In the fall of 1969, The Monkees television series premiered in syndication on CBS. Post Foods quickly conducted a cross-promotional exercise through their various cereal products like Alpha-Bits, Honeycomb, and Frosted Rice Krinkles by releasing Monkees cardboard singles that were printed onto the outside of the cereals' boxes.

Sometime in 1970, Post began a special offer for The Monkees Golden Hits, which collected all of the cereal box singles onto one exclusive vinyl LP that was unavailable in record stores.  A coupon inside their cereal boxes advertised the album, which could be purchased for $1.50 and 2 box tops from any of the Post cereals.

​Thanks a lot to Monkees collector Ed Reilly for sharing scans of the coupon found inside an Alpha-Bits box below:

Issued by The Monkees' label Colgems Records, The Monkees Golden Hits is hard to find nowadays in mint condition and is a sought-after collectible:

(The Monkees Golden Hits images courtesy of Monkee45s.net)

50 years ago today, The Monkees commenced work on "Pleasant Valley Sunday." Andrew Sandoval documented the June 10, 1967 session at RCA Hollywood, one day after The Monkees' triumphant concert performance at the Hollywood Bowl, in his book, ​The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story of the '60s TV Pop Sensation:

Gerry Goffin & Carole King's "Pleasant Valley Sunday" is one of Chip Douglas's most complex productions for The Monkees. Sadly, session tapes will not survive for this landmark date so it is impossible to follow this wonderful creation step-by-step. The basic track is most likely recorded with Chip Douglas and Eddie Hoh forming the rhythm section of bass and drums while Michael and Peter perform on electric guitar and piano. Union documents indicate Micky is also present for this session, and it is quite possible that he contributes some acoustic guitar to the track. Additional guitar overdubs will be recorded tomorrow.

Chip Douglas: "Mike played the lead guitar. That was my riff that I threw in there and taught to Mike. Not many guitar players can play it the right way. ... It's kind of an offshoot of the Beatles song 'I Want To Tell You' but in a different tempo and with different notes. 

"I wish I could hear the original demo, because I can't recall if I got a [lyric] line right or not. It's in the bridge, 'creature comfort goals can only numb my soul and make it hard for me to see.' For 'make it hard for me to see,' for some reason I had the impression that I didn't do the right line in there, or changed it possibly. I couldn't understand that line, or something like that. One of those great mysteries. 

"I do remember seeing Carole King up at the Screen Gems office from across the room after we did 'Pleasant Valley Sunday.' She kind of gave me this dirty look. I thought, 'Was it that line that I got wrong, perhaps? Or didn't she like the guitar intro?' It was faster, definitely, than the way she had done it. She had a more laidback way of doing stuff." 

Michael Nesmith: "I remember that we went after the guitar sound. Everybody was trying to get that great big present guitar sound - Beatle [amplifiers] in the studio, playing really loud trying to get the sound, and it just ended up sounding kind of ... like it does. Kind of wooden. There was a tube-type of limiter/compressor called a UREI 1176, and boy you could really suck stuff out of the track. That was the first time that we really could do it. I think everybody got a little carried away with the 1176 on that record." 

On June 11 and 13, 1967, "Pleasant Valley Sunday" was treated to overdubs, including backing vocals from all four Monkees. 

In a 1982 interview with Bruce Pollack, Peter Tork discussed the blending of Micky and Michael's voices throughout "Pleasant Valley Sunday":

"A notion of mine that I was really pleased with took over at one point, and that was having two guys sing in unison rather than one guy doubling his own voice. So you've got Mike, who was really a hard-nosed character, and Micky, who's a real baby face, and these two voices blended and lent each other qualities. It's not two separate voices singing together, it's really a melding of the two voices. Listening to that record later on was a joy. "

"Pleasant Valley Sunday" was issued as Colgems single #1007 on July 10, 1967, right in the middle of The Monkees' ultra-successful summer tour that year. It was backed with "Words," written for the group by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. The single is considered to be one of their most successful (certified Gold just four days after release), and it's worth noting that radio gave attention to both sides. As a result, "Pleasant Valley Sunday" peaked at #3 in Billboard while "Words" topped out at #11. The songs were later featured on The Monkees' fourth album, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. 

