Monkees
Missing Links Vol 3 - Rhino 1990 ( 66-70 )
Tracks: 1. (Theme From) The Monkees (TV Version) / 2. Kellogg's Jingle / 3. We'll Be Back In A Minute / 4. Through The Looking Glass / 5. Propinquity / 6. Penny Music / 7. Tear The Top Right Off My Head / 8. Little Red Rider / 9. You're So Good / 10. Look Down / 11. Hollywood / 12. Midnight Train (Demo) / 13. She Hangs Out (Single) / 14. Shake 'Em Up / 15. Circle Sky (Alt.) / 16. Steam Engine (Alt.) / 17. Love To Love (Alt.) / 18. She'll Be There / 19. How Insensitive / 20. Merry Go Round
Comments:
This was the third compilation of Monkees rarities and oddities. I guess you would expect that a third compilation of rarities from a band that released 9 albums and whose recording career spanned only 4 years, would be squeezing the lemon too much. This is in fact not the case. Like most Monkees albums this CD contains a great variety of musical styles, and the quality of the song-writing is also pretty uneven. But since Monkees fans are known for having quite different musical preferences, there is bound to be new favorites for everyone on this collection too.
The sound and recording quality on the vast majority of these tracks levels their original albums, and it's impressing that they could manage to record so much quality material over such a short period of time. Quite many of these songs would have fitted nicely into the original albums, and a good handful of them would have improved the general impression of those albums.
My favorite here is the 1967 recording "Love to Love", a song which easily could have been a hit-record . It's a Neil Diamond song sung by Davy Jones, which due to some controversy ( some people wanted a Jones solo-career ) was not originally released on any of the official albums or singles. Great that it finally sees the light of day, in a superb sound quality.
Other great tracks are the two alternate versions of "Through the Looking Glass" and "She Hangs Out".
Peter Tork's "Tear the Top Right off My Head" is a good example of his fine song-writing abilities.
"Propinquity" is a country flavoured tune written by Michael Nesmith that would have been a fine addition to one of the latter day Monkees albums.
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