The Monkees Get Original

Yes, the Monkees do represent the most blatant and insidious attempt by business types to turn a buck after all involved figured out that the counter culture had a few dollars to spend. And while the players that comprised the group (Mike Nesmith, Davy Jones, Peter Tork and Mickey Dolenz) are as culpable for working to pull the wool over the collective eyes of ‘60s audiences, it at least made a play at taking over recording duties subsequent to the group’s first two albums.

By the end of ’67, the Monkees had wrestled control of its recording career away from its business associates. What resulted were a few more hits and some tremendously uneven releases. Of course, Head, the film and soundtrack, is today well thought of in some circles, but nothing from the self-controlled portion of the Monkees’ career would render the group as popular as those that it sought to imitate. So, while it’s difficult to examine any of the group’s work without deriding each player as some starry eyed actor, there were a few decent moments over the band’s career.

Just before Head, the band settled on recording The Birds, the Bees & the Monkees as four, self contained units, with each principal basically retaining its own backing band. It’s been noted – over and over again – that Tork wasn’t particularly taken with the idea which contributed to the fact that he’s largely absent from the proper album. A few of his compositions do, however, crop up on the box set and the re-mastered version of the disc.

Regardless of Tork’s relative retreat, Mike Nesmith can be found to be amidst prefiguring his underappreciated solo career with the clutch of country related tracks included on The Birds, the Bees & the Monkees. His “Tapioca Tundra” is generally considered the best of his contributions, but the barroom styled “Magnolia Simms” arrives every bit as bucolic. Hints of vaudeville even creep in as Nesmith makes mention of rain falling and his woman walking beside him. What’s most interesting about Nesmith’s work here – and over the entirety of the Monkees’ recordings – is the fact that he genuinely attempted to push the pop song format to the brink. And as “Magnolia Simms” winds down, there’s a series of artificial skips injected to make the song seem as if it’s a dusty relic, resurrected for inclusion. The track wouldn’t chart, but with the two Jones fronted efforts, the disc didn’t need anymore help in that department.

Both “Valleri” and “Daydream Believer” would bolster the album, although, Jones wrote neither. Despite that, the songs that the little crooner did write aped roughly the same sound: orchestrated pop ballads that functioned solely as love songs in stark contrast to Nesmith’s attempts at poetics.

Mickey Dolenz, the group’s drumming singer, who on other albums controlled a good deal of the material, isn’t as potent here and doesn’t garner a single song writing credit. But all of this just points back to the origins of the group. No, the Monkees aren’t musicians in the way we think of musicians. And The Birds, the Bees & the Monkees serves to remind us of that fact.