You'll hear lots of fans disparage budget packages like this.  With 79 minutes of space available on a compact disc, to many it seems a crime to put just 12 songs at barely over 35 minutes when there are so many other great Monkees songs that could be included and open the eyes of the unbelievers.  But I know lots of people who just know the hits, and just want the hits.  Sometimes people are just looking for the one song they remember from when they were young, and most likely, the song they're looking for is on here.  Not a bad apple in the bunch among these twelve smashes, and I can't even say that for some of the other single-disc collections.  If you're just barely familiar with the Monkees, and what you hear on the radio sounds like what you're after, then this disc is for you, and you'll be happy with it.  On the other hand, if you're looking for a meatier bite of Monkee madness, and hope to find a collection with the hits and just a little bit more to savor, then pass this by, since there are other single-disc collections at the same price that will offer you more.  This disc is for beginnners only.  For the rest of us...

Rhino did a great disservice to fans when it put out two budget collections of Monkees music whose sole purchasing point was a single, unreleased track.  The first of these, "Daydream Believer and Other Hits" is a mess of selection and sequencing.  Yeah, there's "Daydream Believer" as well as "Words," "Pleasant Valley Sunday" and "Valleri" among the hits, but then to intersplice these songs with "D.W. Washburn," "Tapioca Tundra," "It's Nice To Be With You" and "Oh My My" makes one wonder just what Rhino's definition of 'hits' is.  (Or perhaps what its definition of "is" is - but we'll discuss that another time.)  The fact that this disc (and the following one) are perhaps the only ones casual shoppers will find in the discount bins is discouraging, and misleading, but most annoying is the single unreleased track "You Can't Tie A Mustang Down," which is a forgettable rocker with Micky taking lead vocal, but why make collectors shell out for nine tracks they already have for the one they don't??  Especially when Rhino has spent such care in putting together the "Missing Links" CD's for just that purpose?  So what we really have here is a CD that's too spotty for the casual listener and too ridiculous for the fans.  Which brings us to...

The other half of this diabolical duo: "I'm A Believer and Other Hits," which as a compilation is much better in its song selection, but again tacks on an otherwise unavailable track, the stupifying "Ceiling In My Room" which even fans will find a tedious listen.  But otherwise, this bargain basement CD is fine, with tracks culled from everywhere: from the earliest, ("Girl I Knew Somewhere") to the 1997 single "Heart and Soul."  It's not that the songs are bad on this collection, but there's no real theme, and not all of the tracks were even on singles, much less were "hits," so again, this is deceptive marketing and a shoddy way to treat fans who might want to hear "Ceiling In My Room" just for curiousities' sake by making them shell out several dollars for a sub-par track. I have to say it: This is one of the reasons that fans justify trading mp3's on the internet, it's piracy, sure, but it's just as mercenary to expect collectors to pay for the same songs over and over and over to get the one track they don't have.

Strangely enough, although Rhino has done a bang up job on the Monkees catalog reissues and box sets, I still consider this disc put out by Arista to be the best single-disc introduction to the Monkees that has ever been produced.  The track selection is mostly (more on that later) flawless, with one awesome pop song after another flowing easily from beginning to end.  The sound on this release is muted compared to what's available now, but otherwise, if I were to make my own CD of fun tracks to listen to by the Monkees, it would look remarkably like this one, and I think that word "fun" is the key.  Arista wasn't concerned with making the Monkees "respectable" and "important" which Rhino seems to thrive on; (and which I think they deserve), this package was designed to cash in on Baby Boomer sentiment coupled with GenX interest in the group that was sparked by MTV in the mid-eighties.  So Arista put together the most familiar, radio-friendly package they could, filled it to the brim and tacked on three new songs which amazingly enough, didn't pale in comparison to what had come before, (with the glaring exception of "Kicks" - a poorly realized cover of an old Paul Revere and the Raiders hit song.)  But "That Was Then, This Is Now" and "Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere" are totally fun, retro tracks that Micky totally rocks on. And not all of the tracks are the dusty, old familiars either: "D.W. Washburn" would hardly be called a familiar track by most Monkees fans, but here it fits perfectly as a friendly little aside, sounding more like the Beatles' "When I'm Sixty-Four" than ever before in this context. A fine package, and somewhat rare and hard to find now.

When it came Rhino's turn to put together a greatest hits package after gaining control of the Monkees complete catalog, they didn't change much from the very successful Arista album.  Most of the songs are the same on each disc, and as single CD's they both work very well in doling out the most familiar hits with a chosen selection of lesser-known album tracks to "broaden the minds" of the consumers.  But where the Arista package added tracks of listenable interest, here Rhino seems to be more mindful of giving equal credit to each Monkee (with the notable exception of Peter Tork, who is nowhere to be found here, except in the cover picture.)  So for extra tracks we have "It's Nice To Be With You," by Davy, "Listen To The Band" by Mike, and the 1987 track from "Pool It" - "Heart and Soul" which features Micky.  To my mind, none of these tracks add a thing to the collection; "Nice To Be With You" is utterly forgettable tripe courtesy of Davy Jones Constipated Ballads, Inc., "Listen To The Band" is powerful, but seems to heavy-handed in the midst of the other songs, and "Heart And Soul" isn't nearly as fun as "Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere" from Arista's hits package.  So overall, you get a good dollop of the hits, and some off-key choices that mar an otherwise fine package.

This imported disc from England claims to be a "gold" disc, with super-bit mapping, making it the only Monkees CD to receive such high-class treatment, but don't believe it.  A mid-priced CD that has a curious track selection, the well-known hits are here, along with some baffling filler: in addition to the annoying "It's Nice To Be With You" are the completely non-hits of "Tear Drop City," "Someday My Man," "Oh My My," and the renamed for UK audiences version of Randy Scouse Git: "Good Clean Fun."  Wow.  So someone has to tell me, were these last five songs really hits in the UK, or is someone just pulling my leg?  Anyway you look at it, the songs on this disc really veer all over the place when compared to their early hits of the sixties, which fill up the first half of the CD.  I can't imagine anyone really thinking that these are the big hits, but hey, you know what P.T. Barnum said...

Well, after the runaway success of The Beatles "1" a whole slew of other CD's began appearing, hoping to tap into the same money well that the Beatles hits package did, and Rhino, despite having a Monkees hits CD on the market, and still available, just had to jump on the bandwagon with "The Best Of The Monkees." A curious CD for a couple of reasons: first, squeezed into the 25 tracks on the first CD are some head-scratchers - since when is "Auntie Grizelda" considers one of the Monkees 'best?' If so, then I'm missing something, because even among the Monkees' novelty songs, it rates pretty darn low for me. "Shades Of Gray" is included as a pleasant surprise for me, but again, hardly the first song that springs to mind as part of the Monkees absolute best. Then there are other choices, like "What Am I Doing Hangin''Round?" and "Papa Gene's Blues" which is a fine track from Papa Nez, but again, in the whole of the Monkees output, is it one of the 25 absolute best? Methinks not, but hey, nobody asked me. So again it seems to me that Rhino misses the boat on creating a really listenable greatest hits package for the Monkees, despite having the whole enchilada at their disposal. But fans might want to snap this up for another curio: a second CD of five karioke-encoded backing tracks, which when played in a karioke player, displays the lyrics to the song and all those wannabe Monkees out there can pretend they're shaking up up with Davy (or whoever.)  Well, enough of the single discs.  Not satisfying enough?  Still not sure if you want to take the plunge and invest in a box set?  Then this next title is for you: