The Candy Store Prophets were a 1960s rock band

Rock Band

Rock Band is a music video game developed by Harmonix Music Systems, published by MTV Games and Electronic Arts. It is the first title in the Rock Band series. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions were released in the United States on November 20, 2007, while the PlayStation 2 version was...

, headed by singer-songwriters Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart

Boyce and Hart

Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart were a prolific songwriting duo, best known for the songs they wrote for The Monkees.-Early years:Hart's father was a church minister and he himself served in the Army after leaving high school, Upon discharge,...

. Their lineup included Boyce and Gerry McGee on guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

, Hart on keyboards

Keyboard instrument

A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...

, Larry Taylor

Larry Taylor

Larry Taylor is an American bass guitarist, best known for his work as a member of Canned Heat from 1967. Before joining Canned Heat he had been a session bassist for The Monkees and Jerry Lee Lewis...

 on bass guitar

Bass guitar

The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

 and Billy Lewis on drums.

After Boyce and Hart wrote and recorded the songs for the pilot episode of The Monkees

The Monkees (TV series)

The Monkees is an American situation comedy that aired on NBC from September 1966 to March 1968. The series follows the adventures of four young men trying to make a name for themselves as rock 'n roll singers. The show introduced a number of innovative new-wave film techniques to series...

, they were asked by the show's producers, Bob Rafelson

Bob Rafelson

Robert "Bob" Rafelson is an Emmy Award winning American film director, writer and producer. He was an early member of the New Hollywood movement in the 1970s and is most famous for directing and co-writing the film Five Easy Pieces, starring Jack Nicholson, as well as being one of the creators of...

 and Bert Schneider

Bert Schneider

Berton "Bert" Schneider is an American movie producer, who was behind a number of important and topical films of the late-1960s and early-1970s. The son of Abraham Schneider, onetime president of Columbia Pictures, the younger Schneider tended toward the rebellious. He briefly attended Cornell...

, to name five 'professional' record producer

Record producer

A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...

s who could create the music for the series, once it went into production. Their answer "Boyce and Hart, Hart and Boyce, Tommy and Bobby, Bobby and Tommy, TB & BH" was laughed off, and they were asked a second time. They named some current hit producers: "Snuff Garrett

Snuff Garrett

Snuff Garrett is a retired American record producer whose most famous work was during the 1960s and 1970s. His nickname is a play on Garrett's Snuff, a brand of snuff....

, Mickie Most

Mickie Most

Mickie Most was an English record producer, with a string of hit singles with acts such as The Animals, Arrows, Herman's Hermits, Donovan, Suzi Quatro and the Jeff Beck Group often issued on his own RAK Records label....

, Gerry Goffin

Gerry Goffin

Gerry Goffin is an American lyricist. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 with former songwriting partner and first wife, Carole King. he has co-written six Billboard Hot 100 chart-toppers.-Career:Goffin enlisted with the Marine Corps Reserve after graduating from...

 and Carole King

Carole King

Carole King is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. King and her former husband Gerry Goffin wrote more than two dozen chart hits for numerous artists during the 1960s, many of which have become standards. As a singer, King had an album, Tapestry, top the U.S...

 — and don't ever speak to me again!"

While Most passed on Rafelson and Schneider's offer, and tryouts with Garrett, Goffin and King proved disastrous (with King reportedly walking out of the studio in tears), Boyce and Hart contacted Screen Gems

Screen Gems

Screen Gems is an American movie production company and subsidiary company of Sony Pictures Entertainment's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group that has served several different purposes for its parent companies over the decades since its incorporation....

 music supervisor Don Kirshner

Don Kirshner

Don Kirshner , known as "The Man With the Golden Ear", was an American song publisher and rock producer who is best known for managing songwriting talent as well as successful pop groups, such as The Monkees, Kansas and The Archies.-Early life:Don Kirshner was born to Gilbert Kirshner, a tailor,...

, who was put in charge of delivering the songs for the show, and asked to audition for him. Kirshner accepted, and was treated to a performance by the Candy Store Prophets, who delivered a nonstop set of all the songs Boyce and Hart had written to date for the Monkees. Kirshner was impressed, and officially named the pair as producers.

The Candy Store Prophets recorded the bulk of the backing tracks for the first Monkees album, and for the show's first season, with help from guitarists Louie Shelton and Wayne Erwin. When the Monkees began to perform publicly late in 1966, the Prophets toured with them as their opening act.