Review: 'Buzz Me In: Inside the Record Plant Studios'

What do Electric Ladyland, There's a Riot Goin' On, Black Sabbath Vol. 4, Innervisions, Rumours, Cheap Trick '77, Parallel Lines, a spiffy 12-track machine, a room-size Moog, a suite of sex-fetish rooms, and 162 tons of cocaine have in common? They're all among the ingredients that made the Record Plant THE Record Plant. 

Founded by engineer Gary Kellgren, the Record Plant was the first successful studio by and for hippies. He decked the place out with high-tech equipment (a board capable of recording twelve tracks...twelve!) and, inspired by the perpetual skinny-dipping party at Peter Tork's house, an atmosphere of sexual and chemical malaise. It's where rock and rollers could escape the sterility of their grampa's recording studios to rock out, experiment, snort, and screw as much as their bodies and labels' budgets could bear.

Psychobabble's Favorite (and Not So Favorite) Monkees Songs...161 of Them Ranked!

A list of The Monkees' best-loved songs will inevitably be a cartload of the obvious topped with the usual suspects. "Daydream Believer". "I'm a Believer". "Last Train to Believer". Etcetera. That is not what follows. 

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.  

Review: 'The Monkees: Made in Hollywood'

The most tiresome avenue of inquiry when discussing the Monkees' project has always been that of whether or not they were "authentic." How Mike Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, and Davy Jones came together as actors, not musicians, to play a band on TV and use their voices to sell records doesn't even qualify as an open secret anymore. It's simply Pop History 101. The truly fascinating part of The Monkees' story is how they staged a revolution to become authentic, how they threatened to walk out on their contracts if they weren't allowed to take charge of their own recordings to make one album fully as a band (Headquarters) and one album mostly as a band (Pisces, Aquarius...) and then continue to produce their own recordings basically as solo artists almost until the end of the enterprise in 1970, the year the most artistically controlling Monkee, Mike, split and left Micky and Davy to churn out one last record in the pre-revolution style. 

Review: 'Love Is Understanding: The Life and Times of Peter Tork and The Monkees'

Since Davy Jones was the face of The Monkees, Micky Dolenz was the singer of the group's biggest hits, and Mike Nesmith was its unofficial leader and the one who had the most post-Monkees success as a maker of critically acclaimed records and movies and the de facto inventor of MTV, it's tempting to dismiss Peter Tork as the most faceless Monkee. However, he was The Monkees' finest musician--a masterful banjoist, finger-picking guitarist, and keyboardist--the one most different from his TV persona (a dumbo on the screen; a philosophical and intelligent man in real life), and by far the most unconventional one, which is saying a lot. 

When he wasn't getting screamed at by nine-year olds, Peter Tork was walking around naked in his hippie flop-house mansion, indulging in drugs and orgies, and putting his hippie money where his hippie mouth was and handing out cash, food, and beer to seemingly everyone he encountered from the biggest pop stars of his day (especially the future members of Crosby, Stills, and Nash) to the lowliest aspiring local musicians. What he got in return from his so-called friends was bankruptcy, but he apparently greeted it all with a zen attitude whether he was going to jail for a bullshit drug charge or being reduced to busking on the street to pull in a few coins to support himself and his family. 

Farewell, Mike Nesmith

Where to begin with an artist who spearheaded a genuine revolution in the most corporate sector of the music industry, who helped pioneer jangly country-psychedelic-rock (in conjunction with The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield), who produced such oddball movies as Repo Man and Tapeheads, who wrote one of the few rock autobiographies worth reading, and for all intents and purposes, invented MTV? 

