Micky Dolenz: Sings Nesmith and R.E.M.

Throughout the original TV series, it was apparent that Micky Dolenz and Mike (as he was known then) Nesmith were the Frick and Frack of the Monkees, playing on the assumed telepathic partnership of John and Paul in the Beatle legend. Even then, Micky was a champion of Nesmith’s songs, and it wasn’t until Nez returned to touring with the Monkees in the 2010s that Micky’s exhortations got more regular and wider broadcast. By that time, family scion Christian Nesmith, who’d already been a veteran of touring outfits ranging from Air Supply to King’s X, was the musical director for Monkees’ live show. This continued when Micky and Nez were the only surviving members, and could finally call their schtick “The Mike & Micky Show”.

As with everything else in the music world, Covid put touring on hold, but since Micky had never been lazy and loved to sing, he decided to do his own spin on the Nilsson Sings Newman album by applying the concept (and cover design) to his buddy’s catalog, and corralled Christian to arrange it all. The resultant Dolenz Sings Nesmith accomplishes its thesis, relying mostly on songs outside the Monkees catalog. Many of those songs were originally released in Nashville country arrangements, which makes the templates fairly straightforward, but even the familiar ones are taken in less obvious manners.

“Carlisle Wheeling” includes everything but the kitchen sink, encompassing the original approach with arty touches. “Different Drum” is very daring, as the first-ever hit version put Linda Ronstadt on the map, but this one is done fairly straight. A deep cut on Instant Replay, “Don’t Wait For Me” is here presented with a simple picked acoustic accompaniment. The more obscure “Keep On” and “Marie’s Theme” are showcases for Christian’s keyboards, but still work. “Nine Times Blue” and “Little Red Rider” were both attempted by Nesmith with the Monkees before getting paired on the first First National Band album; here Micky takes the same approach, singing the former with a piano and rocking up the latter following the built-in key change.

“Tomorrow And Me” takes the tumblin’ tumbleweeds of the original to a more futuristic desert, pushing his voice to the upper limits of his senior range. Unfortunately, we didn’t need another version of “Circle Sky”, especially after it was redone once already, and certainly not with a faux-raga treatment. Similarly, “Tapioca Tundra” appears to be set on Mars, but still encouraging Micky’s vaudeville schtick. Much better is “Propinquity”, demoed by Nez for the first album and turned here into a stomper with an appealing banjo part. “Only Bound” is still spacey, and nicely segues into a snippet of “You Are My One”, a quarter of the length of Nez’s original jazz odyssey and filtered through Brian Wilson.

Nesmith died that December, and a month later Dolenz released Dolenz Sings Nesmith – The EP, containing four more songs from the sessions. The given highlight was “Soul-Writer’s Birthday”, a previously unreleased composition that shares the guitar accents with “Salesman” but otherwise isn’t much. “Some Of Shelly’s Blues” and “Grand Ennui” (the latter a bonus track on the main album’s CD) are taken country, while “The Crippled Lion” becomes a big ballad.

Dolenz Sings Nesmith is ultimately a vanity project, but it does reinforce what an inventive writer Michael Nesmith was, melodically and lyrically. As most of his post-Monkees catalog is slowly becoming available again, the curious would be well rewarded to go back to the sources.

After those were given time to marinate, another project that was about as expected and double take-inducing as Pat Boone covering Ozzy Osbourne or Paul Anka doing “Mr. Brightside”. Dolenz Sings R.E.M. was tackled the same way as the Nesmith album, featuring new arrangements of four songs mostly performed by Christian. With “Shiny Happy People” the performers actually managed to make one of the shortest shelf-life R.E.M. songs into a thing of beauty. The waltz intro and interludes are retained, and Micky’s sister Coco gets to sing the Kate Pierson part. “Radio Free Europe” and “Man In The Moon” are perhaps too iconic to be re-interpreted, but “Leaving New York” is positively gorgeous. The R.E.M. boys loved it; perhaps this could be fleshed out into a full-length.

Micky Dolenz Dolenz Sings Nesmith (2021)—3
Micky Dolenz Dolenz Sings Nesmith – The EP (2022)—3
Micky Dolenz Dolenz Sings R.E.M. (2023)—3

Monkees 11: The Mike & Micky Show

One of the things that helped the Monkees as they kept touring 50 years after the fact was the active involvement of Mike Nesmith. The surviving members were also careful to hire a crack backup band of multi-instrumentalists to replicate all the parts fans knew from the records. (Having one of Mike’s sons and Coco Dolenz, sister of Micky, in the troupe kept the tours family affairs.) Peter Tork had bowed out for health reasons towards the end of his life, which the other two acknowledged by billing their concerts as “The Mike & Micky Show”. This also made an easy title for the live album that ensued from the 2019 run.