​A week before The Monkees was set to debut on NBC on September 12, 1966, The Monkees undertook a promotional tour that made stops in Chicago, Boston, New York, and Los Angeles. The group would be introduced to deejays, members of the press, and record dealers. The band's first single, "Last Train to Clarksville," had been released in August and was already quickly climbing the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

The promotional tour was launched in Hollywood on September 1 with a private reception at Screen Gems. A "gigantic block party" was organized to commemorate The Monkees television series, and two episodes were screened during the festivities. The Monkees gave a brief performance in front of the gathered attendees, but it's not known which songs were played.

On this day in 1967, The Monkees' third album, Headquarters, was released. Read more about this landmark Monkees LP in the Live Almanac's archives.

Here are the picture sleeves for all American Monkees singles released between 1966 and 2016. Some were produced in different variations ("A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You" and "Valleri" came with no picture sleeve at all), and countries outside of the United States often promoted their own singles that differed from US selections. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the UK release of Micky's "Randy Scouse Git" from the Headquarters album, which became a #2 hit there.

Fast forward to 2016, an era when physical singles are no longer produced in vast quantities, where the songs issued from The Monkees' latest studio album Good Times! were represented with digital images instead of actual physical sleeves.

In retrospect, there were many other Monkees songs that were more than suitable for single release, and it seems that The Monkees could have potentially had a few additional chart hits during their heyday. Think about the fact that in the spring of 1964 at the height of Beatlemania, The Beatles held each slot in the Top 5 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. That's an incredible achievement that hasn't been topped, and likely won't be equaled.

There was, of course, a major struggle occurring behind the scenes right as Monkeemania was taking off. The four Monkees joined forces against music supervisor Don Kirshner, a story that has been documented many times before. Perhaps the politics of the time and the uncertainty surrounding the situation as Micky, Davy, Mike and Peter fought for and ultimately won complete artistic and creative control of their music stifled single releases during this period. In fact, one single, "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You"/"She Hangs Out," was withdrawn during the Monkees/Kirshner feud. Another potential single, the group production "All of Your Toys," was shelved because of a publishing dispute. 

We can't forget that The Monkees didn't just have great A-sides. The flipside to almost every Monkees single of the 1960s contains a song of merit, a testament to the amount of quality material made available by and for The Monkees. In fact, many of the B-sides would have made great A-sides. Look at "Steppin' Stone" (#20), "The Girl I Knew Somewhere" (#39), "Words" (#11) and "Tapioca Tundra" (#34) - they all received enough airplay to chart in the Top 40. And then there's "Goin' Down," "As We Go Along," "Take a Giant Step" and "Someday Man." And these songs were B-sides! 

Hindsight is always 20/20, so what songs might have added to the successful chart run of The Monkees in the 1960s?  Here are a few of my top picks:

​1. She: A great pop-rocker from Boyce & Hart, perhaps it was this fact that hampered it from seeing release as a single. Kirshner largely considered Boyce & Hart as second stringers, despite the fact that they were monumental in the early recording stages of The Monkees. Featuring an excellent lead vocal from Micky and the "Hey!" shouts, it's almost always on the set list at a Monkees concert.

​2. Love Is Only Sleeping: A psychedelic stunner from the Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. album, it was nearly issued as a single until someone thought the lyrics were a bit too suggestive for radio. "Daydream Believer" got the nod instead.

​3. Mary, Mary: A Nesmith original, a barn burner in their early live shows, and boasting a catchy guitar riff, "Mary, Mary" is an easy sing-along and would have given credence to the notion of The Monkees as legitimate artists during the whole "they don't play their instruments" drama. Rap icons Run-D.M.C. covered it in the late 1980s and issued it as a single, sampling Micky's voice. 

