Monkees - Monkees (Dlx)
|
Our Price: $27.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $24.99 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Monkees (Dlx)
Free Music Review: Great Music from a Classic Group
Hit: 5 Stars
I am fifty and male, and loved the Monkees since I was a kid. I love they way they tweek these old albums from time to time. If you are a Monkees fan, I highly recommend it.Free Music Review: Great Debut Album
Hit: 5 Stars
This was one of the best debut albums of the 60's or possibly ever. If you are a Monkee fan, or not, you'll enjoy the fresh sound of every track on this album.Free Music Review: great cd
Hit: 5 Stars
I am a big monkees fan!! I really enjoyed this cd. I think that any big monkees fan would enjoy this cd.Free Music Review: "They Didn't Get No Respect..."
Hit: 4 Stars
If you are younger than me - and you probably ARE younger than me - then I'm afraid that you'll miss the relevance of the Monkees. In 1966, they were a phenomenon. They were also controversial. I was eight years old at the time, and I loved the band, the television show, the music, all of it. Along with the Beatles, they were a true obsession of mine. Older teenagers, though, cast doubt on my faith and fan-dom. They considered the Monkees to be pawns, a manufactured product who didn't (or couldn't) even play their own instruments. While I vaguely recognized some of their criticisms to be true, it didn't matter in the least to me. Besides, their arguments missed the most fundamental point; the music is good. Really good. While the older kids talked about Jefferson Airplane or the Rolling Stones, I reveled in the Monkees. It was fairly obvious that Davy Jones was not a whiz-bang musician, but the other guys appeared capable of playing, and they all sang great. Mike Nesmith even wrote some of their best songs, so at least he must be playing.
If you were to judge the band by this first album, then we would both be right. Studio musicians perform virtually every song here - including guitar work by Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork. What is revelatory is how a band - an admittedly manufactured band - would develop a strong rapport that made good material even better. "Last Train to Clarksville" is a good song, but the Monkees make it a great song. "This Just Doesn't Seem to Be My Day" and "Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day" are special because the Monkees bring a youthful energy that enlivens them. There are a few gaffs and laughable bits, like Davey's swoon-inducing "I Wanna Be Free" and "I'll Be True to You," but the balance of the record is incredibly strong. "Saturday's Child" still sounds great. Carole King and Gerry Goffin's "Take a Giant Step" is one of the most beautiful songs of the decade, and the Monkees version utilizes imaginative Eastern tonalities that make it simultaneously unique and definitive. After this, the best tracks belong to Mike Nesmith. "Papa Gene's Blues" and "Sweet Young Thing" are the work of a fully developed and extraordinarily talented songwriter, so why didn't the naysayers acknowledge this?
This `special edition' release features the full stereo mix on one disk and the original mono mix on the other, with bonus material fleshing out both disks. The difference in the mixes isn't particularly revelatory, but the bonus tracks certainly are. "Gonna Buy Me a Dog (backing track)" rocks harder than the album version, while songs like "All the King's Horses," "I Don't Think You Know Me" and "Propinquity" should have made the album, if only space had allowed. This material is forty years old, and it has been endlessly maligned, but it has withstood the barrage of insults AND the test of time. So many people missed the point, but after forty years, maybe the Monkees will finally get some respect. A- Tom Ryan
Free Music Review: People say we monkey around
Hit: 4 Stars
Welcome to the original boy band. Meticulously pieced together as a controlled alternative to The Beatles, Mike, Mickey, Davy and Peter were - as the expansive liner notes indicate - an unruly prefab four. The majordomo behind all of this, Don Kirshner, even describes Nesmith as a 'pain in the a$z' during the proceedings.
Funny thing was, the album still holds up 40 years later. It escapes my thinking exactly why I never bought this on CD (I have a very scratchy LP of this from my - ahem - preteen years), but this is close to revelatory. As some of the reviewers have already noted, the remastering is exemplary. This sounds like it was recorded last week...and the songwriting ringers brought on board to craft this churned out a four-million seller in an era when selling 500,000 was considered phenomenal.
The four Monkees themselves had more to this than many care to admit. While "Last Train To Clarksville" is a really good song, the energy and life the guys put into guaranteed its reception. Oddly enough, it was the second album that ponied up the bigger list of hits, but this is a pretty amazing blueprint for what was to come. Nesmith was already chomping at the bit to make his own music, even getting into a collaboration with Carol King and Gerry Goffin (the country-tinged "Sweet Young Thing") and the eclectic "Papa Gene's Blues." Hit-makers Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart brought in the TV Theme and "Last Train to Clarksville."
Just as the TV show did, there was also a fair amount of goofiness. As the liner notes indicate, the screwball "Gonna Buy Me A Dog" was originally intended as a straight-up pop song; the goof take by Davy and Mickey was ultimately chosen for the album. A clumsy attempt at an obvious dance-craze record, however, falls flat ("Let's Dance On"). The bonus material is curious - first takes of Nesmith's excellent "The Kind Of Girl I Could Love," eventual country star Michael Martin Murphy's cloy "Do Not Ask For Love," and radio/TV commercials. It helps codify the historical significance of music that remains better than you may remember it - and as first class pop.