No music is more indelibly etched
in memory from my childhood than
the music from Elton John, The Beatles,
and The Monkees. For the first of these
I have my cousins to thank, and my dad
(for allowing me to order records from
his Columbia House club) but for my love
of The Beatles and The Monkees, I thank
my sister, who allowed me what must
have been hours at a stretch to play
records on her little portable suitcase
turntable on her bedroom floor, and of
my favorites were The Monkees,
More of The Monkees, and Pisces,
Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, LTD.
As much shit as The Monkees got
for not being a real band, dismissed
as a bunch of actors who were only
pretending to be musicians while
professional songwriters wrote and
performed their tunes, their t.v. show
and their records were massive hits,
and ultimately, The Monkees
would not be The Monkees without
the talents of these three young
Americans and this one lad from
Manchester, England. Nesmith and
Tork were actual musicians, by the way,
and if all Davy could do was look cute
and play the tambourine, he sure
did have a kick-ass voice for pop.
And Micky, who at first kind of faked
the drums, did eventually become
a certifiably competent drummer,
and his personality as a lead singer
was a key ingredient in the band’s
success on the screen and in their
recordings. Taken as a whole,
the music they played, and their
individualized contributions to it,
made for absolutely stellar records.
There’s not a single song on
the three albums that were the
creamy center of my childhood
cookie that I would skip, even the
goofiest of them, even the most
saccharine of Davy’s love songs;
even today as I listen again, I am
loving these records.
I swear up and down that Pisces,
Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones LTD
is a masterpiece of pop confection.
It is The Monkees’ Sgt. Pepper.
It is lively, experimental in places,
a joyous record from start to finish,
containing perhaps the greatest
ever ode or satire on suburban living:
“Pleasant Valley Sunday,”
and the interlude that precedes it,
the Peter Tork spoken word rap about
Peter Percival Patterson’s Pet Pig
named Porky, who, of course, loved pie.
Michael Nesmith’s contributions
to this record (“Salesman,” “The Door
Into Summer,” “Love Is Only Sleeping,”
“What Am I Doing Hangin’ Round,”
and “Don’t Call On Me”) are the best,
I think, of all of his songs, sung or
written, in the Monkees catalog.
Every tune on this album deserves
special recognition, but that would
take too long. If you are by some
freak accident a Monkee virgin,
start your journey with this record.
Unbeknownst to me until recently,
the Headquarters album preceded the
aforementioned favorite Monkee album.
It and one of the last of the 60’s output, The Birds,
The Bees, and The Monkees, were not albums
that I had ever heard from start to finish
until I bought this box set, even though I was
familiar with many of the tracks; the singles
and the tunes I had heard on a huge CD
greatest hits compendium, 4 discs wide,
which I no longer have. Listening to
Headquarters now, save for a few tracks,
feels mostly unfamiliar. Not bad, just
new. It is the first album on which the
Monkees claim to be, and are credited
to be, playing instruments on every track,
while other musicians, uncredited on
the liner notes by name, joined the session
at the full creative direction of the
American Fab Four. The songs here are
not nearly as strong as the songs on
the first two records, and definitely no
match for Pisces. . ., but it is typical of
what we expect from these guys: some
silliness, a lot of romance, a few rockers,
Michael Nesmith’s skill as a songwriter,
and the sweet intonations of Micky and
Davy’s lead vocals. Highlights: “Shades
of Gray,” “For Pete’s Sake,” and the closer,
“Randy Scouse Git.”
The opening track on The Birds, The Bees,
and The Monkees, “Dream World,” is totally
unfamiliar to me. Again, the album tunes
on these last late 60’s records didn’t get a
lot of traction, and if these two albums
weren’t part of your Monkees upbringing,
they just feel a little bit warmed over and
done with. Certain instrumental things are
completely familiar, certain riffs, feels and
instruments, which makes it seem like they
are struggling to find new ideas, that is,
until we get to the fifth track on side one,
“Daydream Believer,” which puts the band
in classic Monkees form. What a lovely
pop song. Inescapably hook laden, and
sweet. Everything else on this record
pales by comparison. The songs pale,
but also the recording: this last record
does not sound as good as even the debut.
But I’ve suspected often, and I think I’ve
said this before about other “older” recordings
that I’ve picked up later in life, that my response
to them might be totally different now
if I had heard them when I heard all those
other records as a child. That’s one angle.