​4. Dream World: This one might be more out of left field as Monkees fans seem to have strong opinions about it, but I've always thought that "Dream World" is a great, underrated track in The Monkees' canon. Co-written by Davy and leading off the group's fifth long player, The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, it features a sprightly arrangement by Shorty Rogers. The song is every bit as good as another Jones lead vocal from this era, "It's Nice To Be With You." That track peaked at #51 as the B-side of "D.W. Washburn." But "Dream World" easily outpaces "It's Nice To Be With You" and it would have sounded great on AM radio. Gotta love Davy's semi-ominous deliveries of "You'll see..." throughout the song, too.

​5. For Pete's Sake: An easy selection, this song became the closing theme during the second season of the group's TV series, thus making it instantly recognizable. Composed by Peter, the timely lyrics should have made it an obvious choice as the single from Headquarters during the Summer of Love. 

​6. What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round?: Perhaps Nez put it best to Andrew Sandoval in an interview that appeared in the liner notes of the Pisces deluxe edition in 2007. "One of the things that I felt was honest was country rock," Nesmith said. "I wanted to move The Monkees more into that because I felt like, 'Gee, you know, if we get closer to country music, we’ll get closer to blues, and country blues, and so forth.' [The guys who wrote the song] Michael [Murphey] and Boomer Castleman – Boomer was his nickname – were writers at Screen Gems and they just wrote all kinds of really wonderful little songs, and 'Hangin' 'Round' was one of them.  It had a lot of uncountry things in it: a familiar change from a first major to a sixth minor – those kinds of things.  So it was kind of a new wave country song; [it] didn’t sound like the country of the time which was Buck Owens." The crossover potential could have opened up new audiences to the sounds of The Monkees in late 1967/early 1968.

​7. Steam Engine: Famous for its ultra expensive (and all-around fantastic) production by its author and producer, Chip Douglas, this brassy-bluesy number features a killer lead vocal from Micky and would have made for a suitable follow-up to the "Listen to the Band"/"Someday Man" single. Touring that year with the all African-American rhythm and blues troupe Sam & The Goodtimers, "Steam Engine" seems to encapsulate the sounds and style of The Monkees as a live act in 1969. Not to mention the fact that this song features some great pedal steel guitar work by the late, great Red Rhodes.

​The new Monkees Blu-ray collection includes a bonus 45 featuring previously unreleased mixes of both "Star Collector" and "Goin' Down." The former is an alternate mono mix and the latter is a mono vocal mix, featuring Micky Dolenz singing live in the TV studio to the backing track. Both versions of these well-known Monkees songs were heard exclusively on the soundtrack of the second season of The Monkees. You'll also note the nod to Colgems, The Monkees' original record label.

The Monkees' debut single, "Last Train to Clarksville," was first recorded on this day in 1966 at RCA Victor Studio B in Hollywood. Written and produced by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart and released by Colgems on August 16 (backed with Gerry Goffin and Carole King's "Take a Giant Step"), the song debuted on the Billboard charts on September 3 at #101. By November 5, The Monkees had scored their first #1 single, knocking off "96 Tears" by Question Mark & The Mysterians. The Recording Industry Association of America awarded "Last Train to Clarksville" (and The Monkees' debut album) a gold record on October 27.

This article concerning the power struggle between The Monkees and Don Kirshner most likely comes from a trade magazine (probably Billboard) in early 1967.

Longtime record executive Lester Sill was involved with the Monkees project from the very start. In the early days, Sill was the music coordinator for the group, overseeing the recording process under the helm of Don Kirshner. When Kirshner was sacked in early 1967, Sill took over as musical supervisor. He later became president of Colgems Records. 

There's more about Lester in the archives of the Live Almanac's blog, including an insightful interview with him conducted by the Headquarters radio show in 1988.

Don't forget to vote in the poll (in the blog sidebar to the right)! "What is your favorite Monkees album cover?"

Check out the entire '69 tour program on the 1969 tour page.