To their credit, this is not a strictly “all the hits” package. Mike sticks mostly to songs he wrote or sang, and the focus is more on the deep cuts the longtime fans love most, like stuff from Headquarters and Head, and obscurities like “St. Matthew”. A so-called acoustic set recasts “Papa Gene’s Blues” and “Tapioca Tundra”, and “Auntie’s Municipal Court” gets a rare outing. The banter between the two is still fun, but Micky’s recounting of how he came to write “Randy Scouse Git” is becoming about as tired as Paul McCartney’s story of “Yesterday”. Only two of the newer songs are included: the complicated Paul Weller/Noel Gallagher collaboration “Birth Of An Accidental Hipster”, and the sublime “Me & Magdalena”, which Mike closes by acknowledging writer Ben Gibbard.

Both Mike and Micky are in their 70s, and some of the keys are taken lower to accommodate old men’s voices. But listening to Micky keep up with every word on “Goin’ Down” after all these years deserves a standing O. Live—The Mike & Micky Show is a decent souvenir for those who still care, and especially those who have yet to experience these guys while they still can. And yes, they still do “Last Train To Clarksville” and “Daydream Believer.”

The Monkees Live—The Mike & Micky Show (2020)—3

Monkees 10: Christmas Party

Given the critical success of the first new Monkees album in 20 years, it should surprise no one that a follow-up would shortly be in the works, considering the advanced years of the vocalists. Extra points if you guessed it would be a Christmas album. Sure enough, Christmas Party attempts to recreate the recipe of Good Times!, using the same producer, some of the same songwriters, and plenty of modern technology to bring Davy Jones back from the grave.

If you’re good at math, you’ll also notice that eight of the thirteen songs are sung by Micky Dolenz, with no other Monkee involvement. His tunes include new holiday songs from the fingers of Andy Partridge, Rivers Cuomo, novelist Michael Chabon, and Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey from R.E.M. and the Minus Five. After he gets those out of the way, he tackles more modern rock ‘n roll standards, including “Jesus Christ” by Big Star, “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day” by Wizzard, and most daringly of all, “Wonderful Christmastime” by Paul McCartney. Finally, his cover of “Merry Christmas Baby” proves he ain’t no blues man.

Since a Micky Dolenz Christmas album wouldn’t be as lucrative for anybody, Michael Nesmith contributed two covers recorded on his own: Mel Tormé’s unstoppable chestnut “The Christmas Song” and the more obscure but quite lovely “Snowfall”. An unrecognizable Peter Tork added a vocal-and-banjo rendition of “Angels We Have Heard On High”, while Davy’s vocals on “Mele Kalikimaka” and “Silver Bells” come from 1991. As ever, he knew how to work a room, a professional to the end. (Smart consumers and Monkeemaniacs would have rushed to their nearest Target store to get two exclusive bonus tracks: “Ríu Chíu”, sourced from the TV show’s 1967 Christmas episode, and “Christmas Is My Time Of Year”, originally recorded by Micky, Davy, and Peter in 1976 for the still-active fan club.)

There aren’t a lot of rock ‘n roll Christmas albums, and we’ve already covered the better ones. One’s enjoyment of Christmas Party depends on how much one can stomach an aging yet unflappably enthusiastic Micky Dolenz. Frankly, the ones he doesn’t sing are more successful, and the album is paced mostly well. We wanted to hate it, and we don’t. And it is just once a year.

The Monkees Christmas Party (2018)—3

Monkees 9: Good Times

The latest “new” Monkees album, released to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their 20th anniversary, has gotten kudos for its choice song material, contributed and masterminded by some of the more respected power-pop songwriters of the early 21st century, many of whom learned their craft by listening to Monkees records as kids and, less blatantly, longing for the velvet and velour stage outfits of the Partridge Family. That some of these people have been employed by the Austin Powers franchise should be no surprise.

One defense of the factory ethic is that the Monkees originally relied on Brill Building veterans for their music, from song to record, and while that’s true, it didn’t make a difference once the TV show was over. The four learned how to be a real band, succeeded at it, and promptly worked separately, to increasing indifference. Just like that, they were no longer a band, and without the show, they had no impetus to be, except from a nostalgic point of view.

Here’s the truth, and it will hurt: The Monkees were inessential without the TV show. You can bring any of the participants together in any combination, but they will be even less relevant than they were at the time. (Moreover, they don’t belong in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because there was nothing rock ‘n roll about Davy Jones. Sorry, folks.)

Micky and Davy worked together several times throughout the ‘70s, but it wasn’t until the big revival in 1986 that Peter was allowed back in the fold. A new hits collection—the first of many to come—called Then & Now… The Best Of The Monkees sported three “new” songs, sung by Micky and supposedly including Peter somewhere, and then Davy joined in for Pool It! the following year. The music was purely generic ‘80s pop, with all the fake drums and bad keyboards you can imagine. Mike Nesmith was conspicuous in his absence, as was any lasting impression.

Ten years later, Mike took part in the 30th anniversary campaign on the condition that he write and direct their reunion TV special, and that any new album would be written and performed solely by the four of them. Beginning with a re-recorded “Circle Sky”, Justus tried to rock, and was a little better than Pool It!, though the jury’s out as to whether Micky’s ponytail is preferable to his current choice of hats. (The TV special was clever, though. In places.)