No Monkee defied that group's wholly erroneous reputation for bubblegum weightlessness more than Mike Nesmith. Underneath that green wool hat was a brain that never stopped inventing. From the very beginning of The Monkees' career, he was writing and producing some of the most inventive and exhilarating tracks on their records. He was the dry wit and leader of the group's fictionalized incarnation, but he also led bandmates Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz (as well as a reluctant Davy Jones) in a swift revolution that saw this made-for-TV band wrestle control from old-school music supervisor Don Kirshner to take full control of their own music. It was Mike who hired former-Turtle Chip Douglas to produce The Monkees' new-phase records--and taught Douglas how to produce records!--which resulted in the best albums the group ever made. He sneaked such genuinely weird articles as the Cajun-flavored "Sweet Young Thing", the nightmarish psych-prog "Writing Wrongs", the eerie and poetic ode to the Sunset-Strip riots "Daily Nightly", the lysergic country idle "Auntie's Municipal Court" (co-written with the recently departed Keith Allison), and the 1920s pastiche "Magnolia Simms" (complete with built-in record skips!) onto so-called "bubblegum" albums. His fusion of country-rock and psychedelic-era production techniques and surreal lyricism made his post-Monkees albums with The First National Band truly revolutionary.

Mike was my personal favorite Monkee because of his truly unique music and voice and a demeanor so cool he made wearing a green wool hat not embarrassing (and yet totally, wonderfully dorky). At age twelve, I started combing my hair in a dip in mimicry of his iconic do. I still do. And he was the voice of my favorite Monkees song. Sadly, he died today of natural causes, according to his family. 

Update: Nesmith apparently died of heart failure (he'd had quadruple bypass heart surgery in 2018), and according to Micky Dolenz, he'd entered hospice a few days before his death.

Details About Lost Monkees Compilation Emerge

In 1969, The Monkees released their first official compilation album on Colgems Records, The Monkees Greatest Hits. The record featured all of the group's top-ten singles and tracks from their first five albums, all released before The Monkees took a commercial nose-dive in 1968 with the cancellation of their TV series and the release of the avant garde flop Head. Aside from some curious omissions—such as the top-twenty hit "D.W. Washburn", the high-charting B-sides "Words" and "Tapioca Tundra", and the ever-popular TV theme song—The Monkees Greatest Hits largely played it safe, while its photo-devoid cover was downright unimaginative.

Farewell, Peter Tork

Anyone who has ever read Psychobabble knows that I love The Monkees. In the mid-eighties, they were my gateway into the fab music of the sixties at a time when the airwaves were flooded with crushingly boring adult contemporary pap and crappy hair metal bands. They inspired me to learn to play the bass guitar. They were my introduction to peace-and-love politics. Much of that influence flowed directly from The Monkees' own bass player. 

Psychobabble’s 12 Days of X-Mas Episodes: Day 8

Does the mere idea of stepping into another mall, watching It’s a Wonderful Life for the zillionth time, or talking to your loved ones make you throw up? Then settle your bowlful of jelly into the La-Z-Boy® and deck your hall with today’s installment of Psychobabble’s 12 Days of X-Mas Episodes instead! Merry vegetating!

Series: The Monkees

Episode: “The Monkees’ Christmas Show”, in which The Monkees teach a poor little rich Scrooge the true meaning of blah, blah, blah. Honestly, this is not one of The Monkees’ finest half hours, veering too deeply into sappiness and subjecting viewers to a weird shopping fantasy sequence that goes on way too long. But there are some very nice things about “The Monkees’ Christmas Show”, such as the always welcome opportunity to see Mike get all serious and teach us all a valuable lesson, the casting of Butch “Eddie Munster” as the little Scrooge, which is sort of cool, the heartwarming closing credits sequence in which the guys invite all of their behind-the-scenes co-workers to say “happy holidays!” with them in front of the camera, and best of all, the performance of “Riu Chiu”. Destroying charges that Micky, Mike, Davy, and Peter lacked musical talent, they sing a complexly arranged Christmas carol in medieval Spanish effortlessly. It’ll send chills up your spine.

Psychobabble’s Perfect Monkees Box Set Recipe!

The Monkees were once a punch line to every joke about inauthentic, cheesy pop for toddlers. In a century in which pop is no longer a pejorative, few care about the manufactured manner in which Mike, Micky, Davy, and Peter were assembled, and many now know about their victorious struggle to wrest control of their music. Today, The Monkees are more respected than they ever were in the days when they outsold The Beatles and the Stones.

