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The Monkees Announce Farewell Tour

By Andy Greene

Andy Greene

The Monkees are coming to your town one last time. They have just announced a North American farewell tour starting September 11th at Seattle’s Moore Theatre and wrapping up November 14th at L.A.’s Greek Theatre.

” ‘The Monkees Farewell Tour’ will feature songs that span the band’s entire career — from their 1966 self-titled debut album to 2016’s Good Times! ” according to a release announcing the tour. “In addition to their hits, their farewell shows will spotlight songs featured on their Emmy-winning TV series (‘The Girl I Knew Somewhere,’ ‘You Told Me,’ ‘Randy Scouse Git,’ ‘Goin’ Down,’ and ‘For Pete’s Sake’) as well as music from their feature film Head (‘Circle Sky’ and ‘As We Go Along). Plus some rarely performed deep cuts (such as ‘Auntie’s Municipal Court’) and tracks from their most recent studio album, 2016’s Good Times! (‘Me & Magdelena’ and ‘Birth of an Accidental Hipster’).”

Monkees singer Davy Jones died in 2012 and multi-instrumentalist Peter Tork followed in 2019, but surviving members Micky Dolenz and Michael Nesmith have been leading the group for the past few years. They last toured in 2019 and were originally booked to head out again in 2020, but the pandemic forced them to push those back plans. During the downtime, Dolenz recorded an LP of Nesmith-penned songs called Dolenz Sings Nesmith . It comes out on May 21st.

Also on the horizon for Monkees fans is an updated version of the 2005 book The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story of the ’60s TV Pop Sensation by music historian Andrew Sandoval, who also manages the Monkees. Featuring newly discovered court documents, it shines new light on the group’s battle with Don Kirshner over creative freedom.

Tickets and VIP packages for the Monkees Farewell Tour are on sale right now in select markets, and more will be available later this week on Ticketmaster.com .

The Monkees Farewell Tour Dates

September 11th – Seattle, WA @ Moore Theatre September 14th – Sacramento, CA @ The Crest Theatre September 15th – San Jose, CA @ San Jose Civic September 17th – Riverside, CA @ Fox Performing Arts Center September 18th – El Cajon, CA @ The Magnolia September 19th – Phoenix, AZ @ Celebrity Theatre September 24th – Dallas, TX @ The Majestic Theatre September 25th – San Antonio, TX @ The Tobin Center For Performing Arts September 28th The Woodlands, TX @ Dosey Doe September 29th The Woodlands, TX @ Dosey Doe October 2nd – Chattanooga, TN @ Trivoli Theatre October 6th –  Birmingham, AL @ Iron City October 7th – Knoxville, TN @ Tennessee Theatre October 8th – Atlanta, GA @ Atlanta Symphony Hall October 10th – Orlando, FL @ Hard Rock Live October 12th – Fort Lauderdale, FL @ Parker Playhouse October 13th – Clearwater, FL @ Ruth Eckerd Hall October 15th – Biloxi, MS @ IP Casino Resort & Spa October 16th – Jacksonville, FL @ Florida Theatre October 19th – Red Bank, NJ @ Count Basie Center October 20th – Tarrytown, NY @ Tarrytown Music Hall October 22nd – Bethlehem, PA @ The Wind Creek Event Center October 23rd –  Atlantic City, NJ @ Ocean Casino Resort – Ovation Hall October 24th – New York, NY @ Town Hall October 26th – Burlington, VT @ Flynn Center For The Performing Arts October 28th – Huntington, NY @ The Paramount October 29th – Uncasville, CT @ Mohegan Sun October 30th – Medford, MA – Chevalier Theatre November 1st –  Greensburg, PA @ The Palace Theatre November 2nd – Detroit, MI @ Masonic Cathedral Theatre November 6th – Milwaukee, WI @ Riverside Theater November 9th – Saint Charles, MO @ Family Arena November 10th – Kansas City, MO @ Uptown Theater November 14th – Los Angeles, CA @ The Greek Theatre

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I have been to 3 Monkees' concerts, all starring Davy, Micky and Peter. All 3 concerts were in San Antonio. One was 1986, 1996 and 1997. All 3 were excellent. I hope to be able to see the Mike and Micky concert this summer (2020)

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The Monkees was my first concert in 1967, Cleveland, OH, I was 14. I'm retired now and went full circle and saw The Mike Nesmith & Micky Dolenz Show.