After Davy left for that Broadway stage in the sky, the other three continued to celebrate him, Mike even going so far as to insist that the Monkees “were his band. We were his sidemen.” A few reunion tours were easy enough to pull off, but only the absolute rabid would be excited about a new album, recorded half a century after the first. Since some of those rabid ones included power pop devotee Adam Schlesinger (responsible for the music in That Thing You Do!) and his buddies in Fountain of Wayne, here was a chance for a reunion album made from true love and not merely commerce.

Indeed, Good Times! manages to capture enough of the classic vibe, and not just because it relies on vintage unfinished ’60s recordings for some of the material. The title track is an embellished Harry Nilsson demo, “Gotta Give It Time”, “Whatever’s Right”, and “Wasn’t Born To Follow” never got vocals until now, and “Love To Love” uses a 1967 track with a 1969 Davy vocal and backups recorded this century. (It’s his only appearance on the album, a Neil Diamond blender mix of “Little Bit Me” and “Solitary Man”.)

Each of the guys contributes an original, but most of the other tracks come custom-made straight from Rivers Cuomo (Weezer), Andy Partridge (XTC), and even a collaboration between Noel Gallagher (Oasis) and Paul Weller (The Jam). None are very embarrassing, if a little derivative, though the best is probably “Me & Magdalena” by Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie. (The album version is nice, but the janglier “Version 2”, available some places as a bonus track, is truly wonderful.)

Skeptical as we were, we have to admit Good Times! is worthy of all its good ink thus far received. It’s certainly better than any other “new” product released after the show was cancelled, and goes a long way to reaffirming the Monkees’ justifiable position in rock history. And that should be enough, because they still don’t belong in that building in Cleveland.

The Monkees Good Times! (2016)—3½

Michael Nesmith: The First National Band

In addition to his increasingly experimental contributions to Monkees albums, Michael Nesmith also displayed a defiant affection for country music. As the band dwindled out of commercial favor, he began stockpiling songs, which usually began as poetry pieces with arbitrary titles, that he hoped to one day issue on his own.

His first major extracurricular experiment reared its wacky head in the summer of 1968. The Wichita Train Whistle Sings was recorded over two days with dozens of L.A.’s finest session players, and presented ten instrumental arrangements of Nesmith tunes, some already familiar from earlier Monkees albums. The record is best appreciated if one is fluent with the more standard recordings, because the styles used here range wildly from easy listening to high school marching band, with prominent banjos and a determination to be just plain nutty. Laughter at zany guitar lines is left in, along with the notorious sound of Tommy Tedesco’s prized Telecaster being hurled into the air and crashing to the floor.

Once free from the Monkees, he strove to fully explore the possibilities of blending the professional Nashville sound with his own idiosyncratic tendencies. Such a blend was already evident on “Listen To The Band” and “Good Clean Fun”, both chosen as Monkees singles, and after settling on some friends as his rhythm section, he was able to rope in pedal steel player Red Rhodes to complete the First National Band. In less than a year’s time, they recorded three albums’ worth of material, released faster than they could be recorded. Just like other early practitioners of what would become country rock would take decades to get any kind of respect, they were pretty much ignored at the time, being too country for rock and not country enough for country.

Magnetic South came first, frontloaded with Nesmith originals, some of which were those Monkees leftovers: the samba-flavored “Calico Girlfriend”; the all-too-brief “Nine Times Blue”, which goes into the nearly funky “Little Red Rider”; “The Crippled Lion”, a hidden Nesmith gem; and the surprising hit story-song “Joanne”, which cuts right to “First National Rag”, something of a commercial break telling the listener to flip the record over. There he pulls out the yodel for “Mama Nantucket” and “Keys To The Car”, and gets a little ambitious with “Hollywood”, but by ending with two covers—the straight croon of “One Rose” and a “mind movie” rendition of “Beyond The Blue Horizon”—it’s a nice little trip.

Loose Salute was half in the can by the time Magnetic South came out, and is even more country, but with only one cover (“I Fall To Pieces”). “Silver Moon” with its mild island lilt was a mild hit single, and probably the high point. Monkees fans today have already heard several better takes of “Conversations” (a.k.a. “Carlisle Wheeling”), and the original single of “Listen To The Band” was so definitive, even by his own admission, why do another? “Tengo Amore” is enticing until the vocal kicks in, a frighteningly accurate amalgam of Stephen Stills’ worst Latin tendencies. Where the first album was refreshing, this one’s almost ordinary.

By the time Loose Salute was on the shelves, the rhythm section had already left, so Nevada Fighter was finished with session pros. This time the sides were split, with Nesmith originals on side one and covers on side two. The originals are of fine quality, particularly “Propinquity (I’ve Just Begun To Care)” (another Monkees refugee), “Only Bound”, and the rocking title track. With the exception of “Tumbling Tumbleweeds”, the covers come from the pens of previous Monkee collaborators Harry Nilsson, Michael Murphey and Bill Martin, with a surprising choice in “I Looked Away”, best known as the opener for Derek and the Dominos’ Layla. Red Rhodes’ solo “Rene” closes the album, and the chapter, fittingly.

