Deep Album Cuts Vol. 250: The Monkees
9 years ago this week, I posted my first Deep Album Cuts playlist. In my fondness for lining up the big milestones, I may try to hit the 300th post in the series on the 10th anniversary next year, which is possible since I did post over 50 of them in 2020, but I guess we'll see if that happens. In the meantime, it's pretty crazy that I've done a quarter of a thousand of these things, and I still feel like I'm nowhere near running out of worthy subjects.
Michael Nesmith died in December, leaving Micky Dolenz as the only surviving member of The Monkees. But shortly before that, from September to November 2021, Nesmith and Dolenz embarked on The Monkees Farewell Tour, promising "all the hits, deep cuts & fan favorites" one last time. Like many older touring acts these days, Nesmith and Dolenz used a lyric teleprompter monitor onstage to help ensure they'd sing the right words, and I believe someone on their crew usually does the job but they hire operators in different cities when they're able to. So on October 18th when they played the Warner Theater in Washington, D.C., the teleprompting company I work for was hired and I scrolled lyrics for The Monkees. It was a fun night, they had a great backing band and a real palpable love for their fans and their songs. Nesmith was definitely moving slow, and would take breaks and sit behind me backstage a few times while Dolenz would sing solo, but I'm really glad he got to do that last run of shows before he passed away. I kept my copy of the setlist from that night (you can hear largely the same set on their 2020 live album The Monkees Live - The Mike & Micky Show).
The Monkees deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):
1. Saturday's Child
2. Take A Giant Step
3. Papa Gene's Blues
4. I'll Be True To You
5. Sweet Young Thing
6. Your Auntie Grizelda
7. The King Of Girl I Could Love
8. Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)
9. Sometime In The Morning
10. When Love Comes Knockin' (At Your Door)
11. You Just May Be The One
12. Sunny Girlfriend
13. Zilch
14. No Time
15. For Pete's Sake (Closing Theme)
16. The Door Into Summer
17. Love Is Only Sleeping
18. Cuddly Toy
19. Star Collector
20. Peter Pervical Patterson's Pet Pig Porky
21. P.O. Box 9847
22. I'll Be Back Up On My Feet
23. As We Go Along
24. Ditty Diego - War Chant
25. Circle Sky
26. Poll
27. You And I
28. If I Knew
29. It's Got To Be Love
30. Gettin' In
31. Run Away From Life
32. Birth Of An Accidental Hipster
33. House Of Broken Gingerbread
Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 from The Monkees (1966)
Tracks 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 from More Of The Monkees (1967)
Tracks 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 from Headquarters (1967)
Tracks 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 from Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. (1967)
Tracks 21 and 22 from The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees (1968)
Tracks 23, 24, 25 and 26 from Head (1968)
Track 27 from Instant Replay (1969)
Track 28 from The Monkees Present Micky, David, Michael (1969)
Track 29 from Changes (1970)
Track 30 from Pool It! (1987)
Track 31 from Justus (1996)
Track 32 from Good Times! (2016)
Track 33 from Christmas Party (2018)
Tracks 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 from More Of The Monkees (1967)
Tracks 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 from Headquarters (1967)
Tracks 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 from Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. (1967)
Tracks 21 and 22 from The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees (1968)
Tracks 23, 24, 25 and 26 from Head (1968)
Track 27 from Instant Replay (1969)
Track 28 from The Monkees Present Micky, David, Michael (1969)
Track 29 from Changes (1970)
Track 30 from Pool It! (1987)
Track 31 from Justus (1996)
Track 32 from Good Times! (2016)
Track 33 from Christmas Party (2018)
The Monkees are kind of rock and roll's Pinocchio fable, a fake band assembled for a TV show that willed themselves into becoming a real band. When Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork were cast in the NBC sitcom "The Monkees" in 1966, they'd sing the songs assigned to them by the show's producers and mime their instruments. But there were exceptions even on the beginning -- Nesmith, who'd quickly emerge as the band's most prolific songwriter, penned 2 songs on the first Monkees album, and Tork played guitar on one of them, "Papa Gene's Blues" (all in all Nesmith wrote or co-wrote 10 songs on this playlist).
