Search - The Lovin' Spoonful, Lovin Spoonful :: Collector's Edition 1-3

The Spoonful Deserve Better Than This

Steve Vrana | Aurora, NE | 01/14/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Is there another band that has gotten shabbier treatement thanthe Lovin' Spoonful in the CD-era?BOOS: Only 12 tracks per disc ispretty skimpy. Nothing is included from the What's Up Tiger Lily soundtrack. There's no real thought given to the sequencing of the songs. The weakest Spoonful album (Everything Playing) has nearly as many tracks on this collection as one of their best albums (Daydream). There are virtually no liner notes and no track-by-track information.BRAVOS: You get 36 original recording songs from the Spoonful's four studio albums--plus a couple tracks each from the You're a Big Boy Now soundtrack and Revelation: Revolution '69 (essentially a Joe Butler solo, but "Till I Run with You" and "Never Going Back" are terrific songs and fit in nicely). All but one track ("My Gal") from their debut Do You Believe in Magic is included here. And all but three tracks ("Bes' Friends," "Voodoo in My Basement" and "Henry Thomas") from Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful are represented here.Given the sorry state of the Lovin' Spoonful CD offerings, this one isn't too bad. And while it duplicates a lot of the Rhino Anthology, this has 13 tracks not on the Rhino release. Let's hope that after the Spoonful get inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame later this year, that Buddah will do right by one of their label's biggest successes and rerelease their original albums--and alternate takes and/or unreleased tunes as bonus tracks would be nice."

This isn't as good as it really gets to Lovin Spoonful CD's!

Steve Vrana | 10/08/1999

(1 out of 5 stars)

"For a collector's edition [BOX SET] is way too expense for your money's worth. Besides these songs are not in proper chronological order they're all mixed up for a comprehensive ultimate sixties rock'n'roll music collection on three double-discs. I think the anthology is much better listening enjoyment than this compilation CD right here!"

The music gets 5 stars, but...

MurrayTheCat | upstate New York | 09/28/2002

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Help! I'm up to my ears in "best-of" Lovin' Spoonful reissues! The whole thing is becoming really quite silly...and senseless. Why, oh why can't we just have the original releases? The oodles of various compilations will never satisfy those of us who truly love this band. At least the first two albums ("Do You Believe in Magic" and "Daydream") seem to be back in the catalog. I own a CD copy of "Hums of," but that one as well as "Everything Playing," "Revelation: Revolution '69" and the two soundtracks are out of print. (Was "Revelation: Revolution `69" ever on CD?) So, concerning the Spoonful on the silver disc, we are faced with a quagmire. What to do?This box set gives us 36 songs for a reasonable price. These same discs are also sold individually, but that's no help because the songs are spread willy-nilly across the three discs. Each disc contains a few songs from each of the original albums. Thus, if you already own - and you should! - the first album ("Do You Believe In Magic") you will still need to purchase all three of these discs to get the other songs you need, while duplicating what you already own...except for one song. Sound complicated? Some marketing genius had to have thought this up. Anyway, that's problem number one. Problem number two is as follows. Once upon a time - in the 60s and early 70s - producers had taste and understood the art of choosing the order of songs for an album. Albums had a "musical flow." The songs aesthetically followed one another. Today it seems we must accept the "art" of placing the titles in a basket, tossing them high in the air and however they fall, that's how they go on the CD. So with this box set, you will have to bounce from 1965 to 1967 and back to '65, and so forth. It just doesn't work. If you have a CD burner, you can create your own order. But of course that's an extra expense, extra time and energy, and this whole thing would be so much easier if the damn record company would just give us the original releases! Three discs, 36 songs and still no solution. The 26-song "Anthology" wasn't any better. (At least with that, we got the delightful "Pow" - which was the only major reason to buy the "Tiger Lily" soundtrack.)Here's my solution: "Do You Believe In Magic" and "Daydream" are both available. Buy them! Spend the least amount of money possible for the other songs you must have and wait, hope and pray for the rest of the original albums to return to CD. Sometimes it's a tough world out there.
Cheers,
Murray"