The show sold out and was represented by all age groups. Their back-up band was sharp and included a couple family members of the Boys!

The Royal Oaks, MI concert:

* had great "merch", reasonably priced,

* show started on time,

* they played for hours,

* had solo opportunities,

* honored Davey and Peter thoughtfully,

* showed some great old clips from their show & movie

* The venue, staff & attendees were pure Michigan!

* It was a wonderful sing-along evening.

Unfortunately, this show was cancelled because Michael Nesmith was taken suddenly ill and transported to a local hospital. We all wish Michael the best. There is no official word on when the concert will be rescheduled.

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When Jimi Hendrix Joined the Monkees Tour For Some Reason

What do you get when you cross a guitar genius with one of the world's bestselling pop bands? A frustrated guitarist, a disappointed band and a bewildered and confused audience.

As unlikely as the match-up sounds, the Jimi Hendrix Experience joined the Monkees  during the summer of 1967 for a short run of concerts. The rising guitarist joined the tour on July 8 for its first date in Jacksonville, Fla., and stuck it out for six more shows, exiting after a run of three concerts on July 14, 15 and 16 at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in New York City.

Both Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork had attended the Monterey International Pop Festival in June and saw Hendrix's groundbreaking performance. Like everyone else, they were knocked out. "Micky said, 'We gotta get this guy,'" recalled Tork in the documentary The Monkees Story . "Micky was just enthusiastic about his music."

"You can't imagine what it must have been like for an act like Jimi Hendrix opening for the Monkees," Dolenz wrote in his autobiography I'm a Believer . "It was evident from the start that we were witness to a rare and phenomenal talent. I would stand in the wings and watch and listen in awe."

Tales from the tour reveal that everyone involved got along great. "He was such a sweet guy," said Tork. "It was really just a pleasure to have him around for company." But the group's young audiences, as well as their parents who often accompanied them at shows, didn't feel the same way.

"[The parents] were probably not too crazy about having to sit through a Monkees concert," said Dolenz, "much lees see this black guy in a psychedelic Day-Glo blouse, playing music from hell, holding his guitar like he was fucking it, then lighting it on fire ... Jimi would amble out onto the stage, fire up the amps and break into 'Purple Haze,' and the kids in the audience would instantly drown him out with, 'We Want Davy!!' God, it was embarrassing."

Tork said that "it didn't cross anybody's mind that it wasn't gonna fly." But rumors began to surface that Hendrix was asked to leave the tour after the Daughters of the American Revolution complained about his "lewd and indecent" conduct during his performances.

Legend has it that Hendrix flipped off the audience as he left the stage on the final date of his run. Either way, he decided enough was enough, and asked to be released from his contract and the remaining shows. "I was sorry to see him go," Dolenz wrote. "We did have some great times, running around the New York City psychedelic scene like kids in a candy store, tripping at the Electric Circus and jamming until all hours of the night in the hotel room."

Shortly after Hendrix left the tour, both "Purple Haze" and Are You Experienced?  started to climb the charts, revolutionizing modern music in the process. And in certain parts of the world, the Monkees were viewed with just as much respect. While they were considered mostly a disposable pop band in America, the Monkees were seen in a different, more kaleidoscopic light in the U.K.

A  Melody Maker critic wrote about the band's tour of England in 1967: "I suddenly realized the Monkees were actually freaking out properly and much better than many of the much vaunted psychedelic groups."

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Browse > Home / tour / archive tour / 1966 – 1967 NORTH AMERICAN TOUR

1966 – 1967 NORTH AMERICAN TOUR

April 2, 2010 by raj   Filed under archive tour

(December 1966 – May 1967)

For updated information on this article, see the web site:  monkeesconcerts.com

“With a number one hit, the demands for live appearances were mounting. The boys furiously rehearsed late into the night and on weekends. The crowd screamed as the four leapt through fake speakers onto the stage. Such frenzy had not been seen since the peak of Beatlemania. Crowds were awesome and more than $540,000 was grossed within two weeks.” -Glenn A. Baker, author of Monkeemania: The True Story of the Monkees

• Last Train To Clarksville
• She’s So Far Out She’s In (Mike lead vocal)
• You Just May Be The One
• I Wanna Be Free
• (I Prithee) Do Not Ask For Love [performed on very early dates only]
• Sweet Young Thing
• I Can’t Get Her Off My Mind
• (I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone
• East Virginia or Cripple Creek (Peter solo)
• You Can’t Judge A Book By The Cover (Mike solo)
• The Joker (Davy solo)
• I Got A Woman (Micky solo)
• If I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate (Peter lead vocal)
• Take A Giant Step
• I’m A Believer

