Album: The Mamas & The Papas

Complete Anthology, MCA UNIVERSAL

Sometimes, enough is enough and anything more is just a detraction. The Mamas & The Papas were the pivotal link between The Byrds' 1965 breakthrough and the hippie explosion of 1967, dominating 1966 with a string of hits that put a soft, satin sheen on the close-harmony folk-rock sound. They took their name from Hell's Angels terminology, but it proved apt as an indication of their appeal to mums and dads as well as rebellious teens. But their essential catalogue can be condensed down to a core of about half-a-dozen tracks - "California Dreamin'", "Monday, Monday", "I Saw Her Again", "Dedicated to the One I Love", "Creeque Alley" and "Go Where You Wanna Go" - outside of which their pristine, soaring harmonies led them a touch too close to MOR territory. In that respect, this four-CD compendium does them a bit of a disservice by diluting the impact of those gems with oceans of substandard fillers, solo offerings and curiosities like the seven tracks by Barry ("Eve of Destruction") McGuire on which they sang back-up shortly before they took off. By the Seventies they were yesterday's news, blind-sided by the very hippie revolution they helped to foment through their organisation of the Monterey festival. Better, for their sakes, to invest in a single-disc hits CD.