Single Rereviews: The Monkees: Porpoise Song

The Monkees
Porpoise Song b/w As We Go Along
Colgems Records 1031
October 5, 1968

Okay, so I'm something of a small-scale vinyl junkie. I've been this way for some time now. It probably dates back to when I was only about three or four years old and getting second-hand Kiss records from various relatives. Kiss were no longer deemed "cool" by most teenage standards (New Wave and Punk Rock was) so I got them. Kiss looked like a bunch of life-sized cartoon characters. They kind of were/are. Well, throughout the 1980's my tastes changed towards new wave and punk rock ("college rock" or "modern rock" as it was known as then). But along the way I became something of a fan of The Monkees television show - which was rerun in syndication - and, subsequently, The Monkees' music. As a teenager I discovered the prefab-four's more psychedelic material (Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd., The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, Head and Instant Replay). I then basically became a full-fledged fan.

From their Head album - The Monkees' "Porpoise Song" b/w "As We Go Along" single may be one of their very best. The Micky Dolenz-sung, Hammond organ-heavy "Porpoise Song [Theme From Head]" is something of a lost-classic Gerry Goffin/Carole King song. It's also the complete (single) version of the song (4:12 as opposed to the albums' 2:56) with a great swirling-coda. This version also appears on Rhino's 1995 Greatest Hits collection. It also made an appearance in the 2001 film Vanilla Sky. "As We Go Along" (Carole King/Toni Stern) is again sung by Dolenz. It too is something of a lost-classic. It's warm acoustic guitar/flute arrangement make it a quintessential late 60's light-Psych piece of Sunshine Pop. The accompanying virtual would-be music video clips for these songs that are featured in the film HEAD are near-perfect visual representations of these songs (IMHO).

The single charted at an unfortunate #62, and like many Monkees B-sides "As We Go Along" earned it's own chart-placing (at a better-than-nothing #106). I guess commerce and art have always been at war. Along with lots of other near-steals - I recently picked-up this single for a measly one-dollar.

Hence this entire rereview.

Here We Come...The Monkees Vinyl Reissues from Sundazed

Sundazed Records has recently reissued the first five albums by the prefab four.

Those albums are:

The Monkees (1966)
More Of The Monkees (1967)
Headquarters (1967)
Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. (1967)
The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees (1968)

Each is peppered with bonus tracks on High-Definition Vinyl and boast a nice consumer-friendly list price of $16.98.

Amazingly, in the year and a half span that initially saw these albums released - all but one reached the top of the charts in both the US and UK (The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees at an underachieving #3).
Some of the more well-known songs found on these albums are "Last Train To Clarksville", "The Girl I Knew Somewhere", "Valleri", "Pleasant Valley Sunday", "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You", "For Pete's Sake" (used as the closing theme to the show), "Take A Giant Step", "Words", "Tapioca Tundra", "She", "Daydream Believer", "Randy Scouse Git", "Love Is Only Sleeping", "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" and of course "I'm A Believer".

It's very nice seeing these classic vinyl LPs in print once again.