For their very first tour, the Monkees performed solely as a four-piece band with Micky on drums, Mike on lead guitar, Peter on bass guitar, keyboards and banjo, and Davy on tambourine and maracas. Towards the end of “Mary, Mary,” Davy would play the drums allowing Micky to come down to center stage. Davy would also play the bass guitar when Peter moved to keyboards. The above set list was standard for the earliest shows and would fluctuate in later performances during this round of dates. Other songs added to the set for the early 1967 concerts included “The Kind of Girl I Could Love,” “Your Auntie Grizelda,” “Sunny Girlfriend” and “(Look Out) Here Comes Tomorrow.”

The Monkees’ first full live concert was held in Honolulu, Hawaii on December 3, 1966. Reviews were enthusiastic and subsequent dates were added to the schedule. Images of the Monkees performing and other selected clips were projected on large screens behind the band.

The opening act was Bobby Hart’s band, the Candy Store Prophets. They also provided instrumental backup during the solo segments.

The performance in at the Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, Arizona on January 21, 1967 was filmed and later broadcasted as the last episode of the first season, “The Monkees on Tour.” The Phoenix concert is also a widely circulated bootleg recording, including the rare performance of “She’s So Far Out She’s In.”

Hello! Can anyone answer this question: Did The Monkees ever perform a concert on the Mississippi Gulf Coast? I have a snap of a group of young men standing atop the portico of an old mansion that once existed on the Coast. And the young men look a great deal like The Monkees. Thank you, Anthony Kalberg

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Rod Stewart mocks Donald Trump for ‘turning orange’ after comments about Kamala Harris’s race

Rod Stewart made jokes about an “ orange ” Donald Trump during a Las Vegas performance.

The 79-year-old singer, who recently flew a Ukrainian flag in Germany to a mixed reception , is currently touring the US, performing a string of shows at the Colosseum that began on 24 July and are set to finish on 7 August.

While performing on stage, he abruptly stopped the gig in front of thousands of fans to show a meme on the huge screen behind him. The image was of a tweet with various images of Donald Trump through the years, with his skin colour gradually deepening from a paler shade before morphing into a tangerine-like hue.

A caption to the image made reference to Trump’s comments about fellow US presidential candidate Kamala Harris , when the Republican presidential candidate said he was not aware Harris was Black, until “all of a sudden, she made a turn and she went… she became a Black person ”.

The tweet Stewart projected on to the screen began: “I didn’t know he was orange until a number of years ago, when he happened to turn orange.”

It continued: “I respect either one, but he obviously doesn’t and now he wants to be known as Orange. All of a sudden he made a turn and became an Orange person. I think someone should look into that.”

Stewart also reposted the tweet to his 1.4 million followers on Instagram. Some Trump supporters were not happy in the comment section.

“Way to turn off much of your fan base, Rod,” wrote one person along with sarcastic clapping emojis.

“Oh no! Now you! So out of touch!” commented another person. “Glad I did not buy those expensive tickets to the show at Agua Caliente! After decades of being a fan. No thanks! Trump 2024.”

“People in the entertainment industry should keep their opinions to themselves!! They have no idea about the real world,” criticised another.

However, others defended the musician as they wrote: “I don’t know why you have so many MAGA (Make America Great Again) people on your Instagram, but don’t even listen to them. Your post was funny as hell. He is soon to be orange marmalade toast!!”

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Taylor Swift Once Revealed a Potential Terrorist Attack at Her Concert Was Her 'Biggest Fear'

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Taylor Swift  is grappling with her "biggest fear." After her Eras Tour concerts in Vienna, Austria, were canceled over an alleged planned terror attack , the singer's previous comments about fearing an incident at one of her shows have resurfaced. 

Swift, 34, previously penned a list of her most meaningful life lessons for Elle   magazine in 2019, months ahead of her milestone 30th birthday. Coming in at number seven on the list was "My biggest fear," which surfaced following the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing at an Ariana Grande concert and the Las Vegas shooting that same year during Jason Aldean's Route 91 Harvest Music Festival performance.

