Previously posted on the New Monkees and Amy N. Collen Facebook pages

The other night my friends, Marty and Dino, gave me a new chapter in my book, if not its conclusion. They performed with Micky Dolenz from the Monkees. A 31 year old conflict between the Monkees/New Monkees on its way to fully resolving itself.
In the huge chasm of the world this story matters little. To Dino and Marty it mattered a lot. Perhaps more than either realized. Both leaving the experience a bit shocked, exhausted, and relieved. The beginning of an ending that needed to happen.
It was a fact many of us could see. Jodi Ritzen who planned the event, all the cast and crew of the New Monkees, all the New Monkees fans from back in the day who fought the good fight against hostile Monkees fans, and all of us New Monkees fans today.
And I watched from the little Hobbit House here in Oregon, posting messages, answering emails, downloading pictures and videos, and furiously commenting on the live feed, cheering ecstatically for my guys.
And Marty did “House of the Rising Sun,” a song that brought down the house back in the New Monkees days. When he and his new friends Larry, Dino, and Jared watched and cheered him on back in 1987. All filled with alcohol and bonding together in a little pub in Los Angeles, reveling in their new success. A song Marty sang last night, loud and proud, dancing through it, and visibly relaxed. He truly owned it. His place on the great stage deservedly his, and I think last night he realized it.
And Dino’s version of “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves,” kicking and skipping and just letting loose. The stage and camera loving him always. Finding in him a quite visible vulnerability with that complex layer of tough guy bravado surrounding it.
And the tall, stalwart Micky Dolenz. Letting Marty and Dino do their thing, and giving both men a voice and validation they never knew they really needed.
So back to the book I go, and write these now slightly transformed men in their new chapter. I can’t wait to see where it leads.