"Saturday's Child" (The Monkees)

I’ve said it before: for my money, you can’t ask for a more distinctive rock vocalist than Micky Dolenz, and one of my favorite Dolenz-fronted tracks is “Saturday's Child”--a cut from the group’s 1966 debut album that was featured in two episodes of the TV show (“Monkee vs. Machine” [9/26/66] and “The Spy Who Came in from the Cool” [10/10/66]) but was never released as a single.  Shame, because it’s one of their more rocking songs.

In fact, it’s the only song on the debut album that really makes them sound like the garage rock band that the TV show made them out to be.  

The song prominently features a distorted guitar riff, very similar to the gritty sound The Beatles had captured on Revolver earlier that summer.  But like so many of their songs released before their 1967 album Headquarters (when they gained a little more control over their output and finally were allowed to play their own instruments on their records), Dolenz is the only Monkee on the track.  Session musicians performed the entire backing track, including that fantastic riff.