THE MONKEES
The Monkees is the first album by the band The Monkees. It was released in October 1966 by Colgems Records in the United States and RCA Victor in the rest of the world. It was the first of four consecutive U.S. number one albums for the group, taking the top spot on the Billboard 200 for 13 weeks, after which it was displaced by the band’s second album. It also topped the UK charts in 1967. The Monkees has been certified quintuple platinum by the RIAA, with sales of over five million copies. The song “Last Train to Clarksville” was released as a single shortly before the release of the album and went to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. (More from Wikipedia)
David Gates had been in various local bands in Tulsa, and his high school band backed Chuck Berry for a concert in 1957. David Gates also wrote “Saturday’s Child”, and the Monkees included this song on their first album, The Monkees. Writing for Allmusic, critic Matthew Greenwald says that “Saturday’s Child” has a “proto-heavy metal guitar riff” and is “one of the more interesting curios of the early Monkees catalog”.
(January 2015/1)
