The Monkees were the first band I fell in love with, but it was not the big hits that caught my attention. It was the group's pervasive weirdness, which tends to get steamrolled in discussions of how cute, sweet, bubblegum, and ersatz they were. If The Monkees were the unadventurous, pre-fab, teeny-bopper bait they'd been accused of being for much of their career, I would never have paid them much mind. But that image is bullshit, although it does seemingly hold true for some of the songs that appear down at the bottom of this list, which is limited to their first-phase work (I refuse to ever listen to Pool It, if only out of respect for the band).
These are very personal choices, hence the title of this post, and I'll do my best to express my reasoning, which will likely cause Believers to smash a piano with a sledgehammer while Nes, dressed as Zappa, conducts.
Here they come...
161. The Day We Fall in Love
Thirteen years ago, I flirted with a series called "Tales from the Psychobabble Search Engine Terms," in which I analyzed a couple of weird terms readers used to find a Psychobabble post on the Internet before completely losing interest in the idea. One of these terms was "the worst monkees song." My choice back then remains the same as it does today, so I'll just laze out at the top of this very looooong list by quoting myself from 2011:
160. Ladies Aid Society
In the same old post I referenced above, I also discussed the second worst Monkees song, and I think that selection holds up as well as the song in question most definitely does not. Said I in 2011: "Culled from sessions for More of the Monkees, this piece of bubblegum trash nearly sinks an album of relatively sophisticated music. Late in their career, the guys fully developed and honed their musical personalities: Mike Nesmith, with his assertive country-rock, Micky Dolenz, with his affinity for lounge jazz and avant weirdness, and even Davy Jones, whose adult-contemporary pop confections were finally truly fit for adult consumption. Sadly, none of these musical directions resembled The Monkees’ sound from when they were actually selling records, so The Powers That Be at Colgems records performed an archival dig that resulted in the worst song tacked onto Present: the truly awful 'Ladies Aid Society', as flaccid a protest against officious moralizers as you’re likely to hear." I should have also mentioned the vile chorus of sub-Monty Python fake "little old ladies" that screech the chorus.
159. We Were Made for Each Other
Side A of The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees is the most subversively programmed run of songs in the Monkees' discography. Cute Davy songs are shuffled with Mike's weirdest experiments. However, only one of Davy's songs is outright bad, the simpering "We Were Made for Each Other". The string arrangement is the most cloying on any Monkees recording and the chorus is the worst kind of relentless.
Chip Douglas, who produced The Monkees' two best albums with tremendous taste, produced a backing track for "We Were Made for Each Other" in the established, jangly Monkees style that is surely preferable to the overproduced version that was officially released in '68, but I doubt that anything truly exceptional could be made of Carole Bayer and George Fischoff's sappy, sappy song. The blow of having to hear this on Birds, Bees is somewhat cushioned by the fabulous Nes-songs that sandwich it.
158. All Alone in the Dark
During their original phase, The Monkees went out with that sound you hear when you let the last few gasps of air out of a balloon or eat too much Taco Bell. Despite a few good songs and a couple of very good ones, the Mike-and-Peter-free Changes is a bad album, and its worst crime finds the amazingly versatile Micky Dolenz using the least appealing voice in his seemingly bottomless bag of voices. He skitters up into an eardrum-piercing falsetto for a cornball song that brings to mind soap bubbles floating over the set of The Lawrence Welk Show. Producer Jeff Barry's decision to include a kazoo solo is proof that he hates you.
157. Teeny Tiny Gnome (actually, "Skipping Stones")
The definitive Monkees songsmiths, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, had a pretty sweet deal selecting and producing songs for the first Monkees album, but according to legend, they got shit-canned after coaxing Davy and Micky into singing garbage like their own "Ladies Aid Society" and "Skipping Stones". I've already discussed the former, so let's never think about it again. The latter is a floppy attempt to aim as young as possible for the Monkees' potential audience. "Skipping Stones" is an unbearably cute pop nursery rhyme for drooling toddlers too young for Pink Floyd or Tomorrow's superior songs about wee mythical creatures.
Fans in the sixties were graciously spared this crap, but it was included on the first Monkees outtakes comp, Missing Links, in 1987 as "Teeny Tiny Gnome", a horridly twee title that at least gives you a hint of the awfulness awaiting you. You really don't know what you're getting with something called "Skipping Stones".
156. I Never Thought It Peculiar
Somehow the final song on Changes has developed a sort of cult appeal over the years, and it even found a place on the Music Box box set in 2001. Don't be fooled by cloudy-headed revisionism. "I Never Thought It Peculiar" is hippity-hoppity, cutesy-pie garbage, although like "Teeny Tiny Gnome", it does have a semi-cool distorted guitar solo, which only makes me wish it wasn't wasted on such hopelessly corny fare. Christ, this song is so corny.
155. I Didn't Know You Had It In You, Sally, You're a Real Ball of Fire
I'd been aware of this song title ever since I saw it listed in the sessionography of Ed Finn and T. Bone's The Monkees Scrapbook in 1986. Yet, it never found a place on any of the Missing Links comps, deluxe box sets, or expanded CDs released in the twentieth century. What gives? I'll tell you what gives...it stinks. When "I Didn't Know You Had It In You, Sally, You're a Real Ball of Fire" finally appeared on an exclusive vinyl single in 2007, we were faced with the harsh reality that Denny Randell and Sandy Linzer's song is a cornball old-timey soft shoe that Micky sings in an annoyingly over-affected high register. Hey, wasn't this the songwriting team behind "The Day We Fall in Love"? Take the bench, guys!
154. Penny Music
More old-timey terribleness is in store with this cheesy stab at conjuring a sort of Dickensian mood of cheerful busking. Perhaps this was an attempt to capitalize on Davy's celebrated role as the Artful Dodger in Oliver or a symptom of his determination to make "Broadway Rock" a term that someone other than he might use. Whatever it is, it sucks. (Sorry, folks...I swear I love The Monkees, which will become pathetically clear soon enough. But honestly, some of this stuff is just objectively awful).
153. If I Learned to Play the Violin
After The Monkees won the right to record their own music in early 1967, Don Kirshner lured Davy into the studio to cut some vocals the old fashioned way with Jeff Barry producing. Was it spite? Desperation? Sure. But fetid crap like this highlighted just how out of touch Kirshner was, although it would take actually violating an agreement to oust him from The Monkees' story for good (more on that later). Really, though, it should not have taken anything more than a quick listen to this rotten bubblegum melodrama.
152. Lady Jane
Changes should have been the last word on The Monkees' unfortunate stint as a duo. But they still owed one more single to Colgems, so in 1971, one final Monkees 45 was plopped into shops with all due fanfare, which was zero fanfare. The B-side was particularly terrible, an infuriatingly repetitious funk verse that spooled forth limply with a palpable "Can we please just get this over with already?!?!" vibe. The one interesting thing about the single is that Davy and Micky share vocals on both sides, possibly because neither guy wanted to be accused of being the lead singer on "Do It in the Name of Love" or "Lady Jane". Yuck.
151. Rosemarie
More funk junk. The Monkees' biggest ringer was also the least prolific member of the band. Unlike Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith, and Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz didn't seem overly interested in doing a lot of writing or producing after Chip Douglas left the fold. However, whenever he did, he always turned out something highly unusual. Unfortunately, the missing link "Rosemarie" is mostly unusual for how strained his usually velvety voice sounds and how nonsensical his lyrics are.
150. It's Got to Be Love
Okay, we're starting to transition from terrible to merely bad. That's progress! This one from Changes is corny but not quite bad enough to be unlistenable... nor is it interesting enough to comment further on.
149. You Can't Tie a Mustang Down
The Powers That Be often put ballads in Davy's mouth to capitalize on his heart-throb status, but he usually sounded best when he got more upbeat material to belt. His work on this chugging, bluesy rocker was certainly preferable to what he did with "If I Learned to Play the Violin", but the song simply isn't good. It has no melody, the lyrics don't scan well, and Davy seems unsure of how to deliver Jeff Barry's terrible "Hey, baby, you gotta let me be me!" lyrics.
148. You're So Good
This is another rocker that never finds a groove. Micky seems as unsure of how to sing Robert Stone's dumb metaphors as Davy was when voicing Jeff Barry's. Cut during sessions for The Monkees Present, "You're So Good" was mercifully left off that album...although it still would have been a better inclusion than "Ladies Aid Society".
147. Storybook of You
Following a great orchestrated introduction that may have been Boyce and Hart's answer to "California Girls", "Storybook of You" settles into its destiny as a mediocre outtake with a wavering vocal from Davy and an overproduced finale that stomps the elegance of the song's intro into the dirt.
146. War Games
Marching beats and rock and roll are not a good match. This serious contender for the Head soundtrack ("serious" in the sense that the song takes itself really, really seriously and not because it was seriously considered for inclusion among The Monkees' most consistently excellent assortment of songs) is arthritic, with lyrical good intentions that would have benefitted a lot from a healthy dose of subtlety.
145. I Wanna Be Free
Controversial choice number one! "I Wanna Be Free" is a stone classic that was selected for many a Monkees greatest hits-type collection. It's Davy in intimate "I'm gonna whisper in your ear, girl" mode. It's one of those unabashed "Yesterday" inspired arrangements of guitar and strings, like "As Tears Go By". The weepy vocals and derivative arrangement do no favors to Boyce and Hart's song, which had enough potential to appear in a totally different arrangement good enough to make this the only song that appears on this list twice. This version is sappiness and wimpiness incarnate.
144. It's Nice to Be with You
Another sappy Davy vocal, another sappy lyric, but this B-side at least has a few interesting semi-tone chord changes that give it a somewhat disorienting flavor during the bridge. That's really the only reason it isn't sitting right next to the very similar "We Were Made for Each Other" at the nether regions of this list.
143. Do You Feel It Too?
Too peppy to be a ballad, too wimpy to be a rocker, "Do You Feel It Too?" is neither fish nor fowl, but it's harmlessly hooky enough to sit on the sunny side of foul. I guess that's something?
142. Do It In the Name of Love
The A-side of The Monkees' final contractual obligation single was certainly better than its inchoate B-side, but this is not how fans want to remember The Monkees. This is how Jann Wenner, and everyone else who thought they were super-cool for hating The Monkees, wants to remember The Monkees. "Do It In the Name of Love" sounds like it should play out while werewolf-mask-wearing Mr. Witherspoon chases Scooby Doo. Micky and Davy were the guys who gave the world "Porpoise Song", damn it! Have some respect and bury this crap in a landfill.
141. Band 6
This snippet of Mike Nesmith attempting to play the Looney Tunes theme on pedal steel and failing ridiculously marks another transition in this list. All of the songs leading to this point are songs I'd like to hear less than this 41 seconds of non-music. Now things are going to go from bad to "meh." More progress!
140. Changes
Like "War Games", "Changes" was likely intended for the Head film, which was originally supposed to be called Changes. Like "War Games", this song is unworthy of Bob Rafelson's venomous avant garde musical eulogizing the Monkees phenomenon, but at least it has a groove that Davy manages to find his way into. Not audaciously bad, just utterly generic.
139. Acapulco Sun
This dopey "south of the border" jaunt is too mindless to be good, and the keening "la la las" are like a syrup suppository, but "Acapulco Sun" is catchy enough, and its cod-Latin feel is a unique vibe in The Monkee's catalog. It earns a C-.
138. I'll Be True to You
A potentially appalling Davy Jones ballad see-saws between the bad and the okay, mostly without tumbling too far into either territory. It reminds me a bit of The Beatles' version of "Till There Was You", a track I never cared for. I actually like this Monkees song better. It has a touch of the Mersey Beat sound, possibly a vestige of the original version by The Hollies. The bit where Davy starts talking a la Elvis in "Are You Lonesome Tonight" goes too far though.
137. The Poster
Davy listens to The Beatles' nightmarish trip to the fairground on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and writes his own circus song. "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" this is not. It's a cheeseball organ and a mindless lyric aimed at little kiddies as assuredly as "Teeny Tiny Gnome" was, but at least "The Poster" has a fairly engaging groove and some nice bass/drums interplay. It's also mercifully brief, and as we've already seen, there is a far worse crime on The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees than this one.
136. Ditty Diego
Like "Band 6", this isn't quite a song. It's a rancid remake of the original "(Theme From) The Monkees" that takes a cold, cynical gaze at all of the nasty barbs aimed at The Monkees during their first three years and absorbs them like a monster that feeds on bad vibes. Big surprise that Jack Nicholson wrote it! It's not enjoyable music, but "Ditty Diego" is an important item of Monkees lore. By the way, "diego" is Spanish for "supplanter" or "interloper." Nicholson left no cynical stone unturned.
135. Hollywood
Mike Nesmith finally makes his first appearance, mostly because I think he's awesome and he rarely put a wrong foot forward while in The Monkees as far as I'm concerned. And his Monkees-era version of "Hollywood" is not bad, it just suffers in comparison to the far weirder version he recorded for his first album with his post-Monkees First National Band. Like "War Games", this first pass suffers from a marching drum beat that has no place in rock and roll and not much of a place in country music. This is a generic recording that will be bettered after a good hard rethink.
