The Monkees: Classic or Dud?

"Daddy's Song", "Star Collector", "Here Comes Tomorrow", "Early Morning Blues & Greens", "Daydream Believer" all fabulous, plus his persona on the TV programme was remarkably non-sickening. Plus, how strange was it that he had an actual charting single a full year before the Monkees debut?

RIP Davy

http://open.spotify.com/track/0tnt3gxEkh3cK3zO95is7f

love this song so much

http://open.spotify.com/track/49EoBTPBSmPUeRmPTJsIBX

this one, too

Admittedly finding good Dayy songs is not easy, but they are there. See "You an I" upthread.

Always loved "Shades of Gray", unique combination of Davy + Peter's voices ... must admit Peter's vocals make me well up on that one (bit like Florian Schneider's on "Radioland")

There are a ton of good Davy songs!

There's a lot of bad ones too, his good/bad ratio is the lowest overall

Man, thought of another one i really love: "Someday Man"!

Man, thought of another one i really love: "Someday Man"!

well, with such a classic song tis to be expected.

then again i prefer the original paul williams version of that

Really, the most amazing thing about The Monkees to me is how completely distinctive their voices were, yet how well they blended and harmonized with each other.

The only 'famous' person to live in the village where I grew up. Well the only one where it seems kind of cool that he lived there too. Ben Elton not so much.

And he was in my favourite joke in a Monkees ep.
Man on horseback: Water my horse!
Davy Jones: I'm not a stable boy!
Man on horseback: I don't care about your mental health, water my horse!

http://open.spotify.com/user/djperry1973/playlist/1On2wqSUL6d5g3QVuBafYo

All of the Monkees singles according to Wikipedia

RIP. My favorite song atm is "Cuddly Toy".

I discovered the Monkees when I was first getting into the Beatles and my little brothers had gotten into them too but had moved on to other groups from the era. They had a few VHS tapes of the shows and my mom still had a bunch of old Monkees LPs. I got the "Head" movie because my idol Frank Zappa was in it.

Oh to live in the 60s, when even 'manufactured' pop acts rocked and were trippy.

^^^ lookit Jann Wenner!

listening to all of these songs just reminded me of how much I love "Porpoise Song"; Davy's doubling on the lead-in to the chorus and his harmony line always jumped out at me as a special detail of that song that elevated it

Didn't realize until recently that "Porpoise Song" was written by Carole King!

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/01/opinion/browne-davy-jones/index.html

A mostly good article that has a spectacular implosion at the end.

"Davy Jones didn't die for our integrity sins, but the Monkees' reputation has suffered plenty for them."

say wha?

haha I kind of skipped over that sentence because of how clumsy it is

Finding out that I quite like Instant Replay and The Monkees Present. Lots of Boyce and Hart, lots of Nesmith, the Davy stuff with Bill Chadwick, Micky's "Little Girl" - nice records on the whole. I never listened to them before - I guess because I just looked at the covers and figured they were just product coming from a band on its way out. The covers didn't suggest anything to me beyond that. Now I see what they are, though. They're a band that treated albums as collections of whatever was around that would come out every six months or so with artwork that was more like commercial design (in a good way - both of those covers are quite attractive) than fine art or whatever most rock record covers were at the time. I really like this model - a band that's working and that you can really follow. They also toured in '69 and made TV appearances and stuff.

Yeah, I sort of forget how many Monkees records there were. Up through The Monkees Present is eight LPs between 1966 and 1969! Plus two seasons of a TV show, a feature film, and of course touring and all that. Pretty super intense version of music as a gigging job, without any of the street cred that comes with being a "proper rock band" etc. You can see why Tork bailed.

Their run on the Billboard album chart for '66-'67 is amazing. The Monkees hits #1 on Nov. 12/66, about two months after its release. It stays there for 13 weeks, until it's replaced by More of the Monkees for the next 18 weeks--31 straight weeks at #1. Herb Alpert takes over for a week, and then Headquarters becomes their third #1 album in seven months. It only stays there for a week, giving way to Sgt. Pepper's by a band many dub as "the new Monkees."

is there a good thorough monkees anthology i should pick up that doesn't have, like, EVERYTHING but hits most of the high spots, incl. album tracks? or should i just put that together myself?

I was talking to a few baby boomers about The Monkees and I'm pretty surprised that "I hate them cos they're fakes" is still something people hold against them. Are you really upset that Glen Campbell or Neil Young is playing guitar rather than Michael Nesmith? That a member of The Wrecking Crew is playing drums rather than Micky Dolenz? That they're singing songs by Harry Nilsson and Carol King?

which is why boomers are the fucking worst ppl in human history

awww

in the aggregate
I mean just scientifically

Didn't realize until recently that "Porpoise Song" was written by Carole King!

http://soundcloud.com/almostbetterthansilence/monkees-demos-porpoise-song

covers of the songs king wrote/co-wrote in the 66-69 period are my favorite thing ever

Wow that is awesome.