The three First National Band albums have been in and out of print over the years, and further reissues have gone as far as abridging them to cram the most music in. If one enjoys Nesmith’s voice and writing, and can handle a lot of pedal steel guitar, they’re worth checking out, particularly for fans of Gram Parsons. If anything, they run rings around Changes.

Michael Nesmith The Wichita Train Whistle Sings (1968)—2
Michael Nesmith & The First National Band Magnetic South (1970)—3
Michael Nesmith & The First National Band Loose Salute (1970)—2½
Michael Nesmith & The First National Band Nevada Fighter (1971)—3

Monkees 8: Present and Changes

Granted that “fan” is short for fanatic, it’s understandable there are people rabid for anything the Monkees have done. While some of their albums have merit, our main complaint about the Pre-Fab Four is that their post-TV show albums make it all too clear that they weren’t really a band. Onstage they may have supported the singers okay (and Nesmith insisted to his dying days that, if anything, they were Davy’s backup band) but their separate work in the studio left no possibility for unity. They didn’t merely work separately—they practically partitioned themselves from each other. Their individual idiosyncrasies blended somewhat in the early days, but once Peter left—taking his classical training and folk tendencies with him—Davy always sounded like Davy, Nez was increasingly obsessed with straight country instrumentation, and Micky seesawed between pot-fueled social commentary and bubblegum pop.

However, even after the show had transitioned to Saturday morning reruns, the boys still had keys to the shop, and were still allowed to record to their hearts’ content, fuelling the hubris that nearly led to a double album with each side spotlighting an individual member. Since they were down to a trio anyway, The Monkees Present was limited to a single LP totaling half an hour, barely worth the plastic it was cut upon.

Some of the digging that filled up the last three albums remained in place, with two 1966 recordings spruced up to no real pleasure. “Looking For The Good Times” is practically a backwards version of “I’m Not Your Steppin’ Stone”, while “Ladies Aid Society” was a hideous idea that Ray Davies would have done better. Both of these songs were sung by Davy, where Micky and Peter would have been better suited for them—that is, if they weren’t so awful. Mike offered more cuts from his trip to Nashville the previous summer; “Listen To The Band” and “Good Clean Fun” were both singles, and are arguably the best of those sessions.

As for the “newer” songs, they’re nothing special. Micky’s “Little Girl” is a gentle song performed way too fast. “Bye Bye Baby Bye Bye” is a barely expanded riff on the chant at the center of “Mommy And Daddy”, his truly scathing indictment of middle-class hypocrisy. (Unsettling as it is, the alternate lyrics in the version on the Rhino reissue are even further from acceptable teenybopper fare.) Then there’s “Pillow Time”, a lullaby written by his mother, which gives him the opportunity to close the album yet again. (Some 20 years later he’d market a collection of lullabies called Micky Dolenz Puts You To Sleep.) Davy attempts to tug heartstrings with “If I Knew” and “French Song”. Mike continues his country explorations with the music hall/saloon delivery of “Oklahoma Backroom Dancer” and “Never Tell A Woman Yes” (which predicts Charlie Daniels’ “Uneasy Rider” by a few years).

Those 12 songs only scratched the surface of the studio time spent to come up with this hunk of plastic, and true to Rhino form, three discs were crammed full of alternate mixes, outtakes and other tests of fandom as part of a so-called Deluxe Edition in 2013. To mirror the original album, these include further spruced-up rejects from 1966 and more Nashville tracks by the itchy Nesmith. Some songs only heard on the reruns now appear in context, like the bafflingly popular “Steam Engine” and even their Kool-Aid commercial. While a few songs were repeated from other Deluxe Editions, at least the set stuck to the one period.

There would be one more album under the moniker, 1970’s exceedingly bland Changes. By now the “band” was down to Davy and Micky, and like good little soldiers they added vocals to a pile of generic tracks hurriedly recorded by people clearly inspired by the Partridge Family (as evidenced by the backing vocals). To ensure a connection to the past, they also dredged up a couple of tracks from a pre-Headquarters session, and let Micky include his own “Midnight Train” (which appears in a much more palatable demo elsewhere in the catalog). In all, a dull end to a career that had already ended.

The Monkees The Monkees Present (1969)—1½
1994 Rhino CD: same as 1969, plus 5 extra tracks
2013 Deluxe Edition: same as 1995, plus 68 extra tracks
The Monkees Changes (1970)—1
1994 Rhino CD: same as 1970, plus 3 extra tracks

Monkees 7: Instant Replay

Only a couple of months after the Head soundtrack was released, the Monkees trio defiantly put out their next real album, Instant Replay. While most of the songs came from the year’s worth of sessions that yielded the Head songs and The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, two of those were remakes of outtakes from 1966, and the remainder of the album consisted of actual 1966 recordings given new mixes.

