THE BEST OF EVERYTHING: Monkeemania

This is the 800th post on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do).

Sometimes only the best will do. The Best Of Everything looks back on specific greatest-hits and best-of LPs and what they meant to me.



THE MONKEES: Monkeemania (Arista [Australia], 1979)

You may not remember what it was like.

Ah, maybe you do remember. If you were a fan of The Monkees in the late '70s and early '80s, that vague tinge of isolation, even defensiveness, could well nip at the corners of your recollection even now. It may still feel uncomfortable, an icy chill when you prefer to give up your secrets and let down your hair, and sit with friends here by the fire light. The Monkees. You liked The Monkees. You loved The Monkees. But everyone else seemed to think The Monkees were utter, irredeemable crap.

You didn't necessarily look for validation. You knew you were right about The Monkees, that detractors were wrong, myopic in their smug dismissal of a made-for-TV fake band that didn't play its own instruments. You knew The Monkees were more than just their artificial origin, their test-tube genesis; you knew The Monkees' music mattered.  You'd stand your ground, you'd make your case to the skeptics, the Philistines, and proudly declare, I'm a believer! Some would listen. More would not. But you remained secure in your conviction. You just...y'know, wished there were a few more believers to be found.

The believers were out there. And you would find each other before too long.

I graduated from college in 1980. I didn't have specific plans beyond wanting to stay with my girlfriend Brenda and try to build some kind of life together. She still had another year of school left, and I had no immediate professional prospects; it made sense to remain in our college town of Brockport, get an apartment together, and take a shot. Perils awaited us on our chosen path. We loved each other. We still do. So there we went, walkin' down the street. My B.A. in English was good enough for McDonald's, so I had a paycheck. The head of the English Department at Brockport called me one day at McDonald's to see if I was interested in becoming a Graduate Assistant, but I surprised him by declining the offer. Objectively, one would say this was a stupid move on my part. But it may have been the right stupid move. I wasn't ready for grad school. My college days were over.

Money was a struggle, yet we managed. The rent was paid. Groceries were purchased. We had beer. I was even able to scrape up sufficient cash to keep on buying records. I wouldn't have called it living if I couldn't buy records.

My musical taste was left-of-the-dial mixed with classic: The Beatles, The Ramones, The Kinks, The Jam, The Rolling Stones, The Undertones, The Yardbirds, The Romantics, et al. That certainly included the music of The Monkees.

By the early '80s, I had a decent Monkees collection. I'd inherited copies of The Monkees and More Of The Monkees from my brother when he moved out of the house, I'd scored flea market copies of Headquarters and The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, found used copies of Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. and Head, and acquired a beat-up copy of Changes. I had an RCA Record Club copy of Greatest Hits, and 45s of "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You"/"The Girl I Knew Somewhere" and "Daydream Believer"/"Goin' Down," maybe "D.W. Washburn," too. I didn't have Instant Replay or The Monkees Present, and had never even heard the former, but nonetheless: not bad for a twenty-year-old Monkees fan at a time when the entirety of the group's original catalog was long out of print.

I played the Monkees music I had, and I played it often, right alongside my punk and British Invasion and power pop and new wave. It all fit right together for me. I remember turning in for bed one evening, letting the sound of The Monkees' Changes lull us to sleep as it played at low volume on Brenda's little stereo. Our almost-slumber was interrupted by a knock at the door: the police, responding to a complaint from our downstairs neighbor, who insisted we were playing our goddamned music too goddamned loud. It would not be his last complaint in that area, but that's a story for another day.



My record store of choice was Main Street Records, the best little record store that ever was. Main Street owners Bill and Carol Yerger were believers. It was in Main Street's import section in late '80 or thereabouts that I first spied the manifestation of a seemingly impossible dream: a comprehensive double-LP set from Australia, promising "40 Timeless Hits From The Monkees." This was Monkeemania.



Sometimes, one should believe in miracles, I guess.

It's difficult to fully articulate the jolt of glee I felt when I saw this album. I mean, I already had the vast majority of the songs it contained, so it's not like this could serve as a dramatic upgrade of my meager Monkees holdings. But! It did fill in some gaps, with tracks from those elusive Instant Replay and The Monkees Present LPs. The track listing indicated a live version of "Circle Sky," and I just ached to hear a live cut by The Monkees. I don't know whether or not I realized that two of the tracks--"Steam Engine 99 [sic]" and "Love To Love"--were previously unreleased, but they were for damned sure new to me. I had to have this!