I was talking to a few baby boomers about The Monkees and I'm pretty surprised that "I hate them cos they're fakes" is still something people hold against them. Are you really upset that Glen Campbell or Neil Young is playing guitar rather than Michael Nesmith? That a member of The Wrecking Crew is playing drums rather than Micky Dolenz? That they're singing songs by Harry Nilsson and Carol King?

Wow, real vintage first-world problems these. Even some critics are still towing the old party line. For the longest time, the AMG Monkees bio was by Richie Unterberger, who was mildly condescending towards the band up until the section on the the revival, where he gets nastier. I remember in particular his swipes at Rhino for reissuing the catalog with something along the lines of "the sensitivity one associates with Charlie Parker outtakes". The bio has been replaced, but they still have his Missing Links reviews, all of which reach a "some nice stuff, but really who cares?" conclusion.

I also recall a review in one of the old AMG books of a Box Tops comp by another writer that had several Monkee disses thrown in.

holy crap, that King demo! that's great!

re: compilations - I came in through the double-LP "Then & Now" best-of from the 80s. It has basically all you need if you only want one Monkees thing in your collection, although of course I can quibble over alarming omissions, especially since it does favor the singles or would-be singles and thus leaves out things like "Your Auntie Grizelda" which were in there to sustain their wacky-antics vibe from the show but are also totally awesome in their own right. There might be better comps now...

This is my favorite Davy lead on a Monkees song, a B-side between Instant Replay and Presents:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-lyW33lddU

Friend and ilxor J0seph McC0mbs noted this was Paul Williams' first major songwriting credit.

(Sorry the bad quality and flanging.)

Lol you weren't kidding about Unterberger:

Missing Links, Vol. 2

Nineteen rare and unreleased tracks that, like the rest of the Monkees' output, ranges from excellent to insufferable, with plenty of mediocre material between. The highlights are the sprightly pop-rocker "All the King's Horses" (a 1966 Mike Nesmith original) and alternate versions of two of the group's best singles, "Words" and "Valleri." These alternate takes aren't exactly better, but they are definitely different and less elaborately produced. Most of the rest is either lightweight 1966 pop/rock or weedy 1968 Mike Nesmith country-rock tunes that foreshadow his solo work; several cuts are alternate versions of songs that were hardly notable efforts in the first place. An exception is the live 1968 recording of the unusually forceful Nesmith original "Circle Sky," which was featured in their movie Head (although a studio version was substituted on the actual soundtrack album). Odds and ends like an instrumental banjo piece by Peter Tork and a Spanish Christmas carol are pleasant but inessential. A thoughtfully compiled CD, it nonetheless really gives this group more respect than they're due by treating these artifacts with such importance.

unterberger is such a narrow little shit

is there a good thorough monkees anthology i should pick up that doesn't have, like, EVERYTHING but hits most of the high spots, incl. album tracks? or should i just put that together myself?

Amateurist I liked this comp when I bought it about 10 yeras ago:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Definitive-Monkees-Limited-Edition/dp/B000059QC0/ref=sr_1_9?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1330854443&sr=1-9

But, you know, the first five albums are available for eleven quid in the uk

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Original-Album-Series-The-Monkees/dp/B003097AAQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1330854443&sr=1-1

That King demo is so wonderfully spooky. Thanks for posting that.

; )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxBM9IiIEDY&feature=related

Pretty sure I found out about this song from ILX. Davy's channeling of Grace Slick is super spooky (0:43).

^^^ that's Mickey.

holy shit re: the Carole King demo

Changes is pretty good, too, if you like things like Kasenetz/Katz records or the Archies. It's Jeff Barry, Andy Kim, and Bobby Bloom - obviously, those guys bring a lot to the table. Davy didn't like it apparently. He seems to have gotten himself into an even more difficult situation with his contract with Bell afterwards, although I haven't heard those records (except for "Girl," obviously!).

Peter Tork piece.

that is excellent

Avoid the comments section, as per usual..

I think this should be the case for ANY article online, unless you really want to stoke any feelings of misanthropy.

It was a really nice story.

David came bouncing over to me and yelled above the volume, "WE'RE GONNA FORM A GROUP!"

Love this.

and this:

http://images.channeladvisor.com/Sell/SSProfiles/12000635/Images/113/081227982805.jpg

holy shit re: the Carole King demo

― Vaseline MEN AMAZING JOURNEY (DJP), Monday, March 5, 2012 11:56 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i have two CDs of king demos, they are ace.

I have not watched the sitcom in close to 40 years -- is it amusing? Less or more surreal than Green Acres?