<P> The Monkees found unlikely fans among musicians of the punk rock period of the mid-1970s . Many of these punk performers had grown up on TV reruns of the series, and sympathized with the anti-industry, anti-Establishment trend of their career . Sex Pistols and Minor Threat both recorded versions of "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" and it was often played live by Toy Love . The Japanese new wave pop group the Plastics recorded a synthesizer and drum - machine version of "Last Train to Clarksville" for their 1979 album Welcome Back . </P> <P> Glenn A. Baker, author of Monkeemania: The True Story of the Monkees, described the Monkees as "rock's first great embarrassment" in 1986: </P> <P> Like an illegitimate child in a respectable family, the Monkees are destined to be regarded forever as rock's first great embarrassment; misunderstood and maligned like a mongrel at a ritzy dog show, or a test tube baby at the Vatican . The rise of the pre-fab four coincided with rock's desperate desire to cloak itself with the trappings of respectability, credibility and irreproachable heritage . The fact was ignored that session players were being heavily employed by the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Mamas and the Papas, the Byrds and other titans of the age . However, what could not be ignored, as rock disdained its pubescent past, was a group of middle - aged Hollywood businessmen had actually assembled their concept of a profitable rock group and foisted it upon the world . What mattered was that the Monkees had success handed to them on a silver plate . Indeed, it was not so much righteous indignation but thinly disguised jealousy which motivated the scornful dismissal of what must, in retrospect, be seen as entertaining, imaginative and highly memorable exercise in pop culture . </P> <P> Mediaite columnist Paul Levinson noted that "The Monkees were the first example of something created in a medium--in this case, a rock group on television--that jumped off the screen to have big impact in the real world ." </P>

The music biz and birth of radio. which of the follow in not true