As all of you Psychobabblers know, Psychobabble loves The Monkees, but that doesn’t mean their back catalog is unimpeachable. The fact that an uncountable multitude of writers, producers, and musicians contributed to The Monkees’ output means that some really bad stuff was recorded (see “Teen Tiny Gnome”, the juvenile junk allegedly responsible for Boyce & Hart’s ousting as main Monkees producers) and released (see “The Day We Fall in Love”, the sappy pap regularly regarded as worst Monkees track of all time). Frankly, The Monkees never released a perfect album. Even the wonderful Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, LTD. contains one “this does not belong” track, both because “Hard to Believe” was not as edgy as its LP mates (on which the cutesiest sounding track is about a “Hell’s Angels gang bang.” Gross.) and because it was not made with the democratic band input that went into the other tracks. I’ve tried to maintain the chronology of when the tracks were recorded as much as possible, though Instant Replay is still a bit of a chronological hodgepodge in keeping with the original album’s semi-compilation format.

Super Deluxe Edition of 'More of The Monkees' Coming Soon

On December 15, Rhino Records will continue its long-running Monkees Super Deluxe Edition campaign with a triple-disc edition of More of The Monkees. Sessions for The Monkees' second LP were extensive and had the distinction of producing some of the group's best early songs ("Mary Mary", "Steppin' Stone", "She", "Look Out", to name a few) and some of their all-time worst ("The Day We Fall in love","Ladies Aid Society","Kicking Stones", "I Never Thought It Peculiar"... I shall name no more). The sessions also produced quite a few early versions of songs The Monkees would revisit later in their career ("Valleri", "Words","Prithee", "Mr. Webster", "I'll Be Back Up on My Feet", "I Can't Get Her Off My Mind", "Don't Listen to Linda", "The Girl I Left Behind Me", "I'll Spend My Life with You", "Whatever's Right").

Rhino's Super Deluxe More of The Monkees spreads the great, the bad, and the rest across three discs of mono, stereo, alternate, vocals-only, and instrumental mixes. The most intriguing inclusions on this set are a couple of numbers exclusive to the TV series ("I Love You Really"from the "Monkees at the Movies" episode and Mike's wacky version of "Different Drum" from "Too Many Girls") and the earliest live tracks to get official release. These ten numbers caught in Arizona in 1967 include the long-discussed rarity "She's So Far Out, She's In" and the guys' four traditional solo set pieces (Peter's "Cripple Creek", Mike's "You Can't Judge a Book By Its Cover", Micky's "I Got a Woman", and Davy's "Gonna Build  a Mountain").

You can pre-order the Super Deluxe Edition of More of the Monkees at Rhino.com here. And now here's the complete track listing:

Disc 1

1

She (Remastered) [Mono Mix]

2

When Love Comes Knockin' (At Your Door) [Remastered] [Mono Mix]

3

Review: Michael Nesmith's 'Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff'

In 1965, young Mike Nesmith was bumming around Texas under his shaggy tresses when he noticed that people were taking a lot more notice of him than usual. When he stepped into a 7-Eleven, the cashier flipped out and told him that the local radio station had been reporting on his appearances. Nesmith decided to pop in on the station manager to find out what the deal was. When he got to the station, the manager asked him to confirm that he was, indeed, George Harrison. Nesmith admitted he was not. The station manager threatened to have him arrested for fraud.

31 TV Shows for 31 Days of Halloween Season: Day 5

Series: The Monkees

Episode: “The Monstrous Monkee Mash”, in which a vampiric Count and his sultry niece want to plop Peter Tork’s brain into the skull of the Frankenstein Monster. Based on Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, the vampires of “The Monstrous Monkee Mash” one-up Bela Lugosi by turning all The Monkees into famous monsters of filmland. Fuzzy-haired Micky becomes The Wolf Man. Uptight Mike gets wrapped up as The Mummy. Heartthrob Davy’s powers to mesmerize ladies are put to use when he becomes “Count Dracula reborn!” “The Monstrous Monkee Mash” is both a deliriously fun opportunity to see the boys merge with Universal’s greatest monsters and a crazy continuation of the loosening up of the show’s format. More than ever The Monkees seem like they’re working without a script, or at least, not paying that much attention to it. The guys behind the cameras are goofier too, as seen in Micky’s multiple “scare take” outtakes left in the episode to disorienting effect. Plus, all of our monsters and Monkees end the show by grooving to the awesome “Goin’ Down”. Love is the ultimate trip!

