Recruited through a trade advertisement placed in a Hollywood showbiz paper asking for "four insane boys" to make that call, the Monkees are now widely acknowledged as being the first wholly manufactured pop band to really make an impact. Seen as a direct, home-grown response to the English Beat invasion that had so transformed the US charts in the 1960s, the tidal wave of publicity that their tie-in TV show invaluably afforded them meant that Mickey Dolenz, Peter Nesmith, Davy Jones and Peter Tork were immediate stars. Indeed, for a few crazy months the Monkees were easily as big as the Beatles had ever been when they themselves had made their own shrill-screamed, mop-topped breakthrough and started the whole thing off. This new Definitive collection contains everything that even the worryingly obsessive fan might need. From the recognised karaoke classics like "Daydream Believer" and "Last Train to Clarkesville" to the quirkier, less well-known material like "Mary, Mary" and "For Pete's Sake", there are 70 tracks here to confirm that The Monkees were far more than just a soulless exercise in hype and hope. The gently frazzled psychedelia of "Porpoise Song" and "Randy Scouse Git"'s rinky-dink racket also included go some way to proving in fact that they are worthy of comparison with any other pop group of the period.