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A friend made the connection. Never thought of it but can kinda see it.

Monkees kinda rule. Spoonful kinda drools, but sometimes have cool licks.

Discuss

Are The New Rascals better than The Old Rascals?

Uh, The Lovin' Spoonful predate the Monkees and were actually under consideration to be the Monkees.

https://www.cheatsheet.com/news/the-mon ... nful.html/

I think of Young Rascals and Lovin' Spoonful both as genuine bands who sort of grew out of the early '60s folk scene and survived pretty well in the post-Beatles American music biz. Both had a whole bunch of hits, and good ones, too.

Both had pretty corny marketing gimmicks but neither had anything as corny as The Monkees, who I consider a record company confection.
That doesn't mean Monkees records didn't have killer songwriters and the best musicians money can buy, but it's very different than an organic band like LS or YR.

Yes, I know Monkees had cool and weird shit that they made themselves later on, but I'm talking about the TV show and the Monkees radio songs that normal people actually know about.

The only thing I know about the Lovin’ Spoonful is that they have one of the worst band names in the history of band names.

Maybe so, but if anybody's not already familiar, do yourself a favor at once:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZWqhrR5tPc

jfv wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 11:21 am Uh, The Lovin' Spoonful predate the Monkees and were actually under consideration to be the Monkees.

https://www.cheatsheet.com/news/the-mon ... nful.html/

I'll be damned!

Part of the conversation that got me thinking about this was my friend confusing Turtles songs with Monkees and me yelling at him, which led him to declare how many of the bands from this era were just "More Monkees". which I understand, begrudgingly. Turtles fucking rule. Are they "More Monkees"? Who else is "More Monkees"? Is "More Monkees" a genre? I can embrace that if I have to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15s4Y9ffW_o

More Monkees by a factor of 3X!

Lovin' Spoonful were a damn fine band who cranked out a LOT of great songs in the brief couple of years they were recording before main writer/singer John Sebastian left. Dude wrote "Six O'Clock" when he was maybe 23? Dang.

https://youtu.be/Ep-1W0Fj8yk?si=bBPJuah4ePLb-UyN

The whole band was basically torpedoed by a drug bust at the height of their success. Bassist Steve Boone's autobiography is a crazy read as well. Post-band he did all kinds of stuff ranging from running a recording studio to smuggling drugs via sailboat from the Caribbean.

Also, what happens to Howard Kaylan at 23 secs in this video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEmRgvhT6fE

He does look like he is formed from Play Doh so maybe something to do with that? These dude are definitely More Monkees.