Monkees: Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones Ltd. - Review/Essay/Commentary

[guitarfool2002]

I wrote this over 8 years ago, it was available online elsewhere for a time then disappeared, and I forgot how long it really was!     But since the topic of this great album just came up on the board, and since a lot of new posters and Monkees fans have come on board since 2006, I thought I'd post it here too. Thanks "Bubbly Waves" for the reminder!

From 2006: Part 1, Side 1

I had originally started this review of The Monkees’ “Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones Ltd.” album by offering several comparisons to the Beatles “Revolver”. I was inspired to take that approach mostly by the similarities seen in the design of both album covers, and by the similarities in the various styles of music heard on both albums. But that didn’t feel right, and I scrapped the Beatles angle in favor of a personal approach. I decided to start writing about this album in the same way I remember being inspired and awed by the album when I first bought it on vinyl around age 12. Back then, I would stand in front of our record player and just listen while looking at the cover propped up inside the cabinet. So much inspiration, so much great music to remember hearing when it was mostly “new” to my ears…

So I decided to write about it now under those same conditions. This review and commentary was written as I listened loudly and repeatedly to each track I was writing about, and was largely influenced by what I was feeling as I listened at that particular time. My apologies in advance for what may seem like self-indulgent rambling throughout this admittedly over-long review, but I thought it would be more honest to try to share some of my immediate impressions of the music as I was listening. If possible, I’d highly recommend listening to this album, as well as the others being reviewed in this thread, as you’re reading the review. For the record, I listened to the stereo mix of the album as reissued by Rhino in 1995.

  
Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones Ltd. (PACJ) is perhaps the definitive musical statement from the Monkees as a studio group. Their use of outside musicians allowed them to explore more sophisticated and more complex musical ideas than the mostly self-contained band heard on Headquarters could have pulled off. Since they were more concerned with the music itself rather than any notions of their abilities as a band to replicate the sounds on the road, they were free to experiment with new and exotic instruments, such as the Bob Moog’s then-new modular synthesizer, the electric banjo, various percussion instruments too delicate to be heard properly in live performance, nylon-string guitar again too delicate an instrument to be heard at a rock concert in 1967, and creative uses of studio effects like reverb, echo, compression, microphone placement/technique, etc. Yet the album remained true to both the group’s image and the individual band members’ desire to own and control their musical identity. It is also fortunate that they found such a capable musician as Chip Douglas to provide the direction necessary to create an album of this quality, lending both a sympathetic and skilled ear to the proceedings while providing the direction necessary to record a full album in the midst of Summer 1967 “MonkeeMania”, both on and off the road.

That may be one of the album’s greater accomplishments, one which has been discussed by others in the past: The fact that they were able to piece together such a diverse yet cohesive album during what was by all accounts a whirlwind of professional and personal activity for the band speaks volumes about their often-ignored musical skills. Remember, for the most part, this is essentially the same group of musicians which struggled through take after take in the studio to produce the Headquarters album months before work began on PACJ. With some minor exceptions, most obviously the use of studio drummer Eddie Hoh on most tracks, this is that same group…and what an incredible example of musical growth in the studio over a period of a few months! To progress from stripped-down rockers like “Sunny Girlfriend” and “No Time” to sophisticated and progressive musical statements such as “What Am I Doing Hangin’ Round?” and “Pleasant Valley Sunday” while maintaining much the same basic lineup was an incredible feat - definitely worthy of further investigation.

So what of the music itself? Drop the needle and have a listen…

Salesman: Mike Nesmith had an uncanny ability as a lead vocalist and songwriter to make everything he sang sound like something he wrote. This ability is showcased immediately on PACJ’s opening track, Salesman. Kicking things off with a groove that sounds close to what the Sir Douglas Quintet may have sounded like had they covered the Beatles’ “Taxman”, the accent here is heavy on beats 2 and 4. This was quite popular in 1966 and 1967, with songs like “She’s About A Mover”, “Taxman”, “In The Midnight Hour”, “Psychotic Reaction”, etc. all featuring that heavy guitar and drum accent set to a rolling rhythm. So the opening track was keeping up with the hip sounds of the times, while offering several new takes on the template: First, Nesmith’s vocal twang leans the sound more towards country, and adds a lot to the distinctive sound his voice gave to the Monkees cuts he sang. No one sounded like him. And listen closely to the vocal sound - it sounds like they may be overloading a tube mic/preamp to get that touch of grittiness in the vocal, while compressing it to add yet more flavor. The song would probably sound quite a bit more dull and repetitive without such seemingly minor sonic choices to add flavor to individual parts. Second, the lead guitar riff is played on a nylon-string acoustic guitar rather than the more expected (and somewhat cliché) electric playing those solo lines. Here, Mike’s electric guitar is slamming on beats 2 and 4 as a pure rhythm instrument, while Chip Douglas plays uncharacteristic double-stops and bends on his classical guitar. Along with that classical guitar, Douglas also adds a solid and moving electric bass line to keep things interesting. Plus, listen for some really cool kick drum patterns coming from Eddie Hoh in the right channel which are often buried or masked by average systems. There are some cool 16th note syncopations happening in that kick which, as will be the case on other tracks to follow, Micky Dolenz could not have done as efficiently as was required to record an album like this in between gigs and appearances. A quick comment on the song itself: The groove and the music carries it for me. The lyrics, from Craig Smith, sounded as hip and jaded as they were probably meant to sound before I heard the outtake which featured the unused vocal rap, with Mike describing his process of failing to properly roll a joint. Then they sounded contrived - but so do many lyrics set to good musical grooves.

