Last Train To Clarksville 🚂
#TheMonkees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDBFev_XfYA

12:52pm (Theme From) The Monkees by The Monkees from The Monkees
#KJAC #TheColoradoSound #TheMonkees

Last Train To Clarksville 🚂
#TheMonkees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASPlsai7a6c

Pleasant Valley Sunday 💒
#TheMonkees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2xRPOn9LQE

“ Fooman64 ” / “MORE of the MONKEES BONUS DISC LP 1967 mixes and alternate versions” (1 user) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMzdaSxBdrE #TheMONKEES

“ Fooman64 ” / “The MONKEES: HEADQUARTERS LP 1967 vinyl full album” (1 user) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0bGLt7GlVs #TheMONKEES:

“ Fooman64 ” / “The MONKEES: HEADQUARTERS BONUS DISC 1967 mixes and alternate versions” (1 user) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8sAmjtKLnM #TheMONKEES:

“More of the Monkees is the second studio album by the American pop rock band the Monkees, released in 1967 on Colgem... / “MORE OF THE MONKEES LP 1967 vinyl full album” (1 user) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DC9wTtI987U #themonkees　

DREAM ON, Here is our playlist of songs to #dream by. #TheMonkees #Jungkook

https://rjptalk.wordpress.com/2025/05/04/dream-on/

(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone 🏯
#TheMonkees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfEKrkYja-M

The Monkees Play “Listen to the Band”

Listen to this track by pioneering 1960s multimedia pop culture phenomenon The Monkees. It’s “Listen to the Band”, a single released in April of 1969 and appearing in a different arrangement on the group’s record The Monkees Present … released that same year. The single is distinguished as being the first A-side that features singer and guitarist Michael Nesmith taking the lead vocal on one of his own compositions. Of course, this almost didn’t happen.

The song was twinned with another cut on its release; Paul Williams’ excellent orchestral pop gem “Someday Man” on the A-side, sung by Davy Jones. But when the single circulated among DJs, they preferred Nesmith’s B-side and played it. The label, Colgems, opted to make the appropriate adjustment, issuing new sleeve art that reflected the switch. From there, “Listen to the Band” was well on its way to becoming one of the group’s most recognized and celebrated songs, and one that seems to capture something about the late-Sixties era out which it comes. Perhaps it’s also a reflection of its writer’s state of mind just before his role in The Monkees came to an end.

By the time “Listen to the Band” came out as a single, original Monkees member Peter Tork had left the group. From that point on when it came to the records, the three remaining members – Nesmith, Jones, and Micky Dolenz – doubled down on their post-TV show approach to “The Monkees” as a common creative banner for solo sessions rather than as a traditional band collaborating in the studio together. This both borrowed from and expanded on the way they made records from the beginning, working with session musicians and laying down their respective lead vocal parts over top. This time, though, a designated Monkee served as the creative driver in the studio.

Before Tork’s departure, the proposed concept for the next Monkees record was a double LP with a dedicated side each between the four respective members. Being a trio by 1969, and with record sales beginning to flag after their television show went off the air by March of the previous year, this wasn’t exactly practical as a concept. But the gears were in motion for this strategy before Peter Tork left at the end of 1968.

Nesmith had been the only member of the group to head up sessions for his own songs since they began. This was a luxury allowed to him by music supervisor Don Kirchner, with one or two songs on each album set aside for him. But the dynamics had changed by 1968 and Kirchner was long gone by then. This expanded opportunity to lead sessions as songwriter and producer gave Nesmith an avenue to present his material in ways that had been limited before.

By late May and early June of 1968, Nesmith went to Nashville and to RCA studios with bolstered confidence and vision for the material he brought with him. “Listen to the Band” was among that batch of nine songs.

The approach to recording with Nashville session musicians was to marry country music and modern rock music to get a new sound that displayed the qualities of both. Nesmith had been doing that on Monkees records for years, of course. But while in Nashville and working with some of the best country music players that city had to offer, it made sense to explore that vital combination to an even deeper degree.

It helped that this trend was in the air during that mid-to-late-Sixties era. Bob Dylan recorded Blonde on Blonde in Nashville in 1966 with many of the same musicians that eventually sat in on Nesmith’s dates. The Byrds had just finished sessions for Sweetheart of the Rodeo by the late spring of 1968, not long before Nesmith arrived in Nashville.

Teaming up with RCA’s legendary producer Felton Jervis, Nesmith’s vision for “Listen to the Band” led to the creation of one of his greatest achievements as a songwriter, producer, and singer. Nesmith’s vocal is pure country soul, impassioned, and full of gravitas. As was usual with his songwriting by this time, his lyrics are impressionistic instead of forming a straight-ahead narrative. The overall thematic takeaway is about the transformative power that music itself can offer, what it can inspire, and what we can miss when we aren’t open and present enough to receive it.

