Headquarters
by The Monkees

The people who dismiss the Monkees without ever having listened to them, and who refer to them derisively as a "band" (never without quotation marks), can never really be convinced of their merits. I don't have ill feelings toward these people because they had the whole media telling a story about the Monkees that wasn't really true.

I'm gonna skip over the music for a minute and talk about the relationship between the band and the label/company. Somebody commented on here that the Monkees represented the end of musical integrity and the triumph of the love of money. The thing is, if the Monkees are not important for their music, they are important for being a group, perhaps the first, that stood up AGAINST this paradigm. The Monkees came around in the mid-to-late 60s. What do you think was going on before this? I'll tell you-- companies were putting together groups of men or women who could sing, and then they were choosing songs written by professional songwriters under contract, and they were recording those songs in the studio with session musicians. That's just the way it was done (with a few exceptions). It was rare that any groups would play their own instruments either on record or on stage. That's how the corporations liked it--Total Control. If it sounds familiar, it's because that's how the Monkees started out. Yes, they were prefabricated. Nobody's going to deny that. But, they because an extremely important band because they broke the mold. Somehow, they and a couple of allies they had in the company, waged a war in order to control their own musical destiny. They shouldn't be denigrated for having started out just the same as so many other groups; they should be celebrated for showing the music world that artists are not puppets to be controlled by corporations. They have to have free will.

As for the album Headquarters, they played every note, and it turns out they were talented guys. Does the album stand up with the greats? Well, no, but it is one of the better albums of the year. Moreover, it is better than just about any other talented band at the time that were playing their own instruments and writing their own songs. Much of this is due to the prodigious talents of Michael Nesmith, who's song "You Just May Be the One" is an extraordinary study in pop hooks, and is the best tune on the albums. His other songs, along with Micky's "Randy Scouse Git" are the album's other best songs. The album is weakest when it is borrowing corporate tunes, written for money, like those by Boyce and Hart, and Mann and Weil. Like most of the songs on the first two Monkees albums, these songs lack heart. Nesmith's were always the best because he was an artist recording his own tunes. So many of the songs that Don Kirshner selected were so flat because they were written for a paycheck.

okay

From 2nd-Impressions 10/13/2020 03:30 | #259228

71/100

Best tracks: You Told Me, Mr Webster, Randy Scouse Git
Worst tracks: Shades of Gray, Zilch

Headquarters (2007 Remaster) (1967) by The Monkees - 7.16666666667/10 (Rating Doesn’t Include Tracks that aren’t songs) - Listened to on 7/4/2019
A1 - You Told Me - 7/10
A2 - I'll Spend My Life With You - 7/10
A3 - Forget That Girl - 7/10
A4 - Band 6 - 6/10 (Not Song)
A5 - You Just May Be the One - 8/10
A6 - Shades of Gray - 9/10
A7 - I Can't Get Her Off My Mind - 9/10
B1 - For Pete's Sake - 6/10
B2 - Mr. Webster - 6/10
B3 - Sunny Girlfriend - 6/10
B4 - Zilch - 6/10 (Not Song)
B5 - No Time - 7/10
B6 - Early Morning Blues and Greens - 6/10
B7 - Randy Scouse Git - 8/10

From planetneutral 02/11/2018 18:18 | #207688

Better than I might have expected, downright interesting at times and remarkable given the context. Not exactly the Beatles, but less far away than I would have guessed.

A lot of my favourite Monkeestracks are the ones sung by Michael Nesmith and this has some of his best, You Told Me, You Just May Be The One. For Pete's Sake is another cracker, as is No Time. Second only to Head as an album for me.....

well.....this is one of the most notorious "bands" in history, and many hate them justifiably as an example of what we let happen to ourselves once music got too big and the money too easy to print. this is the fiction story about the beatles. that they were cute and not very talented, that they could be xeroxed continuously for profit until the machine broke. the real story is more interesting. and some of the music is very good. some is god awful. here they were in '67, though, not in charge of anything, but if you listen to the tracks you have to admit they were not trying to get rich or be "mainstream" pop stars. michael nesmith could really write and play, and his discomfort within the group gave it much-needed tension. and they experimented in a mainstream way with vinyl that was precious, and they didn't give a shit.