Even though the TV show was over, a tie-in with their early days was the reliance on songs by the Boyce/Hart and Goffin/King songwriting teams. Such as it is, “Through The Looking Glass” and “Don’t Listen To Linda” sound much of a piece with “I Just Won’t Be The Same Without Her”—fluffy pop, and miles away from the experimentation that pushed their recent work towards rock. The tune that does rock is “Tear Drop City”, a carbon copy of “Last Train To Clarksville” but still fun.

Nez was the Monkee most likely to rock, but here on his stuff would be filtered through country music, having recorded some by himself in Nashville the year before. “Don’t Wait For Me” isn’t as overt as some of the other tracks from those sessions (which would surface soon enough); “While I Cry” was recorded earlier, and is the better song, right down to the unresolved end. “Me Without You” fits Davy’s music-hall tendencies, with a recurring vocal part that makes it a direct ripoff of “Your Mother Should Know”. “The Girl I Left Behind Me” is an elaborate composition given a suitably tearjerking delivery. (A more recent attempt appeared as a bonus on the Birds, Bees reissues; the one here is the 1966 recording.) “A Man Without A Dream” was a B-side of the time, but most startling is “You And I”, a somewhat nasty tune from his own pen and lead guitar from Neil Young.

And there was Micky. “Just A Game” is a decent tune, but the harpsichord dates it. And possibly because it could have gone nowhere else on the album, the mini-opera “Shorty Blackwell” gives us nearly six minutes of nasal duet with his sister as they voice the thoughts of his pet cat. Yes, you read that correctly.

Considering how much the remaining Monkees had going against them at this point, Instant Replay was still moderately successful chartwise—more so than it should have been. Despite the arbitrary nature of the songs, there are those who adore the album. Yet it seemed perverse for even Rhino to prepare a three-disc Deluxe Edition through its Handmade arm, following on from similar expansions. Along with the expected mono and stereo versions, B-sides and alternates, the set offers even more unreleased material from the year before, a whole pile of backing tracks, most of Nesmith’s Nashville sessions all together, and even some of the music for the 33⅓ Revolutions Per Monkee TV apocalypse—though sadly, not Peter’s Bach piece nor the “Listen To The Band” finale, his last performance with the group. When combined with the Birds, Bees Deluxe Edition, the placement of some of these tracks becomes extremely arbitrary. Still, it’s nice to have a few versions of the underrated single “Someday Man”, and the multiple alternate mixes of “Mommy And Daddy” and “Good Clean Fun” would lead the observer to think there wouldn’t be a bigtime rejig of The Monkees Present. This being Rhino, of course, makes such an assumption incorrect.

The Monkees Instant Replay (1969)—2
1995 Rhino CD: same as 1969, plus 7 extra tracks
2011 Deluxe Edition: same as 1995, plus 68 extra tracks

Monkees 6: Head

The Monkees’ feature film Head was designed to explode and obliterate their image, and on that level it was successful. Throughout its 85 minutes the Pre-Fab Four skewer their caricatures, get sucked into a giant vacuum cleaner, are trapped in a variety of boxes, get torn limb from limb, and even attempt suicide off a bridge. Despite having no real plot, it can be considered an extended version of the TV show, right down to the same lettering on the credits. But there are teenage musical interludes, just like on the show, and because it was the law, there was a soundtrack album.

Head can be considered the last real Monkees album, as it was the last to feature all four members for the better part of thirty years. However, it’s a stretch to call it a Monkees album at all, since the handful of actual songs are interspersed with incidental music, dialogue, and effects from the film (sometimes repeated), making for a very disjointed listening experience even if you had watched the film ahead of time.

Like said film, the album starts promisingly enough with a montage leading into the exquisite “Porpoise Song”, with its majestic psychedelic swirl, about something and nothing all at the same time. A spoken nursery rhyme parodies the “hey hey we’re the Monkees” theme song, before giving way to Mike’s “Circle Sky”. While it was performed live by the Monkees themselves for the movie, the studio version was recorded with session guys, and it’s a little tighter, as can be imagined.

Unfortunately, this is where the good part ends. “As We Go Along” is a Goffin/King composition chirped by Micky, while Davy gets to tap-dance all over “Daddy’s Song”, another uncomfortably personal Nilsson song. (To be fair, this sequence in the film is mesmerizing, provided you can ignore his mugging in the closeups.) Peter finally gets two songs on an album, but they’re the quasi-mystical “Can You Dig It?” (accompanied by an embarrassing sequence in the film featuring Micky as a sheik) and the fitting “Long Title: Do I Have To Do This All Over Again?”, both leftovers from the sessions for the album before. Neil Young’s buried in there somewhere, too.

Peter would leave the band soon after filming the band’s phenomenally hideous 33⅓ Revolutions Per Monkee TV spectacular, leaving the other three (and then, just two) to continue making albums and touring. It’s a shame that Head is the end of the line, considering the promise they showed only a year before. Still, Monkeemaniacs hold their entire catalog in high esteem, and likely are still drooling about Rhino’s Deluxe Edition, expanded to three CDs, and possibly the most elaborate re-packaging of seven songs that weren’t that good to begin with.