There’s just something pleasantly otherworldly about “Listen to the Band”, even if its sound is also very earthy with a loping beat and a jubilant and proudly countrified pedal steel part. It contains a kind of spiritual quality just out of the reach of any language to fully describe it. It reveals itself as one listens with a richly layered and a phased psychedelic quality that makes it more than the sum of its parts.

The arrangement includes a classic fade-out-and-fade-in section akin to The Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever” and a sample of a live crowd that displays shades of Sgt. Pepper; sessions for which Nesmith was present as a guest and observer. Back in Los Angeles months later in December 1968, frequent collaborator Shorty Rogers arranged the soaring and anthemic horns heard on the single version of “Listen to the Band”, since recognized as the song’s definitive incarnation.

All of these elements help make the song into a truly transcendent piece of work that is a welcome part of a catalogue of material that makes up the best of the 1960s pop era. In retrospect, “Listen to the Band” suggests a change had begun, that times were moving on, and that the songwriter himself was ready for the next step. But it also contains a wistful, happy-sad quality that comes off as warm-hearted parting advice just before the narrator takes his leave. It sounds like a send-off to an era somehow, full of great love, affection, and profound gratitude. This is just as well.

The Monkees trio incarnation came to a conclusion by early 1970. With a firm relationship formed with Felton Jervis by then, Michael Nesmith followed his former bandmate Peter Tork’s example by buying out the rest of his Monkees contract. He then signed on to RCA as a solo artist, working with steel player Red Rhodes and other members of his First National Band. The core approach set by “Listen to the Band” would serve as a guiding star to Nesmith’s material into the next decade. This included a re-recorded version that appears on his 1970 release Loose Salute. Sometimes, the artist gives life to the song, and then the song does the same for the artist in return.

Michael Nesmith continued in his solo career while also becoming a music television pioneer and heading up a film production company. By the 21st century, a new appreciation for his work in the 1970s with the First National Band solidified his status as a country rock innovator. Significantly, he’d also returned to The Monkees by 2012 and onward, although still intermittently.

By the early 2020s, Nesmith appeared on stage with bandmate and friend Micky Dolenz, performing Monkees material. The sets included many of the songs that Nesmith recorded on those Nashville dates decades before. This included “Listen to the Band”, which is now a recognized fan favourite.

This latter day period of concerts and a new live album helped Nesmith gain a new respect for The Monkees. He recognized that The Monkees is a unique multimedia entity that had come far beyond what he thought it could after over a half a century of his association with it.

Weren’t they good? They made me happy, indeed then.

Michael Nesmith died in 2021.

Read more about his May-June 1968 RCA Nashville sessions for “Listen to the Band” and other songs in this article from talkfromtherockroom.com.

For an exploration of some of The Monkees’ greatest songs, check out this article that covers 20 Great Songs by The Monkees, also written by The Delete Bin Editor-in-Chief Rob Jones.

Enjoy!

#60sMusic #CountryRock #MichaelNesmith #PsychPop #TheMonkees

Last Train To Clarksville 🚉
#TheMonkees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSzsyqzQNeQ

(Theme From) The Monkees 🎡
#TheMonkees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHHZb7c3Qy8

I'm A Believer 💘
#TheMonkees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tpxXDILZHs

Pleasant Valley Sunday 🏩
#TheMonkees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7uRwu3oX3Q

Tom is now listening to Randy Scouse Git - 2007 Remaster
https://open.spotify.com/track/5zurAwfAMVDBKDLrKAhED2

#TheMonkees

"Daydream Believer" is a song composed by American songwriter #JohnStewart shortly before he left #theKingstonTrio. It was recorded by #theMonkees, with #DavyJones singing the lead. The single reached No. 1 on the U.S. #Billboard Hot 100 chart in December 1967, remaining there for four weeks, and peaked at No. 5 on the #UKSinglesChart. It was the Monkees' third and last No. 1 hit in the U.S. In 1979, "Daydream Believer" was recorded by Canadian singer #AnneMurray.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3syk2VOmRw

Cuarta entrega de joyitas de la colección, los Monkees al completo (o lo que yo considero completo) https://youtu.be/fqBQq_fHBLc #vinyl #vinylrecords #NowPlaying #themonkees

‘It was not a boyband!’ Micky Dolenz on the madness of being in the Monkees

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/mar/24/micky-dolenz-on-the-madness-of-being-in-the-monkees

#News #TheMonkees #Monkees #Music #Pop #sixties #TV #Comedy #MickyDolenz #Cinema #HeadTheMove

(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone 🧗
#TheMonkees
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcqEB0KO7yE