…the Beatles Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band album but this past January 9th marked another milestone that past without much fanfare until now. It was January 9th 1967 that the album More of the Monkees was released and by February 11th it was sitting on top of the Billboard album charts and would stay there for 18 straight weeks, 3 weeks longer than Sgt. Peppers which topped the charts on July 1st. Granted Sgt. Peppers revolutionized modern music while the Monkees broke no new ground during this time period but how big were the Monkees? More of the Monkees ended the 13 week chart topping run of the Monkees 1966 self-titled debut album. So from November 12th of 1966 to June 10th of 1967 the Monkees sat on top of the Billboard Hot 200 album chart for a total of 31 straight weeks. In fact the Monkees had 2 other chart toppers in 1967, Headquarters on June 17th but it only stayed for a week and then Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. which had a 5 week run at number one starting on Dec. 2nd of 1967which closed out the year and pretty much their popularity because they wanted to write and play their own material like the the Beatles, not a good move. The Monkees had the luxury of having most of their songs composed by some of the biggest names in the music business from the song writing team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King to Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart not to mention Neil Diamond plus the music was performed by the legendary session musicians the Wrecking Crew. So when I read that a Super Deluxe Reissue of More of the Monkees is on it’s way I got to thinking, that was the first album I ever bought and I didn’t even have a turntable to play it on. I used it for motivation to save enough money to buy one because all we had at home only played 45’s. A Monkees archivist Andrew Sandoval tweeted “Hearing “I’m A Believer’ in mono from tape for the 1st time in 50 years…that’s funny cause the album I bought and still have is the mono release.