Re Focus (album)

Re-Focus is a 1972 compilation album of songs by The Monkees, released on Bell Records, the successor to Colgems Records, which had been the Monkees's original record label.

The band had quit, one by one, over 1969 and 1970, but their television series continued to air on CBS-TV on Saturday mornings (moving to ABC in 1972). Two earlier best-ofs collections from Colgems were hard to find. Re-Focus used an early photo of the Monkees on its front cover. This collection also soon headed for obscurity.

The same song lineup was reused in 1976, after Bell Records evolved into Arista Records (with music mogul Clive Davis in charge), for a far more successful compilation, The Monkees Greatest Hits. In the UK, Bell's distributors, EMI, issued this album in a different cover under the title 'The Monkees' (the same title as their 1966 debut album) on their budget Sounds Superb label (a spin off label from their Music For Pleasure label) with the catalogue number SPR 90032 in 1978. The album sleeve can be viewed at http://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=231341. In 1983 it was again re-issued as MFP50499 with the title The Best Of The Monkees. This release used the same LP master as the number stamped into the deadwax was the same as for the Sounds Superb release, and the rear sleeve carried the statement "Previously released as 'The Monkees' (SPR 90032)." The sleeve for this release can be viewed at http://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=388166.