Monkees bring more than novelty and nostalgia to Lowell

Forty-five years after first creating a frenzy by bringing teen-approved pop to the small screen, the Monkees still resonate, as seen Wednesday at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium where the band performed a two-hour show that went beyond surface nostalgia.

Michael Nesmith bowed out of the current anniversary tour, leaving Davy Jones, Peter Tork, and Micky Dolenz to make the case that the Monkees were more than a prefab four cooked up in the 1960s by American entertainment executives to capitalize on Beatlemania. Tackling more than 30 songs may have been excessive, but the Monkees were persuasive in selling a catalog of indelible pop from the AM radio era. The band is still not to be mistaken for a Beatles doppelganger, but did prove itself an uncanny cipher of song styles influencing rock ’n’ roll through the music’s adolescence.

via Monkees bring more than novelty and nostalgia to Lowell – Boston.com.