The Monkees A to Z

“Madness!! Auditions. Folk & Roll musicians-singers for acting roles in new TV series. Running parts for 4 insane boys, age 17-21. Want spirited Ben Frank’s-types. Have courage to work. Must come down for interview.”

We all know what happened after this ad was published in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter in September 1965. Mike Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, and Davy Jones may have had varying levels of success “coming down” for their interviews, but interview they did, and one year later, they could all be seen glaring out from the cover of their debut album and capering on a new hit series The Monkees, which debuted on this very day in 1966.

Fifty years later, The Monkees seem to be as popular as ever, and more importantly, have finally gotten the critical approval they should have been getting since Micky first crooned “Last Train to Clarksville”. For many of us, The Monkees also provided an accessible introduction to the pop world when we were still a little too young for The Beatles’ complexity, the Stones’ luridness, or The Who’s violence (yet, somehow, we were ready for “Writing Wrongs”. Go figure). I’ve been a Monkees freak for thirty years now, and my obsession with the TV/recording/stage/screen sensations has left me with a wealth of Monkee facts and figures I am about to bounce off your million-dollar head in a feature I call…

Here we come...

OK, let’s address the big, smelly ape in the room with our very first entry. So, The Monkees did not form in a garage the way most bands do. They were put together by TV show producers for mostly commercial reasons, to cash in on the ongoing phenomenal success of The Beatles (see B), and to attempt to recreate the irreplaceable magic of A Hard Day’s Night and Help! for boob-tube audiences. This does not mean The Monkees weren’t artists. Micky had done his time in a garage band sometimes known as Micky and The One Nighters, and more coincidentally, The Missing Links, and possessed a voice of magnificent range and dramatics. Peter Tork was a hat-passing folkie with an extraordinary knack for picking up instruments (piano, guitar, banjo, bass, French horn, etc.) that made him The Monkees’ own John Entwistle or Brian Jones-style jack-of-all-trades. Davy Jones had been an acclaimed Broadway song-and-dance man, and Mike Nesmith was a composer, performer, and recording artist. The boys brought their individual talents to a project that didn’t necessarily need and really didn’t want them. By asserting their artistry on records that were going to sell millions whether or not Peter picked his banjo on the sessions, he, Micky, Mike, and Davy made the Monkees’ albums better than was necessary. Consequently, efforts such Headquarters; Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, LTD.; and Head became albums as timeless as much of what The Monkees’ organically formed peers were making in the mid-sixties.

The guys’ original compositions also made for some of the most interesting tracks on those records, and we’re not just talking about those of seasoned composer Mike Nesmith, whose pure country (“Good Clean Fun”, “Don’t Wait for Me”), pure rock (“Mary Mary”, “Circle Sky”), country-rock (“Sunny Girlfriend”, “You Told Me”), and country-psychedelia (“Tapioca Tundra”, “Auntie’s Municipal Court”) were consistently invigorating. Peter Tork’s “For Pete’s Sake” was strong and vital enough to serve as the series’ closing theme during season two, and his “Can You Dig It?” and “Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All Over Again?” helped bring the ultra-hip Head soundtrack to life. Micky Dolenz’s “Randy Scouse Git” was strong enough to become the first Monkee-composed single A-side (at least in England where it was retitled “Alternate Title” and went to #2), and his “Mommy and Daddy” was a piece of unflinching agit-prop aimed at pre-teen revolutionaries. Even Davy Jones matured into a composer capable of such fine pieces as “Dream World” and the tough-as-shit “You and I”. Had The Monkees never expressed themselves as artists on songs such as these, it is likely I would not be writing about them right now and you wouldn’t care to read about them.

