423 - The Mamas & The Papas - Greatest Hits

[csberry]

Where Phil Spector made a wall of sound with an orchestra of instruments, echo, and vocals, The Mamas & the Papas essentially did the same thing with just their voices and echo in the studio. Strumming of guitars, tambourines, drums, and pianos are pushed back (sometimes nearly drowned out) by the vocals of the four members.

The group took their harmonies, a laid back tempo, and lyrics praising the ideal hippie lifestyle and steered popular music for a couple of years. This collection brings together 20 of their singles and some popular album tracks. It even includes what became a solo release for Cass Elliot - "Dream a Little Dream of Me."

Songs I knew I liked: "California Dreamin'," "Go Where You Wanna Go," "Monday, Monday," "Do You Wanna Dance," "I Saw Her Again," "Creeque Alley," and "Dream a Little Dream of Me"

Songs I didn't know but now like: I really enjoyed their slowed down version of "Twist and Shout"

Songs I can go the rest of my life without hearing again: It creeps me out to hear them sing "My Girl" now after MacKenzie's revelations.

Comments

[chris21718.livejournal.com]

They had a number of good songs. Several of their songs were very wide awkward stereo mixes that sound downright horrible on modern surround systems since several of them have one vocalist on the left channel and the other on the right. Some have total separation of different parts of the music between the left and right channels. With headphones, it's actually quite painful to listen to. Two of their hits: Creeque Alley and I Saw Her Again, used a quite different mix on the singles, and they were mono. The stereo version of Creeque Alley is missing the second "Becoming A Reality" at the end, but you can hear the last syllable "ty" where they didn't do a good job removing it (or failing to mix it in).