Monkee Flips was a 1984 singles and raritiescompilation album of songs by the Monkees, issued by Rhino Records. Labelled as the "Best of the Monkees, Volume Four", the album featured an all-stereo selection of single sides and album tracks, including several songs featured in The Monkees TV series. It was available in both LP record and cassette formats. Until Rhino reissued the whole series of original Monkees albums in 1986, the compilation was the only way to obtain several key Monkees tracks in the mid-Eighties, including "You Told Me" and "No Time" (from Headquarters), "Love is Only Sleeping" and "Daily Nightly" (from Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, & Jones, Ltd.), and "Oh My My" and "I Love You Better" (from the final Monkees album, 1970's Changes). The album also included Michael Nesmith's song "Circle Sky", in an alternate version to the one appearing on the Head soundtrack. The album cover showed a still of the Monkees from a staged performance (with Peter Tork playing a banjo), and the liner notes included a detailed recap of the Monkees career, with recent interview comments from Nesmith and Micky Dolenz. The audio quality of the record was about par for reissues of the period, and notably better than Rhino's earlier Monkee Business. Monkee Flips went out of print as Rhino shifted from vinyl releases to compact discs. Each of the tracks have been reissued on individual Monkees CDs, carefully digitally remastered. However, one of the interesting aspects of this release is the introduction to "Forget That Girl," in which Micky asks whether or not President Johnson's son is really a janitor. This comment has not been included on any Rhino release.
