THE MONKEES DISCOGRAPHY
AND CAREER OVERVIEW
1966: The Monkees (October, 1966). 1967: More of the Monkees (Jan. 10, 1967) * Headquarters (May 22, 1967) * Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, Ltd. (Nov. 14. 1967). 1968: The Birds, the Bees and the Monkees (April, 1968) * Head. 1969: Instant Replay (Feb. 1969) * Greatest Hits (June, 1969) * The Monkees Present Mickey, Davy and Michael (11-69). 1970: Changes (May, 1970). 1987: Missing Links * Live 1967 * Pool It! 1990: Missing Links, Volume 2. 1991: Listen to the Band.
There are good Monkee traits: the highs of nice-guy ambiance; the pleasantness of funny joke TV characters; the good sense in well-intentioned musicians pushing lightly against corporate culture; and the beauty of a few nice songs. If you are a popster, the best traits the Monkees display is perhaps all you need.
As musicians they never really came into their own (leaving aside Michael Nesmith's solo career for the moment). There are no earth-shaking Nesmith guitar parts, no classic Mickey drum breaks (some good jokes though), nothing brilliant to speak of from Peter Tork (my favorite when I was a kid) regarding whatever it was he did with the Monkees. And Davy. Poor Davy. He and Tork offered crashing meteors of song schmaltz and strident, exploding, novelty-tune bombs. Schmaltz and borscht, two traits that sixties' rockers were trying to eradicate, thrive among the Monkees' artifacts. Listening to their records one appreciates the better sense of mediocrity found elsewhere. The Monkees' art is mutated and diluted by show-biz caricature. Mickey and his child-star smile and goof. Davy and his Olde English sentimentality. Michael and his hat, his laid back demeanor, his preference for what would later be called alternative country music. Tork and his ... whatever it was he had. As faux-Beatles, they could have been a little worse. Or they could have been a lot better. The Monkees, in many wars, are footnotes to Goffin/King, Neil Diamond and Harry Nilsson, though perhaps part of the actual text when it comes to Boyce and Hart.
We met the Monkees on their debut album in Oct. 1966. The album is produced by Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart, Jack Keller and Mike Nesmith (Nesmith had a track record as a successful songwriter and was allowed to work on his own tunes). Boyce-Hart pop was old fashioned, tune-smithy, with a light pop aversion to strong rock, r&b, and blues overtones. The debut album is typified by their little-more-than-pleasant "Monkees Theme" and their sappy/novelty tendencies on "I Wanna Be Free," "Let's Dance On," "Gonna Buy Me a Dog" and "This Just Doesn't Seem to Be My Day." They score on "Last Train to Clarksville" with lively harmony singing and beefy, Beatle-esque, arpeggio-hook, guitar lines. Carole King and Goffin shore up things with their usual expertise on "Take a Giant Step" and "Sweet Young Thing." "Saturday's Child" is a good David Gates contribution. Throughout, the Monkees are just voices - Mickey has a sweet upper end going to falsetto. The result is an inconsistent, uninspired template which would repeat itself to similar effect throughout their career.
More of the Monkees becomes a slightly different corporate affair as several songwriters take over producing chores on their own songwriting contributions. Boyce and Hart aren't as prevalent, but the replacements - Neil Sedaka, Carole Bayer and Jeff Barry - are Boyce-Hart facsimiles. "When Love Comes Knockin', "Hold on Girl," "Your Auntie Grizelda," "Laugh," and "Day We Fell in Love" represent the disembodied featherweight side of the Monkees. Nesmith's tunes - "Mary, Mary" (done spectacularly by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band) and "Kind of Girl I Could Love" - are uninspired efforts. Boyce and Hart score big with "Steppin' Stone," based on rock moves from two years earlier. Goffin-King and Neil Diamond spike things up a bit, but there is markedly no improvement over the first album. The Monkees weren't a band like, say, the Move or the Searchers. The Monkees never became stylistically meaningful. Individual style is left to session players. Band identity has no true soul.
In August, 1967 the Monkees recorded tracks which would be released in 1987 as Live 1967. It's a rhythm heavy and murky affair which suggests the band wasn't a competent live unit. And Colgems must not have been too interested in recording them properly: the sound is awful. The average mid-to-late Sixties' live rock album is full of surprises. Live Monkees is a joke ("Don't pick it Mike, it'll get infected").
Mike, Davy, Peter and Micky wished to be taken seriously, but their aim was very low. The late '67 Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn and Jones, Ltd. has the guitar parts handled by the Monkees, but what results is louder bass playing by Chip Taylor and keyboard-orientated arrangements mostly handled by Chip Taylor and Bill Martin. The guitar parts aren't as vivacious as the earlier efforts by various session men. The usual results accrue. The bad: "She Hangs Out," "Don't Call on Me." The ugly: "Hard to Believe," "Daily Nightly." Boyce and Hart don't quite cut it with the overwrought "Words." What's good? Goffin-King with "Star Collector" and the splendid "Pleasant Valley Sunday." Mickey's beautiful voice and sophisticated demeanor is perfect for Harry Nilsson's mean-spirited piece of subversive fluff called "Cuddly Toy." Nesmith pursues his neo-folk-rock holy grail and tips the album towards an interesting direction, but the album is only marginally likable.
The Birds, the Bees and the Monkees is an ineffective swan song - though the records would go on. Peter Tork is gone (yea?), but that just means more Davy (booooo!!!). Mickey fades into the wood-work with exception of the camp classic "Zor and Zam;" and Mike delivers four fairly lengthy tunes that have a dull folk sheen wedded to nearly identical and vaguely understandable lyrics. The failure of the Monkess as a band united is typified in the credits which thank "the many talented musicians who performed with us and under our supervision on this album" and then lists the "musical supervisor" Lester Sill, and the arrangers - Shorty Rogers and Don McGinnis. Boyce and Hart's "Valleri" offers the unlikely conjunction of flamenco guitar, Las Vegas horns, and another rip-off of garage rock from a few years back. It's the highlight of the album. It is tunes like "Valleri" which are pulled off of various Monkees' albums and filed together which give a fraudulent illusion of competence, inspiration and consistency. But the Monkees, for all their low-key charm, were little more than a pleasant figment of corporate pop imagination.
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