the shrewdness of apes

the Times Online reviews Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. it's pretty academic, and as derisive of the state of "pop" music in 1967 as you could easily find in many places today. and then thay have to go and take a big dump on the Monkees:

One can imagine a new pop group deciding cold-bloodedly to concentrate commerically on appealing to one of these age groups [teenagers and young adults]. The creators of the Monkees do not deny having done so and even virtuoso pop musicians are galled by the success of a group that was brought, Frankenstein-fashion, into being without reference to musical talents. Thir songs are carefully modeled on early-Beatles style uncreatively but skillfully manipulated. Their first single, Last Train to Calrksville, flopped in Britain at first, but zoomed up the charts as soon as the Monkees begain to appear in weekly short films on television (the manner of presentation heavily indebted to A Hard Day's Night. Just now, the Monkees are idols of the pre-teenage generation and are not quite despised by those approaching O-Levels. This has been their year in the absence of anything more remarkable, and the showmanship involved has to be admired, if not the musical artistry. I suspect that their songs were written by a computer fed with the first two Beatles L.P.s and The Oxford Book of Nursery Rhymes.

now I was sort of with them at first, because I know that had I been a music lover back then with a similar attitude to my own today, i probably would have hated the existence of the Monkees the way that i loathed O-Town or any of that other "made for the lowest common denominator" stuff. but the last line seemed a bit overboard. certainly it was a much harsher accusation in 1967 when computers were more theoretically mystical than it would be today (when such a thing is probably being done as we speak). i suppose i'm biased because i like the Monkees, and loved watching the reruns of the TV show back when MTV was watchable. their reunion tour in 1987 (taking advantage of the first big 60s nostalgia trip) was the first concert i ever attended. "Weird Al" Yankovic opened and this geeky 12-year old was in heaven. but i digress.

i suppose what i would be interested to know is how the reviewer would feel if the knew that the Monkees have remained popular and that some of their songs (Clarksville, I'm A Believer, Pleasant Valley Sunday) have become "classics", even among the musical literati. i guess probably the same way i feel knowing that Smashmouth will likely be more popular in 40 years than most of the music that i love.