"Please Don't Kill Me Before I See Micky Dolenz!": My Emotional Roller Coaster The Night Of A Monkees Concert

I was in a Lyft ride on my way to the City Winery in Chicago last Tuesday to see Micky Dolenz of The Monkees. We were about five seconds away, and the driver decides to make an abrupt left turn in front of a bus going the opposite direction. I yelled out "Holy shit!" and the Lyft driver apologized, half-heartedly, and then said "Well, you wouldn't have been hurt, you're sitting on the driver's side," and my only sarcastic, freaked-out response besides me wanting to say "Fuck you!" was "Please don't kill me before I see Micky Dolenz!". The driver, probably unaware of who I was talking about, just bursted into laughter, as well as the poor guy in the passenger seat, who had just seen his life flash before his eyes.

Already a ball of nerves to begin with, I walked into City Winery and went immediately to the bar. Shaken from the incident and waiting for my friend who was driving in from the suburbs, I ordered a vodka soda, after the bartender looked at me weird when I asked him if they had vodka drinks. Um, it's called 'City Winery,' and having only wine there before, and also being traumatized from my Lyft ride of death, I didn't think it was such a dumb question.

While sitting at the bar, I noticed Monkee's fans like myself scattered around, finding their way to the theater. I struck up a conversation with a couple next to me and asked if they were there for the concert. When they said no and asked who was performing, and I said excitedly "Micky Dolenz of 'The Monkees!'" the older gentleman, about 60, looked at me confused and asked "Aren't you too young to be a Monkees's fan?". The woman seated next to him, about ten years older than me, in her 40s, said, "Oh, I loved them when I was twelve back in the eighties!". It was an interesting interaction that would continue to plague me the entire night.

As I sat there drinking my vodka soda that was calming my nerves and saving my life, I texted my friend Lori "There is a bunch of old people here." Maybe I was the youngest person there, at 36-years-old, which I'm fine with, but I didn't think that would matter, considering I'm a Monkees fan from their reemergence in the 1980s.

I took my seat in the venue, and looked around. Most of the crowd was late 40s to 70s, and I didn't feel like a total outsider. Lori laughed at me when I texted her about old people, because she said she is one of them. I think with her being 47, she was actually one of the young ones.

But, when Micky Dolenz walked onstage and started belting out "Mary, Mary," I didn't think about age, I didn't think about feeling out of place as a young person who appreciates good music of the 60s, I didn't even think about how most of the audience is my parent's age. I instead immersed myself in what it feels to be a fan of The Monkees, singing along to every song, and appreciating Micky Dolenz and his sweet vocals that remind me of my childhood.

That's all that matters.

Until, of course, Micky Dolenz walked towards my side of the stage, looked at me and this woman sitting next to me, and said "You don't look old enough to be here."

Well, I'll take that as a compliment.

The concert itself was extraordinary, and Micky's renditions of "Sometime in the Morning," "Words," and "She" made me yearn for the days when the TV show was on, in the late 60s, and how it would
be to see them on TV and actually have the chance to see all of them in concert. When he sang "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone," one of my favorites, I squealed with delight like a teenager, imagining what it would be like to be one of the girls that danced on the show.

When he talked of Michael Nesmith, my favorite Monkee, and how he was trying to get the band to include "Different Drum" in their catalog, which the execs said it "Wasn't a Monkees song," but then had success with it anyways when he sold it to Linda Ronstadt and The Stone Poneys, you could tell Micky's admiration for his friend and former bandmate. I wished he was there too. I think we all did from the cheers in the crowd when he mentioned his name.

Micky sang his rendition of "Daydream Believer," and as the slide show of Davy Jones' pictures went up, I almost started balling my eyes out. It was touching that Micky gave his old friend a tribute in his show, and you can tell by his salute to him at the end that a part of him and his music will always have a little Davy Jones.

He told the story of Jimi Hendrix opening for The Monkees back in 1967, and he showed how Jimi would start playing, and then mimicked all the girls screaming "Davy! Davy!". Then the band played "Purple Haze," in tribute to the great Hendrix and what is now a memory that now lives on in Micky's show.

Having become a recent reborn Monkees fan, I have just heard these stories myself a few months ago, but it was nice hearing someone who had lived through it talk about what he saw. It makes me think about the stories my uncles tell me about their past, about the 60s and 70s, and how it's sometimes easy to overlook people who are older, but they are the ones with the best stories.

The concert was like taking an emotional roller coaster ride through memory lane. Some of the curves took me to my childhood and why I liked The Monkees, some to why my mom liked The Monkees, and some curves took me to the unknown places of a time before me, and wondering what it would have been like to live when all the great music happened in the 60s.

I may have been the youngest one there, but being on an emotional roller coaster with the audience, we were all at the same speed.