The Vinyl Project - Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. by The Monkees (1967)

A Trip Thru Your Grooves - Episode 14


Release Date: 28-April-1969
Genre: Rock/Pop/Psychedelic
Producer: Chip Douglas
Label: Colgems
Time: 33m 00s
Review Date: 02-December-2018
Format: LP

Side One

1. Salesman
2. She Hangs Out
3. The Door Into Summer
4. Love is Only Sleeping
5. Cuddly Toy
6. Words

Side Two

1. Hard to Believe
2. What Am I Doin' Hangin' 'Round?
3. Peter Percival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky / Pleasant Valley Sunday
4. Daily Nightly
5. Don't Call on Me
6. Star Collector

Review: When I was growing up, The Monkees was my favorite TV show. I watched the syndicated Saturday morning reruns, foregoing the basic Hanna-Barbera and Sid and Marty Croft fare that most of my friends watched. In truth, my love affair with music began with The Monkees, even though I was disappointed to hear that through most of the two seasons and 58 episodes the band didn't play their own instruments. Oh, I did love their house, and I'd kill to live there right now.

Tell me about that Monkees' House, Mike:   The address 1334 North Beechwood Drive, Hollywood, CA was frequently given as the address to contact Screen Gems and/or The Monkees. The front of the first floor was a combination of the living room, dining room and kitchen. In the back, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, was an alcove formed by massive floor-to-ceiling bay windows, where the band kept their instruments and rehearsed songs.

The walls were covered with various hip signs and posters, such as MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL and IN CASE OF FIRE, RUN. Also residing with the Monkees was Mr. Schneider, a talking mannequin that dispensed philosophical advice. Additionally, the boys had to contend with their bad-tempered landlord Mr. Babbit, who was always threatening to throw them out for not paying the rent. Hey, they were a struggling band.



The story behind Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd.  - the band's fourth album - is extraordinary when you consider that the executives behind the show had absolutely zero faith in the band as musicians. After wresting control of their music and the band's direction from Don Kirschner, the Monkees first recorded Headquarters (1967) as a mostly self-contained unit. That was a great effort but falls short of this gem. Relying only on themselves again, but with some outside help from some of the better known session musicians at the time -- plus the production team of Chip Douglas and recording engineers Hank Cicalo and Peter Abbott -- this is the Monkees at their finest. It's not only the band's best album, but one of the best records of 1967, a watershed year in the music industry, critically speaking.

Believe it or not, the Monkees ruled 1967 as far as album sales. Their first four albums held the number one position on Billboard's Hot 200 for 29 of 52 weeks that year and the Monkees were never out of the top ten. Only four albums interrupted their number-one run: Sounds Like... by Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass for the week ending June 17th; Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles from July 1st to October 7th; Ode to Billie Joe by Bobbie Gentry for the weeks ending October 14th and 21st; and the Greatest Hits effort by Diana Ross & The Supremes from October 28th through November 25th. The band ended the year with four Top 100 singles.

It's important to look at our Monkees-101 syllabus here.

• The Monkees was a TV show about a band in its original concept and the Monkees were not originally a band per se.
• Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart wrote all the songs and provided the original vocals for both the demo and pilot.
• A consortium of songwriters from the Brill Building in New York (known as Tin Pan Alley) that included Neil Diamond, Carole Bayer Sager, Harry Nilsson, Bill Martin, Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil, Boyce & Hart, Carole King and Gerry Goffin wrote all of the songs for the Monkees that were produced by Don Kirshner.
• An aside, if you will: The line "Twelve hours in the Tin Pan, God there's got to be a better way," by Pete Townshend in the song Who Are You always reminds me of what must have been epic battles between the Monkees and their creators.
• At some point it was decided, and rightfully so, that Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork were going to have to do the vocals for the songs that were written for the series.
• Andrew Sandoval noted in Rhino's 2006 Deluxe Edition CD reissue of More of the Monkees that album sales were outstripping Nielsen ratings, meaning that more people were buying the music than watching the TV Show. 
• The Monkees always felt confident enough in their own abilities and it was before the recording of their second album that they protested strongly enough to be recognized as a real and legitimate rock and pop band. They also felt no need or desire to continue working with Kirshner.
• They soon fought for and earned the right to collectively supervise all musical output under the band's name for the vast majority of their career as a band. This allowed all four members to play instruments, produce songs, and record and release songs written by all four individual members.  As Dolenz would later describe it, "The Monkees really becoming a band was like the equivalent of Leonard Nimoy really becoming a Vulcan."  
• Kirshner's dismissal came in early February 1967, when he violated an agreement between Colgems and the Monkees not to release material directly created by the group together with unrelated Kirshner-produced material. Kirshner was incensed with the lack of loyalty from the band members and lack of support by the show's producers.