The Monkees Head (1968)—2½
1994 reissue CD: same as 1966, plus 6 extra tracks
2010 Deluxe Edition: same as 1994, plus 38 extra tracks

Monkees 5: The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees

The TV show was all but finished, but the Monkees still had the time and the clout to keep recording for albums. The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, which was released the month after the last episode aired, is incredibly disjointed, both in concept and history. Each of the members worked alone, and in increasingly opposite directions. And Peter, the one who loved being in a band most of all, isn’t heard anywhere, despite using the likes of Stephen Stills and Buddy Miles on his sessions.

Davy is prominent on the first side. “Dream World” has a decent rock backing, but is unfortunately dated by brass and strings. “We Were Made For Each Other” is more typical syrup with too much harpsichord. In between, “Auntie’s Municipal Court” is a simple three-chord country lope with inexplicable Nesmith lyrics to match the nonsensical title, but being sung by Micky, it’s not that far out at all. “Tapioca Tundra” is just plain odd, signaled by pointedly off-key whistling before escalating into another Nesmith attempt at poetry over a Latin beat. First heard as a B-side (where it belonged), it still managed to hit the top 40. “Daydream Believer”, recorded for the previous album but released as a single instead, finally appears, complete with the jokey slate opening. It’s still a great single, even if those trumpets do sound too much like the Partridge Family. Then there’s “Writing Wrongs”, which begins with a big studio sound anchored by a promising piano part, then takes a two-minute detour into a pointless jam over the same chord, with a couple of flatted-fifths thrown in at random for an attempt at jazz.

Side two offers a few carrots for longtime fans. “I’ll Be Back Upon My Feet” and “Valleri” had both been featured on the TV show, so new re-recordings are used here. Davy’s “The Poster” is a questionable rewrite of “Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite!”, but without the menace. Similarly, “P.O. Box 9847” uses Beatlesque production technique for a song written as a personal ad. Nez tries again to defy conventional record making with “Magnolia Simms”, which managed to predict “Honey Pie”, complete with surface noise, but McCartney wouldn’t have included a skipping or scratching effect, or put it only in one channel. Micky gets the last word with the anti-war “Zor And Zam”, which was also prominent in the last episode of the TV show, which he happened to direct.

Considering the disparate sounds here, it’s amazing that The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees was remotely good, or even successful. They were, however, able to choose from dozens of songs attempted throughout the sessions. (So much so that when Rhino released a limited deluxe expansion of the album, it stretched to three full CDs, including both the stereo and mono versions of the LP plus tons of alternates and outtakes, not least of which are a bunch of Mike’s countryish tunes, three versions of Peter’s mysterious “Merry-Go-Round” and FOUR stabs of his never-completed “Lady’s Baby”.) Sadly, there were even some songs recorded during the sessions that would have made the album better, but they were being held over for the soundtrack of their upcoming feature film.

The Monkees The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees (1968)—3
1994 reissue CD: same as 1968, plus 5 extra tracks
2010 Deluxe Edition: same as 1994, plus 71 extra tracks

Monkees 4: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.

The Monkees had managed to stay a viable commercial product even after the Summer of Love, which they embraced with nutty anarchy on TV. And having established their autonomy as a self-contained that could write, perform and record their own songs on Headquarters, what did they do? They started working as solo artists within the group context, before the Beatles even, augmenting their own sessions with handpicked professional musicians. From this anarchic setup came Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., helped by songs recently heard on the show as well as a couple of hit singles.

Mike dominates the proceedings on the album, beginning with the not-so-ambiguous “Salesman”. “The Door Into Summer” is a nice folky lope, with its fairy tale imagery and great high harmonies from Micky. He’d go further towards country with “What Am I Doing Hangin’ ‘Round”, which he didn’t write, nor are the Byrds playing on it. “Love Is Only Sleeping” simmers with a bit of psychedelia, while “Don’t Call On Me” predicts the MOR sound of 1968.

Despite Micky’s competent drumming on Headquarters, here he’s content to let somebody else handle it, and sing whatever’s given him. “Words” is a re-recording of a Boyce/Hart song from the first season, the lead vocals shared with Peter, who only otherwise appears on a spoken piece shortly before the phenomenal “Pleasant Valley Sunday”. (Mike’s playing that infectious riff, by the way.) Micky’s biggest contribution to the album is the debut of the Moog synthesizer, which chirps all over “Daily Nightly” up against his own histrionic vocal. He also added another, more musical embellishment to “Star Collector”.

Despite such strides, the band would always be seen as a teenybopper group. Truth be told, it wasn’t their own musicianship (or lack thereof) that denied them respect from their peers; rather, it was Davy. The songs he chose as his showpieces tended to be so corny they’d make Paul McCartney blush. “She Hangs Out” is a rerecording (again) of another leftover from the Kirshner days, but “Hard To Believe” came from the little guy’s own pen. “Cuddly Toy”, a Harry Nilsson composition, has something of a vaudeville approach, but at least all four Monkees play on it.