134. (Theme From) The Monkees
Generally speaking, TV theme songs are not good. They may spark nostalgia and happy memories of watching Gilligan's Island or I Dream of Jeannie or some other garbage, but they're usually more like advertising jingles than actual music. That's the problem with one of The Monkees' most recognizable songs. The theme from their television show is catchier and harder rocking than the average TV theme, but listening to it in the context of a record instead of an episode of their sitcom is still a bit too much like putting "The Ballad of Gilligan's Island" or "Byyyyyy Mennen" on the turntable. Next!
133. Shake 'Em Up
Micky's production of Leiber and Stoller's "Shake 'Em Up" was probably an attempt to catch a bit of the bottled lightening he'd caught when doing the dynamic duo's "D.W. Washburn" for Lester Sill, head of Colgems Records, a week earlier. Okay, a lot of people hate The Monkees' final top-twenty song, but I dig it (more on that a lot further up this list). This recording has some chutzpah, but it doesn't work as well as the hit because Micky sounds like he's struggling with the vocal and Mr. Henry Diltz sounds like he's having similar difficulties on clarinet. Don't quit your day job as the most celebrated rock photographer of the sixties, Henry!
132. Alvin
A silly yet charming little a capella ditty about an errant alligator written by Peter Tork's brother Nick might have found a place on The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees had Pete not pissed off the Powers That Be by spending so much time and bread on "Lady's Baby" (more on that to come). "Alvin" was in the album's original track lineup, and would have taken up precious little space on the record, but it had to wait until Birds, Bees was expanded with bonus cuts in the nineties to see release. It's nicer to listen to than "Peter Percival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky," which I totally forgot to include on this list.
131. Gonna Buy Me a Dog
Apparently, the idea was to record a fairly straight-faced version of "Gonna Buy Me a Dog", but Micky couldn't do it that way because the song is stupid. Mike even cut a fairly rocking backing track for it that went unused. What we're left with is hardly great music, but it is the stuff that an installment of Dr. Demento's show is made of. Micky and Davy's jokes are merely groan-worthy, but their sincere fits of hysterics over the shtick are sincerely infectious. Plus, my son loved this song when he was eight. At ten, he's grown out of it, for which I am grateful.
130. Look Down
This is another of those faintly generic rock songs Davy got to sing, like "Changes" or "You Can't Tie a Mustang Down", although this one is a bit breezier and catchier than those stumbles. "Look Down" was rightfully left as an outtake, but it's still one of the better things on the mostly barrel-scraping Missing Links Volume Three.
129. Don't Listen to Linda
And here's another one of those fairly generic, fairly sappy ballads Davy got to sing, but this outclasses the ones that precede it on this list because the singer actually gets to belt a bit on the bridge. It's also the rare Davy number that sounds better in slower ballad mode than it did as the faster pop song Boyce and Hart cut in late 1966.
128. Apples, Peaches, Bananas, and Pears
With the jangly guitars of "Last Train to Clarksville" and an instrumental break straight out of "(Theme From) The Monkees", "Apples, Peaches, Bananas, and Pears" plays like a half-assed retread of Boyce and Hart's stock tropes with the bonus of an absolutely idiotic lyric about giving the gift of fruit. The guitar sound is sunny though, and the track doesn't drag along the weight of being a TV-theme, so I guess it's better than "(Theme From) The Monkees"? I don't know. Adjust the order as you see fit.
127. I Can't Get Her off of My Mind
When The Monkees fought for and won the right to record their own music, they'd executed a true rock and roll revolution. Take that, Jefferson Airplane! The guys were smart enough to record songs that were uniformly better and more adventurous than the ones on their first two albums but stuck close enough to the established Monkees sound to not totally alienate their legions of new young fans.
The results, Headquarters, is one of The Monkees' very best albums, and it only suffers one taste lapse. This vaudevillian rerecording of "I Can't Get Her Off My Mind" is better than Boyce and Hart's more expressly bubblegummy first production of it, but it isn't much less cheesy. It's cool that The Monkees—a real band playing real instruments—play this, but it's the one very skippable track on Headquarters. Fortunately it comes at the end of the first side, so doing so is really easy!
126. Ticket on a Ferry Ride
This relatively lengthy, slow burn from Changes has a cool groove, but the harmonies are too syrupy by several vats, which is a real pervasive problem with The Monkees' final album of their first phase.
125. Laurel and Hardy
Even though The Monkees were very tuned into the experimental aura of their time, they didn't jump on some of the biggest and most enticing bandwagons of the psychedelic age. They didn't use the Mellotron and only used sitar twice, once when Peter recorded the millionth version of "Prithee" for the terrible 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee TV special (I didn't include any of the songs from that show on this list, which is for the best) and once for this Birds, Bees outtake.
"Laurel and Hardy" is a real mixed bag. It has that psychedelic sitar and fuzz guitar, a lyric about the venerable comedy duo, and one of those tunes that has me overusing the word "corny." It certainly isn't catchy, but the strange production touches of "Laurel and Hardy"—the sitar and fuzz guitar, the odd stops, the plodding half-time outro—make it more interesting than most of Davy's bubblegum outtakes.
124. You're So Good to Me
Now we go from "meh" to "pretty decent." Davy gets a tidier piece of music to contend with and comports himself well. Jeff Barry's song is another mediocrity that will make you forget he's the guy who co-wrote the divine "Be My Baby", but the performance has gumption. Pretty decent!
123. Tell Me Love
Another Changes number, this one of the pleading soul variety. Micky commits to another merely passable Barry toss-off and elevates it a bit, particularly on the chorus when the pace picks up.
122. Me Without You
Boyce and Hart completely rip off one of The Beatles' lamest songs. After listening to how out of place the old timey "Your Mother Should Know" sounds on the freaky Magical Mystery Tour, they changed its lyrics but didn't bother to change the backing vocal arrangement. With its calliope intro and punctuating tuba burps, "Me Without You" is unbridled cheese for sure, but a grungy guitar solo comes out of nowhere to slap the track with awesome for half a minute.
121. Your Auntie Grizelda
Not a nice tune. In fact, to many ears, "Your Auntie Grizelda" is nothing short of grating. Jack Keller and Diane Hildebrand wrote it as their answer to the Stones' "19th Nervous Breakdown", and Keller said he was taken aback when Jeff Barry gave Keller's fuzz-guitar laden backing track to Peter Tork instead of Micky Dolenz. Tork proceeded to layer on a bizarre array of quacking and sloshing sounds. Keller was not pleased, feeling his song deserved the respect a righteous protest song deserves, ignoring the fact that his lyrics are stupid. Dr. Demento, however, found yet another standard for his radio show. Good or bad, "Grizelda" became Peter's concert piece for years to come. That gnarly guitar sound is something else.
120. Hard to Believe
After The Monkees made Headquarters as a dedicated unit, most of them couldn't bear the idea of making another record in the same way, with Micky doing take after take to get an error-free drum track down and Davy banging his palms raw on a tambourine. So for The Monkees' fourth album, they agreed to water down the purity a little and welcome in session drummer Fast Eddie Hoh to play on most of the tracks.
Peter was not pleased that his dreams of being in a normal band were dashed, but the music benefitted greatly from Hoh's tighter, more dynamic drumming and the musical intrepidness that came with recording in a post-Sgt. Pepper's world. Consequently, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, LTD. ended up as the very best Monkees album. It would be near perfect, too, if not for one track. Davy's "Hard to Believe" isn't quite the proverbial turd in the punch bowl. It's catchy enough, not quite sappy enough, and has a pretty neat light bossa nova beat. But it sticks out like a smashed thumb amongst the rest of the record's psychedelic country rock.
It also sticks out because it doesn't feel like a proper Monkees recording, mostly because it isn't. Mike, Peter, and Micky were not involved in its recording at all, co-writer Kim Capli overdubbing all of the non-orchestral instruments himself. Had this been left off Pisces in favor of "Goin' Down", The Monkees' best album would have been much better.
119. When Love Comes Knocking (At Your Door)
This Neil Sedaka trifle is no better than "Hard to Believe". It doesn't have that other song's novel rhythm and its lyric is much cutesier. However, coming on More of the Monkees, it has somewhat less stellar surroundings to sabotage and its all over in well under two minutes. Advantage Sedaka.
118. If You Have the Time
Davy is once again in full bubblegum surroundings with one of those over-emphasized 2/4 beats that can be hard to stomach, but "If You Have the Time" has a pretty good melody and the synthesizer solo adds novelty. On Missing Links, it sits better than it surely would have if it had landed on a proper Monkees LP.
117. Zilch
The Monkees surely had a lot of fun while making their first album as a proper band, and the utter nonsense of "Zilch" attests to that. Each Monkee spews a line of found babble at increasing tempos before cacophonously overlapping and (probably deliberately) losing the plot completely. This is even less of a song than "Ditty Diego" or "Alvin", but it's more fun than the former and cooler than the latter.
116. I Love You Better
Perhaps the most flattering words one could use to describe Changes are "catchy" and "dumb." The B-side of the record's only single captures those two not-unrelated sides of the final Monkees record pretty well. The lyrics, a litany of the ex-girlfriends the singer does not like quite as much as his current one, are very dumb. The sing-along chorus, the tough and funky rhythm, and Micky's committed and soulful vocal, which this song definitely does not deserve, are definitely catchy.
115. Party
As we've seen, Davy sang on a few fairly generic pop-rockers during his time, but they weren't all so interchangeably featureless. "Party" derives a fair share of personality from a chaotic, contrapuntal arrangement that sees funky guitar lines bouncing off of brass bursts and percussion flair ups. The song is slight, and Davy does not turn in one of his most committed vocals, but the rhythmic quality is very nifty, especially in the fade out.
114. The Crippled Lion
In 1968, Mike Nesmith traveled to Tennessee to record a clutch of his countriest songs with an ace crew of Nashville cats. The problem is that there wasn't much to differentiate a lot of the songs he took with him. A lot tended to slot into "generic country ballad" or "generic up-tempo country song", and he did many of them better with the First National Band after he'd bought himself out of his Monkees contract.
One of those is "The Crippled Lion", which he recorded with an arrangement that makes it tough to distinguish from "Some of Shelly's Blues", "Propinquity", or a lot of the other things he cut in Nashville. On the First National Band's Magnetic South, "The Crippled Lion" picks up a snappy shuffle rhythm and the marvelous picking of pedal steel wizard Red Rhodes. Nice tune no matter the version, and that line where he refers to "something called the moon" is so endearingly goofy.
113. Propinquity (I've Just Begun to Care)
So, here we are with another one of those interchangeable Nes country ballads cut in Nashville. Another nice tune and a recording that compares less unfavorably with its First National remake than "The Crippled Lion" does. Plus calling a song "Propinquity" is such a Mike Nesmith thing to do. Maybe it's a love song to his dictionary.
112. Come On In
After Chip Douglas expertly produced Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, The Monkees got a bit big headed and decided to let him go so they could helm their own sessions. This brought a swift end to any notions that the four guys would continue recording as a unit, and it became the Wild West in terms of their own sessions.
While Nesmith was gallivanting off to Nashville to recorded a thousand of his own compositions, Peter was running up the studio hours on four or five songs. One was this cover of folkie Jo Mapes's "Come On In", which she debuted on her 1964 album And You Were on My Mind. The Association did it on Birthday the same year Peter cut multiple versions of this pleasant if slight tune. His rendition earns a lot of appeal from its double-time bridge, which The Association miss out on by doing the whole song as if they're trying to win a foot race.
111. She'll Be There
Another folkie vision, this one written by Sharon Sheeley, who'd hit pay-dirt by penning Ricky Nelson's "Poor Little Fool" and Eddie Cochran's proto-thrash metal "Somethin' Else". There is no thrashing to be heard on "She'll Be There", just the gossamer harmonies of Micky Dolenz and his sister, Coco, as they lay down a simple guitar and voice demo of Sheeley's tune during the Headquarters sessions. Nothing earth shattering, but it is rather pretty.
110. Merry Go Round
Eerie and slightly off-putting, Peter recorded another of his own songs during his not-super-productive '68 sessions. He wrote this protest song with Diane Hildebrand, and its echoey, almost all-keyboard arrangement makes it haunting. Peter was a great keyboardist. His pitchy singing spoils the recording a bit.
109. Zor and Zam
Another eerie, slightly off-putting protest song from the prodigious Birds, Bees, & Monkees sessions, this one not only ended up on the album but it also became something of a hits compilation standard. Go figure. Micky does his best Grace Slick as he sneers about two little kings who can't get any soldiers to show up for the big war they'd planned. A thoughtful lyric and a somewhat ugly sounding arrangement make for an atypical Monkees "classic" indeed.
108. Michigan Blackhawk (actually, "Down the Highway")
A year after his famous Nashville session, Mike was still very committed to the sounds of the south and cut a rollicking rendition of a song by the not-very-country east and west coasters Carole King and Toni Stern. Here Mike is getting closer to the effervescent sound of his First National Band, and when he recorded "Down the Highway" in the summer of '69, he was on his last legs as a Monkee. Someone mis-titled it as "Michigan Blackhawk" when it was finally released on Missing Links Volume Two in 1990.