 

Review: 'Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television, and American Pop Culture'

The question of whether or not some artifact of the twentieth century still “matters” has become a trendy question among pop-culture writers. The annoying implication is that the writer’s judgment holds some sort of weight, and if it is decided that, say, The Beatles get the thumbs down, they no longer “matter”—whatever that means. Instead of asking questions, Rosanne Welch’s new book Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television, and American Pop Culture makes an emphatic statement, and unlike a lot of these other “does this matter?” pieces, there is a special point behind her statement since The Monkees spent so much of their fifty-year career having critics tell them they most certainly do not matter.

As Welch points out, that attitude really began to change in the wake of Davy Jones’s death in 2012, as critical consensus started moving toward the judgment that The Monkees were actually really great. The point of Why The Monkees Matter is to articulate that judgment, and she does so by focusing exclusively on their TV show, which she notes was artistically, narratively, and politically progressive.

Welch organizes her book as a series of stand-alone topical essays. She deals with the state of the teenager on American TV prior to The Monkees arrival; how The Monkees contemporized depictions of young people by voicing anti-war, anti-consumerist philosophies (some scripted, some not); the radical inventiveness of the series’ design and writing (The Monkees was that rare sixties show that went out of its way to hire young writers); its pop-cultural legacy; etc.

Welch also deals with how women and non-American ethnicities were handled on the show. This is where The Monkees didn’t always live up to its Aquarian ideals, though the author cuts the series a lot of slack regarding its treatment of women. Yes, we do see an unusual number of female characters in respectable positions on the show—judges, royalty, PH.D. students, rock musicians—but some of Welch’s arguments that the series was generally feminist are weak. She contends that Davy’s weekly girlfriends weren’t sex objects because they never actually spend the night at The Monkees’ pad. Well, how many women on sixties sitcoms spent the night at a man’s pad? Zero? She suggests that Micky values intelligence more than sexuality because he describes Brenda from “99 ½ Pound Weakling” as “brilliant and intelligent” when this is clearly a joke on her stoned inarticulateness. While Welch notes the demotion of the all-female band The Westminster Abbeys to go-go dancers at the end of “Some Like It Lukewarm”, she unconvincingly suggests that other elements in the episode balance out the sexist way the writers chose to end it.

Welch is less forgiving when analyzing how non-American ethnicities are handled on “The Monkees”, focusing on how Asians, Italians, Gypsies, and Russians are stereotyped on the series. She misses a great opportunity to discuss the character of Thursday in “Monkees Marooned”, who very effectively sends up the “black native” stereotype with his eloquence, intelligence, ability to take control of situations, and hipness.

Aside from the weaknesses in these two chapters, Why The Monkees Matter is not only a fine piece of cultural analysis overall but also an atypically readable and fun one. It’s filled with historical tidbits about the series’ filming and writing and Mike, Micky, Davy, and Peter, so even if you need no convincing that The Monkees matter, you may still find much to interest you on its pages.

Review: “The Monkees Complete Series” Blu-ray Set

UPDATED 8/15/2016

The Show: I assume I don’t have to go into a long spiel about the quality of “The Monkees”, itself. If you’re considering dropping $200 (plus tax and shipping) on “The Complete Series”, you must already know whether or not you like the show enough to spring for it. In short, it still holds up as a radical, joyous, original, tuneful, subversive twist on the Network sitcom. Four hippies don’t merely reassure your parents that it’s OK to grow out that crew-cut; they also subtly voice their opinions about drugs, prejudice, teenager rights, war, and other topics in their improvisations, scripts, after-show interviews, and songs. And, boy, those songs! Some of the most glorious pop of their day. But again, you already knew that, and if you didn’t, spend an hour reading through every post tagged “Monkees” here on Psychobabble. That should hip you right up.