"After the Manchester Arena bombing and the Vegas concert shooting, I was completely terrified to go on tour this time because I didn't know how we were going to keep 3 million fans safe over seven months," she wrote, referencing her 2018 Reputation   Tour. "There was a tremendous amount of planning, expense, and effort put into keeping my fans safe."

Swift also addressed her concerns about her own personal safety in her everyday life. 

"My fear of violence has continued into my personal life," she wrote. "I carry QuikClot army grade bandage dressing, which is for gunshot or stab wounds. Websites and tabloids have taken it upon themselves to post every home address I’ve ever had online. You get enough stalkers trying to break into your house and you kind of start prepping for bad things. Every day I try to remind myself of the good in the world, the love I’ve witnessed and the faith I have in humanity. We have to live bravely in order to truly feel alive, and that means not being ruled by our greatest fears."

Event organizer Barracuda Music announced news of the cancelled shows on Thursday with a statement reading, "With confirmation from government officials of a planned terrorist attack at Ernst Happel Stadium, we have no choice but to cancel the three scheduled shows for everyone's safety."

"All tickets will be automatically refunded within the next 10 business days," the statement continued.

Swift has not yet issued a personal statement on the situation. 

According to  ABC News , Austrian authorities announced on Wednesday that a 19-year-old Austrian citizen and a second suspect had been arrested, with Franz Ruf, director-general for public safety in the Ministry of the Interior, stating that the suspects had allegedly radicalized themselves online.

Vienna was reportedly the target of their planned attack, with the 19-year-old suspect stating a particular focus on Swift's concerts at the Ernst Happel Stadium.

Swift is set to wrap up the European leg of her record-breaking tour in London with five nights at Wembley Stadium, beginning August 15. She will again return to the stage on Oct. 18 to kick off another North American leg at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, Florida.

Throughout her blockbuster Eras Tour, Swift has kept a keen eye on fans in the audience who might be in need of assistance . 

"We have to take care of these crowds because you're just the best, and you just dance so wildly and sing so loudly, and the way that you just, like, are so in the moment, I never could have imagined we would have this much fun on the European Tour," she said during a June show in Lyon. "It's just been crazy, you guys, and I appreciate it so much." 

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Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork will launch a Monkees 50th Anniversary Tour on May 18. The jaunt boasts nearly 50 North American dates through the end of the year including a homecoming gig at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles on September 16.

THE MONKEES Tour Dates

May 18-Fort Myers, FL----Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall 19-Melbourne, FL----King Center for the Performing Arts 20-Tampa, FL----Ruth Eckerd Hall 21-Atlanta, GA----Frederick Brown Jr. Amphitheater 24-Charlotte, NC----Blumenthal PAC - Belk Theater 26-Washington, DC----Warner Theatre 27-Boston, MA----The Wilbur Theatre 28-Philadelphia, PA----Keswick Theatre 29-Red Bank, NJ----Count Basie Theatre

June 1- New York, NY----The Town Hall 3- Toronto, ON----Casino Rama - Entertainment Centre 4- Windsor, ON----The Colosseum at Caesars Windsor 5- Cleveland, OH----Hard Rock Live Northfield Park 7- Fort Wayne, IN----Foellinger Theatre 10-Louisville, KY----Louisville Palace Theatre 11-Hammond, IN----The Venue At Horseshoe Casino 12-Indianapolis, IN----Murat Theatre at Old National Centre 14-Dayton, OH----Rose Music Center at The Heights 28-Dallas, TX----AT&T PAC – Winspear Opera House 30-Tulsa, OK----Hard Rock Hotel & Casino – The Joint

July 1- Mayetta, KS----Prairie Band Casino & Resort – Grand Lakes Ballroom 16-Hampton Beach, NH----Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom 22-Hot Springs, AR----Oaklawn Racing and Gaming – Finish Line Theater

September 14-Tucson, AZ---- Fox Tucson Theatre 15-Phoenix, AZ----Mesa Arts Center – Ikeda Theater 16-Los Angeles, CA----Pantages Theatre 17-Las Vegas, NV----Primm Valley Casino Resorts – Star of the Desert Arena 20-San Francisco, CA----The Warfield 21-Modesto, CA----Gallo Center For The Arts 23-Lincoln City, OR----Chinook Winds Casino Resort 24-Lincoln City, O----Chinook Winds Casino Resort 25-Seattle, WA----The Moore Theatre

October 1- Biloxi, MS----Hard Rock Live Biloxi 22-Paso Robles, CA----Vina Robles Amphitheatre 29-Shippensburg, PA----Shippensburg University – H. Ric Luhrs PAC

