Description
• 7 CD, 170-track box set compiling the complete 1960s recordings by The Lovin’ Spoonful.
• Mastering is by Grammy nominated archivist/producer Alec Palao.
• Includes their first four studio albums 'Do You Believe In Magic' (1965), 'Daydream' (1966), 'Hums Of The Lovin’ Spoonful' (1966) and 'Everything Playing' (1967) in both stereo and mono plus stereo mixes of their two soundtrack albums 'The Lovin’ Spoonful In Woody Allen’s 'What’s Up Tiger Lily?' (1966) and 'You’re A Big Boy Now' (1967).
• Also contains the Joe Butler-helmed final album 'Revelation: Revolution ’69' (1969), original guitarist Zal Yanovsky’s solo album 'Alive And Well In Argentina' (1968) and stereo and mono versions of the early Lovin’ Spoonful tracks included on Elektra’s 1966 compilation 'What’s Shakin’, the mono mixes appearing on CD for the first time.
Including all of their hits: 'Do You Believe In Magic’ (US #9), 'You Didn’t Have To Be So Nice’ (US #10), 'Daydream’ (US #2, UK #2), 'Did You Ever Have To Make Up Your Mind’ (US #2), 'Summer In The City’ (US #1, UK #8), 'Rain On The Roof’ (US #10), Nashville Cats (US # 8, UK #26), 'Darling Be Home Soon’ (US #14), 'Six O’Clock’ (US #18) and 'She Is Still A Mystery’ (US #27).
Bonus tracks include 'Alley Oop’, an out-take from their debut album sessions plus demos, alternative versions and instrumentals.
The Lovin’ Spoonful’s first seven singles gave them seven consecutive US Top 10 hits. Often described as Americas answer to The Beatles, The Lovin’ Spoonful were so much more. They rose out of the Greenwich Village folk boom and adjacent to the British Invasion hit big with their 'good time music’, an exhilarating mix of jug band, blues, folk, rock and roll and big-hearted pop. MOJO Magazine’s Lois Wilson describes the members in the notes as 'John Sebastian, a hugely talented, often underrated songwriter with a preternatural command of words and melody; Zalman Yanovsky, a protean guitar player, capable of fuzzed out psych, mercurial blues and fingerpicked folk; then Steve Boone and Joe Butler, bass and drums respectively, who provided a rock ’n’ roll framework with a jazz player’s lightness of touch'.
The Beatles themselves were influenced by them on 'Good Day Sunshine’ while Johnny Cash covered the Spoonful’s 'Darlin’ Companion’.