The occasional wince nonetheless, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. still qualifies as a “good” Monkees album, but the schizophrenia that would soon dominate their recording sessions has already begun to emerge. Each of the Rhino reissues was bolstered mostly by alternate mixes of the songs, with the only really welcome extra being Micky’s breathless James Brown-styled showpiece “Goin’ Down”, a contemporary B-side.

The Monkees Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. (1967)—3½
1995 reissue CD: same as 1967, plus 6 extra tracks
2007 Deluxe Edition: same as 1967, plus 25 extra tracks

Monkees 3: Headquarters

Following a successful tour of England, where they got to hang out with the real Fab Four, the Monkees managed to stage a coup, ousting Don Kirshner as supervisor of their music. Now they were determined to make their next album on their own, choosing the songs themselves and playing all the instruments. While it had all the potential of a massive train wreck, Headquarters turned out great, giving them the respect they felt they’d more than earned.

They didn’t just try to duplicate their on-screen image, either. While Micky proved to be a competent drummer, Mike expanded his expertise to learning pedal steel guitar. And Peter relinquished the bass duties to producer Chip Douglas, choosing instead to add a variety of tasteful keyboards throughout. (Davy, of course, played the hell of out his maracas.)

With a jokey count-in, “You Told Me” gallops in, complete with banjo, setting up what would soon be called country rock, continued on “I’ll Spend My Life With You” (a Tommy Boyce-Bobby Hart song, and an excellent choice). Their producer offered up “Forget That Girl”, Davy’s first vocal on the LP and a nice one. “Band 6” was probably not the best choice of a track to show off their instrumental prowess, but if you listen closely you can just hear Nesmith find his way through the Looney Toons theme. Another song first heard on the TV show, “You Just May Be The One”, is here given a better vocal and tighter all-around performance. “Shades Of Gray” is something of a serious song, splitting the vocal between Davy, Micky, and even Peter. And Davy does a tapdance routine on the still charming “I Can’t Get Her Off My Mind”.

Peter was definitely on a roll here, as “For Pete’s Sake” predicted the spirit of the Summer of Love, and was even tapped to be the closing theme of the TV show. Another Boyce-Hart song, the eerie “Mr. Webster”, takes a page from the Kinks, complete with surprise ending. Mike’s last and best contribution to the album proper is “Sunny Girlfriend”, so simple yet so catchy. As with side one, the middle position is taken by a novelty, in this case the superior round “Zilch”. The band gets to rock (and Micky gets to scat) on “No Time”, before the chilly suburban vibe of “Early Morning Blues And Greens”, a surprisingly cynical Davy vocal over Peter’s layered keyboards. Micky’s tympani drives “Randy Scouse Git”, a response to their British tour, as infectious as it is inscrutable.

In the tradition of the Beatles, no singles were released from the album, but those who bought the 45 of “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You” might have flipped it to experience “The Girl I Knew Somewhere”, their greatest song and performance. When Rhino released their expanded CD, however, an earlier take was included, along with other full band performances of lesser musical quality. The later Deluxe Edition did include the single, but unfortunately also gives too much attention to the pile of dreck that Davy, ever the company man, added vocals to in the last days before the Kirshner era ended.

These are most likely of interest only to the collectors who’d rued their exclusion from Headquarters Sessions, a bold step taken back at the turn of the century by Rhino’s Handmade division, which specialized in limited editions of albums that even Rhino geeks would consider extreme. Following in the pattern of the similar treatment of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds box, these three CDs follow the album’s (and the band’s) progression as the tracks developed from first takes to final mixes, with lots of time given to session outtakes and backing tracks, to demonstrate how well these guys actually managed to play together.

With that title available at hefty resale prices but also streaming, the album finally received a Super Deluxe Edition along the lines of the Monkees’ other megaboxes in the year of its 55th anniversary, albeit in ultra-limited quantities. This time compiler Andrew Sandoval attempted to tell the whole story, giving equal time to the tracks created without the foursome as well as those created with. The first disc is devoted to yet another new stereo mix of the album plus various singles and other completed tracks already known from reissues and compilations. Then we proceed chronologically, starting with the boys’ first attempts at a single, then going through a couple dozen backing tracks for the insipid songs Don Kirshner and Jeff Barry pushed. Even without vocals it’s staggering to think just how awful their third album could have been, as proven by the tracks Davy (and Micky, down the road) actually sang on. Halfway through the third disc the boys take over, with handpicked selections from the Sessions set alternating with previously unreleased takes, finally ending disc four with further mixes of some of the Jeff Barry tracks and two mixes of the TV theme song sung in Italian, which still sound like someone keeps bumping the turntable.

The Monkees Headquarters (1967)—4
1995 reissue CD: same as 1967, plus 6 extra tracks
2007 Deluxe Edition: same as 1994, plus 30 extra tracks
2022 Super Deluxe Edition: same as 2007, plus 65 extra tracks
The Monkees Headquarters Sessions (2000)—3

Monkees 2: More Of The Monkees

No matter what the actors themselves may have believed, the Monkees were a product first and foremost, and any responsible music organization in the mid-‘60s knew how essential it was to keep fresh merchandise on the shelves. So it was that, four months after the debut’s release and with half of a TV season still to be broadcast, More Of The Monkees was unleashed, to be undoubtedly snatched up by rabid teenyboppers.