107. Little Red Rider
Another rocking Nesmith country number that he also recorded with own band, "Little Red Rider" is appealing whether in its driving Monkees-days arrangement or its funkier First National one. This one's more about the feel than the song, which isn't one of Nesmith's sharpest, but the feel is a groove.
106. Shorty Blackwell
As I wrote much earlier in this list, Micky Dolenz didn't compose a lot, but when he did, he always produced a doozy. His biggest doozy was "Shorty Blackwell", an opus he claimed was inspired by Sgt. Pepper's. Nothing The Beatles or anyone else did ever sounded like this. It's more like a jazz-adjacent show tune, and it's one about Micky's own growing disdain for show business, no less. "Shorty Blackwell" is outlandishly ambitious, with its grand Shorty Rogers arrangement and restlessly shifting movements (incidentally, Rogers is not the Shorty of title, which refers to Micky's cat, who also features prominently in the lyrics).
I was horrified when I first heard this song on the Hit Factory compilation; my twelve-year-old brain simply was not wired to comprehend Micky's wacky helium introduction or the cacophony and chaos that followed. I still cannot say whether "Shorty Blackwell" is good music or merely a misguided and pretentious mess, and if I'm being honest, I kind of think it's probably the latter. But I absolutely love the fact that those bubblegum whipping-boys put something so outrageous on one of their albums, though it isn't nearly as terrifying or outright subversive as an experiment that appears about forty paces up this list.
105. Just a Game
As overblown as "Shorty Blackwell" is, "Just a Game" is almost minimalistic to a fault. A song Micky first demoed around the time of Headquarters as "There's a Way", "Just a Game" is basically just a series of verses, which allow the jazzy arrangement to build to an orchestral crescendo that ends up sounding as huge as "Shorty Blackwell" without all of that song's complications. "Just a Game" is not much of a song, but it is certainly more immediately attractive than "Shorty Blackwell" and further evidence of Micky's refusal to travel any traditional compositional routes.
104. Looking for the Good Times
The individuals that comprise The Monkees spent their post-Chip Douglas years furiously recording, and there was certainly a wealth of terrific recent stuff that could have been used for their final album as a trio. Colder feet prevailed, and one grotesque song intended to pander to the worst notions about the band and one carbon copy of their most recent big hit were pulled from the archives.
We've already gone over how lousy "Ladies Aid Society" is. (Sorry! I know I promised I would not speak of it again, but like certain idiot ex-presidents, it refuses to just go the fuck away). "Looking for the Good Times" is not bad, although it is pretty superfluous in light of its similarities to "Valleri". It has a similarly tough beat and similarly spectacular guitar fills from session whiz Louie Shelton. It's perfectly fine and perfectly redundant and "Steam Engine" or "Down the Highway" or "Angel Band" or "Time and Time Again" should have been on The Monkees Present instead. "Ladies Aid Society" should have been burned (Sorry!).
103. The Girl I Left Behind Me
This Neil Sedaka song has more personality than "When Love Comes Knocking", and as a Davy ballad, its sap coating is a bit thinner than usual. A superior backing track was made during the Birds, Bees sessions, but that one, which has appeared on several expanded releases, does feel less polished than the one that ended up on Instant Replay. For the most part, "The Girl I Left Behind Me" is sincerely pretty without being too cornball.
102. Don't Call on Me
Like "Hard to Believe", "Don't Call on Me" is an odd-man-out ballad on the best Monkees disc. In fact, it may not even be as likable as Davy's song. It's straight-up lounge lizard muzak, complete with faux cocktail chatter. Mike sings it in an unrecognizable parody of Bill Murray as Nick the Lounge Singer a decade before Bill Murray first played Nick the Lounge Singer. Yet, almost despite Mike's efforts to drown this song in smarmy caricature, it still manages to be pretty (confession: I'm a sucker for a major 7th chord), and unlike Davy's track, it benefits from genuine Monkees contributions on keyboards and guitar. Plus there's a bonus piano performance from Monkees TV-show co-creator Bob Rafelson in those cocktail lounge bits that bookend the song! Cheeky!
101. Mommy and Daddy
Another strange Micky track. Let's hold off on the lyric for a moment. Musically, it starts as a muted faux-Native American chant with lots of piano and thumpy drums, the kind of thing you might hear in a seventies cartoon that has not aged very sensitively. Than it builds into a full-on German oompah with many layers of contrapuntal Mickys. Okay then.
Lyrically, "Mommy and Daddy" is the most confrontational thing The Monkees ever released. Micky directly addresses his listeners, working on the assumption that they are still mainly a pre-pubescent crowd. He implores the kids to demand answers about the internment of Native Americans, the immoral and directionless violence in North Vietnam, and pill poppers from their parents. "Daydream Believer" this is not.
The original lyric was even more extreme, with lines about JFK assassination conspiracy theories and scenarios in which the parents must imagine their questioning toddlers bleeding to death on the kitchen floor. Even in its bowdlerized, love-championing released form, "Mommy and Daddy" is another piece of Micky music that makes you question whether or not you're listening to something that suits any metric of "good" pop music and another song that you can't help but be impressed made it onto a Monkees record.
100. Oh My My
The A-side of the single from Changes is pretty similar to its B-side in that it is catchy and dumb. But "Oh My My" bests "I Love You Better" because it sounds more finished. There's a genuine guitar riff, played rudimentally on acoustic. Micky's vocal is almost uncomfortably sexy. "Oh My My" has a sort of acoustic-soul feel that's pretty novel, and though it's no classic, it is a stand out on Changes, easily clearing an admittedly low bar.
99. Tear Drop City
Had "Tear Drop City" been the first Monkees single, I think we'd all remember it more fondly. It has a lot of familiar elements from early Boyce and Hart classics. The melody is a near twin for that of "Last Train to Clarksville", and it jangles and name-drops cities similarly. It revives the rolling tom toms of "Steppin' Stone". Finally finding release more than two years after those hits, "Tear Drop City" ends up as another cynical attempt to capitalize on past successes when something like its own B-side, "A Man Without a Dream", or "Through the Looking Glass" would have better represented The Monkees' sound at this stage of their career. Consequently, The Monkees were rewarded with their second single to miss Billboard's top fifty.
98. Nine Times Blue
Although it is often rated as an unreleased Monkees classic, I find "Nine Times Blue" a bit slight, even in its released First National Band form. There's no chorus and not much of an arrangement. Like so many country songs, it's sung from the perspective of a total jerk, and the fact that he's an apologetic jerk doesn't make it much better because you know he's going to be a jerk again now that he's made his lady friend crawl back to him. It is fairly pretty, though, Mike's voice sounds great, and the recording is short enough to not overstay its welcome.
97. Cuddly Toy
The jerk of "Nine Times Blue" is a rank amateur compared to the monster narrator of this song. Harry Nilsson said this acidic piece of work was inspired by the Hell's Angels scumbag motorcycle gang. I always figured he'd written it after reading Hunter S. Thompson's sobering book on the topic, in which Gonzo the Great explained that sexual assault was a staple of the Angels' diet.
Mike Nesmith says that aspect of this song totally went over his head when he fell in love with the vaudevillian jauntiness of Nilsson's demo. The Monkees certainly play "Cuddly Toy" without a trace of irony, and it has become an honorary greatest hit. It is arranged well and hooky as all get out, but knowing the song's actual inspiration will either give it some edgy cache or repel, depending on your tolerance for bubblegum toe-tappers about gang rape.
96. If I Knew
Now we're comfortably in good territory with a song that might not seem like a good one on paper. A very soft backing track, Davy whispering assurances of romantic rescue and doing a big breathy sigh...is this "The Day We Fall in Love" part two? Somehow, it is not. "If I Knew" is genuinely lovely, a mature pop love song with those jazzy tinges that are all over The Monkees Present.
95. Don't Wait for Me
Here's another genuinely pretty song, though one that hardly delivers messages of romantic fidelity. Nes liked to make good on all of country music's promises, including its chief role as the preferred music of bounders and no-goodniks. Don't wait for him, because the guys that sing country music are the least dependable guys in the world, but they sure sound nice making promises of fickleness against a smooth backdrop of acoustic guitars, pedal steel, and banjo.
94. Bye Bye Baby Bye Bye
Bridging the gaps between country, jazz, and blues, Micky turns in an atypically straight-forward song with another of those big contrapuntally overdubbed finales and a spit-fire vocal before it. Even more prominent banjo on this one, and prominent banjo is always a good thing.
93. I'll Spend My Life With You
The Monkees did a lot of pretty country songs, especially after Mike got the keys to the studio. This is the first. A Boyce and Hart marriage proposal, "I'll Spend My Life With You" had the potential to be a touch cornball, as evidenced by a poppier first pass cut during the More of the Monkees sessions. By scaling the arrangement to airy basics (acoustic guitars, celeste, tambourine, pedal steel, and bass), The Monkees deliver this tune with such humble sincerity that it works well on Headquarters.
92. I'm a Believer
And so we reach the breaking point, that decisive moment at which you must decide if you're with "Psychobabble's Favorite (and Not So Favorite) Monkees Songs" or against "Psychobabble's Favorite (and Not So Favorite) Monkees Songs." Because any ranking of Monkees songs worth its salt is going to put their most deathless and ubiquitous hit in the top-five, right? To not do so is to be nothing more than mindlessly, infuriatingly contrarian, correct?
Perhaps, but ever since I got my Monkees wings at the dewy age of twelve, I have been almost completely indifferent toward "I'm a Believer". Neil Diamond expertly crafted an immediately attractive pop song. Micky sings it with his uncanny knack for drama, pitch perfection, and completely unselfconscious soulfulness. The arrangement is iconic, with its instantly recognizable roller rink organ lick and rubbery guitar riff.
That instant recognition may be why "I'm a Believer" leaves me so cold. With familiarity comes contempt, or at least, indifference. It's a fine pop song. It's good. I'll cop to that. But "I'm a Believer" represents absolutely none of what draws me to The Monkees: the jangle, the oddness, the atmosphere, the poignancy, the imagination. It is the height of pop competence, and just typing those words bores me to tears.
91. Daydream Believer
Insult to injury, but I'm indifferent toward the other believer for all the reasons I am toward the one I discussed above. However, for a long time I actively disliked "Daydream Believer" for its cutesiness and soft-rock bona fides. I once dated a woman who deeply offended me by comparing my beloved Monkees with my most loathed group, The Carpenters. Then I realized she'd probably never heard "Circle Sky" but probably had heard "Daydream Believer", which made the comparison a lot fairer.
In fairness to The Monkees, The Carpenters never exuded an iota of the moxy The Monkees do on "Daydream Believer", and I can now comfortably recognize its sing-along magnetism, the strength of Davy's vocal, the always noteworthy fact that all of The Monkees perform on it, and that wistful flugelhorn solo that brings the song to a wistful end. Fair play, "Daydream Believer" is good, but as with "I'm a Believer", I can live a long and satisfied life without ever hearing it again.
90. Forget That Girl
This tuneful Davy ballad probably isn't as good as the somewhat similar sounding "Daydream Believer", but you already know my stance on familiarity. Its relative obscurity makes "Forget That Girl" relatively fresh, as does its melancholic edge, and Peter's Vince Guaraldi-esque electric piano lick is a solid hook.
89. Lady's Baby
As we've already noted, after releasing Pisces, Aquarius, The Monkees let producer Chip Douglas go and all sense of order went out the door with him. The Monkees started producing their own sessions as four solo artists without anyone to rein them in. The most extravagant of them was surely Peter, who invited his hippie friends into the studio to hang out and get stoned while he recorded innumerable takes of the few songs he had on hand.
The grandest offender was his ode to girlfriend Karen Harvey Hammer and her child, whose babbling and gurgling noises are captured on the final version of "Lady's Baby". Despite the simplicity of this warm homage to mother, child, and Pete's fave group, Buffalo Springfield, the amount of studio hours he squandered on its recording ran up a bill that only NASA could calculate. Legend has it that "Lady's Baby" cost more than "Good Vibrations" to record, though I'd take that one with a sizable grain of salt.
In any event, the song didn't make it onto The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees, allegedly because Colgems' Lester Sill (and the "Les" in Phil Spector's defunct Philles label) resented Peter's spendiness. It's certainly a more pleasing piece of music than the unctuous "We Were Made for Each Other" or the sepulchral "Writing Wrongs".
88. Daddy's Song
Here's a Harry Nilsson number with a very similar vibe to that of "Cuddly Toy" without the icky baggage. Not that it's totally baggage-free. Nilsson tells a tale of how his father abandoned him, a sad cycle Harry would play out with his own child. The version Harry Nilsson recorded for his Harry Nilsson LP betrays the poignancy of the situation. The version Davy sang on the Head soundtrack album doesn't really, although the live a capella break he takes in the film does. Extra points for appearing in a brilliantly shot black on white and white on black dance sequence costarring Toni Basil.
87. A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You
After "I'm a Believer" sold and broke records, another Neil Diamond number was a veritable shoe-in for the next Monkees single. So while Don Kirshner and Jeff Barry had Davy sequestered in the studio, and the other guys were standing their ground in their fight to record their own music, the Kirshner-crew recorded this rewrite of Diamond's 1966 smash "Cherry Cherry". "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" did even better on the charts, though it failed to capture the top spot as "Last Train to Clarksville" and "I'm a Believer" had, possibly because it received less exposure on the TV series than its two predecessors did. In any event, it's a retread, but a retread with a purposeful acoustic lick, some zesty twelve-string that really punctuates that riff, and a solid Davy vocal.
