What is the proper title of The Monkees 8th LP:

1) Present
2) The Monkees Present
3) The Monkees Present Micky David Michael

Is it Present as in Christmas present or Present as in introducing, presenting, etc... ?

Always wondered...

Your third choice. It was supposed to be a two lp set..one side for each Monkee and one side as a group. Then the budget and their recent sales figures scaled the LP back to just one.

This Lp's original concept was inspired by The Beatles' "White Album",so to speak-but it was nixed by Colgems because it was too costly and probably the record company didn't want to do it-as Nesmith himself has said "We were as cold as yesterday's soup..nobody wanted to be bothered with us." Still,it would've been nice to have had the 2-Lp set,nevertheless... Michael Boyce

Assuming we get that far in the Deluxe versions, it would be great to have a reconstruction of the 2LP version of Present.

I think the problem is that not all the material was recorded for the double album as originally proposed. From what I have read in the past I was always under the impression that the three of them were set to do a double album with one side being complete group as a band with each other side being essentially a mini solo album.

When the word came down that Colgems or Columbia wouldn't fund the double album, all that changed and we ended up with the present version of "Present". May be wrong tho!

I thought a great deal, if not all, of the intended material was made, just not realeased until the Missing Links series. Anyone have those on hand at the moment to check what tracks would have been on [U]Changes[/U]?
Anyways, whatever survives should be resequenced for the deluxe editon release with whatever theoretical intended track order that might exist, with any related alternates [mixes, takes, demos, etc.] on the second disc. That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
-Arthur

quote:

Originally posted by Echosend:
I thought a great deal, if not all, of the intended material was made, just not realeased until the Missing Links series. Anyone have those on hand at the moment to check what tracks would have been on [U]Changes[/U]?
Anyways, whatever survives should be resequenced for the deluxe editon release with whatever theoretical intended track order that might exist, with any related alternates [mixes, takes, demos, etc.] on the second disc. That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
-Arthur

You can't be wrong with an opinion
Anyway, that sounds like something we might see in the liner notes if/when the deluxe set for this album is released. We still have 3 more albums to see re-release before we get there.

quote:

Originally posted by Bob T:

You can't be wrong with an opinion

You can if you make that opinion known to those who disagree. ;-0

I really wish they had figured out a way to make the album the way it was originally intended. They should have released an album from each member. Kinda like those 4 Kiss solo albums. Let each member have full creative control over an entire LP with the others helping out by performing on it. It would have been really cool. I think they should have done that instead of making the "Head" movie. Their careers would have been better off, because after releasing 4 solo albums, each member could have had a lucrative solo career following it.

I looked into Andrew's book and couldn't find any alt line up and he said in an online interview a decade ago that none have popped up in his research.


There is the Unsurpassed Masters bootleg series on the Monkees, Vol. 8 , I believe that has remixes and tons of bonus trax for 'Present'.

www.bootlegzone.com

Cool.