Music Box
![]() | By The Monkees Rhino / Wea, 2001, Audio CD Customer Rating: 35 reviews Recommend |
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No Description Available.
Genre: Popular Music
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 27-FEB-2001
Assembled via casting call as American television's answer to the Beatles, the Monkees incurred the wrath of "serious" critics from L.A. to London. But, though initially a manufactured pop commodity, they displayed a willful, sometimes perverse, drive to wrest control of their musical destiny from the all-star stable of songwriters and producers (including Boyce and Hart, King and Goffin, Mann and Weil, Neil Diamond, and Chip Douglas) who made them pop stars. Maybe the notoriously frenzied '60s had something to do with it: their artistic legacy in that decade bridged both Don Kirshner and Jack Nicholson; and Jimi Hendrix opened for them, if only a few times, on a 1967 tour. Even more unlikely, that legacy had a three-decade-plus staying power well beyond its obvious nostalgic charms.
Though Rhino has previously reissued and anthologized the Monkees' catalog to seemingly exhaustive extremes, this four-disc collection of 99 tracks (each individually annotated by band members and songwriters in the set's colorful booklet) is the only one that spans their full recorded output. Structured around the A- and B-sides of the band's singles, strong album cuts, and outtakes (including three previously unreleased), it's a journey that's both comfortably familiar and occasionally surprising. The Monkees' individual parts — Mike Nesmith's tuneful, pioneering country-rock; Davy Jones's Broadway-honed panache; Peter Tork's spirituality and innate musical chemistry; and Micky Dolenz's loopiness and occasionally avant-garde instincts — are showcased well. But by the sometimes-spotty fourth disc (largely spanning the mid-'70s to mid-'90s), the band's output was hampered by partial lineups, part-time commitments, and, perhaps ironically, the lack of the very pop song-crafter thoroughbreds who'd helped to establish their legend in the first place. — Jerry McCulley
Disc 1Disc 2
- (Theme From) The Monkees
- I Wanna Be Free [Fast Version]
- Let's Dance On
- Last Train to Clarksville
- Take a Giant Step
- All the King's Horses
- Saturday's Child
- Papa Gene's Blues
- I Wanna Be Free
- Sweet Young Thing
- Gonna Buy Me a Dog
- I Don't Think You Know Me [First Recorded Version]
- I'm a Believer
- (I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone
- She
- Mary, Mary
- Your Auntie Grizelda
- Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow) [Previously Unissued Extended Version]
- Of You [Previously Unissued Mix]
- Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow) [Previously Unissued Extended Version]
- Sometime in the Morning
- When Love Comes Knockin' (At Your Door)
- Do Not Ask for Love [First Recorded Version]
- Valleri [First Recorded Version]
- I'll Be Back up on My Feet
Disc 3
- Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You
- She Hangs Out [Single Version]
- Girl I Knew Somewhere
- All of Your Toys
- Love to Love
- You Told Me
- I'll Spend My Life With You
- Forget That Girl
- You Just May Be the One
- Shades of Gray
- For Pete's Sake
- Sunny Girlfriend
- No Time
- Randy Scouse Git
- Pleasant Valley Sunday [Single Version]
- Words
- Daydream Believer
- Goin' Down
- Salesman
- Door into Summer
- Love Is Only Sleeping
- Cuddly Toy
- What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round?
- Daily Nightly
- Star Collector
Disc 4
- Valleri
- Tapioca Tundra
- Dream World
- Auntie's Municipal Court
- P.O. Box 9847
- Zor and Zam
- Carlisle Wheeling [First Recorded Version]
- Tear the Top Right off My Head
- Girl I Left Behind Me [First Recorded Version]
- Nine Times Blue
- Come on In
- D.W. Washburn
- It's Nice to Be With You
- St. Matthew
- Porpoise Song [Single Version]
- As We Go Along
- Ditty Diego -- War Chant
- Circle Sky [Live]
- Can You Dig It?
- Daddy's Song [*]
- Long Title: Do I Have to Do This All over Again
- Tear Drop City
- Man Without a Dream
- Through the Looking Glass
- I Won't Be the Same Without Her
- You and I
- While I Cry
- Shorty Blackwell
- If I Ever Get to Saginaw Again
- Smile
- Listen to the Band [Single Version]
- Someday Man
- Some of Shelly's Blues
- Mommy and Daddy
- Good Clean Fun
- Looking for the Good Times
- Steam Engine
- I Never Thought It Peculiar
- Midnight Train
- Oh My My
- I Love You Better
- Do You Feel It Too?
- Do It in the Name of Love - Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Monkees
- That Was Then, This Is Now - Micky Dolenz, Monkees, Peter Tork
- Heart and Soul
- MGB-GT [Live]
- Every Step of the Way [Single Version]
- Oh, What a Night
- You and I
Title: Music Box
Sales Rank: 97457 in Music
Artist: The Monkees
Label: Rhino / Wea, 2001-02-27, Audio CD, 4 Discs
Format: Box set
Item Dimensions: 1.2 pounds
Package Dimensions: 10.1 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches, 1.2 pounds
- Very well received
- My typical music choice is not reflected with this purchase, but I've been tasked with finding music for a very wide range of listeners including residents of a retirement community. This was bought on a whim and was not a researched purchase...I was just looking for music that would please the listeners and I struck gold with this one. I have More reviews
- While I Cry - remake
- Artist Dimthingshineon recently did a cover of The Monkees: "While I Cry" on his latest 4 CD project called "Nostalgia" released in 2009. Check out http://www.myspace.com/dimthingshineon
or http://www.geocities.com/dimthingshineon
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- Great Set
- Music Box by The Monkees is a four CD set and is four hours, twenty-nine minutes and thirty-two seconds long and was released on February 20, 2001. This CD set cover the years of the Monkees from their first album in 1966 to Justus in 1996. Included in Music Box is a brief story of the Monkees, stories behind each song written and information on that More reviews
- the hated monkees
- OK,i want to 'fess up. Back in the 60's,my sister was crazy about the monkees. i absolutely loathed them. hated them. thought they were the musical equivalent to the Antichrist. etc.etc.(Nesmith was OK,tho')
But,as the years wore me down,I realized that I actually enjoyed some of their songs when they happened to be on the radio.
I bought More reviews
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- Fantastic. I love this stuff. Why? Because you can't take life seriously when you are listening to The Monkees box set. The newer stuff on here I don't like, you can keep it. I don't think these guys realized it at the time, that they had industry powerhouses cranking out some great music... yeah, there are some More reviews