She Hangs Out: They had to give Davy one of these pre-teen magnets on every album, I suppose; Something an older sister or brother would never be caught listening to on his or her own record player, yet something which they would secretly tap their foot to each time it was heard on the television show. This song never worked on record for me: Yet when they ran the video on the Monkees TV show, it sounded much cooler. Behold the power of video, Mike. The organ playing on this track is straight out of the roller rink, in style and sound. Even the unison guitar/organ fills sound forced, and almost too expected. Other than the doubled bass trombone parts, which resonate very nicely in stereo and add a touch of Hank Mancini to the track, it’s strictly by-the-book arranging and playing on this one, although I have a fascination with each and every rhythm guitar part Mike Nesmith ever recorded. He actually swings his guitar part pretty well, and I find myself focusing on that rhythm guitar and the drums more than any of the parts they probably wanted us to focus on. So it’s fairly stock pop bubblegum until the bridge…where the horns lapse into lines which are about as cliché to the 60’s go-go dance sound as you’ll hear. And, I might add, horn lines which remind me of those Brady Bunch episodes where they were singing on various talent shows. But the driving drums save the day for Davy and co.

Actually, what saves the day for me on the track more than anything is Davy Jones. I’m not exactly a big fan of his voice in general, but on She Hangs Out, it sounds like he’s singing the lyrics with a big smirk on his face and perhaps a middle finger in the air…like he knows exactly what he’s singing and why. He’s got a touch of Liam Gallagher in his voice, to borrow a more modern Manchester reference. Listen closely to how he sings his ad-libs as the track is fading out, and hear how he makes a mockery of the whole thing. Example: “I told her, man. Whoa, she’s gonna be in trouble. You tell ’em baby, yeah! Yeah, hey!” They couldn’t edit out a brilliantly snide commentary like that…

The Door Into Summer: After one decent Texas rocker and some pure pre-teen bubblegum, the album reaches the stratosphere with one of the greatest “unknown” album tracks ever recorded by any artist (to be followed by another). Everything about this song and its’ production works. Everything. Again, we soon hear that bizarre ability of Mike’s to sing a song as if he wrote it - as if the song was written just for him to sing. Yet in his cynical way, he considers himself merely a hired singer on this one. Whatever, Mike, just accept the praise every so often from your Monkees fans, okay? The track starts with a very cool clavinet line coming from the left channel, and features that clavinet sound blending in and out with a complimentary acoustic-leaning electric guitar part. And that clavinet line is brilliantly answered in the right channel by another appearance of (what I assume is) Chip Douglas’ nylon string classical guitar. After stating a classic triplet-based ascending and descending chordal motif for the intro and verse, it sounds like Douglas then uses this unusual instrument (for rock/pop, that is…) to focus on doubling Larry Taylor’s bass line in the prechorus and chorus, before changing back to playing the triplet runs for another verse. This interplay between arpeggios played on a nylon string, full chords on standard guitar, and a clavinet line playing guitar-like phrases is very similar to the memorable multi-guitar effect created a few years later on “Everybody’s Talkin’” from Midnight Cowboy…and a very effective use of stereo panning. The drums and bass throughout sound timeless - those parts (and the song in general) could have been recorded in any year since 1967 and not many would be able to date it. Mike’s voice here is crystal-clear, in comparison to the overdriven and compressed effect heard on Salesman. It had to be - these lyrics needed to be clear and clean to deliver their story, and a great production decision and great vocal sound did just that. Yet the story is that he tracked this vocal in a men’s bathroom at RCA because he didn’t like RCA’s echo. As mentioned in a previous review, Mike Nesmith and Micky Dolenz had a terrific vocal blend, where their individual vocal styles and sounds complimented each other as if they had been performing together for years. Micky’s vocal harmonies literally soar over Mike’s melody on this one. On top of a great groove (yet again), the vocals really shine on this one. Listen to Mike’s voice trail off from 2:18 to 2:20 on the last proper chorus before the tag. As much of a mockery as Jones made of his vocal delivery on the previous track‘s final lines, it sounds like Mike was letting out a relaxing breath after he knew he just nailed a good vocal take on a song which deserved a great take - and unlike Jones’ smirk, you can almost detect a smile from Nez on that last exhaled note of the last great chorus of a great tune…which he probably wishes he had written himself, hence his icy opinion of it.

