[What a groovy time they were having.]
Revisiting A&M Records No. 18
Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart: ‘Test Patterns’ (Sept ’67)
If you’re any kind of Monkees fan, then you’re likely very familiar with this legendary songwriting duo.
Not only did they pen more of their irresistible ditties than Neil Diamond, Goffin & King or any other tunesmiths — ‘Last Train to Clarksville,’ ‘Words,’ ‘Valleri,’ ‘She,’ ‘I Wanna Be Free,’ ‘I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone’ and the group’s TV theme are all their creations, just to name a handful — they also recorded and produced most of the quartet’s earliest material.
Notoriously so, in fact: the rush-released Monkees debut was essentially a Boyce & Hart album, backed by their band the Candy Store Prophets, with Messrs. Dolenz, Jones, Nesmith & Tork overdubbing vocals to replace Tommy’s & Bobby’s.
The Monkees, noteworthy talents in their own ways (especially Nesmith), were widely derided for being little more than a Don Kirshner confection, a backlash that stung Mike the most and led them to more pivotal roles in their productions starting with third album ‘Headquarters,’ which dropped four months before the LP shown here.
Makes sense B&H would want to parallel that juggernaut’s success by launching their own self-branded albums. After all, despite rapidly becoming one of the era’s biggest-selling songwriting teams, they’d initially aimed to become pop stars themselves. What they gained via Monkeemania enabled them to secure a spot on the A&M roster and craft a trio of pretty terrific full-length titles, starting with this neglected nugget.
It drew scant attention at the time, appearing at the very bottom of the Billboard 200 for one (and only one) week amid ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ lengthy run atop the chart while leadoff cut ‘Out & About’ scraped its way into the singles Top 40. But the remaining tunes are well worth checking out, especially for those of us still enamored by all of the above.
Some similarities are startling, if also unsurprising given the duo’s backstory: ‘For Baby’ regurgitates ‘Words,’ ‘Sometimes She’s a Little Girl’ owes its riff to G&K’s ‘Pleasant Valley Sunday,’ their jaunty W.C. Fields-inspired number ‘My Little Chickadee’ foretells what Harry Nilsson will soon do with ‘Cuddly Toy.’
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Then there’s ‘Out & About,’ which uses the martial drum fill of the Electric Prunes’s psych-rock classic ‘I Had Too Much to Dream (Last NIght)’ (from November ’66) to jarringly shift from being a ‘Mary, Mary’-esque hip-shaker and then a swingin’ stroll à la the Mamas & the Papas’s ‘Creeque Alley’ (a big hit five months before B&H’s highest charter).
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More intriguing bits explain why Boyce & Hart were a tricky fit on pop radio, echoing the Walker Brothers one moment (‘In the Night’), exploring newly expanded sonic terrain the next (more convincingly in the Indian pleasures of ‘I Should Be Going Home’ than in the strained pseudo-blues holler of ‘Life’).
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In all cases, however, a half-hour of listening investment pays playful dividends. Sunny ‘60s stuff start to finish. Most groovy indeed.