Mike Nesmith Joins The Monkees Via Skype at NYC Concert

The Monkees are celebrating their 50th anniversary this year with a critically acclaimed new album, Good Times! (their first full-length studio effort since 1996, and first since the death of band member Davy Jones), along with a nationwide tour. While original Monkee Michael Nesmith contributed to Good Times! and toured with the band back in 2012, he has opted out of this year’s tour because he is working on a book. However, Nesmith participated virtually, via Skype, when surviving/actively touring Monkees Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork performed at New York’s Town Hall venue on Wednesday, June 1. It was Nesmith’s first “appearance” on the tour, which kicked off May 18.

(Photo: Matthew Eisman/Getty Images)

Nesmith, always one to embrace technology and pop culture (his TV series PopClips and Elephant Parts were the precursors to MTV, for instance), Skyped in during the first act of Dolenz and Tork’s NYC show to play 1966’s “Papa Gene’s Blues,” with the live band joining in.

Video: The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz Talks 50 Years of ‘Good Times!’

Later, the onstage Monkees welcomed a real-life, flesh-and-blood cameo by Fountains of Wayne’s Adam Schlesinger – who produced Good Times! – on “Stepping Stone” and the new track “I Was There (And I’m Told I Had a Good Time),” which Schlesinger co-wrote with Dolenz.

Good Times! features songwriting contributions not only from Schlesinger, but also from Weezer’s River Cuomo, XTC’s Andy Partridge, Oasis’s Noel Gallagher, Paul Weller, Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, Neil Diamond, and Carole King, as well as a posthumous virtual duet between Dolenz and his later friend Harry Nilsson on the title track.

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