It was priced around $20, in low-wage 1980 money. I had to have it, sure, but I wouldn't be able to have it anytime soon.

In those days, I was at Main Street Records at least once a week anyway, sometimes more often than that. I studied the glittering prize that was Monkeemania on each visit. The LP wasn't sealed, and the Yergers were okay with allowing me to look inside the package and read the extensive liner notes. Those liner notes made me want it even more.




This cannot be overstated: Australian rock journalist Glenn A. Baker's liner notes essay for Monkeemania was not only the first serious attempt to tell the story of The Monkees without dismissing them outright; for years, it was the only such attempt. Decades later, I can't thank the Yergers enough for letting me stand back in the corner of their store to read and re-read again and again and again what Baker wrote. Baker's essay became an integral part of this set's appeal to me. Someday it would be mine.

Months passed. I'm not exaggerating. I was poor! And, y'know, still buying other records, too. But Monkeemania was still on the rack at Main Street, awaiting its predestined rendezvous with a believer. Look out, here comes tomorrow. At long last, tomorrow arrived. I walked into Main Street, made a bee-line for the back corner, plucked Monkeemania from its perch, and returned to the front counter. Bill Yerger smiled and said, Finally getting it, huh? I smiled in reply, giddy with the satisfaction of a vow fulfilled. I went back to my apartment to listen to Monkeemania.



Monkeemania is not quite sequenced chronologically, though it does begin with the familiar "(Theme From) The Monkees" and commences through the group's first three singles, including both the A- and B-sides of the monster second 45, "I'm A Believer" b/w "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone." So Side One bashes through the theme, single sides "Last Train To Clarksville," "Steppin' Stone," "Believer," and "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You," then plays the More Of The Monkees LP track "Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)," completing a hat trick of Neil Diamond's three Monkees compositions back-to-back. Another More Of The Monkees cut--Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart's stomping "She"--follows, and leads into Boyce & Hart's sublime "Words" from third album Pisces, then David Gates' "Saturday's Child" from the eponymous debut and Harry Nilsson's "Cuddly Toy" from Pisces. A perfect side of perfect rockin' pop.

Side Two launches right into the mother lode of Monkees songs written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King: the "Clarksville" B-side "Take A Giant Step," More Of The Monkees' sublime "Sometime In The Morning," the irresistible "Pleasant Valley Sunday" single, and the Pisces groupie kiss-off "Star Collector." "Sweet Young Thing," Goffin and King's first-album co-write with Michael Nesmith, flows into the sheer majesty of Goffin and King's "Porpoise Song (Theme From 'Head')," followed by the easygoing delight of its B-side "As We Go Along," written by King with Toni Stern. Songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil's complete Monkees c.v. follows, as we hear "Shades Of Gray" (the first Headquarters track so far) and "Love Is Only Sleeping" from Pisces. Side Two concludes with my first exposure to the Instant Replay track "The Girl I Left Behind Me," written by Carole Bayer Saga and Neil Sedaka. I confess that last track has never done anything for me.

After all these groupings of The Monkees' outside songwriters on the first two sides, Side Three explodes with songs written or co-written by members of the band: Nesmith's "Mary, Mary" from More Of The Monkees, Micky Dolenz's "Randy Scouse Git" from Headquarters, Davy Jones and Bill Chadwick's agreeably heavy "You And I" from Instant Replay, Nesmith's "Tapioca Tundra" from The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, Dolenz's incendiary "Mommy And Daddy" from The Monkees Present, Peter Tork and Joey Richards' shoulda-been-a-single "For Pete's Sake" from Headquarters, and Nesmith's country triumphs "Good Clean Fun" and "Listen To The Band," both from The Monkees Present. After some spoken-word audio clips of each Monkee (from the TV series episode "The Monkees On Tour"), the side closes with the rare treat of The Monkees playing live, savagely attacking Nesmith's "Circle Sky" in the concert sequence from their movie Head. If you're not a believer after hearing that, I say the devil can have you.

