stage, they were dressed like the Monkees were in the second season. And then they said, "We have a surprise performer." I grabbed my son's arm and said "Could it be Peter!?" It was!! He came bounding up onto the stage from my right. Great interaction between him and the band. At one point, one of them even held up a sign and pointed to Peter - the sign said 'He's really playing this!', lol, too funny. And I was literally only several feet away from watching Peter perform. Wow.

I later learned that Peter just happened to be in the Chicago area when he caught word the ML were to play at Brookfield. (It was promo'd on tv news but I didn't see that, myself..) He called them to ask if he could come and play along. Naturally they said yes! He was only to do the 11 am show, but was talked into doing the 2 pm as well. Lucky me! I guess Peter was on hand to greet people earlier, but had to leave right away now, to catch a plane they were saying afterwards. I was completely on Monkee-auto-pilot by that point, so I was absolutely drawn to follow Peter parallel from the audience side, as he walked off the stage and past some tables to a waiting golf-cart. He was quite friendly to everyone. "Hi Peter!", I said as he caught my gaze. "Hi there!" he said to me and flashed his great smile. He gave out 2 autographs, but when more people began to ask him all at once, he simply didn't have the time for any more.

Whoosh! They wisked him away in that golf-cart! What a great surprise I had that afternoon!
I had just signed into this board a couple weeks before, and when I got back on it later that day, I learned there was another MLand member who was also there. Loveisonlysleepingwhenimdead is her user name. We compared notes of the show and found she was only a little ways to the left side of me.

So I was basically a brand new member, and already I had a story to tell! I still will not forget this wonderful Saturday afternoon soon!

Ok then Shane, thanks for the heads up!
Tomorrow I'll probably put in what I had written here at home about the Davy concert last year in Calumet City, on the thread Sally started here on that..
And I don't see something here from Jan when I last saw Micky at all, so then it will probably be a good addition to this forum...