It's one of those amazing pop culture facts. I've been using the white out quite a bit today too.

Actually, Liquid Paper can be considered the "mother of music videos," if you took the connection to the extreme. Mike used his inheritance from his mom's profits of LP to produce "Elephant Parts," what's been called the startoff point for the proliferation of music videos that led to the birth of MTV.

I love the Monkees. Just bought the box set - again. I used to have Listen to the Band but I lost two of the discs, so then I bought Music Box cause it's supposed to be better.

I have the Rhino Best of the Monkees CD, which is very good and more comprehensive than the old two-album record set that my sister and I had back in high school.

Mike used his inheritance from his mom's profits of LP to produce "Elephant Parts," what's been called the startoff point for the proliferation of music videos that led to the birth of MTV.

Yeah, except the lineage of music videos goes back a long time before that with Soundies and Scopitones all the way to the 40s. I mean, I own what are undeniably videos for songs like "The Wanderer" by Dion and "Wheel of Fortune" by Kay Starr. Not that Elephant Parts isn't fun.

Granted. I've just read that Elephant Parts was such a financial success that more music companies looked into doing videos as a promotional boost to a song than before EP was released.

I've just read that Elephant Parts was such a financial success that more music companies looked into doing videos as a promotional boost to a song than before EP was released.

Well, the TV special won a lot of awards and did well, but Mike Nesmith never sold very much as a solo artist (despite doing some excellent and ground breaking country-rock albums in the early 70s). I think EP entered the consciousness of the music industry about what videos could do. I'd definitely say it was influential, but I wouldn't credit it as starting music videos.

I was dating a DJ when Elephant Parts came out, and somehow we got invited to the press conference (or whatever it was) when Nesmith was showing it, I think for the first time. Nesmith was all, This is revolutionary! and everyone else was like, WTF is this, and what do we do with it? Where's the buffet? Didn't your mother invent Liquid Paper? In retrospect, funny.

Also? Mike Nesmith is not as hugely tall as he appears on The Monkees. He's only a little taller than me, maybe 6 foot, so Davy Jones must be like three feet tall.

He certainly looks it here. In a very cute little way.

At one point, VH-1 was lifting music videos from old Monkees episodes and Beatles movies for time fillers.

Ah, the early days.