Carol King: Another Pleasant Valley Sunday

        On July 3rd 1967 the band The Monkees released the very successful song Another Pleasant Valley Sunday.  It told the story of an everyday neighborhood that could have been anywhere in America.  The song was a social commentary criticizing the incessant monotony and creeping emptiness of middle class life as well as being a very springy pop song.  It was the first single off of their fourth album entitled Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones. Ltd.  The single peaked at #3 on the charts and the album became the Monkees fourth number one album in a row.  Shortly the members of the band would be answering questions about whether or not they could play their instruments, perform their music, or were even a real band.  They became the victims of a backlash where the kids buying the records believed the Monkees were fake and the media seemed to fan that fire.

Carol King & Gerry Goffin 

       That story is a myth.  In fact, The Monkees were musician/actors who were cast to play a rock band in a comedy television series.  They immediately became the vocal group singing music written by Boyce & Hart, Goffin & King, Neil Diamond as well as many others and backed up by the famous LA Wrecking Crew.   Eventually the band started performing concert tours to support the music and TV show.  Those live shows were witnessed by tens of thousand of kids whipped into an almost Beatlemania like frenzy and proving the Monkees were in fact a real band.  
      Starting with their 3rd album the Monkee's wrote much of their own music, played most of the instruments, and chose who their musical contributors would be.  This recording method is very similar to the way the Beatles, Stones, and Beach Boys were recording their records as Frank Sinatra & Elvis did a decade earlier.  The next two albums the Monkees wrote much of the music and played most of the instruments and both of those albums reached number one.  The album Monkees Headquarters reached number one where it was displaced after one week by The Beatles Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and then it spent the next eleven weeks at number two. Getting bumped out of #1 by Sgt. Peppers is like being the victim of a Mike Tyson knockout punch.  Chances are you never had a chance to begin with.
       The tale of the Monkees is an interesting story that keeps repeating in one form or another every so often within the music culture.  In the 90's the band Soul Asylum fell into disfavor because their fans believed they sold out for fame.  In the 80's Styx got hung out to dry after becoming the victims of  the corporate rock label and the entire 1970's disco music genre fell into popular disfavor almost overnight.  I'm not sure why this happens but it has been an echoing pattern throughout history.  Tearing things down seems to be one of the things the human species does best.

Carol King Tapestry a top 10 must have album

       The one kernel of truth in the Monkees tale is that much of their music was written by others.  Another Pleasant Valley Sunday was written by Carol King and Gerry Goffin.  They wrote the song as social commentary about the neighborhood they lived in and named it after the street they live on called Pleasant Valley Way.  Chip Douglas, the Monkees producer, heard the Carol King demo and believed it would be a great song for the band to record.  The band agreed and they went into the studio together and created pop music history.
       Behind all of the Monkees success was a completely kick ass demo recording performed by Carol King that has not, to my knowledge, come to the full attention of the public.  I decided to dust it off and give you a chance to hear it.  The song is played at a somewhat slower pace and Kings reading is tinged with a bit of despair acknowledging the inevitability that everyone ends up a prisoner of Pleasant Valley.  Despite the relatively poor production values usually associated with a demo which by definition is an unfinished product the King version blows away the slickly produced version by the Monkees.  The Monkees version is outstanding but Micky Dolenz gives the song a more disdainfully satiric tone than perhaps Goffin and King intended.  

The Monkees finally achieving their
well deserved recognition

       The Monkees eventually achieved some of the recognition they deserved for being an outstanding vocal group.  Though there are still many people both in and outside of the music industry that still tend to keep their music at arms length.  Goffin and King wrote a bunch of hits for other acts dating back to the early 60's and eventually Carol King became a recording artist on her own.  She would go on to conquer the music world and her album Tapestry 
sold more than 25 million copies.  Her songs have been recorded by the Monkees, James Taylor, Aretha Franklin, Gloria Estefan, Linda  Rondstadt, Rod Stewart, Amy Grant, the Bee Gees as well as many others.  She is a multi-grammy award winner,  a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and is one of the greatest songwriters of all time.


    I would like to thank my wife for helping me write and edit this post.  Her patient reading and rereading proved to be extremely valuable and if you like this post then much of the credit is hers.