86. Pillow Time
Micky was playing with fire when he decided to record his first full-on kiddie song since the travesty known as "Teeny Tiny Gnome". But this time he did it through a much more adult musical lens. I guess it helps to be in control of your own music and to record something you have a genuine personal stake in. You see, "Pillow Time" was co-written by Janelle Scott, aka: Micky's mom. Like many of Micky's Present-era productions, there is a deliberate jazz flavor here, and he makes great use of Louie Shelton's brilliance. Even with the nursery-zone lyrics, it's a lovely track.
85. Oklahoma Backroom Dancer
Mike Nesmith skitters away from pure country for an energetic if slightly generic boogie rocker penned by Michael Murphey, making his second and last showing on Monkees wax after waxing "What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round?" a couple of years earlier. "Oklahoma Backroom Dancer" isn't as good as that stone-cold Pisces classic, but it's full of fun frolic. I challenge you to not grin when Mike off-mics, "Somebody get the piano player a drink of water!"
84. If I Ever Get to Saginaw Again
Jack Keller and Bob Russell melt all of The Monkees' stock jerk characters into one country-singin' Frankenstein monster. He's the bounder of "Don't Wait for Me", the terrible father of "Daddy's Song", and the underage violator of "Cuddly Toy" all rolled into one. Yet, like the very best country artists, Mike makes this creep sound like the victim, with an unbelievably poignant vocal layered onto a poignantly delicate backing track. You'll feel like a heel for feeling for this heel.
83. Time and Time Again
How this nice ballad got left off of Changes in favor of dreck like "All Alone in the Dark" and "I Never Thought It Peculiar" boggles the brains. "Time and Time Again" establishes a quiet, borderline mysterious mood that is endlessly more appealing than the bubblegum barrel-scraping that dominates the final Monkees album.
82. Some of Shelly's Blues
Instead of ducking out on the woman who loves him, Country-Time Mike puts the moccasin on the other foot and begs his girlfriend not to go. It's all a tad undignified, but "Some of Shelly's Blues" has a potency that some of Mike's other pure country recordings don't, possibly because he really belts this one. Mike's buddy and fellow belter Linda Ronstadt made hay with "Shelly's" on her third album with The Stone Poneys (who'd already broken out with their hit version of Mike's "Different Drum"). The Poneys do it way too fast though.
81. This Just Doesn't Seem to Be My Day
Here's our first bit of evidence that The Monkees were already bucking bubblegum clichés on their very first album. Portions of "This Just Doesn't Seem to Be My Day" are as chirpily, chipperly cheesy as "I Never Thought It Peculiar", but then it lapses into a fuzzed-out riff of "Paint It Black" Turkish rock, then it's off to the chamber for some harpsichord and strings elegance. "This Just Doesn't Seem to Be My Day" is terrific because it refuses to remain any one thing.
80. All the Kings Horses
Remember what I'd said about how marching beats have no place in rock or country music? Here's the exception to that rule, mostly because "All the Kings Horses" only suffers from the briefest marchy passages. The rest of it is garage-rock country with nothing but momentum. This one was good enough to feature on a couple of episodes of the TV series, although it had to wait for 1990's Missing Links Volume Two compilation to see official release.
79. Laugh
Placing this one as high as it is on this list might prove just as controversial as placing the "Believers" so low, but I've never quite understood all the hate Monkees fans and critics shower on this song by the guys behind The Tokens. It has been criticized for its dumb lyrics, although I think the "When life gets weird or shitty or confusing, try to have a sense of humor" message is solid advice. I also like the plodding beat, crunchy harpsichord, and robotic "ho-ho-ing" vocals. I find them pleasingly odd, and I'd way rather listen to this song than hits-comp-interloper "I Wanna Be Free". "Laugh" is the song that made me want to buy More of The Monkees, a purchase I do not regret. Lighten up, Francis, and cut "Laugh" some slack.
78. Never Tell a Woman Yes
Mike's oddest number on his last LP with The Monkees is another one that gets its share of guff, but I think it's a mildly brilliant homage to prohibition-era jazz with a feisty arrangement, reasonably engaging storytelling, and an expertly dramatic/comedic reading from Mike. And Hal Blaine's brief yet complex drum solo and Joe Osborn's brief yet super-simple bass solo toward the end of the track knock me out.
77. Angel Band
If there's one thing that irks me more than shoddy country guys, it's gospel evangelizing. But, as was his way, Mike makes the unpalatable palatable. William Bradbury's 19th century hymn takes on a goofy, shambling, charmingly humble mien in Mike's arrangement featuring wheezy harmonium and keening choir. I think "Angel Band" is more moving than "Let It Be" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water" rolled into one.
76. 99 Pounds
Davy the rocker tended to get short shrift during Monkees sessions, but whenever the short one ("I am standing!") whipped out his panther yowl, he seemed way more at home than he was when he was simpering about the day he fell in love. The toughest thing Davy, Jeff Barry, and Don Kirshner cut during their infamous counterrevolutionary sessions finally found a home on Changes, and it's no surprise that this razor-sharp pre-fab "Twist and Shout" slays the vast majority of recent recordings on that album.
75. No Time
From pre-fab rocker to simply fab rocker, "No Time" is The Monkees' own stab at a retro-barn shaker and an energetic highlight of Headquarters. The song is essentially "Long Tall Sally" with the guys' stoned piecemeal lyrics full of contemporary references to Ringo Starr, Andy Warhol, grass-smoking hippies, hippie-busting cops, and Bill Cosby, back when we could all laugh at his silly voices and not worry about his reprehensible proclivities. While the song is no expertly crafted gem, the performance is outrageous fun, as Peter fumbles his way through his piano solos, Micky shouts his brains out, and the whole gang guffaw their way through the call-and-response. Like "Gonna Buy ME a Dog", "No Time" is the sound of The Monkees just having fun, but unlike "Dog", they're not merely giddy from being forced to record a laughably bad song.
74. Last Train to Clarksville
Although "Last Train to Clarksville" is not as polished a composition as "I'm a" or "Daydream Believer", it wins the day because it hasn't been as overexposed. In fact, I'd never even heard it until I started watching the TV show. Yet, it was a great big number one hit despite its lack of a chorus. Or maybe it lacks a verse? I don't know, but Boyce and Hart forgot something when they decided to turn the fade-out of "Paperback Writer" into a dedicated song.
What "Clarksville" lacks in structure, it makes up for with what many have surmised to be a subtly anti-war lyric (the singer is rumored to be saying goodbye to his gal because he's being shipped off to boot camp) and jangle, lots and lots of jangle. When Martians land and demand our leader explain "jangle" to them, the president of Earth should just play "Last Train to Clarksville" for them.
73. The Kind of Girl I Could Love
Mike arrived in The Monkees enterprise with a fully formed musical personality. His style was completely unique; no other rock musician of his era was so dedicated to melding the melodies and harmonies of country music with the bump-and-shake of Latin rhythms. His one vocal on More of The Monkees is the bumpingest example of Nes's Tex-Mex style, and it's about damn time he gets full credit for inventing a sub-genre that pretty much belonged to him and him alone.
72. Hold on Girl
Here's another little-loved track from More of The Monkees that I'd take over "I'm a Believer" any day of the week. Boyce and Hart's first production of "Hold on Girl" was unbearably prim, but Jack Keller and Jeff Barry's remake speeds the tempo and hammers on a four-bangs-to-the bar beat that propelled this baroque-pop nugget onto The Monkees' second album. The way the track see-saws between the primness of the harpsichord riff and that slamming beat is pretty righteous.
71. My Share of the Sidewalk
Between his Tex-Mex pop and straight-Tex-country phases, Mike Nesmith went a bit bonkers. This is the era that brought us such oddities as "Daily Nightly", "Tapioca Tundra", "Magnolia Simms", and "Writing Wrongs". Left on the outtakes pile was "My Share of the Sidewalk", which is unlike any of those other songs and anything else this side of Sondheim. It's a time-signature shifting show tune with full brass and gibberish lyrics about chocolate ice cream and pedestrian passageways. The version with Davy's vocal that ended up as a CD-exclusive bonus track on Missing Links was apparently unfinished, but it sounds like one of Mike's most complete and audacious productions to me. "My Share of the Sidewalk" sounds nothing like The Monkees, and placing it on a proper Monkees record would have been just as radical as placing "Shorty Blackwell" on one and a whole lot more listenable.
70. So Goes Love
"My Share of the Sidewalk" is an unusual collaboration between producer Mike Nesmith and singer Davy Jones, but not an unprecedented one. Mike loved Davy's voice and put it to nice use on this bitter ballad by Goffin and King. This airy Latin-jazz rendition is way more affecting than The Turtles' overbearing melodrama, which they recorded shortly before bassist Chip Douglas briefly joined the group. One might assume that if he was on board for their session, Chip might have applied some of the tastefulness he brought to his own sessions for The Monkees.
69. Good Clean Fun
When a publisher told Mike that he wasn't going to have a hit if he couldn't whip up a bit of good clean fun, Mike responded in a very Mike way by writing a jaunty country rocker called "Good Clean Fun" without the words "good clean fun" anywhere to be found among its lyrics...always a good recipe for confusing top-40 radio listeners. Nevertheless, this chorus-free romp was released as a single and predictably tanked just as Mike's boot heel was disappearing around the Monkees' door jamb. He went out with a production and vocal bursting with vitality.
68. Let's Dance On
Boyce and Hart structured The Monkees as a Beatles-echo, with its own Ringo-style novelty ("Gonna Buy Me a Dog"), George-style second-banana tracks (Mike's tracks), and Paul-style ballad ("I Wanna Be Free"). "Let's Dance On" was their John-style rocker in the mode of "Twist and Shout". Its shouts of dance moves are positively old-fashioned, Chubby Checker-style stuff, but the riff cooks and the track is a fast-moving, hip-shaking monster that makes novel use of baritone guitar, which was next used on several sixties sci-fi soundtracks and the theme song from Twin Peaks.
67. Listen to the Band
This is another borderline non-song that benefits immeasurably from a power-packed performance. "Listen to the Band" is the definition of repetitiveness. It's just the same verse sung over and over with nary a chorus nor bridge to break it up (although there is a brief interlude for church organ). The lyric is Dick-and-Jane simple. Yet "Listen to the Band" became an easy Monkees classic and their only non-hit single to be regularly anthologized because it so handily serves as the anthem for a bunch of guys who were never given credit for being the real band they'd been ever since they started playing live way, way back in 1966. The weight of that history swells this heavy country rocker with poignancy. Its title is a frustrated demand from an artist who had every right to make frustrated demands.
66. She Hangs Out
Jeff Barry and Elle Greenwich's spew of warnings for a patriarchal older brother is another number intricately tied up with Monkees history. Don Kirshner placed Barry's fatigued production, recorded during that session, on the B-side of "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You". Problem was, the agreement to appease Mike and Peter's artistic ambitions stipulated that they were entitled to record the B-side for the next Monkees single as a proper band. Although "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" b/w "She Hangs Out" was only briefly released in Canada, his arrogant move cost Kirshner his job.
The Monkees weren't done with this song yet, though. Never ones to let a good bit of tin-pan-alley debris go to waste, they recut it with Chip Douglas, giving the track a heavy beat, a groovy organ line, and a horn arrangement that nudges the enterprise into Tom Jones territory. That other Jones gives it his all, snarling, yowling, and screaming the lyric, settling the Rocker Davy vs. Ballad Davy bout once and for all.
"She Hangs Out" is the song that got me to seek out my first and favorite proper Monkees album, which my grandma agreed to buy for me if I could find it at Record World while we waited for my mom to finally emerge from whatever store she'd gotten lost in at the Sunrise Mall.
65. Calico Girlfriend Samba
The song that launched Mike Nesmith and the First National Band lost a key part of its title when it made the transition from Present-era demo to Magnetic South finished recording. Any sane individual would assume it was the first word, since it implies some sort of interspecies tryst between man and feline. But Mike Nesmith titles have never been aimed at the sane. Rather, his title lost its "Samba," and though a mere "Calico Girlfriend" still makes for an energized opener on Magnetic South, it loses something along the way. Call it a vibe. Call it a rhythm. Call it that special something one only encounters among the enchanting fruit-topped dancers of Rhode Island. Rhode Island, Rhode Island, Rhode Island, Rhode Island.
64. How Insensitive
Antônio Carlos Jobim surely didn't envision his "Insensatez" as a harrowing country ballad when he gave it to João Gilberto for cocktail bossa nova treatment in 1961. Ever the forward thinker, Mike tinkered with the song and imbued it fully with the misery inherent in Vinícius de Moraes's lyric. This one falls back on the shit-heel regret of so many of Mike's country songs, but this time Mike really, really sounds regretful and, perhaps, a few steps away from leaping off the nearest bridge.
