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| From | "Chris Coyle" <ccoyle@sacoriver.net> |
| Subject | New Monkees set |
| Date | Wed, 30 Apr 2003 09:53:46 -0400 |
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I Picked up the new Best Of collection yesterday at Best Buy. They had at least 20 copies for sale and were priced at 11.98. Nice price considering, Borders only had 4 copies and were priced at $18.99..yikes!!
The packaging is quite good and the dull slip case art is enhanced at least by the nice glossy logo and color back art work.
The inside art is very appealing and includes a small fold out lyric book for the enclosed Karaoke CD. The CD booklet does include that famous 33 1/3 promo shot and has a nice fold out center with a photo spread and CD credits. There's one or 2 alternate shots, but most of the pictures have been published before. A few of them I notice straight out of Rhino's "Hey Hey We're The Monkees" book. The alternate rainbow back cover photo is not new, it's from the center intro spread for the 2nd section of the "Music Box" book found on pages 28/29.
The CD's themselves are red/white and blue/ white with the same cartoon characters used on the CD faces of "The Music Box".
Among the CD credits, Rhino Monkee family Andrew Sandoval, Bill Inglot, Gary Peterson, and Dan Hersch return along with Patrick Milligan, who returns as project supervisor from the credits of "The Music Box". We have new names Komeka Freeman, Steve P. Gorman, Hugh Brown and Bryan Lasley. this time out, for the artwork and other project assistance. Notice long time art design Lisa Sutton is missing.
Bill Inglot and Dan Hersch are responsible for the remastering, the same team who worked on The Music Box. Bill Inglot, of course, has worked with Rhino since their beginnings. His name and Monkees masters go hand in hand.
Andrew Sandoval's liner notes is just a quick overview of Monkees history, mainly pointing out all their successes, with a few un-published commentary in the notes from Mike Nesmith and James Fawley.
Song credits include chart placing, album and single release dates as well as lead and backing vocal and producer credits. No musician credits are found except for The Monkees instrument list (ala "Headquarters") inside the center fold out section.
Now for the music...let's take the new Karaoke CD+G first. This CD will play in both standard CD players as well as karaoke machines, where I suppose the lyrics will also scroll. I don not have a karaoke machine, so I could not test this function. It will not work in a DVD player, other then play as a standard CD.
Five tracks (Monkees Theme-the short TV version/ I'm A Believer/Stepping Stone/Pleasant Valley Sunday/Daydream Believer) have been remixed from their multi-track tapes, thus allowing the removal of the lead vocal, as well as any harmony lines going along with the main verses. This is a great way for the rare Monkee fan who enjoys hearing and getting into the original tapes as much as Rhino has allowed. What you get is a nice new creation of those songs, with the backing vocals in place and noticeably more up front in the mix then originally produced. Like on the 2nd and last chorus of "Daydream Believer", Micky's harmony is pushed up in the song, while Davy's is pushed down. Another example is Tommy Boyce's backing vocal on "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone", you can actually make it him out loud and clear, nice!
If playing in a standard CD player, the songs have before and after pauses, and they start either around 15 secs of 20 secs into the track. Don't be alarmed..
The main CD is sourced from their stereo album mixes, not single mixes as previously reported. The only single mixes used were for "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" , which is the mono mix and "Listen To The Band", which is the stereo single mixed released many times over. Going with the stereo mixes for 99 % of the album is a good marketing approach as young people these days might not care for the mono mixes. Though not, as pure as most purist would like, it's almost sounding fresh, as Rhino has released many songs like "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" and "Pleasant Valley Sunday" many times over in their original mono single mixes, making their stereo counterparts almost a rarity unless you own the original or re-issued albums, while still keeping the rare stereo mix for "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" hidden on their Flashback series of Monkees CDs.
As for the sound, I did a side by side comparison using Cool Edit Pro of a few songs off of "Music Box" and this new collection, and I did not detect any new sound enhancement. It looks like they used the newly mastered sources they used for "Music Box" in 2001.
Not a bad release, and a good place to start for future Monkees fans. It's only for completists and session die hards who will want to ad the new remixed backing tracks to their collections.
Chris Coyle
http://www.coylepop.servemp3.com/
Original and cover pop! with sugar added....
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