Love Is Only Sleeping: One of the more bizarre pop songs of the 60’s, yet one that works perfectly. No matter what some may think, Pink Floyd’s “Money” is not the first, and perhaps not even the greatest example of a killer rock riff in 7/4 time. That honor - well, perhaps we can agree on the “first” aspect more universally than the “greatest” - belongs to “Love Is Only Sleeping”. And to further increase the song’s credibility among guitarists, the low E string must be tuned down to D to play this riff. As long as that is on the table for the guitar community, I’d say this is one of the greatest “lost” singles ever. It was scheduled to be a Monkees single prior to the album’s release along with “Daydream Believer”, but various issues killed those plans. What a shame, really - to have an odd-meter song as dark-sounding and as bizarre-yet-catchy as this released in the Spring of 1967 would have forced so many Monkee critics and bashers to either own up to their mistakes or shut up about the musical output of their so-called “prefab four”. If this were The Beatles, it could have been a killer “double A side” single as they were famous for doing. Once again, the third time so far on the album, Mike Nesmith delivers an inspired lead vocal on someone else’s song as if he had written the song himself. In this case, it helps a great deal if that “someone else” is Mann and Weil. And yet again (again), Micky and Mike create a fantastic vocal blend, so tight that I really cannot tell if it’s Micky and Mike doubling certain lines in unison, or a double-track of Mike himself. Their blend was *that good* when it had to be. Micky Dolenz’s harmonies are again superb throughout this tune. A true musician at work, as skilled as McCartney at singing just the right harmony part with just the right feel. It’s already becoming a cliché for me to say the drums and bass are solid, but they are on this track as well. The guitar work is stellar throughout this track, from the main electric riff to the above-average and beyond-cool rhythm guitar work heard on acoustic in the left channel and electric on the right. Listen especially at 1:05, at the bridge - someone is slamming away on that acoustic in the left channel, keeping the groove with a very percussive playing style on the chords, while Mike lays down one of his characteristic arpeggio/strumming/chord/single-note hybrid parts that he used on many a Monkees track…and which is extremely difficult to replicate with that same feel.

Special attention has to be paid to the myriad of studio effects heard on this track, effects which act like a separate musical instrument in how they add to the overall sound. Listen very closely in the left channel - as soon as the lead guitar riff starts up to the right, there is a percolating sound barely audible that soon grows into the characteristic echoed and reverbed percussion sound that fades in and out of the track, which I believe was the sound of somebody hitting a drumstick against their mouth, close-mic’ed and with a heavy repeat-echo-delay applied. Also, listen to how the application of a heavy reverb effect on the backing harmony vocals adds a sense of mystery, distance, and even darkness to the song. If these were Hank Cicalo’s creations he deserves special recognition. His bizarre studio sound effects made a great track even better - as all well-applied effects should do. As if to get one last shot into this mix, listen at the end as the final Hammond organ chord fades in underneath the swirling chaos of vocals, guitars, harmonies, and reverbs, then suddenly drops in pitch and volume, trailing off as the lone instrument to survive that chaos, and fades out in a wash of reverb. I’m not sure if this was achieved by slowing the actual tape down on the tape machine, or by the old trick of turning the Hammond organ’s power off and dropping the pitch by slowing down the organ’s mechanical tone wheel (ancient precursor to the soon-ubiquitous pitch wheel…), but Hank, Chip, or whoever was responsible nailed a perfect studio-created ending to a near-perfect studio creation. And they weren’t going to stop there with studio-tweaked endings, at least on this album…    

Cuddly Toy: I’d like to put aside, for the purposes of this piece, the story of these lyrics being written by Harry Nilsson about a Hell’s Angels gang bang. I leave that commentary to Mike Nesmith, who has said he took the song at face-value as a song he liked and wanted to record, rather than something they put on the album as an in-joke or something. Harry Nilsson got the last laugh if there was one to be gotten in this case anyway, so let’s leave it at that and check out the music. The song fittingly starts out with Mike Nesmith’s acoustic rhythm guitar strumming triplet figures in the right channel - fitting because many of the musical highlights which elevate a standard chord progression to something more interesting and vital are heard in that guitar part. Rather than a standard C major chord, listen as he adds the note “D” to the voicing, then drops it, then adds a high G. Very cool. Then change to D, and complete the progression with a F major…but it’s an F major7th chord, to which he then adds the note “G”. My point being this - an average and less creative guitarist wouldn’t think of adding those enhancements, and wouldn’t play them as instinctively, especially on what sounds like a continuous track. That guitar part carries the tune, and it’s a guitar style we just don’t hear enough these days.

What is also worth mentioning is that this is essentially the last appearance of the Headquarters band, featuring Micky Dolenz on drums. Not coincidentally, this was the earliest song recorded for the album, so the Headquarters vibe was probably still alive and well when this was cut in the studio. Consider this track the Monkees’ bridge between Headquarters and everything they did afterward in 1967. There is still some of that loose, self-contained charm in the sound of this track, that bit of DIY charm that continues to draw so many listeners to Headquarters. But to achieve a greater level of studio polish, obviously some of that charm of a self-contained band had to be sacrificed. I’m glad we have Cuddly Toy to enjoy one more time that sound of a self-contained Monkees band amidst the more polished (dare I say professional) tracks surrounding it on PACJ and on future albums.

