Was Colgems seriously considering reissuing
the Monkees’ catalog in late 1969/early 1970?
Part 1 The Monkees
By Ed Reilly
In March 1969, Flip Magazine mentioned that The Monkees’ television series would air as part of CBS’s Saturday morning line up, starting in September. According to Billboard Magazine, plans were already underway to re-dub new songs onto the episodes in hopes of revitalizing the Monkees’ music and promoting new material still being recorded by Michael Nesmith, David Jones and Micky Dolenz. In fact the article in Billboard magazine that announced the series’ new home indicated new music written by other contemporary artists like the Beatles, Donovan, and Jimmy Webb were being considered. But as the time drew closer to the premiere, only new songs by the Monkees were chosen.
While the series was airing, news of its Saturday morning ratings success surprised even the executives at Colgems. By 1969 the availability of The Monkees’ catalog was very limited in record stores nationwide, with only the last two releases (Instant Replay & Greatest Hits) in some stores. So was it on the label’s agenda to consider re-releasing the catalog?
Over the years as The Monkees’ albums went to multiple pressings, every time a change was made on the album cover, it was assigned a new code number, RE for revised, RE2 for second revised version, etc.
(See The Monkees, More Of The Monkees, Headquarters or Head for examples.)
This is the rear jacket that was first used by Rhino when they reissued this as a CD in September 1994. Monkee fans speculated as to exactly where this image came from and whether a US Colgems edition was ever released this way.
Rhino CD Booklet The Monkees
Based on the language of the copyright, this pressing of The Monkees was issued in 1968
as “Colgems COS-101 RE2”. The Colgems logo replaced the old Colgems name that had been there
since the first issuance of the album in 1966. This was previously thought to have been issued in 1969.
COS-101 RE2
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Now a third version, Colgems COS-101 RE3 (noted as such in the bottom left corner) has been discovered but it was never used. This version removed the mono catalog number (i.e. COM-101) that was listed on earlier versions including the above RE2 edition (Colgems’ manufacturer and distributor, RCA, had phased out mono
releases in 1968).
They replaced the blurb about watching the Monkees in color every Monday night on NBC-TV at 7:30 PM EDT, with the Monkees now on Saturday mornings on CBS – TV.
The RE3 edition also added the Colgems Stereo Records reference in a box (“playable on all modern equipment”) that was not on previous editions but did show up on later Colgems albums starting with the release of Head.
RE3
Rear Slick (Photo - Ed Reilly)
Continue to Part 2 Headquarters