Funny story. James Hampton used to play the Bugler, Private Dobbs, on "F Troop". It had been a particularly dry period for Hampton after "F Troop". He was desperately trying to find work...movies, TV, commercials, supermarket openings, anything. But there was nothing. One day, a studio called his agent and said they were doing a movie and they were looking for a "Jimmy Hampton type" for one of the lead roles. The agent said, "Good news! I just happen to represent Jimmy Hampton." "No, no, no," the studio said, "not Jimmy Hampton. We don't want Jimmy Hampton. We want a Jimmy Hampton type." Ain't that a kick in the teeth.
Anyway, getting to the point, I can't possibly be the only person who thinks that Make Like Monkeys sound like The Monkees. Can I?
I don't know anything about Make Like Monkeys. They have no web site, really, or Facebook page. They're on Soundcloud and YouTube. There was a Make Like Monkeys blog, which wrote about, well, monkeys and linked to Make Like Monkeys music. But nothing new there since 2014. Near as I can tell, Make Like Monkeys is one dude...Mark. So, OK, The Monkees are pretty much just Mickey Dolenz these days. Hey, maybe Mickey and Mark should get together.
Make Like Monkeys seem fairly prolific...especially with the Christmas music. There are better than 40 seasonal simian songs on Soundcloud, at present (say that 5 times fast). Some of them are even free to download. And they do not (yet) include the songs on "A Barrel of Christmas", released digitally on Amazon on November 3.
1. New Christmas 2. Found Love for Christmas 3. Don't Let Christmas Come Without You Girl! 4. A Winter's Carol 5. Happy Holiday, I Just Wanna Play 6. Santa Claus Is Dead 7. 4,3,2,1, Christmas! 8. Another Holiday 9. I Love You Jingle Bells 10. Some Sort of Merry Christmas |
Look, nobody is saying to put your Monkees Christmas CD on the shelf. Just that "A Barrel of Christmas" by Make Like Monkeys is a fun little record, too. It's a little less "produced", but that's a feature, not a bug. It's ten super cool Pop Christmas songs. And, like I've always said, the world can never have too many good Pop songs. Why, "A Barrel of Christmas" is more fun than.....nope, not gonna say it (but you thought I was gonna, didn't ya?).