So how did that band do on Cuddly Toy? Excellent. The previously mentioned acoustic guitar carries the trrack, Micky’s drums are simple yet swinging enough to match the lazy Vaudeville feel of the track, the bass is, as usual, solid as a rock, and the piano fits in well, not taking the usual route of trying to sound like a damned Western saloon tack piano every time a groove like this is played. That willingness to break the cliché, or do the unexpected, is a big part of the entire album’s success. The barely audible string lines are a nice touch to fill things out a bit. And Davy Jones’ vocal track? One of his best. Sure, it isn’t as convincing nor as emotional as “Forget That Girl”, but on this track they finally found the perfect balance between Jones the pop singer/idol, Jones the rock star, and Jones the stage performer, the song-and-dance man of the group, without sounding contrived. This balance was further enhanced by a classic video segment for the song, the kind which you might see once and not forget for the next 15 years. Wisely, the P.O.B. later used this very same tactic with Jones’ “Daddy’s Song” dance sequence in the movie Head - that perfect balance of corn and cred, pop and Broadway, song and dance, that Jones seemed born to do.

So does anyone still care what the lyrics were *really* about? Don’t answer that.

Words: Here are Boyce and Hart writing a pseudo-psychedelic track for the Monkees before they were even hired to write songs for the Monkees, and surely never intending the Monkees to play the actual instruments. Oh, the callousness of Boyce and Hart in 1966…So here is this leftover pre-fab track which could have sounded very contrived had it not been for the brilliant decision to have Micky wail on the chorus as the only band member who could pull off such assured vocals, but make him share the verse with the less-often-featured and less-assured lead vocals of Peter Tork. Their trade-offs on the verses do nail the tune, provide a great aural hook, and are actually what I remember most from the first time I can recall hearing the tune. Wisely, yet again, Chip Douglas and the Monkees decided to leave a good pre-fab thing alone and copied most of the original Boyce and Hart production from 1966. If it ain’t broke, as they say, just tweak it a little bit. Highlights include the drums and bass (as usual), the unison ascending guitar and bass hook line in the chorus (a technique seemingly, ahem, borrowed by the Beatles on both Hello Goodbye and Lady Madonna), great background vocals drenched in distant reverb, a cool vibrato rhythm guitar part, and that killer little Hammond solo that adds the sense of foreboding to the whole thing. Put that Hammond together with the wind chimes, remove the vocals, and you might convince some folks this song was from the soundtrack to a long-lost, low-budget horror flick. Just kidding. More like a really cool low-budget surf documentary, with a lot of footage of early-morning wipeouts as the sun is just peeking out over the horizon…

[guitarfool2002]

This thing was sooooo long, it "exceeded" the maximum amount of words allowed in a post! So I had to split it up...damn...


Part 2, Side 2:

Hard To Believe: I can’t resist the obvious joke here. It’s Hard To Believe this song was not only included on the album, but it’s even more Hard To Believe they used it to open side 2, a prime spot often reserved for the singles and stronger album cuts! There must be an in-joke hiding somewhere. The song sounds too over the top to work, definitely too Vegas for its surroundings on the album, and the song itself is a pretty naïve attempt at casting Jones as a swinging lounge singer. Let’s face it - they already found his niche, they found his vocal range to sing convincing and credible pop, they knew what he could do with even a trace of song-and-dance aura in a tune, yet this is what kicks off side two. I just don’t like the song as much, and I think Jones’ vocal performance plays a big part in my opinion. Is this the guy who just sang Cuddly Toy?

There are musical highlights, though. I give Kim Capli a ton of credit for playing everything on this track minus the full string and horn arrangements. He does a really good job on most parts playing the one-man-studio-band role for Jones, although those guitar stabs are a bit too cliché. The drum groove is perhaps the best part, easily carrying the tune. I love string and horn arrangements, but this one is perhaps a bit too commercial, easy listening in the more bland sense of that term. One vocal highlight, which in my opinion may have helped the tune had it been used more, is the point where Jones’ vocal peels off into a double-track at 1:31, creating a dramatic shimmering effect that broke away from the lounge sound and leaned more towards psychedelic pop. But I’m really grasping at straws on this one - This track may be the only one on the album (well, the only one featuring *music* hint, hint…) that I’ve usually skipped over in every format of the album I’ve owned.

Wait a minute…that is  possibly the in-joke I was looking for with this song! They made it the first track of side 2 so we could put the needle down on the *next* track, What Am I Doing Hangin Round, bypassing Hard To Believe entirely without missing a beat, without anyone in our Monkee-cynic listening audiences ever noticing. I passed the needle over that track dozens and dozens of times without realizing what a classic joke they were playing on us…or were they? At least Davy was laughing part of the way to the bank, since he got a writer’s credit here for an actual song. He must have learned smart music-business economics from Mike.