63. While I Cry
In the midst of his totally weird late '67/early '68 phase, the guy behind "Writing Wrongs" and "My Share of the Sidewalk" did the nearly unthinkable: he wrote and recorded a totally normal pop ballad. And as he would with "How Insensitive", Mike let Sad Mike take over. "While I Cry" is a simple song with a simple arrangement and one of the saddest vocals on record. It was too sad and normal for The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees or Head, but it finally found a spot on the Instant Replay hodgepodge a year after its creation.
62. Writing Wrongs
Remember when I referred to a "terrifying," "outright subversive" experiment that bested "Shorty Blackwell" for sheer horror value? I was talking about "Writing Wrongs". Where to begin with this song? Mike's wailing corpse from beyond the grave vocal? The disturbing lyrics about yellow water and a guy falling from a window? That piano-plonking, nightmare middle-section that sounds like the bad trip that sent Syd Barrett over the edge?
Like "Shorty Blackwell", the most insane thing ever to appear on a Monkees record is impossible for me to rate as good or bad because I don't think such judgments apply to it. Chances are, after hearing "Writing Wrongs" for the first and last time, most Monkees fans knew they needed to lift the needle as soon as "Daydream Believer" came to an end. That's what I always did when I was twelve. "Writing Wrongs" really shook me up, kind of like the first time I heard The Pixies several years later. And just as I came to become obsessed with The Pixies, "Writing Wrongs" fascinated me and eventually won me over in a profound way.
"Writing Wrongs" also gave me a taste for the more outré side of psychedelia. Sure I like sweet Sgt. Pepper's, but I prefer scary Satanic Majesties Request, an album my guitar teacher told me about after I played "Writing Wrongs" for him because I wanted him to tell me if Mike's song was bad music or music I was simply too young to understand yet. My teacher deemed it as bad as Satanic Majesties, a record he promptly loaned to me and I promptly fell in love with.
Yet, I do believe it was Sgt. Pepper's, specifically "A Day in the Life", that inspired "Writing Wrongs." The songs share a reportage conceit (Lennon discusses events he read about in the newspaper; Nes discusses events he writes about in a letter), a cacophonous mid-section with severe tempo changes, a slowly striding rhythm, prominent piano, and an overall spectral ambiance. And if you'll indulge a more hypothetical connection, Nesmith was present at the orchestral overdub session for "A Day in the Life", so he may have felt a personal kinship with the Beatles' song for that reason.
One thing is for sure: "A Day in the Life" is better than "Writing Wrongs", and "Writing Wrongs" is not what anyone expects to hear, and few want to hear, on a Monkees album. But that's what's exciting about it. I'll always contend that placing it immediately after "Daydream Believer" on The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees is the most subversive programming move in the history of record programming. Good? Bad? Whatever. I dig me some "Writing Wrongs".
61. Dream World
While Lester Sill cut Peter out of The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees with extreme prejudice, he really handed Davy the keys to the Cadillac, allowing the Tiger Beat cover boy to place more vocals on an LP than he had since his pre-Monkees solo days. Some of the selections highlighted the worst of Davy's tendencies: his cutesiness ("The Poster") and his sappiness ("We Were Made for blaaaaagh"). Elsewhere, Davy got to show off his abilities as an ace-in-the-hole hit-maker ("Daydream" and "Valleri") and a really good songwriter, which he did with this Steve Pitt co-creation. "Dream World" is a highly tuneful pop song with momentum to spare and an ace arrangement of classic Monkees elements: harpsichord, punchy bass, snappy drums, and soaring orchestrations. Davy's voice seems to be changing a bit here too, as he demonstrates the hard quaver evident in most of his recordings going forward.
60. I Wanna Be Free (Fast Version)
The Monkees often recorded multiple and radically different versions of the same songs at different stages of their career. Rarely was the discarded version superior to the one that ended up on a proper, non-Missing Links record. Compilers be damned, "I Wanna Be Free" is an exception. The honorary greatest hit is a humorless ballad on which Davy whispers so spinelessly he hardly sounds committed to the freedom he demands. This alternate, which shared space with the other version in the pilot episode of The Monkees, is completely different. Dylan's period style was clearly the inspiration, as Michel Rubini squeals out an Al Kooper-esque organ line and Billy Lewis slams the kit like Bobby Gregg. With the accelerated tempo and breezier tone, Davy and co-conspirator Micky sound a whole lot freer and make me wish Boyce and Hart did a little less pandering when programming The Monkees.
59. Midnight Train
Here's another song I first heard on an early episode of The Monkees, although it was a while before I realized the syndicated rerun of "The Chaperone" used a redubbed soundtrack from after the release of Changes. When Rhino reissued Changes, along with all of the good Monkees albums, I was able to get my hands on that rapid-fire, Johnny Cash-like ramble I'd first heard while the guys were decorating their pad for that big party in "The Chaperone".
For this late-era recording of a song he first demoed during the Headquarters sessions, Micky pulls out the stops. There's his blinding "Goin' Down" litany. There're his sweet harmonies with sister Coco. There's the ever-invigorating support of Louie Shelton. "Midnight Train" is the one great new recording on a bad record.
58. Seeger's Theme
With much of the same runaway rhythm of "Midnight Train" and a runtime of just 45 seconds, Peter's rendition of “Goofing Off Suite”, an instrumental by his hero Pete Seeger, may seem too slight to slot so high up on this list. But if you listen to it, you will understand. Peter was a fabulous and fabulously underrated multi-instrumentalist, and his chief axe may have been the banjo. He rips the shit out of his five strings while future Band of Gypsys drummer Buddy Miles rolls and tumbles so wildly he may have gone off the cliff completely had "Seeger's Theme" lasted another second. After listening to this, how could you not conclude that Lester Sill only excluded Peter from Birds, Bees out of spite?
57. Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day
Sure The Monkees is largely the work of studio pros, but you can't deny that this rare collaboration between Tommy Boyce and Steve Venet kicks with the vigor of a homegrown garage band. The slashing opening guitar and quivering tremolo-counterpoint provide a load of personality to a somewhat undistinguished blues rock song. I like it better than the similar "Clarksville".
56. Of You
Joy radiates out of every beat of this Monkees outtake, one of Mike's first recordings to utilize the magical harmonies of himself and Micky. He also seemingly utilizes every piece of percussion lying around Western Recorders studio. At under two minutes, "Of You" is exceedingly short, but it still accomplishes everything you want from a pop song, and it will have you walking on air well after it ends.
55. St. Matthew
Mike fashions another completely uplifting recording, but this time he's working in weirder waters with surreal lyrics inspired by or directed at Bob Dylan. Don't ask me what that means. Is Dylan the girl they call St. Matthew? Since when is Dylan a saint? Is he even a girl? I don't know. I think I have a bit of a handle on the meanings of "Tapioca Tundra", "Auntie's Municipal Court", and "Writing Wrongs", but I must admit defeat when it comes to this psychedelic country tidal wave. The power of the arrangement and Mike's vocal say all that need be said.
54. French Song
Monkee pal and "Zor and Zam" co-composer Bill Chadwick was so taken with the soundtrack of Carlo Ponti's The 10th Victim, a sort of arthouse precursor to Death Race 2000, that he was inspired to write a song in a similar vein. No matter that the music Piero Piccioni composed for that film was much jauntier than Chadwick's moody tune. No matter that the film was Italian. "French Song" radiates Frenchness with its rainswept atmosphere; its jazzy vibraphone, flute, and organ arrangement; and an elliptical lyric that sounds like it was poorly translated into English, kind of like what Elvis Costello would later do with his Serge Gainsbourg pastiche "Love Field". The song itself is slight, but the atmosphere is sumptuous and mysterious and Davy's vocal is spot on.
53. Love to Love
The best product of Davy, Don, and Jeff's rule-breaking recording session is this Neil Diamond number that is a lot moodier than "I'm a Believer" or "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You". Just as the latter follows the "Cherry Cherry" template, "Love to Love" follows in the sullen slippers of Diamond's "Solitary Man", but it's better. Davy turns in one of his best vocals, and I'm sure that it is only its untoward recording circumstances that caused "Love to Love" to sit on the shelf until it emerged on a few compilations in the early eighties. Then in 2016 it finally got to sit on a proper Monkees album when Micky and Peter dubbed on harmonies for inclusion on Good Times!
52. Tear the Top Right Off My Head
Peter got to sing all on his very own when he recorded this psychedelic country folk stroll he debuted in brief as an impromptu duet with Micky in the "Hitting the High Seas" episode of their TV series. As a proper recording, "Tear the Top Right Off My Head" exists both with a lead vocal by Peter and with a lead by Micky. I must say I vastly prefer Peter's version despite Micky's obvious superiority as a singer. The song is so endearingly odd that it sounds wrong sung by a vocalist of Micky's caliber. Imagine if Paul had sung "With a Little Help from My Friends" instead of Ringo. Peter catches the perfect tone with his eccentric voice on an eccentric song. If The Grateful Dead were good, they'd sound like this.
51. A Man Without a Dream
Boyce and Hart may have placed the most songs on Monkees vinyl, but Gerry Goffin and Carole King were hands down The Monkees' best non-Monkee composers. Their songs never pandered to the teeny boppers. Goffin and King always seemed to take The Monkees seriously, and their songs were mature, sometimes odd, and uniformly excellent.
Perhaps their most underrated contribution to the group was their last to make it onto a Monkees record. The Monkees were not first to get dibs on "A Man Without a Dream". The Righteous Brothers cut it for the B-side of their flop single "On This Side of Goodbye" in 1966. Their version is arranged identically to the one Bones Howe produced for Davy in early 1969, but it's way too slow, and with Bill Medley's deep voice, it sounds like the Instant Replay version playing at the wrong speed. Bones Howe picks up the pace considerably, and Davy's potent vocal is an invigorating antidote to the Righteous Bros' soporific original.
50. Little Girl
Micky establishes the jazzy tone of The Monkees Present right from the get go with this light yet hasty original. Who could keep pace with "Little Girl"? Louie Shelton can, of course, and once again he swings in to whip off his patented fleet-fingered fretting. Fresh as an icy breeze and the best track on The Monkees' last record as a trio.
49. (I Prithee) Do Not Ask for Love Again
The first of three Michael Murphey songs The Monkees recorded was the one they played during their earliest live shows. "Prithee" was also a featured number in 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee, but it had to wait until 1990's Missing Links Volume Two for a proper release. There was a lot to choose from, as The Monkees serially recorded this strange and bitter ballad Murphey composed in forced medieval dialect (lots of "thees" and "thous"). Davy, Micky, and Peter all took a shot at singing it. Mike produced the Missing Links version in a style similar to that of "So Goes Love". Aside from the pitchy Peter versions, all the attempts are good, although Bill Inglot and Andrew Sandoval (whose The Monkees: The Day-By-Day Story of the '60s TV Pop Sensation never left my side as I wrote this post) probably made the right call in choosing Micky's solo vocal version. The chorus packs a total punch. Nobody pounded on the maracas and tambourine like percussionists under the direction of Papa Nes.
48. Riu Chiu
From ancient English to ancient Spanish, this seasonal hymn was a little number Chip Douglas toted over from his days with The Modern Folk Quartet. He taught The Monkees his old group's arrangement, and they sang it with astonishing simplicity, skill, and beauty live on camera as the capper for the "Monkees Christmas Show" episode of their series. For the version belatedly included on Missing Links Two, Douglas takes Davy's place behind the mic. No matter the version, "Riu Chiu" is breathtakingly lovely, and Micky sounds like he'd been speaking Catalan his whole life. Now blow out that candle, Mick.
47. (I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone
Now blow it up! If the proto heavy metal of "Saturday's Child" wasn't enough to halt accusations that The Monkees were lightweight before their career had really begun, than this garage punk assault from their second single and second album should have been. Even the group's biggest detractors had to admit that this track was molten. I won't even bore you with how The Sex Pistols deemed it cover-able, because they were boring and given to acts of boring irony. I will aver that The Monkees' version blows the original by Paul Revere and the Raiders—no slouches themselves in the garage-punk department—out of the agua.
46. Steam Engine
Late in The Monkees' career, the guys were drifting further and further away from the sounds of their best records, and though taking risks with things like "Mommy and Daddy", "French Song", and "Never Tell a Woman Yes" yielded rewards, the return of Chip Douglas was still a welcome one. Yet, his one late-career contribution to the band languished in the vaults for a decade, only sneaking out in a couple of redubbed reruns of The Monkees. This was shoddy treatment for the guy who contributed so much to The Monkees' sound and the best song of their waning years. "Steam Engine" is a straight boogie with hints of CCR, a fiery Micky vocal, and a bizarre solo that is either a terminally distorted guitar or a terminally distorted saxophone. I actually don't really want to know which one it is. How did this get left off Present and Changes? Perhaps it simply rocked too hard for the former and wasn't shitty enough for the latter.
45. I'll Be Back Up On My Feet
This was another song relegated to TV show only, although it didn't have to wait as long as "Steam Engine" for a proper release. The first version of Linzer and Randell's ode to resilience sounds a bit unfinished, so it's good that it was left to simmer for a bit instead of landing on More of The Monkees. The rerecording on Birds, Bees is polished to perfection and arranged imaginatively with a tasteful horn section and Brazilian cuica, which fools the ear into believing The Monkees invented beat-boxing well ahead of The Fat Boys. The biggest improvement is the addition of a suspenseful minor chord that passes through the chorus. The original version sounds bland without it. "I'll Be Back Up On My Feet" would have made a great single!
