Ah, The Monkees, so often derided as the original manufactured boy band, a tag they struggled to shake off despite wresting control of the songwriting from their puppetmasters and actually crafting some memorable tracks in their own images.
This lavishly-presented 4-CD box set rounds up everything anyone would ever need to own by Davy, Micky, Mike and Peter. The first three discs feature the greatest and rarest moments from their heyday in chronological order, while the fourth centres on late-60s material, out-takes and tracks from their two reunion albums in 1986 and 1996.
How else could it begin but with the '(Theme From) The Monkees', a song that defined 60s US TV as readily as the Gerry Anderson themes did in the UK? It's also a pretty good pop song, as is much of their earliest material.
With the songwriting team of Boyce and Hart turning out gentle, harmony-dipped gems like 'Last Train To Clarksville', 'Take A Giant Step' and the melancholic 'I Wanna Be Free', The Monkees effortlessly racked up the American hits.
However, it wasn't until the sunshine-kissed 'I'm A Believer', with its burbling keyboard and handclaps, that The Monkees really hit international paydirt. It also ushered in a rich vein of classic songwriting form, with '(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone', 'She' and 'Valleri' (the original version) particularly memorable.
The second disc centres on their finest hour - 1967's 'Headquarters' album. Tracks like Mike Nesmith's superb country rocker 'You Just May Be The One', Peter Tork's co-composition 'For Pete's Sake' (which became the TV show's closing theme) and Micky Dolenz's 'Randy Scouse Git' showed the group could stand on their songwriting feet.
There's also plenty of other non-band gems including 'The Girl I Knew Somewhere', the 'It's All Over Now' rip-off 'Sunny Girlfriend' and the song that has haunted karaoke bars across the world, 'Daydream Believer'.
Disc three features 1968, which is when things really went ape. The commercial disaster of the movie Head and increasingly unsuccessful singles brought the band to the brink of collapse. There were still some fine moments - 'Tear The Top Right Off My Head', 'D.W. Washburn', 'Porpoise Song' and the live 'Circle Sky' in particular - but the end was nigh for the original line-up.
Tork was the first to go, leaving the remaining three to soldier on through 1969's 'Instant Replay' and 'The Monkees Present'. Nesmith's epic 'Listen To The Band' still stands as the pinnacle of their later career, although when he too jumped ship Dolenz and Davy Jones could only serve up the mediocre 'Changes' before they too parted. There followed various touring reunions before the full-blown 20th anniversary shindig of 1986.
Unfortunately, the new material that they produced is particularly dire. Dolenz and Tork's 'That Was Then, This Is Now' just manages to smuggle some warmth under the suffocatingly period keyboards and drums. However, there's no excuse for 'Heart And Soul', which mercifully is the only track included from 1986's abhorrent 'Pool It!' album.
All in all, there's an awful lot of material here of varying quality. While the band's run of singles and albums in 1966 to 1968 is rightly regarded as part of the 60s' best pop/rock heritage, their later material shows that once the rot set in, it was pretty terminal.
The fact that only Nesmith has gone on to produce any music of substance is also indicative of the balance of power within the group (as evidenced by his absence from the material between 1970 and 1996).
That said, this box set will doubtless please diehards and there's no arguing that The Monkess are more deserving of the treatment than many of their contemporaries. However, novices and those wanting just the hits are steered in the direction of the recent 'Definitive Monkees' compilation.