What Am I Doing Hangin Round?: This is perhaps the most difficult song to define in words. Without question, this is one of the absolute highlights of the Monkees’ entire career, and I’ll go as far as to say it is one of the prime examples of the best that late 60’s pop had to offer. There is no way to measure how much influence this tune may have had on countless nascent country-rockers, who may have heard this on any incarnation of the Monkees television series, and had the overall sound and feel of this song burned into their subconscious for later use, as they started to discover that you could do more with a country chord progression than staying with G, C, and D7. I hear no cliches on this tune, nothing to point out as an obvious attempt to sound country. Even those elements which lean it towards country, like the addition of a banjo part, are tweaked in such a way that it sounds nothing but fresh and exciting. In the case of the banjo, they could have easily called in a traditional acoustic banjo player to do some pickin’ and grinnin’ over the chords, but instead they tweaked the entire concept and called in one Douglas Dillard, who, in his own musical pursuits, was exploring some forward-thinking ideas of what country music meant and how it should sound, same as Michael Martin Murphey and Owen Castleman who would continue down a similar path of reinvention.

The song kicks off with Mr. Dillard and his electric banjo in the left channel, a sparkling electric rhythm guitar track in the right, yet another rock-solid bass line, and rock-solid drumming immediately setting up the groove. Then Mike Nesmith’s vocal enters, with perhaps one of the finest opening lines he’s ever sung: “Just a loudmouth Yankee I went down to Mexico”. His vocal quality, delivery, and phrasing sets up the entire song in one line. About as perfect a marriage of singer and song as you’ll hear, and repeating myself again with this point, it sounds for all the world like Mike would have had a hand in writing something like this, even though we know he did not. That ability to deliver a melody perhaps works better on this track than any of the others I’ve mentioned. And his Texas twang adds so much to the success of this track, convincing us in a way that the guy singing the song and telling the story is relating something that actually happened to him. Maybe it’s best to say the song was meant for him to sing in some cosmic meeting of the pop music fates which seem to have been extremely busy in the years 1966 and 1967.

So what makes the song different, why does it stand out as a pure song? It starts off with your basic chords which many country songs would ride for two-and-a-half minutes and sound just fine. But as soon as Mike sings “There I lightly took advantage…”, you’re launched into another world. This type of chord progression was not at all in the mainstream country music lexicon in 1967. You wouldn’t hear such harmonies delivered with such a rhythm on country radio for the most part. As has been said so many times already, this was the kind of progressive music that was setting the stage for what was soon to follow and be labeled “country rock”. The days of not allowing electric instruments on the Grand Ole Opry were a distant memory…

I can’t recommend this track enough. It is timeless, it is universal in its appeal, and above all it is simply a wonderful performance of a well-written tune. This is genre-less music, as much pop as it is country, as much rock as it is folk, and as much anything as someone wants to call it. There was so much of this cross-pollination of styles happening in 1967, and this is one instance where we can hear all of that crystallize on a single recording. It should be noted that this song was the lone non-single album cut to be included on the soundtrack of the Monkees mid-80’s revival, the greatest hits collection “Then And Now” - possibly influencing yet another generation of fledgling country artists and writers to break the rules.

Peter Percival Patterson’s Pet Pig Porky: A childrens spoken-word ditty, originally performed for and perhaps best enjoyed by children. In that spirit, I look forward to the day when I can play this song for my first grandson and try to answer him as best I can when he asks “What the hell was that?”.

Pleasant Valley Sunday: After that bit of nonsense, in a rather jarring juxtaposition of the disposable and the essential, here sits one of the finest pop singles of the 1960’s, as brilliant a record as was heard on top 40 radio in 1967. From the songwriting team of Goffin and King, this started life as an observational rocker that transcends its cynical and judgmental suburban subject matter as soon as the Monkees and their musicians start playing their instruments. The record starts with a bang, a killer multi-tracked guitar riff written by Chip Douglas and played by Mike Nesmith on his Gibson Les Paul. This riff grabs you right away, and sets up much of what is to follow. Some say it was inspired by the Beatles’ “I Want To Tell You”, some quote the popularity of riff tunes like “Paperback Writer”, “Day Tripper”, the Monkees’ own “Last Train To Clarksville”, etc. What sets the Pleasant Valley Sunday riff apart is once again the lack of a cliché, in this case the tone of the guitar. While many bands would have fuzzed it out, or at least distorted it in some way, this guitar riff sounds for all the world like a clean yet loud electric guitar, with a tone unlike most of what passed for lead guitar tones in 1967. It was driving yet different as soon as the track started up, without having to resort to overtly and obviously psychedelic guitar trademarks like fuzz. In the same way, this single was a Top40 disc jockey’s dream, with both a jackhammer opening riff that jumped out of the speakers and enough intro space to talk up the song until the lead vocal enters. Tailor made for radio, how could it not be a hit?

How about the other highlights? The stop-on-a-dime hits in the intro and the breaks; A slamming and grooving acoustic rhythm guitar track, courtesy of Bill Chadwick, that drives the track throughout and sounds about as good as acoustic rhythm guitar can sound when played by a good guitarist; An incredibly active yet again rock-solid bass playing from Chip Douglas and one of Eddie Hoh’s best drum grooves; great keyboard playing from Peter Tork, especially the blues-leaning ascending lines heard in the bridge; and overall a terrific feel from all the musicians playing as a group.

