The Lovin' Spoonful - Greatest Hits | The Lovin' Spoonful

The Lovin' Spoonful - Greatest Hits | The Lovin' Spoonful | Great Music from One of the 60's Best Bands

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	The Lovin' Spoonful - Greatest Hits The Lovin' Spoonful Buddha, 2000 average customer review:based on 50 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

It sometimes feels as though the Lovin' Spoonful have been reduced to a footnote in the history of rock & roll. Yet few of their contemporaries could match the likes of "Daydream," "Summer in the City," and the transcendent "Do You Believe in Magic?"--a song that can still turn January into June. Legend has it that the Spoonful auditioned for The Monkees, and they'd have been good in those roles, having the right candy-sweet sound and a warm humor in constant evidence. But it wouldn't have lasted: lead songwriter John Sebastian was too willful and idiosyncratic, coming on like an American Ray Davies on songs such as "Younger Generation," a prescient meditation on the hippie generation's future parental dilemmas. Greatest Hits is a fine 26-song introduction to a perennially underrated band. --Taylor Parkes

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Lovin' Spoonful

If you are 50 something like me and dont own this one already what are you waiting for?

Great Music from One of the 60's Best Bands

Phil's review covers a lot of good ground, so I won't re-hash. Here's my 2 cents:

Never flashy, always fun, drawing on the folk and jug-band scene of early 60's Greenwich Village, they lit up the top 40's airwaves with much needed balance to the British gang and served as a reminder that this country had better music to offer than the pop-vomit of the likes of Jay and the Americans, the Buckinghams, Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, and others too painful to recall let alone mention in print. The Spoonful were musician's musicians (Zal Yanovski's country influenced leads were one of the underrated treasures of the era - the break in "Do you Believe in Magic" being a fine example and one of the tastiest solos ever), and the band as a whole was as tight as it gets while maintaining a sense of good-time looseness.

Unfortunately, after Zal returned to his native Canada following a run-in with the law, the band lost a lot of its verve and humor. John Sebastian remained the band's center; but Jerry Yester's contributions were weak at best. The band began sliding into weaker and weaker tunes until the curtain came down and Sebastian went off to do his solo thing.

This compilation has most of the best of the band's output although, I would have included "Night Owl Blues" - a great 12-bar instrumental that shows off Sebastian's harp (as in harmonica, not autoharp) and Zal's blues roots - and I would have 86'd "Lonely" - the worst song on the album. I also would have included "Blues in the Bottle," Bald-Headed Lena" and "Butchie's Tune" (a Steve Boone original )from the "Daydream" album - all gems - in place of clunkers like "Full Measure," "Younger Generation," "Money" - none of which were either "great" or "hits" by any sober standards, unfortunately.

These guys warmed a lot of hearts and brought a lot of smiles. They deserve a place on your shelf and/or your I-Pod.

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26 Cuts of Good-Time Music

This is the real thing, with 26 cuts of good-time music, most of them featuring the inimitable voice of John Sebastian. About 10 years ago, Rhino released a Spoonful anthology that also contained 26 cuts, but this newer release on Buddha is slightly preferable (big-time Spoonful fans will want both), if for no other reason than that it contains the songs "Wild About My Lovin'" and "On the Road Again," which the Rhino collection omits. Audiophile sound was never a feature of Spoonful recordings, but the sound is certainly serviceable.

The Lovin' Spoonful Greatest Hits

This is truly a greatest hits album. Just a wonderful capitulation of the Lovin Spoonfuls. If you ever liked this group you will defintely love this collections of songs. I highly recommend this album.

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Great music of the sixties