"Sugar Sugar" is a slowed-down, blanded out rip-off of a much better song, My Boy Lollipop, the first breakthrough hit of the ska trend. Notice that it isn't just the main riff (the major scale arpeggio after the vocal line) that's lifted, but also the candy theme.

Do you really get the sense that the Riverdale kids were listening to much Jamaican music?

An interesting bubblegum-to-reggae influence: Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldiers" is ripped off "The Tra La La Song" by the Banana Splits. (Thus spake wikipedia.)

I think the lip sync is better for the Donovan video if you watch it full screen. No idea why.

lip sync and video, whatever.. isn't anyone else bothered by the fact the microphone technology has basicly never changed since its invention?
i think about that all the time.. and think all.. wtf?

I'll never forget the dissapointment I felt as an 11 year old, slowly realising that the Cher film I was watching had nothing to do with Matt Tracker.

trevor, neither has speaker technology in any way that couldn't be said to have a parallel in mic technology.

Rocket technology hit its peak with the Saturn V. Computers will probably peak out in the next ten years. I give genetic engineering another 20 or 30 years to peak. Pretty much whatever the tech, its rate of change peaks then slows asymptotically to zero. So, things keep getting better but not that much better, and there is a natural limit that a particular technology approaches.

Or that's how imagine it will work out.

Believe it or not, you can see a couple of music videos of the New Monkees at this site:
www.intrinsicsmile.com

It's kinda funny and I didn't think it was bad,...for the 80's :)

Cheers!