Then there are the vocals: Micky Dolenz simply soars on this track, with as confident and as mature a lead vocal as he has ever delivered. His voice was perfect for cutting through the static of AM radio, and his voice in many ways was the sound of the Monkees, with an innate commercial sensibility that none of the others could really match as effortlessly. He was a natural singer with a unique voice, and songs like Pleasant Valley Sunday are recorded proof of his abilities. Listen especially to how he changes his tone, and therefore enhances the emotions of the track, as he sings the lines in the bridge leading up to the frustration of saying “I need a change of scenery!” And all of Micky’s vocal highlights are enhanced by stellar background contributions from Mike and Davy, background parts and counterpoint lines which take full advantage of each singer’s tonal differences and vocal idiosyncrasies.

Credit again must go to Hank Cicalo and the production team as a whole for creating several moments of electricity through studio trickery. This ending is pure magic, a fadeout ending which feeds the tracks into a wash of reverb, creating a unique cacophony of wet and dry signals, with tracks floating in and out of the speakers, the reverb feeding back on itself and the tracks, and creating the sounds of rising and falling chaos. And the absolute ending, with only the last pieces of the tracks bouncing around the reverb hangover, ends the song on just the right note of unfinished sonic activity which may still be reverberating somewhere. Understanding that these sounds were a chance experiment by Hank Cicalo that happened to work and sounded pretty cool in the process, I always thought such an ending made perfect sense in the context of the song. It almost reminds me of the noise and chaos that anyone living in the suburbs of any major American city has to encounter each and every morning when they commute into the city to work, in order to afford to live in said suburbs. It’s a beautiful thing when accidental moments of musical inspiration can translate into a deeper meaning when placed in the context of the song.

I’d recommend listening to each and every version of this song that is available, from mono single mixes to stereo album mixes, and soaking it all in as a classic example of how to record and produce a pop song that matters. And by all means, if possible, seek out the version which has the lead vocals removed, and listen for the careful interplay between all of the instruments and musicians. Be sure to play that vocal-less version for any cynical musicians still doubting the Monkees’ abilities as musicians.

Daily Nightly: Mike Nesmith had a habit of writing song-poems which never mention the actual song title in the lyrics. Here’s one of them. The lyrics contain fairly oblique references to the Sunset Strip “riots” of late 1966, but in all honesty that never mattered as much to me as the actual music. And even the actual music never mattered as much to me as the overall sound. And even the overall sound never mattered as much to me as the sum of the really, really cool individual parts played by these musicians. And sometimes, those parts never mattered as much to me as the sound of those parts. You get the idea…

This song itself is nothing special. It’s primarily a three-chord ditty that sounds like it was written on a great sounding keyboard instrument, the kind of instrument where you get absolutely lost in how amazing it sounds when you hold out basic chords on said keyboard and let them float around for a bit before going to the next one. You don’t really need to play anything all that complex if you can milk a few sparse chords for all they’re worth and have it sound really cool. That’s what may have happened - Mike claims he had just bought a Hammond B3 organ, quite possibly the coolest of all previously mentioned great-sounding keyboard instruments, and this song was something he wrote on that organ. Notice the Hammond organ playing throughout the track - sounds great, doesn’t it? Yet most musicians could play that kind of part within an hour of figuring out how to turn the instrument on. So what - it’s a cool song that sounds great.

But let’s revisit the simplicity aspect of Daily Nightly. Exactly how would you go about turning a fairly pedestrian three-chord rock song into something special, using the stripped-down four-piece Monkees studio lineup of Mike on guitar, Peter on organ, Chip on bass, and Eddie Hoh on drums, with minimal overdubs, on a song with cryptic lyrics? Call Micky Dolenz, and make sure he remembers to bring his new Moog synthesizer to the session. But let’s record the basic tracks first, as Micky is busy packing up his Moog and wrapping all those patch cables…

First, make sure you lay down a rock-solid groove with that four-piece band. Have Eddie Hoh lay back into that groove as much as possible, and then be sure he knows that he has the freedom to explode with a great fill any time he feels it. Especially mention that first transition between chorus and verse at exactly 48 seconds into the track. And definitely let him know he can break into a pseudo-Latin groove on the ride cymbal any time he wants. Then fire up the Hammond organ, and have Peter space out on some sustained chords as he digs the sound the Hammond makes as the mechanical tone wheel makes all those cool sounds swirl around each chord he plays. Mike wrote the tune, just tell him to play his usual solid, yet syncopated, stop-and-start rhythm guitar style that only he could play right. Four chords in the whole song, make sure you do some interesting rhythms on that guitar. Chip can pick up the bass and do his usual rock-solid job, he knows what the hell he’s doing.

And Micky - after singing those cryptic and sometimes nonsensical lyrics over this groove with as much power and skill as you might sing a love song to your future wife, we’ll leave a few tracks open for him to play his new Moog synthesizer any way he sees fit.