Monkeemania's fourth and final side serves up "Daydream Believer," the simply wonderful "What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round?," "D.W. Washburn," fave rave "Valleri," Instant Replay's "Looking For The Good Times" (first time I'd heard it, an instant winner for me), and the non-LP B-side "Someday Man." Then the underrated "Oh My My," Brenda's favorite Monkees track, is Monkeemania's sole representation from Changes.

But we're not done yet! Monkeemania continues with the first-ever release of two fantastic tracks from the vaults: "Steam Engine" (transferred to album directly from a TV broadcast) and another Neil Diamond song, "Love To Love," which immediately became my all-time favorite Davy Jones performance. The album closes with the B-side "Goin' Down," written by Dolenz, Tork, Jones, and Nesmith with Diane Hildebrand, and with "Tema Dei Monkees," a weird, badly-edited (but great!) rendition of  "(Theme From) The Monkees" sung in Italian by Micky.

Monkeemania does suffer from...well, let's call it less-than-pristine sound quality. What's the opposite of virgin vinyl? Gigolo vinyl? Jaded six-time divorcée vinyl? Even if the plastic were pure, it's just overloaded with ten tracks per side. It ain't exactly an audiophile release. The track selection is pretty swell, though one mourns the lack of "The Door Into Summer" from Pisces, and the absence of any of Nesmith's blockbuster trifecta from Headquarters--"You Told Me," "Sunny Girlfriend," and especially "You Just May Be The One"--borders on jarring. Yet believers absolve it of its flaws. It's somehow perfect after all. In 1981, it was the Monkees collection I needed.



The 1980s would turn out okay for The Monkees and their fans. Even before I bought Monkeemania, I received a Monkees t-shirt as a present for my 21st birthday. Some time well after that, during the summer of '81 or '82, I wore it to a bar for a live show by The Insiders, a young garage band that specialized in energetic '60s covers and like-minded originals. At one point late in their set, one of The Insiders said, Hey, I hear there's someone walkin' here around tonight in a Monkees t-shirt! This is the song he came to hear.  With that, The Insiders slammed into "Last Train To Clarksville," and I believe they also did "Steppin' Stone" before the night was done. It was the first time I had ever heard anyone--anyone--play a Monkees song live.

The crowd did not protest. There was no grass-roots revolt against the ludicrous idea of a rock 'n' roll group covering The Monkees. There was dancing. There was joy. I was not alone. There was belief.

Full-blown Monkeemania (without italics) made The Monkees pop stars again in 1986. I was managing a record store in Buffalo, and happy to help all of these young fans who'd seen The Monkees on MTV and became new believers overnight. There were rumbles of resistance--the odd sneer, the occasional rolled eye, the oozing condescension of the clueless--but they were the old guard. They did not believe. The rest of us, the ones who knew better? We were the young generation, and we had something to say.



My own copy of Monkeemania is long gone, the victim of shrinking available storage space, periodic record collection purges, and continuous upgrades. It was replaced by better sets, and those sets have in turn been replaced by even better sets. In 1991, I had an opportunity to review Rhino's four-CD Monkees retrospective Listen To The Band for Goldmine. I began that review by reflecting on what the music of The Monkees means, and what its value might be:

By choosing Listen To The Band as the title of this boxed set, Rhino has made it clear where the emphasis should be in reviewing The Monkees' recording career. Just by existing, this retrospective invites us to consider an intriguing what-if scenario: what if the memory of The Monkees had to stand on the music alone, deprived of the TV show image and Prefab Four hype? Can The Monkees be judged today as a legitimate musical force of the '60s (in spite of their artificial origins), or are they best discarded as mere cathode-ray background noise (in spite of their hit records), no more relevant than the incidental music from Bewitched or My Favorite Martian?

I betcha you can guess my answer to that question.

But by then, others were eager to agree. That was always true, I'm sure, but it was evident now. I'd found Monkees fans online, and read sincere appreciations of The Monkees in books and magazines. There were even a few rock critics who had seen the light. I once believed I was alone, that I was the solitary man immortalized in a hit record by a guy who used to write hits for The Monkees. I'll be what I am. But now, I finally knew: I wasn't alone. I was not alone at all.

I'm still not alone. I guess I never really was.

All Monkeemania scans courtesy of Monkees Live Almanac

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