The Latest Bonus Specs on the 'Monkees' Blu-ray Box

OK, so it's disappointing that the "Monkees Complete Series" Blu-ray set, which was originally supposed to be released last January before being bumped up to late this April, has been delayed once again to June 27, but it sounds like Andrew Sandoval and John Hughes have been hard at work adding more content to this set. They recently appeared on the "Zilch" podcast to express their embarrassment over the delays, assure us that this is the last one, and go into greater detail about what we can expect from the set. You can listen to the full podcast here, but this is the gist of the bonus content:

"The Monkees" Alternate Song Track Guide

When “The Monkees” makes its Blu-ray debut as a limited edition box set on January 29, 2016, it will arrive with enough bonus material to stuff the trunk of the Monkeemobile. Aside from the feature film Head, the most important of these bonuses will be alternate song tracks that Monkee-wrangler Andrew Sandoval recently announced will be part of the set. These tracks are so important because not all of us were lucky enough to watch the series when it originally aired. So if you caught episodes for the first time as reruns during the summer 1967 hiatus or as Saturday afternoon reruns during the 1969-1970 season, you may be used to very different songs in certain episodes. In some cases, the replacements greatly changed the tone of the episode. Imagine The Monkees frugging in Hell (“The Devil and Peter Tork”) to the insipid “I Never Thought It Peculiar” instead of the acidic “Salesman”. Whoops!

As someone who wasn’t even born during those years, I first discovered “The Monkees” in the mid-80s when it aired on MTV, Nick-at-Night, and in syndication on weekday mornings on channel 9 WOR-TV in New York. These reruns were a jumble of the originally aired episodes, 1967 replacements, and in a couple of cases, ’69/’70 replacements. As a nostalgia junkie, I long to rewatch “The Monkees” with the songs I remember from my youth. In “Success Story”, Davy forever broods on the beach to “Shades of Grey”, not “I Wanna Be Free”. “Midnight Train” is the soundtrack to the guys getting ready for their big party in “The Chaperone”, not “This Just Doesn’t Seem to Be My Day”.

Now, Sandoval apparently said that there will be alternate song tracks for “some” episodes. This is either a reference to the fact that only 32 of the 58 episodes aired with alternate songs or that only some of those 32 episodes will appear with alternate songs. We will only know when all the specs of the still-a-work-in-progress- box set are announced. In any event, if only some of the episodes that aired with alternate songs are included, you may want to figure out which ones are present and which ones are absent. I know I will, but when I went looking for a guide to the episodes that featured alternate songs in reruns, I couldn’t find one. Thanks a lot, Internet! Steve Urkel has his own Wikipedia page, but I can’t find some pretty basic information on one of the most enduring TV shows of the sixties.

So, with a little (lot of) help from Andrew Sandoval’s essential book The Monkees: The Day-By-Day Story of the 60s TV Pop SensationI put together my own guide to the alternate song tracks used on reruns of “The Monkees”. Maybe you’ll find it useful too.

1967: Summer Hiatus Reruns

Ultimate Blu-ray Edition of "The Monkees" Coming in 2016!

One of my biggest wishes on the 2015 wish list I posted shortly before the beginning of this year was the release of "The Monkees" on blu-ray. While that deadline won't be met, my wish is still coming to pass, and it's probably appropriate that it's happening in 2016 to coincide with the series' fiftieth anniversary. On January 29, 2016, Rhino will release both seasons of "The Monkees" on a ten-disc blu-ray box set that will include the group's surreal feature film Head and an all-new HD remaster of the TV special 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee. The series and TV special are both being remastered from the original negatives (Head is presumably the same version Criterion released as part of the BBS Box Set in 2010). 

Other bonuses include commentaries and Kellogg's commercials, presumably the ones already avalable on the DVD edition, as well as never-before-seen outtakes from Head. No word yet on whether or not the set will include alternate music tracks for the summer-of-'67 and 1969 reruns that included replacement songs, but I think we can all agree that the folks at Rhino would be cuckoo not to include those.

"The Monkees Complete TV Series Blu-ray" is now available to pre-order as an addmittedly pricey limited edition set of 10,000 units that will include fancy packaging and a bonus 7" featuring unreleased TV mixes of two unspecified songs. Hopefully, a more affordable version of the set will be available soon after January 29. That might have to be a wish for my 2016 wish list.

