WHERE THIS ALL STARTED...

 

I remember watching re-runs of the Monkees as a kid and I had a little Monkeemobile toy car and one of those cardboard records from the back of the cereal boxes. Then in the early 80's I bought a double cassette greatest hits: MonkeeMania; an Italian version of an Australian comp that for some reason was selling at my local grocery store. 40 big hits and I loved it and was hooked.

I went off to college and started hunting their LPs and found the first four and a Japanese version of Instant Replay and a few singles. I found myself living in Waco Texas and went to the Baylor Library and while doing research one day I noticed they had back issues of TV Guide on microfilm. So I systematically went through and photo copied each and every episode description (I also did Star Trek, but thats another story) and the two cover stories featured in 1967. I was researching and trying to find out all I could about the band, but I couldn't find any books on them. This was the fall of 1986.

A year later, Monkee mania stormed the planet. Books, LP re-issues, all the episodes on the MTV marathon (which I taped), concerts. It was mind blowing to go from nothing to information overload and drove my roommates crazy.

Sadly I ended up selling almost everything in the 90's as I thought vinyl was dead and I needed the money! Now I have bought back all that I sold plus much, much more.

I've been hard core collecting since 2006 doing most of my buying online, and most of that through ebay. Ebay is great because the bidding system allows us to determine the real value of each record.

I really found myself digging the foreign releases, particularly the singles with the unique songs and picture sleeves. At first I just wanted to get a copy of my favorite tune "Pleasant Valley Sunday" from every country in the world. But later completed each country as I could. Favorites include Japan, France, Australia, Germany, Brazil and Mexico. Its really tough to get the last few singles/EPs in most countries.

Then I got this site, but it sorta sat here for a year, with nothing done with it. Time and money were the big factors here. I almost let the web site go but then....

A friend from the Hoffman Music Forums (StewMac) gave me his excel spreadsheet of every known Monkee 7 inch release in the world. With my scans (and some from others) and StewMac's list, this site has become everything I hoped it would be.