Monkees 50th Anniversary Tour

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Fans of Taylor Swift are devastated by the cancellations of three sold-out “Eras Tour” shows in Austria after authorities foiled an apparent plot for an attack in Vienna. (Aug. 8)

Concert organizer and fans react to Swift cancellations

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At a ‘Reefer Madness’ Reunion Concert, Kristen Bell, Christian Campbell and Other Cast Veterans Retell the Satirical Show’s History Via Signature Songs and Cut Numbers

Rachel Bloom also stepped in to revive material that got cut from the musical-comedy on the 25-year path to the current revival in Hollywood.

By Chris Willman

Chris Willman

Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic

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If you were cataloging the signs of a stage musical that has had a robust life over a period of not just years but decades, here are two things that might be included on that list:

A) The show engenders such a sense of family among those who’ve performed it that even members of casts from different times and places mix well together, and…

B) You could practically create an entire alternate version of the musical just by doing a separate assemblage of the very good songs that were cut as the show went through different incarnations.

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Another marquee name who joined the intermingling of past and present cast members was Rachel Bloom , who has never appeared in “Reefer Madness” but came down to Hollywood to belt out “The Monkey Song,” a long-discarded number that dates back to the show’s earliest days at the Hudson Theater down on Santa Monica Blvd. in the late ’90s.

There was a bittersweetness to the parade of musical excisions. Condensed down into a one-act musical, the version of “Reefer Madness” now running works like a well-lubed-with-cannabis-oil machine. And Studney may not be just blowing smoke when he says “it’s my favorite production in 25 years.” But the effect of hearing 10 numbers that have gotten the boot was to think, following each one, “ That definitely should be put back in the show.”

One song that is still in the show, “Mary Jane/Mary Lane,” served as the reunion concert’s full-cast finale, led by Bell and Campbell. It’s enough of a staple that fans of the show may have a hard time remembering it wasn’t there for the original L.A. and New York productions. As Fickman explained, during the Showtime shoot, “We were in Vancouver and Kevin (Murphy, the book and lyrics writer) and Dan had to write one new song so we could be considered from some awards. They kept writing song after song after song, and Kevin and Dan wrote this song quicker than any song. K-Bell and Christian rehearsed the choreography on this number endlessly. The day we were supposed to film, we had a permit issue and we didn’t have time to finish it. So it was pretty much: ‘You two, just be adorable and we’ll shoot it.’ And this song won us an Emmy award.”

Fickman told how the Showtime version came about, as the cabler’s one-time head, Bob Greenblatt, sat in the audience. “Like so much (others) in the world, we had a show that was opening (in New York) during 9/11… and we closed and we bonded together as a family… We thought that was the last time we would have ‘Reefer Madness’ and it ended pretty bittersweetly. (But) Kevin and Dan had written a screenplay. and we decided to do a reading at what was the Coronet — now Largo — and we asked K-Bell to come join us and we mixed and matched our L.A. and New York casts. And that night there was an angel with us. It was about his third day working as the head of Showtime, and our friend Bob Greenblatt, saw it and said, ‘I don’t know what we’re doing at Showtime. Let’s try it.’ They sent Kevin and Dan and I to Vancouver, where they had just shot the pilot for ‘The L Word,’ which is set in present-day West Hollywood. ‘Reefer Madness’ takes place in Americana in the 1930s. They gave us a tour and said, ‘we just did this pilot. ‘We don’t know if we’re gonna pick up the pilot, but if you can find a way to shoot your 1930s movie on the “L Word” set, you have a green light.’ And I remember looking at Kevin and Dan, and looking at all the fine people at Showtime, and I said, ‘It’s exactly what we had hoped for.’ So Bob Greenblatt, we’re here today still because of you.”

With that, the concert diverged for just one song to a cover: “Suddenly Seymour,” sung as a cross-cast duet between Bell and Anthony Norman, who plays the earnest Jimmy in the current incarnation. (Norman seemed thrilled enough to be singing with Bell that he prefaced it by saying he hoped someone was filming, for his family’s sake.)

Bloom performed “The Monkey Song” as if she were a veteran cast member. “We have a long tradition about having special guest stars who were not in our production be in our production,” Fickman said, handing the baton to Studney to name-check Lea DeLaria, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Lena Hall and others who’d sat in for a number. “This was a scene where Jimmy was trying to kick the monkey off his back. This song we always loved so much because it was a song in which we actually literally had a monkey on stage. Now, after the police got involved, we were no longer to have that monkey on stage, and had to put an actor in a costume. Boo. But we’ve got our original three (human) monkeys joining us tonight.”