21 Underrated Songs by The Monkees You Need to Hear Now!

I’ve done quite a few of these “21 Underrated Songs You Need to Hear Now” lists, but this is the one that matters most, because none of the other groups I’ve covered are as misunderstood as The Monkees. Ridiculed during their time for being phonies because they formed on a TV studio back lot and not in a garage, The Monkees were painted as a quartet of no-talent, bubblegum salesmen. Anyone with ears who heard their best hits could detect this wasn’t true, even if the guys rarely contributed more than their considerable vocal talents to those charting singles. But as far as I’m concerned, you have to dig a bit deeper to uncover the songs that really made The Monkees extraordinary. Some of these non-hits—such as “Randy Scouse Git” (which actually was a hit in the UK), “Shades of Gray”, “What Am I Doing Hangin’ ‘Round?”, “Saturday’s Child”, “Mary Mary”, “Goin’ Down”, and “For Pete’s Sake”—have been well represented enough on hits compilations that they can’t really be called underrated anymore. A lot of other Monkees recordings have gotten a lot less exposure than they deserve. So for anyone who still holds to that increasingly outdated opinion that Mike Nesmith, Micky Dolenz (celebrating his 70^th birthday today), Peter Tork, and Davy Jones weren’t truly talented, truly original singers, musicians, writers, and producers really does need to hear the following 21 underrated songs.

1. “Papa Gene’s Blues” (from the album The Monkees) 1966

The Monkees were rarely taken seriously during their own time, but fortunately a lot of the stupid prejudices to which they were subjected have faded over time. Today it’s hard to feature anyone not succumbing to the exhilaration of Mike’s Tex-Mex jambalaya “Papa Gene’s Blues”. With its rising and falling chord progression and simplistically joyful chorus, it remains one of Nes’s freshest compositions. With its intricate web of percussion and twangy guitars, it is one of his most magnetic productions. Mike deserves extra credit for demanding Peter Tork be allowed to pick his acoustic in the backline, thus taking the first tentative step toward making The Monkees a real group.

2. “Sweet Young Thing” (from the album The Monkees) 1966

Despite composing some high quality material on his own, Mike Nesmith still couldn’t catch any respect from music supervisor Don Kirschner, who insisted he work with the more seasoned duo of Gerry Goffin and Carole King. The experience wasn’t pleasant for anyone involved, and Mike apparently said something that reduced Carole to tears at one point. Fortunately, something great came out of the forced collaboration, the stomping, careening Cajun funk “Sweet Young Thing”. Like “Papa Gene’s Blues”, it was a real pop anomaly in ’66, and I certainly haven’t heard anything that sounds like it since. I don’t care if Mike wasn’t the guy whacking out those fuzz chords or sawing away at the fiddle (session man Jimmy Bryant deserves credit for that dizzying touch), he produced this thing, and it’s the production that makes the fairly simplistic composition come alive.

3. “All of Your Toys” (unreleased until 1987’s Missing Links compilation) recorded 1967

The Monkees Meet the Monsters

Demonic deals. Cursed, severed animal parts. Reanimated corpses. Unholy séances. Unwanted brain transplants. These things have long plagued humankind. Four particular young men were unlucky enough to have to deal with all of them. Mike, Micky, Davy, and Peter may have been too busy singing to put anybody down (well, unless we’re talking about Don Kirshner, Bob Rafelson, LBJ, each other…aww hell, The Monkees loved putting people down). That didn’t stop an assortment of creeps, spooks, and kooks from putting them down.

In keeping with its postmodern take on entertainment, “The Monkees” often spoofed well-worn genres: spy pictures (“The Spy Who Came in From the Cool”, “Monkee Chow Mein”, “The Card Carrying Red Shoes”), heist pictures (“Monkees in a Ghost Town”, “The Picture Frame”), gangster pictures (“Monkees à la Carte”, “Alias Micky Dolenz”), sports pictures (“Monkees in the Ring”), beach movies (“Monkees at the Movies”), motorcycle movies (“The Wild Monkees”), pirate movies (“Hitting the High Seas”), westerns (“It’s a Nice Place to Visit”, “Monkees in Texas”), sci-fi (“The Monkees Watch Their Feet”, “Mijacogeo”), even documentaries (“Monkees on Tour”, ”Monkees in Paris”). However, “The Monkees” trampled no genre as regularly as horror.