Monkees

Who's ready for even more of MORE? In honor of 50th anniversary this year, we've super-sized MORE OF THE MONKEES with a staggering 91 tracks including 55 previously-unreleased alternate takes, remixes, and newly discovered concert recordings from 1967, the band's earliest-known live tracks, as well as a bonus 7” of “I’m A Believer” (Remix)/”(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone” (Vocals Only).

The Headquarters Sessions is an 84-track 3-CD set by the Monkees containing 60 previously unreleased recordings from the sessions that produced the band's third album, Headquarters…

The Monkees were a pop rock group. Assembled in Los Angeles in 1966 by Robert "Bob" Rafelson and Bert Schneider for the American television series The Monkees, which aired from 1966 to 1968, the musical acting quartet was composed of Americans Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork, and Englishman Davy Jones. All music was supervised by producer Don Kirshner. At the time of the group's formation, its producers saw The Monkees as a Beatles-like band. At the start, the band members provided vocals, and were given some performing and production opportunities, but they eventually fought for and earned the right to collectively supervise all musical output under the band's name. The group undertook several concert tours, allowing an opportunity to perform as a live band as well as on the TV series.

The Monkees formed in 1966 when Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Mike Nesmith, and Peter Tork were picked out of a mass casting call to portray a band on a zany T.V. sit-com designed to mimic the madcap spirit of the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night. The brainchild of producer/directors Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, the show was a ratings phenomenon and won 1967's Outstanding Comedy Series Emmyr. Through the efforts of music industry legend Don Kirshner, who employed the biggest Brill Building songwriters of the day to pen hits for the group, The Monkees' records were a smash as well.

The Monkees were talented singers, musicians, and songwriters who made a handful of the finest pop singles of their day (as well as a few first-rate albums) and delivered exciting, entertaining live shows. But at a time when rock music was becoming more self-conscious and "serious," the hipper echelons of the music press often lambasted the Monkees, largely because they didn't come together organically but through the casting process for a television series, and they initially didn't write the bulk of their own material or play all the instruments on their records….

Deep, introspective, and I dare say Nashville-esque. The Monkees' final effort to contribute a deep and lasting artistic effort to the 60's.

It's hard not to wonder why the four-disc Music Box even exists. After all, Rhino has not only released definitive reissues of all of the Monkees' studio albums, complete with bonus tracks, but the label has a series devoted to rarities (Missing Links), a single-disc greatest hits album, a double-disc anthology, and another four-disc box, Listen to the Band, which is excellent…

The Monkees Greatest Hits is a 1976 greatest hits compilation album of songs by the Monkees released by Arista Records, and a reissue of an earlier Bell Records compilation, Re-Focus. While the Monkees were among the top-selling bands of the mid-1960s, their decline was sharp and their last new albums and singles sold poorly…