This Month's Colgems Upload - Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. (stereo LP)

Here is this month's Colgems upload of the Monkees' fourth and most mature LP, "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd." It came out nearly 42 years ago on Nov. 25, 1967 and it was their fourth, and final, No. 1 album on the Billboard Top Albums chart.

The album was originally supposed to be a bit more expansive, and was set to include "Special Announcement," another "Zilch/Band 6"-type filler, and "Goin' Down," the Monkees' James Brown opus that was written by all the band members and Diane Hildebrand. However, the LP was finally pared down to 12 tracks, plus Peter Tork's lone vocal contribution, "Peter Percival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky," which was one of many such vocal meanderings that he recorded, and one of the few that actually was released back then. (He also did several variations on something called "Alvin," but those only came out much, much later.)

The use of the moog synthesizer was prevalent throughout the recording of this LP, and it is credited with being the first rock album to use this instrument. Whether that is true or not, it was certainly the first No. 1 rock album to feature it prominently.

Here is what Wikipedia had to say about it:

"The album is particularly interesting for the pioneering use of the Moog synthesizer, which Micky Dolenz introduced to the group and played in the studio; he owned one of the first twenty ever sold. Pisces is perhaps the first hit rock or pop album to feature the Moog. In any event, Pisces is one of the first few commercially issued recordings in any musical genre to feature the instrument. Micky Dolenz plays the synthesizer on "Daily Nightly" and electronic musician Paul Beaver plays the Moog on "Star Collector."

This album probably marked the zenith of the band's popularity, although more successes were yet to come, through a couple of singles which cemented their legacy as one of the top pop acts of their time.

You can access this album at http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/albumania/.

More Monkees next month.