44. Magnolia Simms
In his The Monkees Tale, the premier biography of the band, Eric Lefcowitz described "Magnolia Simms" as "half-baked" and "unlistenable." Eric must have been fully baked when he wrote those comments. This is one of Mike's most thoughtfully arranged and executed creations, a 1920s jazz pastiche so authentic that Mike baked 78rpm pops and skips right into the mix. Not only is this a terrific song that could have been yodeled by Arthur Fields forty years earlier, but the guitar, horns, and slapstick shtick is perfect.
43. Someday Man
The more adult-oriented Davy of 1969 got his ultimate pop anthem from Paul Williams, his fellow diminutive dynamo who gave the world "The Rainbow Connection" and The Penguin's voice. Davy thought Bones Howe's arrangement of Williams's whimsy was too busy, but I don't see how it could have been bettered. The zooping bass line grounds it, the French horns flutter above breezily, and the acoustic guitars drive it along. If Mike's "Listen to the Band" is the ultimate anthem for The Monkees as a unit, then its flip side is the ultimate one for the guys as individuals going their own ways.
42. Through the Looking Glass
Boyce and Hart took inspiration from Lewis Carroll, but their original production of "Through the Looking Glass" was a bubblegum bounce light years removed from the spooky psych of "White Rabbit" or "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds". The superior remake they produced a year later is hardly spooky, but it is much more imaginatively realized. Losing its cornball beat, "Through the Looking Glass" gains a humorously grand piano introduction, a striding rhythm, and strings that soar, weep, and snicker. This was originally in the running for The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees, but it was held back until it ended up as the opening number of Instant Replay, where it could stand as one of that record's very best tracks.
41. Words
While Boyce and Hart's "Through the Looking Glass" had the potential to get psychedelic, they actually delivered the goods with "Words" when they cut it in mysterioso mode at the More of The Monkees sessions. Sensual wind chimes, a snake charmer's flute, even a squirming flash of Revolver-style backwards tape sets the tone. But that version didn't get further than an airing on the TV show. Shortly after that, The Monkees rerecorded it for the B-side of "Pleasant Valley Sunday". Gone were the flute and arbitrary backwards thingy. The wind chimes stayed, as did the smart decision to have foreboding Micky and wailing Peter trade lines in the verses. It was good enough to be the only Monkees B-side to nearly tip into Billboard's top ten, although as far as I'm concerned, it was their first B-side that wasn't better than its A-side.
40. Star Collector
Trivia Nugget 1: A well-traveled nugget of Monkees-lore is that Micky Dolenz was only the third person to own the recently invented Moog synthesizer.
Trivia Nugget 2: The first owner was allegedly Paul Beaver, and the second owner, strangely enough, was country legend Buck "Act Naturally" Owens.
Trivia Nugget 3: Herb Deutsch, who helped Robert Moog develop his instrument, was one of my college music professors!
Trivia Nugget 4: It's pronounced "Moag", rhymes with "vogue," not "Moooog."
Now back to our regularly scheduled program.
While Micky handled the complicated contraption of keys, dials, inputs, and needles himself on a track a couple of spots up this list, he shared duties with Beaver, who actually knew how to play it, on Goffin and King's tart anti-groupie diatribe that closes Pisces, Aquarius with sci-fi cacophony. This is one of The Monkees' nastiest numbers, but the arrangement is full of speed-freak humor, with its loping riff, Chip Douglas's hopped-up bass line, Peter's organ stabs, and Eddie Hoh's machine-gun snare fills. Davy shouts above the din. Micky says "bye, bye." Would've made a great single... on Neptune!
39. Sometime in the Morning
A much warmer Goffin and King number, but perhaps no less focused on below-the-belt doings. Even as an innocent twelve-year old I suspected that "Sometime in the Morning" was a veiled ode to "the morning after" (i.e.: the morning after doing it!). After all, this is the songwriting team behind "Will You Love Me Tomorrow". Gerry and Carole knew what's what. It's possible The Monkees didn't, though. After all, they supposedly thought "Cuddly Toy" was about a teddy bear or something. But Micky certainly sounds like he's tapping into the song's erotic potential with his breathy vocal. The swirl of guitars and organ shimmer like sun rays slipping past the bedroom curtains and falling onto the sheets... where sex had just happened!
38. Daily Nightly
I love Mike's slightly hoarse twang, but he was not precious about it. He had no reservations about handing one of his songs over to a fellow Monkee, and if he hadn't done so with "Daily Nightly", Micky would have had a mere two lead vocals—both amply shared with bandmates—on Pisces, Aquarius. That would have been pretty jarring after he dominated the past few albums and most of The Monkees' singles. I'm not sure if Mike would have been able to belt the high notes on "Daily Nightly" as effortlessly as Micky does anyway.
What Micky is belting is a surreal yet oddly journalistic report on the Sunset Strip curfew clashes between hippies and cops that went down during the summer of ’66 (a topic Micky addressed with such directness during one of the TV show's interview segments that I'm surprised NBC aired it). The Beav sits this one out, leaving Micky to twiddle the dials on his own Moog, and the squalls and squacks he elicits from the machine make "Daily Nightly" one of The Monkees' most darkly and fully psychedelic tracks. The razor-edged bass line makes it seven kinds of sinister awesome.
37. Valleri
Like "I'll Be Back Up On My Feet", "Valleri" was a More of The Monkees outtake that leaked onto the first season of the TV series before getting a much-improved remake for The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees. Davy's voice and the backing vocals are much more assured, the horn arrangement punches it up, and Louie Shelton's second pass at his digit-tangling, Flamenco-like guitar solo is even more phenomenal than his first.
The demo-like original version was good enough to get some radio play in mid-1967, so "Valleri" was a natural choice for a single a year later, and it became The Monkees' final entry in the top-five. I always liked to believe that Boyce and Hart wrote it for Valerie Kairys, the pretty extra who pops up in a bunch of Monkees episode and plays Toby in "Monkees à la Mode". I also like to believe they stole the fuzzy riff from "Satisfaction". This was my first favorite Monkees song when I was a kid, though it didn't retain that honor for long once I started buying their albums.
36. Mr. Webster
And here we are with yet another Boyce and Hart song recorded for and rejected from More of The Monkees. While the differences between the first and second versions of "I'll Be Back Up On My Feet" and "Valleri" are mostly down to polish, the MoTM and Headquarters versions of "Mr. Webster" are practically different songs. The first is a ponderously orchestrated melodrama. The second is an airy and eerie folk-pop gem, much better than a lot of the Simon & Garfunkel songs it seemingly imitates.
The tidy story-lyric is easy enough to follow—sweet old bank teller skips his retirement party so he can skip off with everything in the vault— but I think Boyce and Hart overestimate the ease of stealing all the money from a bank. Micky never raises his voice above a whisper. Peter's piano starts and stops and starts. Mike's pedal steel rains question marks all over the place. Magic.
35. She
Let's keep this Boyce and Hart party going with what may be The Monkees' most celebrated album cut without the words "Hey Hey." Eric Lefcowitz described "She" as a "headbanger," a description I like much more than that time he called "Magnolia Simms" unlistenable. Remember that time?
The studio guys do, indeed, bang out this basher like a garage band that will one day devolve into a metal group, a la Spinal Tap. Micky commits to the role of a guy who misses the girl who broke his heart completely. He always did his best acting in a recording studio, and that includes when he voiced Arthur on The Tick. That was awesome.
34. I Don't Think You Know Me
Goffin and King's "I Don't Think You Know Me", which does for stuck-up models what "Star Collector" would do for groupies, is another song Mike produced early in the Monkees saga. Peter tried singing it. Micky tried too. I'd find it hard to believe that Davy didn't give it a shot at some point too. But the very best version features the producer's voice and eventually landed on Missing Links despite being much better than nearly everything on The Monkees. Mike really came out of the gates with a great production sound.
33. Take a Giant Step
The Monkees' first B-side is way better than their first A-side. Flip "Clarksville" and find a melancholy yet hopeful Goffin and King rumination on isolation and connection. The mention of "mind" gives "Take a Giant Step" a lysergic angle, and The Monkees go full psych for the very first time with a mid-section that slops on rattling harpsichord, snake-charming oboe, and booming drums until it all ruptures in a mushroom cloud of echo. Wistful, trippy, and accessibly poppy, "Take a Giant Step" is utterly fab. Taj Mahal's Rising Sons did a nice version of this one, too, but The Monkees' is inarguably definitive.
32. You Just May Be the One
Mike Nesmith didn't just fight for musical control because he was a genuine artist who hated having to pretend to be one on TV. He knew there was much money to be made by getting more of his songs on Monkees wax, and even though he liked to confound with whacked-out concoctions like "Writing Wrongs", he also knew how to play the game.
His commercial instincts were especially sharp when he penned the ridiculously catchy “You Just May Be the One”. With its cautiously romantic lyric and jittery bass hook, the track was spot-on even before The Monkees recorded it as a real band for Headquarters. Mike cut a version with studio musicians during a 1966 session, which ended up on the TV show, and frankly, sounds damn near perfect to me. In comparison, the spare arrangement on Headquarters reverses the usual remake results. The LP version of "You Just May Be the One" sounds unfinished compared to the dense and electrifying TV version, on which the singer breathlessly spat out the title instead of drawing it out as he does on the HQ version.
Despite my preference for the first take of "You Just May Be the One", it's a neat pop song no matter the version, and the Headquarters one is important because it shows off what a great bass player Peter was. His sweat-free execution of the tricky riff is so impressive that he barely needed to play his TV instrument on the rest of the record, leaving the bass in the very capable hands of fifth-Monkee Chip Douglas. While this song never achieved its true calling as the single it should have been, it has been included on all Monkees hits compilations worth their salt.
31. Early Morning Blues and Greens
One of the most underrated tracks on Headquarters, Keller and Hildebrand's melancholic "Early Morning Blues and Greens" enchanted Peter, who wanted to sing the lead. He had to settle for the harmony lines he layers over Davy's hushed lead, but he should not have felt jilted because the superimposition of Davy's resigned sweetness and Peter's saddened stringency strikes the perfect balance. Plus Peter really got to shine with his rippling electric piano arpeggios. His Devo-like organ outbursts, coupled with some slapping percussion, sound a good twenty years ahead of their time. This is a way better eighties Monkees song than "That Was Then This Is Now".
30. Papa Gene's Blues
That The Monkees were not taken seriously during their own time is infuriating, especially since they started innovating as soon as Mike got the run of the studio during sessions for the first album. Nothing in 1966 sounded like his exhilarating Tex-Mex jambalaya “Papa Gene’s Blues”. With its ragtime chord progression and simplistically joyful chorus, it remains one of Nes’s freshest compositions. With its tangle of percussion and twangy guitars, it is one of his most enthralling productions, and you'd be a grade-A butthead to complain about the group's session-man-dependent origins after listening to guitarist James Burton's rippling, twanging leads. And if there's a better showcase for the vibraslap, I've yet to hear it.
29. Carlisle Wheeling
Mike Nesmith wasn't happy with “Carlisle Wheeling”, which may account for its failure to appear on a Monkees album in its own time. The lyric about a ripening relationship is wordy and heavy handedly poetic, yet the simple folk melody is hauntingly lovely. Mike tried rerecording the song several times before realizing its issues laid in the lyric and not the arrangement. He even tried changing the name from his poet nom de plume to “Conversations” when he remade it for the second First National Band album. The best version is still unquestionably the first, with its spare ensemble of acoustic guitar, drums, percussion, banjo, and organ… and it simply must be heard with the ominous percussive introduction only included on Missing Links.
28. D.W. Washburn
If I lost most of you when I got "I'm a Believer" and "Daydream Believer" out of the way before I was even halfway through this list, I'll probably lose the rest of you now.
Even though it was the final Monkees song to go top-twenty, "D.W. Washburn" is not fondly remembered. Andrew Sandoval seemingly disliked the hit enough to not make space for it among the fifty tracks on The Monkees Anthology. Mike refused to play it at his final shows with Micky. Fans all across the internet profess a distaste for Leiber and Stoller's ragtime tale of a drunk who's perfectly happy wallowing in his own gutter barf.
Yes, Micky's singing is a bit overly mannered and self-consciously comical. This certainly doesn't sound like The Monkees of radio fame and was an utterly bizarre choice for a single. Lester Sill claims his selection of it was sincere, but it's hard to believe he wasn't trying to do his part in bringing a swift end to the whole Monkees thing.
Nevertheless, I've always loved this song. It's offbeat, funny, engagingly structured, and beautifully arranged. The way "D.W. Washburn" slots into The Monkees' chronology makes it feel like they were deliberately using it to enter a weird new phase. Like "Shorty Blackwell" and "Writing Wrongs", it's one of those songs I dig because it highlights the strangeness of The Monkees phenomenon, but in contrast to my ambivalence regarding the inherent quality of those songs, I genuinely think "D.W. Washburn" is good.
27. Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)
Okay, here's one we can all agree is terrific. "I'm a Believer" and "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" may have gotten 45RPM pride of place, but "Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)" is by far my favorite song Neil Diamond donated to The Monkees. It bucks no bubblegum stereotypes, from its Did-You-Ever-Have-to-Make-Up-Your-Mind lyric to the wheezy cartoon organ taking a victory lap after its previous appearance on "I'm a Believer" to the fact that Davy sings it. But he sings it with unbridled gusto, and the chorus bursts so boisterously from the barely contained verses that it's hard to not get swept up in the "Hey, kids, are you ready for some goddamn FUN!!!" of it all.
26. You and I
You ready for some more fun with that lovable teen heartthrob David Jones?!? Tough shit! Because Davy is sick of the whole fucking thing. When he sings about how "you and I" have reached the bitter end of your relationship, millions of teen hearts must have rended (well, thousands...this was on Instant Replay, after all). But it sure seems like he was addressing his fellow Monkees.
For his one real stab at acid rock, Davy pulled no punches. "You and I" shreds and withers, he shouts the lyric with no venom spared, and the king of corroded guitars, Neil Young, tortures his axe to shriek along with the cute one. Davy later reused this title for some twee jive on Justus, but that thing could not expunge the rusted memory of the real "You and I".
25. P.O. Box 9847
When Chip Douglas went his own way, Boyce and Hart finally had an in to slip back into the producers' chairs. Only problem was that The Monkees were now to be the nominal producers on all future recordings. So Tommy and Bobby only got credit for writing "P.O. Box 9847". That must have stung, especially considering that this is their best arrangement. The song, with its personal's ad conceit, is good enough, but it's the psychedelic shotgun marriage of horror-movie strings, slidey bass, pulsing tabla, and shivering marxophone (last heard on The Doors' fab version of "Alabama Song") that makes this one of the stand-outs on The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees.
24. Salesman
The story goes that NBC didn't want to air what many folks consider to be the best episode of The Monkees because it featured a song they insisted was about a drug dealer. Mike insisted it was just about any old salesman. Supposedly, NBC's real problem with "The Devil and Peter Tork" was its multiple references to how the network wouldn't allow anyone to say the word "Hell".
That all of this could be true just speaks to how out-there The Monkees were. Yes, they delighted in saying "Hell" over and over (bleeped with a censorious cuckoo sound effect, of course) and ribbing the conservative network in the episode. Yes, they also sang "Salesman" against a kick-line of sexy go-go dancers with horns and tails. Yes, the title character of Craig Smith's song is a pot dealer. Sure, Smith makes it clear that the pots in question are of the copper and tin varieties, but even the NBC suits weren't so clueless that they were unaware of the existence of double entendres. No excuses necessary, though. All this stuff is just feathers in the cap of the countrified funk that opens Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, LTD., with one of Chip's best bopping bass lines, Eddie's gasser of a drum solo, and a hip bloodshot wink.
23. Randy Scouse Git
Micky's eyes were certainly red when he wrote his first song. He was flying so high after hanging out with Paul McCartney and meeting his gorgeous future wife, Samantha Juste, during a trip to Swinging London that he threw caution to the wind and pop songwriting rules in the dust bin and poured out this surreal account of his trip. Samantha is "wondergirl." The Beatles are "the four kings of EMI." The title is a racy insult discharged by racist Alf Garnett on the BBC's Till Death Us Do Part. The "talcum powder" is probably drugs. The chorus is what moms and dads always say to the kids who just want to let their freak flags fly, maaaaaan.
"Randy Scouse Git" is as musically off-the-wall as it is lyrically off-the-wall. The tympani swells. Peter's ragtime piano. Micky's scat solo. The shouty noise rock refrain. The way it all overlaps in the ninth inning. "Randy Scouse Git" set the stage for a songwriting career that included such choice oddities as "Just a Game", "Shorty Blackwell", and "Mommy and Daddy", but Micky never bested his first effort, which nearly topped the charts in the UK. Micky answered the demand that the UK single be given an alternate title by titling it "Alternate Title", because Brits understand that "randy scouse git" means "horny Liverpudlian moron."
22. Saturday's Child
Released just ahead of the first Monkees album, The Monkees' first single laid some clues that Network TV's first rock and roll sitcom was not going to avoid the realities of hip youngsters, what with the possible anti-war sentiments of its A-side and possible acid-dropping references of its B-side. The album didn't waste much time before confirming The Monkees' hipness either. After getting that naff theme song out of the way, producers Boyce and Hart drop a bomb of heavy metal guitars that annihilate David Gates's silly ditty about girls who can be arranged according to the days of the week.
Gates, the guy whose seventies reign of terror found him fronting Bread, must have messed himself but good when he heard how monstrous his song sounded. He later claimed it was considered for the first Monkees single, but its just too muddy, too grungy, and that instrumental break, in which the wall of guitars battles it out until Billy Lewis shovels the lot up with a 'roid-rage drum fill, was not fit for the top 40. "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadows?" hadn't even been released yet!
21. Sweet Young Thing
Mike was none too pleased when he was bum-rushed into collaborating with seasoned pros Gerry Goffin and Carole King. He didn't enjoy the experience, and according to legend, he made Carole cry by mocking her songs. You'd never think the experience was so disharmonious after hearing the shakingest, quakingest track on The Monkees.
This stomping ho-down, with its tyrannosaurus fuzz guitars and screeching pterosaur fiddles, is simple, infectious, and totally mesmerizing. I love the video for it on The Monkees. Peter's hypnotized expression during the instrumental break shows just what "Sweet Young Thing" is capable of doing. I love it so much I refuse to engage with the fact that it's one of those creepy valentines to an underaged girl. See, I didn't even mention that!
20. The Girl I Knew Somewhere
All Mike wanted was to place his song on the B-side of a hit Monkees single so he could sup upon the royalty rewards. But Don Kirshner had to go ahead and do that thing he did with "She Hangs Out". The rest is history I've already covered.
The next step was to reissue "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" with the song that should have been on its flip in the first place, and if we're being totally sober, the song that should have been on the A-side, because Mike's breezy epistle to a girl he may or may not have previously encountered is immeasurably superior to "A Little Bit Me."
Mike was a smart enough cookie to infuse "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" with all the trappings of a Monkees hit. After singing the demo version himself, he stepped aside to allow Micky to sing it. He slashed out a simple guitar lick as immediately ingratiating as the one that kicks off "Last Train to Clarksville". He quietly rolled the organ of "I'm a Believer" out of the room and sits Peter behind the more dignified harpsichord. A modest pop masterpiece is born, and one that probably could have been a big hit if it got the promo its A-side did. It still sneaked into the top forty on its own merits.
But this still isn't the full story of the first single with a true Monkees recording on it. Sit tight for a few more entries and we'll get to it...
19. For Pete's Sake
Headquarters is a wonderful showcase for The Monkees as both musicians and songwriters. Nesmith, Dolenz, and Peter Tork all make major contributions to the record, but only Pete’s was deemed suitable to take a particularly prestigious position as the closing theme of season two of The Monkees. His roommate, Joey Richards, contributed a few lines, but “For Pete’s Sake” is mainly its namesake’s work. Peter roots his charmingly naïve hippie love-and-peace lyrics with a deliciously bluesy guitar figure and gives Micky plenty of room to stretch out with his ad-libbed vocal acrobatics. It's fired-up and full of color.
18. Mary Mary
Mike made his name as a Monkee, but he'd already been doing his thing for a while as a folk singer masquerading under the twee moniker Michael Blessing. He was also a song hawker in his pre-Monkees days, and he successfully hawked this bluesy funk to The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, who released “Mary Mary” concurrently with "Last Train to Clarksville" and well before its appearance on More of The Monkees. Their version is slow and lurching, with overcooked white-guy blues belting. The Monkees' version smokes it with Hal Blaine's slapping drum hook, Glen Campbell’s gut-twisting blues riff, and Micky’s cooked-to-perfection white-guy blues shouting. So cool that Run DMC made it a hit two decades later. So stop your damn buggin', already!
17. All of Your Toys
When we last left our hundredth retelling of how Don Kirshner was ousted from The Monkees enterprise, "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" was finally released as the B-side of "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" and the guys were poised to barrel ahead into the Headquarters sessions. But there's still a missing piece of this puzzle, and that is "All of Your Toys". Because The Monkees didn't just envision having a B-side bone tossed their way. They wanted it all, and the plan was to place Bill Martin's moody lament on the A-side. Problem was Colgems' house publisher was Screen Gems-Columbia Music, and Martin was signed to Tickson Music, who refused to grant Colgems the right to release the song.
I doubt Colgems would have given an "All of Your Toys" b/w "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" single the green light anyway, certainly not when Don Kirshner was still running the show and milking Neil Diamond's portfolio for all it was worth. "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" did sound more like a potential hit. Hell, it had been a hit when it was called "Cherry Cherry"! "All of Your Toys" is too downbeat, too structurally ambiguous, with a chorus that never manages to show up. Perhaps it's too dependent on Peter's elegant harpsichord when that pop-rock staple, the guitar, is mostly used for arpeggiated color.
But what lavish color! What elegance! This is a lovely recording that made Missing Links worth the wait. You can hear how each individual Monkee makes a powerful contribution, and that includes Chip Douglas, whose pulsing bass drives the track along. And be sure to only listen to the Missing Links mix on which Micky releases all his vocal fireworks in the fade and not the less explosive mixes that tend to appear on other releases.
And though it's a shame "All of Your Toys" failed to make the grade as a single, this story still has a happy ending, and not just because The Monkees got to spend the rest of 1967 recording as a proper band. When Bill Martin dropped his officious publisher to sign with Screen-Gems in the hopes of finally scoring some of that sweet, sweet Monkees money, he sold them a song that appears way, way up this list.
16. Can You Dig It?
If you've made it this far through "Psychobabble's Favorite (and Not So Favorite) Monkees Songs," you know that I think it was unfair that none of Peter's songs made it onto The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees. You're probably also shouting, "Hey, Goober, haven't you ever heard of a little album called Head?!?" Well, there's a reason you've only read about one of the album's songs (and one of the album's non-songs) so far. It's because I can't be arsed to write about things like "Supplicio" and "Dandruff", and because the album's actual songs are so damn good that most of them are sitting pretty at the top of this list.
So let's get started with one of Pete's, because one of the many cool things about Head is that it corrected the biggest wrong of Birds, Bees (aside from "We Were Made for Each Other", which we've already established is a piece of crap) by allotting a full 33 1/3 percent of the song-space to Mr. Peter Tork. Considering that there are only six actual songs on Head, that means Peter only placed two on the album, but that's still pretty impressive and the songs are both amazing.
First up is a track that takes the pseudo-Turkish vibe of "This Just Doesn't Seem to Be My Day" and fully commits without any hippity-hop bubblegum bullshit. The atmosphere is all incense, mystic philosophizing, and bellydancing, which gets full and sexy realization in Head. The sloganeering refrain is dated, to say the least, but the mesh of whirling-dervish guitars, hard-hitting drums, and fluttering bass are timeless excitement. Can I dig it? Yes, I can dig it.
15. Shades of Gray
Though an exceptional musician, Peter Tork tended to fall a bit flat as a singer. With three more accomplished singers at The Monkees’ disposal, he was rarely elected to sing. But what he lacked in technical skill, he more than made up for in commitment, as can be heard in his indispensable supporting roles on "Words" and "Early Morning Blues and Greens". Had Davy been left alone to sing Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill’s world-weary expression of uncertainty by himself, "Shades of Grey" might have been more saccharine than somber. But by counterpointing Jones’s inherent sweetness with Peter's shaky yet sincere pipes, "Shades of Grey" emerges as a movingly grave duet.
The incessant piano line Peter crafted underpins the track beautifully, and bonus points to him for notating the cello part and Wagnerian French horn melody Mike devised. It all adds up to The Monkees' most mature ballad yet, and it deservedly became the honorary single from Headquarters in the U.S. and a hits-comp-regular for years to come.
14. You Told Me
The Monkees had worked as a live band almost from the very beginning of the TV/recording/ marketing project bearing their name. So when it came time to make Headquarters, they had already developed a decent playing rapport. The sessions weren’t easy, and the resulting album required innumerable edits for it to pass muster, but the highlights were plentiful.
One of the most dazzling occurs just ten seconds into the disc. The guys goof through a parody of the count-in to The Beatles’ “Taxman”, Mike picks a few rudimentary arpeggios on his guitar. Amateur hour? Hardly. Peter’s fleet-fingered banjo shudders into the mix. Suddenly the track whirls, and when Chip Douglas’s bass drops in and Micky slams into his four-on-the-floor beat, we’re knee deep in a country-rock funk no “pre-fab” band could ever pull off.
13. What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round
"Listen to the Band" and "Good Clean Fun" were singles, but what is likely Mike's most popular vocal spotlight is the song that kicks side two of Pisces into gear (that is, after we've all skipped "Hard to Believe").
"What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round" was so good it was seemingly used in every other episode of the show's second season. Jangling guitars and electric banjo mesh so tightly it's impossible to tell which is which, as Chip Douglas zooms his bass hither and yon and Mike joyously shouts about being a bit of a dick to a Mexican woman who may or may not understand that he's about to slip town. This time an irresistible chorus and arrangement make it entirely possible to completely ignore the jerkiness of the song's narrator. Apparently there were rumors that The Byrds backed Mike on this track, but if I can be totally honest, and speaking as a big Byrds fan, they weren't this good.