Just as rabid, but for a different reason, was the band itself, who allegedly only heard of the album’s existence when they saw it advertised for sale. They hated the cover, and they especially hated the liner notes that gave all credit to the people behind the scenes, rather than the four boys being chased from hotel to stage to limo.

Their anger is a little misplaced, since it wasn’t like they hadn’t spent any time in the studio recording vocals for (and in Mike Nesmith’s case, writing and producing) a few albums’ worth of songs. A handful stretched back to the earliest sessions, while some were more recent, in search of their next hit single.

Still, despite the inclusion of some of those hits and TV favorites, there’s a distinct leftover feeling throughout the album. Peter finally gets to “sing” on “Your Auntie Grizelda”, but the absolute nadir is Davy’s wretched spoken performance on “The Day We Fall In Love”. (He pulled the same trick on the bridge of “Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)”, so obviously some genius thought it was a good idea.)

The inclusion of such head-scratchers makes it hard to fathom this is the same album that gave us “I’m A Believer” and “(I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone”. “Mary, Mary” had already been recorded by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, but one hidden highlight is “Sometime In The Morning”, a Goffin-King nugget delivered nicely by Micky.

More Of The Monkees hasn’t aged as well as the first album, with its reliance on fuzztone guitars and harpsichords. But it didn’t have to be good, it just had to sell, which it did, by the bucketful. (As with the debut, Rhino’s first CD reissue was only slightly expanded, while the Deluxe Edition is loaded with timely outtakes, TV hits and alternate versions. And just because they could, the inevitable Super Deluxe Edition added plenty more mixes of songs not good enough to make the album in the first place, plus ten songs from a January 1967 concert.)

The Monkees More Of The Monkees (1967)—3
1994 reissue CD: same as 1967, plus 5 extra tracks
2006 Deluxe Edition: same as 1994, plus 25 extra tracks
2017 Super Deluxe Edition: same as 1994, plus 74 extra tracks

Monkees 1: The Monkees

While there’s no denying that the Monkees were a manufactured pop group, what detractors seem to forget is that some of the music created in the process of fulfilling contractual obligations was pretty good. From the start the people behind the scenes gathered songs from already successful contemporary songwriters, and got to work creating the backing tracks using the cream of LA’s session musicians, the same people who’d been busy playing on records by the likes of Phil Spector, the Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Mamas & The Papas and countless others.

That’s not to suggest that The Monkees is a pop masterpiece; rather to consider just how awful the music written to order for a sitcom designed to capitalize on the Beatles and A Hard Day’s Night could have been. Instead, the producers found four guys who had more than a little charm, and decent singing voices. While some episodes of the TV show can be excruciating to watch today, the album provides a nice snapshot of the times.

Most of the singing is split between the two Monkees with acting experience, Micky Dolenz (who fit the role of the funny guy) and Davy Jones (resident British heartthrob and maraca shaker). Peter Tork (the dumb one who looked like Stephen Stills) didn’t have much to do besides gyrate and emote whilst pretending to play the bass, but in a foreshadowing of what was around the corner, Michael Nesmith (the serious musician, albeit with a ski cap) exerts a certain amount of power, writing and producing two country-influenced songs. One of those was a collaboration with Gerry Goffin and Carole King, who contributed other songs as well.

The bulk of the remainder were written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, a duo who’d slowly been making their way through the pop industry. What they came up with for the Monkees could have been performed by anyone of the time who’d been influenced by the Beatles. “Last Train To Clarksville” combines a great riff with layered harmonies over seventh chords, and a deserved #1 hit. “I Wanna Be Free” was also tried in an electric version for the TV show, but the acoustic album cut was slathered in strings for Davy to sing, in the footsteps of “Yesterday” and “As Tears Go By”. “Gonna Buy Me A Dog” is included in a jokey take that actually improved the song. “Let’s Dance On” manages to cram in several references to obsolete dance moves, and today sounds like a selection from That Thing You Do!

The Rhino label now owns the trademark to the Monkees name, and has never missed an opportunity to cash in on their investment. Their first expanded CD reissue of The Monkees added only a few tracks, but the later two-disc version included the album in both mono and stereo, with various alternate takes and songs that had been heard on the show, but not included on the album. To make things even more annoying for the collector, the eventual Super Deluxe Edition didn’t include all of the extras on each of the previous editions, choosing instead to load up one disc with session outtakes. Perhaps to balance those backing tracks with zero Monkee input, the third disc offers Davy’s 1965 solo album in mono and stereo, plus six early “Michael Blessing” tracks. Proceed with caution, or not.

The Monkees The Monkees (1966)—3
1994 reissue CD: same as 1966, plus 3 extra tracks
2006 Deluxe Edition: same as 1994, plus 25 extra tracks
2014 Super Deluxe Edition: same as 1966, plus 88 extra tracks