Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork – 20th Anniversary Tour 1986 A great souvenir of a great tour. This was available in vinyl and cassette on the 1987 tour. (The CD release came out about a decade later.) Whenever I want to remember those amazing days of the ‘86 tour, I put this on, close my eyes and I imagine myself back in that audience enjoying the excitement of finally seeing the Monkees in concert. I don’t mind the crowd noise at all, it adds to the atmosphere and excitement of the show. This is the entire show with some edits, most notably on ‘Listen To The Band’ where they cut out the band intros. This was issued on David Fishof’s own label. A pity that Rhino didn’t give it a fuller release. Nice to have a couple of original songs by Peter and Davy on it. As noted, it was put out under the guy’s own names since they weren’t legally allowed to issue it as “The Monkees”. As a Live document, this is a must have in any Monkees collection. If you can find a copy in vinyl, cassette or cd, grab it! 5/5. Vinyl Front and Back cover. Cassette CD with photo taken by Henry Diltz.
The 20th Anniversary Tour 1986 album sounds pretty good on the whole. The packaging is a little disappointing (despite the nice front cover design) in that it isn't a gatefold, so you have two LPs shoved into a single sleeve. But as I said, it sounds pretty good, almost slick (very slick compared to Live 1967). Unfortunately, it also sounds rather '80s in places, but not excessively for the most part. I saw the three-piece Monkees three years later (1989) when they played Oxford, UK. This album serves very well as a reminder of that as the stage banter, etc., is pretty much the same - the spontaneity was obviously well rehearsed! I suppose that may also represent a bit of a problem with The Monkees from that time; the music occasionally suffered from their emphasis on 'humour' - 'Shades of Gray' deserved better than a sight gag about grey hair (which obviously doesn't come over well on record anyway). Of particular interest, perhaps, is the way the three of them attempt 'Listen to the Band' - it may not be a musical highlight as such, but it's a brave effort. Anyway, it's a good album to have in your Monkees collection as it represents the 1980s revival rather better (in my view) than their studio work of that period.
I haven't heard this and again won't get enough of a chance to evaluate it properly. I hope to listen to bits of it through the day. Without wishing to give a numerical rating, it looks like a quite predictable track listing except for MGBT. The performances, and production is fairly as to be expected. It's a good record of the concert, but nothing particularly spectacular.
While I never heard this particular recording, I heard this (or similar shows) three times. Starting in August, 1986 outside in Baltimore, then at the Vet in Philly after a college football game and then back inside at the Baltimore Arena. The set list on the last two is exactly as this is. Live records sometimes do not capture what it is really like. This recording would suffer from that for me as the joy of seeing the Monkees, even without my favorite band member, made everything sound better back then. For some reason, I like live music that I did not see better, such as Live at the Palais, one of my all time favorite LP's which I have played thousands of times. Still overall this is a 4 for me. After 20 years of being either ridiculed or ignored as a fan of the Monkees, to see and hear the noise and reception at these concerts was unbelievable.
I remember checking the record bins for this release, not knowing until years later that it was only sold at shows. I just assumed that it never came out. I did buy the '90's version on the 1996 tour. It's a nice souvenir but I haven't listened to it in years. The 1986 tour was my first-ever concert. They were booked into a pretty small suburban tent venue before the comeback really took off, and they were playing the local football stadium a few months later. As I've said elsewhere, now that I'm an old geezer, it blows my mind that Davy Jones had only just turned 40.
Live - 4/5 I bought the vinyl and cassette when it was first available and hadn't played it in quite some time. It's a nice piece of time capsule of the moment in time in 1986 when the Monkees were hot. It was just too bad they didn't pay Columbia Pictures the money to utilize the logo. Hated the CD cover, despite it being a Diltz photo, the design screams bootleg to me and if I had to rate that it would have been a 1.
I’ll do 4/5 for the live 1986 album. A real fun listen. I really dig when they do “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You”. I’ve got this one on cassette and I’d like it on vinyl soon too.