And right there is the brilliance of the tune, that entity which keeps me listening over and over again, that hook of the song that has kept me a fan since I first heard it. Micky’s Moog playing is a revelation, about as free and as creative a Moog part as was ever created for a pop song. Micky, you see, had no rules to follow on how to play a Moog. No one really understood this concept more than Micky, including Chip Douglas who thought the Moog parts were too random. Micky had one of the very first Moogs ever sold (original sales records exist to confirm this fact), and with the high price tag came that freedom to play it any way he wanted, with no rules or preconceived notions of what a Moog player should do or how he should do it. Micky on Daily Nightly paints landscapes of sound, creates sheets of sound and snapshots of random sound, seemingly random yet somehow connected to a main theme. The sound itself becomes the music rather than the actual notes the sounds may be hitting by chance. Sometimes they actually fit the key of the song, more often it doesn’t even matter.

That Moog part is brilliant in its randomness, and elevates a rather common attempt at grooving on a psychedelic song to the level of something special. It is historic, in that Micky’s Moog part was the first to appear on a mainstream pop recording. It is somewhat tragic that he never really attempted to repeat the initial success of Daily Nightly - maybe he just did the part, and that was it. Perhaps the part itself is/was not judged a success by everyone, but is revered enough by a group of pop musicians who hear in that part the freedom to make something beautiful out of seemingly random noise.   

Don’t Call On Me: Mike’s attempt at doing a lounge act, with a beautiful song that might be a textbook study of many key elements of his unique songwriting style. I read somewhere that Mike tried recording this vocal this way as an experiment in controlling his vocal delivery, and experimenting how to sing extremely close to the microphone to capture that slightly overdriven, unique electronic sheen on a vocal track. After the initial blast of their staged piano-bar skit, which actually works on a more sincere level other than the perhaps obviously intended humor, the first sound heard is Mike’s singular syncopated rhythm guitar style strumming the always-pretty major 7th chords. Then the drums enter with a syncopated hi-hat rhythm to match the guitar figure, and yet another Hammond organ part swirling around and giving just enough sonic bliss to drift away with the chords whenever they sustain longer than a few beats. The bass is much more mellow this time around, fitting perfectly into the laid-back atmosphere. Heard lower in the mix in the right channel is a nylon-string guitar part owing quite a debt to those musical atmospheres created by one Antonio Carlos Jobim on the same delicate instrument, with similar chords and rhythms.

Mike floats above all of this with perhaps one of the most deliberate vocals he’s ever delivered. His close-singing works well with the nearly-overdriven microphone, creating a soft and intimate effect. This kind of song, with all of those elements, might lapse into self-parody, or fall dangerously close to sounding cliché. Mike’s songwriting quirks save it from that fate: Even though it is a pseudo-Bossa lounge feel, listen as he changes the groove in the bridge to a heavier accent on all four beats, something he does often. Then listen to that same bridge for his ultimate quirky trademark, the IV chord going from the standard major to the less-common minor before resolving the progression. For a great example of how he did this elsewhere, listen to the bridge of Different Drum. Mike’s songwriting must share credit for carrying this tune, and that credit must also be shared with an overly-hot vocal microphone and the whole notion of  lounge music.

Then, naturally, end the song with a continuation of the opening piano-bar skit, and have everyone exit the bar without leaving a tip for the musicians who just gave you 2 minutes or so of pure pop bliss.

Star Collector: Psychedelic. But it’s not cliché, not contrived, not lame, not naïve, not boring, not expected, not cheap, not unimportant, not irrelevant, not phony. Some might claim this tune was one of those descriptions listed above, since the folks playing the tune had no real cred to do a song like this because they were a television band making music for teen girls. Well, those folks are wrong, dead wrong.

Star Collector is the obvious choice to close this album. Miles away from targeting the usual innocent audience who loved hearing Davy sing a lead vocal, this is as much a throw-down to the critics and as much a self-indulgent musical gift to themselves as they ever recorded. The self indulgence spreads to all participants - the Monkees, Dolenz and his wacky ideas of using a Moog synth on the new album, Paul Beaver with his wacky ideas of playing be-bop and free jazz lines on a Moog keyboard during a psychedelic freak-out solo section of a rock tune, Chip Douglas for throwing everything into this mix but some guy banging a pipe wrench on the kitchen sink, and Hank Cicalo for having a microphone set up under the kitchen sink and keeping one track open if Chip ever did call that guy with the wrench. All musicians and studio-types get this way sometimes, and anyone who hasn’t just hasn’t experienced the full joy of creating music. And it often happens that the more self-indulgent the music being created really is, the better it sounds on a record. Star Collector sounds amazing.

Davy Jones sings lead on this one. Go figure - but it probably had to be him, by design rather than by choice, since the subject matter of the song is something Davy had raging around him since he became a Monkee. Who better to sing the song, and make full use of the rather snide and condescending attitude, then the guy who was on every teenzine and fanzine known to exist in 1967? The great Frank Zappa couldn’t have pulled off a critical and judgmental pop culture commentary as valid as this because he didn’t have “the” Davy Jones providing the commentary.