The other angle is that I’m just correct in
my assessment. It’s not only nostalgia
that keeps me loving those first three
records; they are simply better, objectively so.
I completely lose track and interest in
The Monkees all through their attempts
in the 70’s, the 80’s, and the 90’s, in
various incomplete configurations, to
revitalize the band; I even missed the
1996 record Justus, which, for the first
time, reunited all four members of the
group. As I listen to all of this Monkee
business, my curiosity about that record
is peaked. When it came out, I don’t
even think I was aware of its release.
Davy Jones dies suddenly in 2012 at 66
from a heart attack, and four years
later, 20 years after their last effort,
in tribute to Davy and maybe
as well because they could all feel
the clock ticking, Micky, Peter, and Mike
reunited one more time to produce
(I think) two of the best records ever by
The Monkees, Good Times and Christmas Party.
Good Times combines some old unreleased
material, like the opening gem collaboration
with Harry Nillson or the lost Davy Jones
lead vocal on “Love to Love, with brand new
songs and squeaky clean new recordings.
Here’s where it gets super exciting for me,
and where my love for The Monkees is once
and for all legitimized: four of my musical
heroes are writing songs for this album.
Andy Partridge from XTC writes “You Bring
The Summer,” Rivers Cuomo from Weezer
writes “She Makes Me Laugh,” Benjamin
Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie writes
“Me & Magdalena,” Adam Schlessinger (RIP)
from Fountains of Wayne writes “Our Own
World,” and he also engineers, mixes, and
produces the album. This is a recipe for an
album that Michael Jarmer will love, and
I thank them profusely for it. Not a
clunker on the whole album. And it’s followed
by an E.P. of bonus tracks that are nearly
as good, including another one from Andy
Partridge! Squee! And the Christmas Party
album that comes out three years later
has been for the last seven years my favorite
holiday record. In the years after these two
brilliant albums and some final touring,
we lose both Michael Nesmith and Peter
Tork. Micky Dolenz is our last remaining
Monkee, and, happily, he’s still carrying the torch.
Notes on the vinyl editions: After buying those first three pivotal albums on CD a number of decades ago now, I recently, within the last ten years or so, picked up the Rhino box set of the first five albums remastered in their original mono mixes and pressed on to heavyweight vinyl. I used to wonder why anyone would prefer a mono mix as opposed to a stereo mix. In these cases, of rock albums released in the 60’s, albums were most often mixed this way, optimized, I suppose, for radio broadcast, while stereo on the radio was still new-fangled, as was the home hi-fi. When stereo took hold, I assume, most of these albums were remixed for the home stereo consumer, and those are the versions that became the most desired ones, right, because stereophonic listening was inherently better than monophonic. Granted, they were weird stereo mixes. Most everything was panned hard left or right, so by turning the balance left or right on your stereo receiver, you could make instruments completely disappear. This was fun. I don’t know what they were thinking when they did these mixes. Maybe, they thought the hard pan approximated listening to musicians in a room: the drums are over there, but the tambourine guy is over there, while the bass player is standing over there with the drummer, and the guitar player and the keyboardist are over here with the singers. Or wait, the lead singer is over here, but the background vocalists are over there. Quite silly. It’s as if these mixing engineers had never listened to a band playing music in a room before. At any rate, long story short, mono mixes have become popular with some listeners because they are, first, the original format, but secondly, because they sound fuller, more cohesive, more like a band playing music in a room. That’s my little exegesis on mono recordings.
Here are the records in the box by Rhino Records, The Monkees in Mono, released in 2014 from the original 1966, 1967, and 1968 albums (that’s right, five albums in three years) on 180 gram black vinyl, and the other titles in my Monkees collection. But first, a confession on the listening: I listened to every single one of the following albums except Christmas Party. I cannot bring myself to listen to holiday music in the summer! But rest assured, I spin that baby every year in December at least a few times:
- The Monkees, 1966
- More of The Monkees, 1967
- Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, LTD., 1967
- The Monkees’ Headquarters, 1967
- The Birds, The Bees, and The Monkees, 1968
- Good Times, Rhino Records, 2016,
- Good Times Plus, Rhino Records, 2016, E.P. (four bonus tracks from Good Times) on translucent pink with red swirl, 10″ vinyl.
- Christmas Party, Rhino Records, 2019, opaque red vinyl.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
michael jarmer 