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Rating:  -
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.
Rating: -
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.
Rating:  -
This, of course, is the legendary first album by the Monkees. Most of the album was produced by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, with the exception of the two Michael Nesmith songs, which Nesmith produced himself. Most of the material is quite good. The weak parts of the album, to me, are the Davy Jones songs. Nothing against Davy, but he often got stuck with drippy ballads on the Monkees albums. A case in point would be "I'll Be True to You" (ugh) on this album. But, credit where credit is due, "I Wanna Be Free" is actually a pretty good ballad sung by Davy. Personally, my favorite song here is Mike's "Sweet Young Thing". This two cd "deluxe" edition features both the stereo and mono versions of the album. In addition, there are 17 bonus tracks. Most of these bonus tracks were previouly released on a prior version of this cd, or on one of the three "Missing Links" cds, but it's nice to have them all in one place. The previously unreleased tracks are mostly alternate mixes of previously released songs. This is a really well put together set, but only hardcore Monkees fans will need to own both the stereo and mono versions of the album.
Rating:  -
A middling album with a lot of uninteresting songs. How it ever became such a sensation is anybody's guess. The three stars are for the overall album as an interesting trove of different takes (different primarily, or exclusively, in who took the lead vocal on a given song), but really, how often you'll listen to the same album in stereo and then mono depends entirely on how rabid a fan you already are. However, what I find truly uncanny is not only that they were "fabricated" but that they got away with a whopping amount of what you might call "further and more sophisticated fabrication." Many songs, outside of their hits, cleverly but blatantly imitated important artists of the day - not a complete song, not a specific riff, but more intelligently, the overall sound or atmospheric idea. Credit must be given to their various songwriters for copying so masterfully but also, and very eerily, for occasionally "predicting" music that was right around the corner but hadn't arrived yet. A few examples: "I'm not your steppin' stone" is almost explicitly Steppenwolf in atmospherics, but something like "Mary, Mary" is much subtler - a bit of Jefferson Airplane, epitomized by Kaukonen's metallic and echoey guitar. A lot of songs sounded like generic but very pretty "adult" music of the time, meaning that they encompassed everything that was on the charts, from Mamas and Papas ("A little bit me...") to the Carpenters or Paul Mauriat ("So goes love") and Nilsson, one of their occasional writers (Propinquity); more important, "Papa Gene's blues" is Buffalo Springfield, "This just doesn't seem to be my day" is Traffic, "The girl I knew somewhere" and especially "I don't think you know me" are early Who (of their second and third album, where Townshend wrote several subdued, melodious and semi-acoustic ballads). And, of course, the opening riff on "Heart and Soul" reeks of the Stones, but "That was then" sounds creepily like the Eurythmics of "When tomorrow comes." Which probably proves that there were talented hack songwriters out there who had some brilliant ideas before anyone else, but knocking out songs for various Monkee-like bands as a 5 to 9 job will kill your talent really fast.
Rating: -
This one is a mixed bag: on one hand it's great to have this collection of songs (my main reason for buying it was the song called "Laugh" [originally done by The Tokens], a delightful little piece of fluff that is so typically 1960s); on the other, it's a bit pricey - not only for someone interested in only one or two otherwise unavailable tracks but also because it is a 2-CD set that is essentially mirror-image redundant, i.e., both CDs contain the same tracks - the only difference being that one is in mono and the other in stereo. I didn't realize this until after I received the set. Also, the stereo remasters/mixes are a bit harsh soundwise (something I've noticed with many re-releases of classic tunes).
Still, if you love The Monkees and want a CD that contains a lot of their material on one recording - and don't mind paying what to me is a slightly exhorbitant price considering the inclusion of the IMO unnecessary mono disc - I can recommend it.
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