Filled with pop dynamite like She Hangs Out and Cuddly Toy (written by Harry Nilsson), psychedelic deliciousness such as Daily Nightly and Star Collector, both of which compare favorably with the Beatles by the way (I'm not kidding), this is the LP that proved beyond a doubt that the boys were better musicians than they were actors. In fact, I wrote about seven years ago that Pleasant Valley Sunday may be the perfect pop song.

Dolenz had some serious musical chops: Micky played the newly invented Moog Synthesizer on Daily Nightly and Star Collector.  Not bad for a childhood actor with limited, if any music experience before getting the gig on the TV show. This album was among the earliest to make use of the Moog, which Dolenz introduced to the group and played in the studio; he owned one of the first twenty ever sold.

For me, the best songs are those that feature Nesmith:  Salesman, Love Is Only Sleeping, Don't Call on Me and What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round? - a song that's nearly Flying Burrito Brothers-like. That being said, Pleasant Valley Sunday and Words are the stunningly appealing singles on this long player. The groupie-inspired Goffin-King collaboration Star Collector is equally fun. And that best describes Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd. - fun-filled and filler-free (except Peter Tork's exercise in alliteration, Peter Percival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky). It's a must-own vinyl.

Something to keep in your back pocket if you still do digital playback: Rhino's 1995 CD reissue of the album adds the Dolenz-penned Going Down plus seven previously unreleased songs, including alternate versions of Daily Nightly and Star Collector. The streaming version on Spotify offers 27 songs, most being variations of the album's better songs.

Aborted single: Love is Only Sleeping // Daydream Believer was scheduled to precede the album but was canceled due to fears that the title of the A-side might be a bit too risqué for airplay. Daydream Believer was chosen instead as the A side with Goin' Down (which apparently had no immodest undertones at the time) as the flip side.

Best Songs: Pleasant Valley Sunday, She Hangs Out, Words, Star Collector, Salesman, Hard to Believe, The Door Into Summer, What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round?
A Deep Cut You'll Love: Daily Nightly

An interesting note about this album: A song-to-episode synopsis for Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones, Ltd.

1. Salesman is featured in the episode The Devil and Peter Tork. NBC objected to the episode, citing the song and its veiled drug reference in the third verse.
2. She Hangs Out is featured in the episodes The Card Carrying Red Shoes and Some Like it Lukewarm.
3. The Door Into Summer is featured in the episodes Monkees on the Wheel and Some Like it Lukewarm.
4. Love is Only Sleeping was featured in three episodes: I Was a 99-pound Weakling, The Monkees in Paris, and Everywhere a Sheik-Sheik. Cuddly Toy was featured in the same episodes.
5. You can hear Words in the episodes Monkees in a Ghost Town and Monkees Chow Mein.
6. What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round? can be heard in The Monkees Race Again, Monkees Marooned, and It's a Nice Place to Visit. 
7. Pleasant Valley Sunday was actually inserted into two episode rebroadcasts during the summer rerun season of 1967: Captain Crocodile and Case of the Missing Monkee. The song wasn't in the original broadcasts of each. Pleasant Valley Sunday was then used in season two episodes The Picture Frame and Monkee Mayor.
8. Daily Nightly is featured in the episodes Fairy Tale and The Monkees Blow Their Minds.
9. Don't Call on Me is used in The Monkees in Paris. The introduction "From the elegant Pump Room of the magnificent Palmer House, high over Chicago" is an anomaly of sorts since the Pump Room was not part of the Palmer House Hotel, but rather the Ambassador Hotel. The Pump Room closed in 2017.
10. Star Collector was featured in five episodes of the TV series: The Wild Monkees, Hitting the High Seas, Monkees Watch Their Feet, The Monkees in Paris, and Monkees Mind Their Manor (my personal favorite episode title).

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