Other risky moves were recalled. The musical was based on an infamous 1936 exploitation/scare film that had been created ostensibly to warn youth about the slippery slope to madness and murder that would result from puffing marijuana. “There was one surviving cast member, Thelma White, who played the original Mae in the movie,” Fickman recalled. “She was in her late eighties, maybe early nineties, and we invited her to come see our show at the Hudson. We sent a car for her; we wanted to treat her special. She came in in a wheelchair and had a full oxygen tank. We made sure she was in the perfect spot on the front row.

“About the middle of our show back then, when we did the orgy — and we did do the orgy — Christian Campbell, aka Jimmy, would be on the ground just inches away from where Ms. Thelma White was. What we also had, because I was all about flare, was a fire dancer who had long fingernails on fire, and she would dance and gyrate over Christian. Now, in order to not burn down our theater, the best direction I have ever given was ‘Stay away from the backdrop,’ so they brought it forward. It was that night in the booth that I noticed the fire was very close to the oxygen tank. And somehow our fire dancer, who was very talented, did not make the connection. But Thelma White had never shown so much life in her eyes, with every swipe — and all I thought was, ‘Oh God, we’re gonna blow up Thelma White.’ At the end of the show, we all gathered around to take pictures and we said, ‘Did you love it?’ And she said, ‘Well, yes, except for the part where I almost died .'”

Kassir is known for being the voice of the Crypt Keeper, which he brought into his performance of “Lulla-bye,” a song sung partly from the point of view of a fallen character’s dead baby. Karris noted that “occasionally the cast would get a little punch drunk, and between Harry (Murphy) and I with our improvisational background, we’d do a little entertaining and maybe a little bastardization of the show.” With that, he offered a version of that song that devolved from baby bonnets into a “Tales From the Crypt”-style reading, complete with skeletal cackling.

The show did lose some of its darker material over time. “The Stuff,” which is an early highlight of the show now and then, used to come back near the end, as what Fickman called “Stuff Reprise — Gross-Out Version.” “There’s a bloodbath,” the director recalled, “and when we first wrote that reprise, a lot of people had died in the show — not Thelma White, but Sally, Ralph and Mary were dead by then, and so Mae was left with the unfortunate task of cleaning up the mess.” Veteran cast member Lori Alan was then charged — sans any vivid props or substances — with singing a long-gone number that rhymed “Madame Bovary” with “Is that an ovary?”

The two numbers that Studney said it hurt to take out a week into the current production were both such show-stoppers, it seems like there’d be a strong case for reinstating them. (They could go back in and the show would still run under a “lean, mean” 90 minutes.) In full belter mode, J. Eiaine Marcos knocked a razzle-dazzle number called “Kindergarten Teacher” out of the park, as Sally, a hopeless dope moll who really only ever aspired to be “the best teacher of kindergarten in the goddam universe.” And Norman beautifully delivered an earnest “Cautionary Tale,” the kind of dead-serious song that a satirical musical can occasionally afford to sneak in for actual pathos… even if it’s understandable that producers would be worried about bringing an audience down with lines like “Heaven’s empty, God has gone away” so close to the end of a largely camp-fueled crowd-pleaser.

If the end result of all these first-rate outtakes was to convince attendees that an ideal version of “Reefer Madness: The Musical” would be nearly three hours long — which is to say, not ideal by most standards of musical satire at all — that speaks well for the ongoing evolution that has resulted in the streamlined version L.A. theatergoers are seeing today, with surely more revisions due in years to come.

The director sees an ongoing life for the show he couldn’t have imagined in the wake of the post-9/11 off-Broadway shutdown, or probably a lot of years since: “All of you being here means the world to us,” Fickman said. “They say nobody comes to L.A. to do theater. All these people would tell you otherwise. … We need help staying alive, and that’s where you come in. It’s been 25 years for this family to be here. We now have ‘Reefer’ babies, and those babies, in 25 years, we want them doing this.” Stonier things have happened.

“Reefer Madness” is performed at the Whitley (redubbed the Reefer Den for the occasion), at 6555 Hollywood Boulevard, through Sept. 15. Tickets are available at  ReeferMadness.com .

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