The Monkees quickly became a music industry phenomenon that competed with the more respected '60s rock legends of the day -- in 1967 they outsold The Beatles and toured with Jimi Hendrix as their opening act. Inevitably, the prefab nature of the Monkees became embarrassing, particularly to the members of the band, who fought for the right to actually write and perform the music on their albums, beginning with their third album Headquarters ("No Time" being the first proper song co-written by all four Monkees, although they gave studio engineer Hank Cicalo a co-writing credit as a lucrative gift). And though the real Monkees all played on the band's third and final U.S. #1, "Daydream Believer," their popularity soon did started to wane, and "The Monkees," never a huge ratings hit relative to the sales of the albums, got canceled after only 2 seasons.
Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart were the songwriters behind a lot of The Monkees' biggest hits, and at one point in the '70s they toured with half the Monkees and released an album as Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart. But the group had a whole stable of impressive Brill Building songwriters working on their records, as well as legendary session players. Gerry Goffin and Carole King wrote "Take A Giant Step," "Sometime In The Morning" and "Star Collector," which features Peter Tork playing some of the earliest Moog synth heard on a pop record. Goffin and King also co-wrote "Sweet Young Thing" with Michael Nesmith. King also co-wrote "As We Go Along," and Goffin co-wrote "I'll Be True To You," which was a hit for The Hollies (under the title "Yes I Will"). Neil Diamond wrote "Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)" alongside the hit "I'm A Believer." Harry Nilsson wrote "Cuddly Toy" and "Daddy's Song." Neil Sedaka and Carole Bayer Sager wrote "When Love Comes Knockin' (At Your Door)." Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil wrote "Love Is Only Sleeping," which has a really great use of 7/8 meter.
The Monkees' first and only feature film, Head, was famously a box office flop, but reputedly a really strange and experimental little movie that's gained a cult following over the years. I haven't seen the movie, and the companion album would probably make sense if I had, but there's some interesting stuff on there (for that matter I've never really seen much of "The Monkees," which is surprising because I saw a ton of campy '60s sitcoms like "Gilligan's Island" and "I Dream of Jeannie" on TV in the '90s).
The Head album was sequenced by Jack Nicholson, who co-wrote the screenplay and appeared in the film, and co-wrote the song "Ditty Diego-War Chant." Frank Zappa appears in a small role in Head and some of his dialogue makes its way into the song "Poll." "As We Go Along" has a cool 5/4 section at the end that I may use in a future 5/4 DJ mix. And on the next album, Instant Replay, Neil Young plays guitar on "You And I," which is a really cool song with an interesting performance by legendary Wrecking Crew drummer Hal Blaine. After Head, things slowly unraveled and members of the band began leaving, first Tork and then Nesmith, and Justus is the only one of their last 7 albums that features all 4 Monkees.
Dolenz, Nesmith, and Tork released two albums after Davey Jones's death, both of which were produced by Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne, who weirdly co-wrote "House Of Broken Gingerbread" with novelist Michael Chabon. Good Times! was the album that really cashed in on their goodwill with alt-rockers who grew up on their music, in addition to Schlesinger there are songs written by Rivers Cuomo, Ben Gibbard, and Andy Partridge, and "Birth of an Accidental Hipster" was written by Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller. At the D.C. show, they were proud to note that the Good Times! single "Me & Magdalena" was written by Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie. After Nesmith's death in December, Gibbard played a short tribute set on Instagram that included "Me & Magdalena" and "You Just May Be The One."
The band's setlist at the D.C. show that I worked on included "Papa Gene's Blues," "Sweet Young Thing," "The Kind Of Girl I Could Love," "You Just May Be The One," "For Pete's Sake," "Sunny Girlfriend," "The Door Into Summer," "Love Is Only Sleeping," and "Birth Of An Accidental Hipster." Those selections are, naturally, heavy on Dolenz and Nesmith songs, but they also did some Jones songs. Tork had by far the least contributions as a lead singer, but I put a few on the playlist, "Your Auntie Grizelda," the goofy little a cappella piece "Peter Pervical Patterson's Pet Pig Porky," and "Gettin' In." This playlist is actually the most tracks I've ever crammed into my self-imposed 80-minute cap for Deep Album Cuts (the previous record held by both the Everly Brothers and They Might Be Giants playlists, which each had 32 songs).
A couple years back, I appeared on DC Hendrix's podcast to talk about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and one of the things he asked me was whether I think The Monkees had been inducted. I answered yes, mostly on instinct, because I'd love their inclusion to kind of challenge the Hall's ideas about authenticity and who gets counted as a real artist, and The Monkees' story is so unique and sort of inspiring in that respect. But now that I've really taken a deep dive into their catalog, I believe in moreso that they deserve to at least get nominated for the first time.
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