Let’s enjoy the self-indulgence some more. The track starts off with random noise from an open studio microphone, including feedback, and why not reverb that nonsense for full effect before the music comes in, Hank? It sounds cool, let’s do it. Then kick off the groove proper after the intro, a groove which is another solid bass line, various organ and keyboard parts, and a wildly uncommon pseudo-jazz shuffle from drummer Eddie Hoh, that is unlike the standard beat preferred by most drummers not named Hal Blaine who say they play psychedelic music. Then, have a higher-pitched Hammond organ hitting hard on the 2 and 4, another cop of the hook-laden “She’s About A Mover” feel. And that’s probably Mike on guitar falling right into place with the drums and the Hammond, creating another sick rhythm guitar groove, his 12th on the album. Absolutely continue this feel into the chorus, where Davy gets vocal support from some trippy high harmonies and the organ goes into some busy arpeggios. Keep it rolling for the next verse, adding some of those high vocals to help both the verse and chorus this time, and then call in the professional Moog player.

The story is told often, so I won’t repeat it too much, but Paul Beaver was a Moog sales rep in and around LA, and was the musician who sold Micky Dolenz his Moog and helped Micky learn, play, and keep in tune his new Moog. Paul Beaver did this for many of rock’s elite in LA who would soon own their own Moogs but couldn’t keep them in tune or play them very well. So Chip Douglas wants to hear a real Moog player after Micky’s freak-outs on Daily Nightly, and gets Paul Beaver himself into the studio to play a Moog solo acting on his bit of self-indulgence as a producer. And Beaver plays a great musical part, with a very unique and at that time totally new sound, and he made the extra effort to play something “out” on this wild track in the form of highly syncopated, angular bebop jazz phrases. Now *that* is educated psychedelic from a really unique musician like Paul Beaver.

Naturally, then, after that solo you’d bring Davy and the vocals back in and try to bring the tune to a close. But the musicians are really feeling this one, they’re in a groove, let’s keep the tape rolling and record everything they’re doing. Every major and minor group of musicians who ever records in a studio has an experience like that, pure self-indulgence yet again, but it’s a group self-indulgence that creates a bond among the players and a sound so wild you can’t resist it. So the tape rolls out, and everyone is jazzed about what just came through the speakers (Did we really play that?), so they start thinking of what to overdub on top to try to sustain that high of totally unexpected, unplanned, and mostly random music-making.

You can’t really describe nor justify that freak-out ending of Star Collector with the written word, or with anyone’s verbal description. It’s best, in a case like this, to just listen to the results and get lost in that vibe those musicians were sharing as the tape was rolling perhaps longer than anyone expected.

What a fitting way to end the album. 

       

[joshferrell]

Thanks for posting that was a cool review about my favorite Monkees album..

[SMiLE-addict]

There's no way I'm gonna read all that. Sorry.

[Orange Crate Art]

Great Monkees album! Although Head is probably my favorite of theirs.

[feelsflow]

Thanks guitarfool2002,  That was excellent.  And not too long.  Lots of information that I, a long time Mike fan, had not read before or forgotten.  Great session details on who played what.  Guess you have read a few books, and studied those notes!

It would be Great if you would go over to the Country Thread and do something on Mike's First/Second National Band albums.  Just kidding.  Unless you have the inclination and time!

.

I've been working on a post the last few days to add to Bubbly's Monkees Thread, but won't have much to add to your solid run-down on Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones Ltd.  What makes it such a strong Monkees album, is that Davy was never better.  He needed to toughen up.  Micky always had a Hit on any of the records.  From what I'm reading Mike has a lot of fans here at Smiley.  I wasn't really much of a fan of the group in 1966 - more popular with my friend's little sisters, as you pointed out.  But when they did Pleasant Valley Sunday my ears perked up.  Then I became a Nilsson fan.  I was into Carole too back then.  I still have my copy of The City long-player.  But didn't buy the albums until I came in through the back door after hearing the First National Band in 1970.  Even then I never bought the albums on vinyl, just the Missing links titles. When they started putting out the Deluxe sets a few years ago, with the bonus Mike tracks - then I bought all of them through Presents.  And the DVD TV Series.  I have two of the Box Sets:  The Birds, the Bees, & The Monkees and what I think is the best box, Instant Replay (with the '68 Nashville sessions).  I like Micky and Davy now much more than when I was a teenager, though even back then I liked the Mike tracks.  I grew up with Country music around the house, so those stood out.  My love for Country deepened in 1967 and '68 when Bobbie Gentry, Byrds, Springfield, Gene Clark (with and without Doug), Poco, The Dillards w/Herb, Chris and Gram, Delaney and Bonnie, Area Code 615, and many more came on the scene and freshened things up.  This Monkees deal, it's The Mike Sessions I'm mostly after.  Have you heard The Penny Arkade, a band Mike tried to help (produced) in 1967?  sundazed released a neat CD in 2004.  Check it out.

[alf wiedersehen]

Cool review.

I listened along as you suggested; lot of info to keep straight when listening, but, hey, at least you have some interesting stuff to say.
Thanks for putting this up 

[The Demon]

Wonderful commentary for a brilliant album.  Thanks for sharing!

[Nicko1234]

Thanks for this interesting review...still not as good an album as Headquarters though.

[Bedroom Tapes]

Bringing this back but was just wondering if Rhino, 7A, etc. is working on a PACJ Super Deluxe box set reissue for this year?  I have thoroughly enjoyed the previous box sets of the Monkees.  Thanks