It definitely captures the excitement and atmosphere of the first reunion era and the guys mostly sound good, but it's still sooooo rushed and slick and "modern"/'80s. I'm thinking 2.5/5 but will round up to a 3. FWIW, I'd have given it a 5 had they just used this photo with no other text as the cover:
20th Anniversary Tour 1986 A well-produccd slick Monkees live album. Starts off rather strangely. They should have gone straight into Clarksville since we didn't need telling this was the Monkees in disguise. The screaming is a bit off-putting but you get used to it and it never stops you enjoying the music. Very little of the heavy-handed 'humour' that tends to invade live concerts and no single Monkee seems to dominate proceedings. There are a couple of songs with shared vocals, about half and half of the rest for Micky and Davy, and even Peter gets more than just Auntie Grizelda. Makes me wish I'd seen this great nostalgia concert at the time. But what's better is that now I know all the songs thanks to this thread. 5/5
The ‘86 shows started with a visual gag of the guys making their entrance as the ‘Monkees Theme’ played. Then the song keeps repeating and then you see a record player on the stage and it’s obvious the needle got stuck. Peter then produces a large stick of dynamite, places it on the record player, they blow it up, and then launch right into ‘Clarksville’. (This was pre-Milli Vanilli, so this is not a reference to them, though the Monkees have been unfairly compared to the Milli Vanilli fraud.) It’s a visual gag that doesn’t translate well audibly. But if you were at those shows you immediately got the reference.
I hesitated not rating this. The 1986 shows had to be seen and heard. But I'll give it a 2.5 I will say this is a hundred times better than the DBJH live album.
2/5. Seeing them live at the time was exciting, but considering how much better their shows became a decade later, I can't imagine revisiting this album for anything other that completist reasons. This era's importance was that it happened, and they became so popular again. A great feat, but with no lasting artistic impression.
I don’t know about that, ‘Good Times’ proved they still had it in them to record a great album which charted in the Top 20.
Today’s song is Heart and Soul: And finally we reach the group’s worst album… This is a pretty decent opening track though and probably a slightly better single than That Was Then, This Is Now. Unfortunately, by this point the bubble had burst and the group (or Davy) had annoyed the wrong people which killed any chance of it being a similarly sized hit. Micky sounds pretty good on this one and it’s fairly catchy. The production drags it down a fair bit though and worse was to come on the rest of the album. I still wouldn't describe this as good when I look at the rest of their output, but it's a tolerable 1980s song so a low 3/5.
Heart and Soul Song writers: Simon Byrne and Andrew Howell I like this song, still do. I listen to it once in a while. I bought the 45 way back when. I don't remember seeing the video much on TV because the Monkees were no longer on MTV. From my understanding, they were supposed to appear at a New Year's event and could not. So MTV took it as insult and never showed them again on its channel. I never knew any of that until much later. The video is a lot of fun for this song. I had bought a Monkees' video compilation and had a copy of the Heart and Soul video there. 4/5
Heart And Soul-Now this is more like it A really good mix of classic Monkees sound and modern (at the time) sound. The best of the 80's Monkees. 4/5
Heart and Soul - A nice 80’s Rocker with Micky giving a great vocal performance. Love the crunchy guitars and I don’t mind the synths. Was very well received on the 1987 tour. It should have been a big hit for The Monkees if it weren’t for the miscalculations that led to MTV banning them. MTV also pulled some unscrupulous shenanigans. They had a request line where fans could call in and request their favorite videos to get airplay. The Monkees ‘Heart and Soul’ video got numerous requests from fans but MTV transferred those votes to the similarly titled single by the group T’Pau which got plenty of airplay while the Monkees literally got Zilch! The whole situation is a bit too complicated to post here, but I do have a more detailed chapter about the whole MTV episode in my Monkees book, along with copies of printouts I received of how MTV purposely lopsided the votes. For the song ‘Heart and Soul’ my rating is a high 4/5. T’Pau’s ‘Heart and Soul’.
"Heart and Soul" -- 4/5 This is a really great single, though the cheese factor has been turned up a notch since 1986 and "That Was Then, This is Now". The Monkees -- Davy in particular -- wanted Roger Bechirian to produce a modern sounding record for them, going against every instinct he had about the project, and causing quite a bit of tension with him. The hissy keyboards, slick guitars, and gated drums don't exactly scream "Monkees", but the tune is fantastic and Micky sings the hell out of it. There really isn't a shortage of good material on Pool It! -- the songs just aren't in the style I necessarily want from those guys, and the production sounded corny out of the gate. This could have, and should have been at least a moderate hit.
"Heart And Soul" It's the 80s - you're in no doubt about that at all as soon as the song starts. As an 1987 synthy/rocker it's pretty much par for the course and Micky gives a good performance. Given that the production is so generically mid-80s, a fun game to play with many tracks on Pool It! is "Who else could have sung this?" Same backing track, same song, just a different vocalist. For "Heart And Soul", I'm nominating Tiffany. 3/5.
HEART AND SOUL is a fantastic track, and yeah....Micky does it total justice. A solidly high 4/5. And that's it for me and POOL IT. I'm gonna sit back and wait for Rico, which I imagine will be the most trashed vote we've had in a loooooong time! I am TOTALLY looking forward to it!
