"That Was Then, This Is Now" by the Monkees

1986 / #20

Rate Your Music score: 2.85 out of 5!

Let's set the stage for this entry by going back to circa 1977. This would have been when I was about 4, and it seemed that nobody cared about the Monkees anymore. This was my earliest memory of us having a family yard sale. One of few things I remember about this event was that my mom sold a vintage Monkees album as well as a record player. I remember that she played the record on this record player just before the sale.

I don't remember the details, but I think we sold the record to a young man who thought it was just the greatest thing ever. He seemed to be one of few people around who still cared about the Monkees.

We lived to regret selling this album. Fast-forward to 1986. The Monkees staged an unexpected comeback. Anything to do with the Monkees from 20 years earlier was now worth a fortune. The feller who purchased that record from us probably discovered it was a rare collector's item in 1986, sold it, and spent all the money on bubble gum.

The reunited Monkees even scored a brand new top 40 hit: "That Was Then, This Is Now."

As Monkee mania roared back in the summer of '86, it's also responsible for a flatulence-related memory. Remember, that was "Rumbleseat" summer. This memory involves the theme song from the Monkees' TV show. At the time, it was common to preface a fart by saying, "Here it comes." Well, at least once, a bunker blast was preceded by singing, "Here it comes...Walkin' down the street."

There was also a renewed interest in the Beatles at the time, so much so that "Twist And Shout" reentered the top 40. It also prompted a kid at school to say when confronting almost any situation, "Beatle Beatle!" This was different from the battle cry "beedle-eedle-eed!", which was an uncontrollable reflex rather than a voluntary declaration.

"That Was Then, This Is Now" is also evocative of one of the worst commercial slogans in history. Years after this song, the Bill Knapp's restaurant chain tried to recover from its sagging fortunes. By then, its shrinking customer base consisted mostly of senior citizens. The restaurant also received bad publicity from a Listeria outbreak. So it tried to revive business with a new tagline: "That was then, this is wow!" The commercial showed the old restaurant sign suddenly morphing into a new style. This campaign suggested that there was something wrong with Bill Knapp's before. So why should anyone go there now? After all, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Furthermore, customers rejected the changes that the restaurant made, and the chain went out of business not long after.

That was then. This is now.