12. Goin' Down
How good can The Monkees be? This good. Peter brings the band an arrangement for Mose Allison's "Parchman Farm" that a friend of his cooked up, and they decide recording covers is stupid and enlist Diane Hildebrand to write an original lyric. What's it about? A guy who tries to kill himself but comes to regret it as the river he'd leaped into conveniently delivers him to New Orleans, where he finds that hopping and bopping are better than pining for his ex-girlfriend or filling his lungs with polluted river water.
The most audacious thing about "Goin' Down" is Micky's "Sit down, kids, cause I'm gonna do some showing off" vocal. Remember those Micro Machines commercials with that guy who talked really fast? Big deal. It's not like he was singing. Micky jazzes out Hildebrand's wordy words a mile a minute, speeding up until it just becomes a blur of sound in the fourth verse. But that's not all! He then breaks into his best James Brown impression to scat his way to the Land of Hope and Glory.
Micky's tour de force is so tour de forcey that it's easy to ignore the other guys' contributions, but you'd be a chump to do that. Mike, who usually settled for simply strumming or arpeggiating chords, bends off some groovy blues licks cool enough to impress Peter, who was a way better musician. There seems to be some confusion regarding who plays the magnetic walking bass line that serves as the song's main riff, but whether it was Pete or Chip, it is fantastic and the reason I decided to learn that instrument after watching that weird video in which some guy in black gloves mimes the bass part unconvincingly. Seeing that made me think, "I could do that!" and that kind of arrogant self-delusion has served me well now for decades.
11. As We Go Along
If Micky hasn't wowed you yet, you're a dum-dum and don't deserve any more convincing.
Okay, damn it, here's some more proof. The polar opposite of his performance on "Goin' Down", Micky has slowed down to hit his most melodic and melancholic tone for Carole King and Toni Stern's luxurious love song that graces Head and the B-side of that album's single. His performance is emotion-and-pitch perfect, rising and falling as the mood swells and settles. But it's almost as show-offy as "Goin' Down" because he does what he does in complicated 5/4 time. Singing "As We Go Along" was a challenge, even for a pro like Mick, but it was well worth the hassle. Neil Young is back for a more sedate performance than the searing, electrified one he supplied to "You and I", but his woozy, romantic acoustic pickings are just as integral and memorable.
10. I Won't Be the Same Without Her
You think "As We Go Along" is pretty? Well, you're right, it is! But so is this wallow in the inability to get over a failed relationship. Mike sings it against a deep rhythm section of innumerable guitars and percussions, but its those Association-like fluttering vocals by some anonymous studio singers that really grab my heart by its heart-throat and give it the ol' coronary throttle.
Mike's loveliest production of one of Goffin and King's loveliest songs couldn't be included on The Monkees because then there wouldn't have been space for sap-ola ballads like "I Wanna Be Free" or "I'll Be True to You" or stupidity like "Gonna Buy Me a Dog". Can't have that! Fortunately "I Won't Be the Same Without Her" was rescued for Instant Replay, where it could stand out as the best song on the album even though it totally would have done that very same thing had it been included on The Monkees.
9. Sunny Girlfriend
Mike wrote “Sunny Girlfriend” as a simple tune the guys could reproduce on stage with a minimum of fuss. It worked, and the song was a set-list mainstay for The Monkees’ famed 1967 tour.
On Headquarters, it was just as effective. Borrowing the guitar riff from The Rolling Stones’ version of “It’s All Over Now” and the standard boogie bass line, The Monkees had themselves a delectably jangly countrified rocker with a strangely sinister bridge. It all sounds uniquely like The Monkees in a way that session concoctions like "Last Train to Clarksville" and "I'm a Believer" never could. Mike and Micky harmonize like no one else.
8. Pleasant Valley Sunday
The Monkees got some massive hits with their first few singles, but as if you couldn't tell, I don't think any of the A-sides were that great. All that changed for single number four. Gerry Goffin and Carole King's “Pleasant Valley Sunday” was more sophisticated than any non-group composition The Monkees had recorded up to this point.
The topic, a light jab at the generic suburban communities popping up all over the U.S., was more interesting than the usual “I love you, you love me, la la la” material Kirshner foisted on the band. The guitar riff Chip Douglas worked out under the thrall of George Harrison’s “I Want to Tell You” and taught to Mike was both intricate and entirely captivating. The performance was incredibly dynamic, with Mike fingering that riff flawlessly, Eddie Hoh discharging machine gun drum fills, Chip supplying the thrillingly upfront bass line, Peter laying down an equally exciting and involved piano part, and all four Monkees contributing to the invigorating weave of harmonies. All of the attention the "Believers" received should be passed along to "Pleasant Valley Sunday", the hit single that actually deserves it.
7. Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?
Peter had a reputation as The Monkees' resident flower-powering peacenik. He's the guy who posited that "love is understanding," after all. In reality, he could be ornery and once decked Davy Jones (although he insists that Davy nutted him first).
Punk Peter is the one we hear on his most electrifying song. Speedy and aggressive, spiced with tortured guitar bends, thrashingly fast bass, and a heart-stopping shift to waltz time in the bridge, "Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?" is a masterpiece of composition and ensemble playing. Anyone who thinks Peter Tork was nothing more than a pre-fab sitcom star should shut up and try to cover this. I did, and you know what? It was hard as hell. Peter also turns in his best vocal, sounding not unlike Jim Morrison.
Cut from the running of The Birds, The Bees at the last minute, “Long Title” (do I have to type that whole title all over again?) ended up on the Head soundtrack, taking its rightful place among the most uniformly superb songs on any Monkees LP.
6. Tapioca Tundra
As we've noted, Mike wrote his weirdest songs for The Birds, The Bees, & The Monkees, from the consciously old-fashioned “Magnolia Simms” to the futuristic psychedelic horror show “Writing Wrongs.” It’s hard to feature these two songs springing from the pen of the same man before you hear “Tapioca Tundra”. This poetic rumination on the passage of a song from writer to audience bridges those other two curiosities: a jazz-age romp to be crooned through a megaphone at one end of the spectrum; a freak-out with bizarre echo effects and a disturbing climax that suggests Nes plunging to his death at the other. With its frenetic percussion and jolly melody, “Tapioca Tundra” is also a slight return to the Tex-Mex pop Mike contributed to the first two Monkees records.
As the charting B-side of “Valleri”, “Tapioca Tundra” is surely one of the strangest songs to ever creep into the top forty, but it also brims with melodic and rhythmic punch and an inventive structure that begins with a whistling stroll before slamming into the song proper and finally toppling off that cliff. I like Pop Mike, and I like Country Mike, but Weird Mike is my favorite Mike.
5. Auntie's Municipal Court
4. Love Is Only Sleeping
The Monkees’ place in light-pop history was etched in bubblegum when they scored with “Daydream Believer”, but the original plan was to release Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil’s weirdly philosophical, psychedelic love song in 7/4 time. Further complicated by the relatively uncommercial vocals of Mike Nesmith, “Love Is Only Sleeping” probably would not have been the #1 monster “Daydream Believer” turned out to be if that song was left on the B-side, which it was until a manufacturing delay led to a rethink. But hits aren't everything. “Love Is Only Sleeping” is not just cooler than "Daydream", it's cool enough that Bob "St. Matthew" Dylan played it during an episode of his radio show on the topic of "sleep." What do you think of your hero now, Wenner?
That sleep aspect is rumored to be another reason that toppled "Love Is Only Sleeping" from its A-side role. Colgems supposedly worried that the title was too suggestive for radio and teenyboppers, the implication apparently being that “sleeping” is code for “fucking” (clearly, these people were doing it wrong). According to another and likelier rumor, the Powers That Be just didn't think Mike's voice was the stuff of bubblegum hits.
Whatever the case, it's hard to believe that "Love Is Only Sleeping" ever stood a chance as a single, but one cannot help but wonder what might have been if it had ended up in that role just as The Monkees' popularity was peaking. Would this have been the record to ruin them commercially, as Lester Sill allegedly feared? Would it be the one to finally force the hipsters to recognize that The Monkees were groovier than them, what with that irresistible wiry guitar riff, proggy time signature, psychedelic clicks and clacks, and dirty lyrics (for those who enjoy misinterpreting fairly easy-to-grasp songs)? We'll never know, as "Love Is Only Sleeping" was left to fulfill its destiny as yet another track that makes Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones the best Monkees album.
3. Circle Sky
Like "Sunny Girlfriend", “Circle Sky” is a song Mike composed for The Monkees' stage show. It's a another simple one with a simple progression to be played with energy fierce enough to make everyone in the audience momentarily forget how much they wanted to jump Davy's bones. It also makes disorienting use of the chromatic scale, which gave several of Mike's songs ("Mary Mary", "Good Clean Fun", "Listen to the Band") their unique flavor—John Enwistle is the only other rock songwriter I can think of who made the chromatic scale such a personal signature. When Bob Rafelson wanted to include a live performance in Head to prove that The Monkees were no phonies, "Circle Sky" was a great choice.
And most commentators will go down insisting that the film's live version is the definitive one. That's not the song way up at number 3 on my list, though. Frankly, I think the studio version that was allegedly included on the album "accidentally" blows the live one out of the water. On that version, Mike's vocal is too up front, the arrangement is too sparse, and Micky keeps tripping up what should be a straight, galvanic beat, with his incessant drum fills.
The studio version is an altogether different beast, with its shakers, wood blocks, organs, and army of skidding Bo Diddley guitars (must be about half a dozen). Without a solo in sight, "Circle Sky" may be the greatest rhythm guitar track ever recorded. It's all so overwhelming that Mike Nesmith can only shout out nearly inaudibly from the eye of the maelstrom. The other Monkees were bummed he didn’t include their live version on the Head soundtrack album, but the studio version is the magnificent one.
2. Porpoise Song
For The Monkees' one and only feature film, director Bob Rafelson and writer Jack Nicholson came up with something totally unexpected: a withering avant garde romp that relentlessly drives home the message that The Monkees were prisoners of their unfair ersatz image.
I hope at this point I've driven home the message that when The Monkees were free to create the way they wanted to, which they very often were, they were anything but ersatz. Proof is in the theme song of Head. There's nary a trace of bubblegum, teeny-bop pandering, or awkward artistry in this dreamy psychedelic dirge from the perfect pens of Gerry Goffin and Carole King.
Gerry's production is perfect too, as yawning cellos dance with droning organ, tip-toeing bass, warped Moog, clarion tubular bells, and elephantine drums. Micky and Davy breathe surreal lines that conjure images stretching from Micky's child-star days as TV's Circus Boy to his current ones as the trapped-in-a-black-box TV pop star whose overdubbed vocals are refused the chance to rejoice.
Why a porpoise? Well, it's much more intelligent than most people realize. It's often forced to perform in silly shows for slack-jawed doofuses, imprisoned in a tank when it should be free to do as it pleases. Does that remind you of anyone?
"Porpoise Song" is sad and personal and powerful. Then it slams to a halt, takes a breath, and slams back in as the cellos break out of their binds, the drums hammer a torrent of brimstone, the tubular bells clang midnight, and the Moog shrieks in mimicry of the title sea creature. It fades, and all you can do is try to catch your breath.
Hearing "Porpoise Song" for the first time on Hit Factory was like putting my musical tastes through a maturity accelerator. In an instant, things like "Valleri" and "Daydream Believer" were no longer good enough. I'd tasted how good music could be. I shit you not: "Porpoise Song" is as good as almost anything the critically revered Beatles ever recorded. But there's one Monkees track I love even more...
1. The Door Into Summer
If you'll scroll back up to my entry on "She Hangs Out", you'll recall my story about how I got my first proper Monkees album because I liked Davy's pop rocker from the TV show. While listening to Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, LTD., in its entirety for the first time, I was thrilled to discover how many of its other songs I knew from the show too, but none thrilled me as much as hearing a song I'd previously assumed was called "Penny Whistle Band" or "Gypsy Caravan" or something.
It wasn't. It was Bill Martin's "The Door Into Summer", a song The Monkees would not have been able to do had Martin not jumped ship from his old publisher after the whole "All of Your Toys" debacle. Thankfully he did, because his latest song was even better than that scrapped single. Inspired by Robert Heinlein's time travel novel of the same name (which is way better than Stranger In a Strange Land, FYI), Martin wrote a wistful song of regret delivered with sensitivity, power, and creativity by a real band.
There's stalwart and uncelebrated sideman Chip Douglas fingering the tricky nylon-string guitar interludes and the propulsive bass line. There's Peter spinning off shimmering, music-box piano runs and a gnarly Clavinet growl. There's Davy dutifully banging his tambourine. There's Micky gracing the upper atmosphere with his heavenly harmonies, and quite likely laying down a driving backbeat on the drums to go along with Eddie Hoh's rolling and tumbling one. And there's Mike Nesmith singing the lead with his mature, pensive, not-remotely-bubblegum sigh.
Eric Lefcowitz called "The Door Into Summer" "transcendent." I cannot improve on that, and you'd have a tough time finding a song that improves on "The Door Into Summer". It is perfect and as real as real gets, as The Monkees tended to be when they were free to be themselves.
