Album Reviews

Either you get The Turtles (originally a dance band called The Crossfires) or you don't. Either you think of them as pop schlockmeisters or you see them as they really were: an adventurous, eclectic and sometimes deep post-Beatles psych/rock band. I'm not here to sell them to you. They did write some great tunes and cover many others guided by Hollywood pro A&R guys and they were recorded by the best engineers in Hollywood: "Bones" Howe, Bruck Botnick and Armin Steiner among them.

They started singing folk-rock Dylan, P.F. Sloan, Mann/Weill—the usual covers—but they did them so well. Then, like so many mid-sixties pop rock groups, they headed underground. They got Ray Davies to produce one album and of course two of them, Mark Vollman and Howard Kaylan became Flo and Eddie and along with band member Jim Pons joined Frank Zappa's merry band. Frank appreciated their humor and especially their musicality.

Before the core walked away they produced an incredible array of pop and acid-tinged pop-rock, folk-rock, acid-rock and some tunes that were simply indescribable.

If their breezy west coast sound and tunes— hits and "B" sides including "You Baby", "You Don't Have to Walk in the Rain", "Happy Together", "She'd Rather Be With Me", "She's My Girl" ( weird and way under appreciated on so many levels!) and the others don't give you a good feeling or make you feel good, or give you an acid flashback I don't know what might. "Outside Chance", the flip side of "Elenore" was written by the then unknown Warren Zevon.

Kaylan's voice—influenced by Zombie Colin Blunstone— was so damn ebullient, the harmonies so dopamine producing you couldn't help but feel good. Backed by the best Hollywood session men too, the group produced a series of hit singles with "B" sides that were almost as good. They mined territory also occupied by The Lovin' Spoonful and Spanky & Our Gang among others. They were so unhip in some circles it was actually hip to dig what they did—and that included the cream of Brit-rock: Beatles, Jimi etc.. Take the time to read The Turtles Wikipedia entry and you'll find a cast of known and unknown characters and a story sufficiently compelling to be turned into a movie or at least a VH-1 "Behind the Music" special or both.

No need to apologize for liking The Association, The Turtles, Harper's Bizarre or any of the other "West Coast Sound" multi-harmony pop groups. They may not have been pure rock and roll but they were still great and their sound is today appreciated and copied by many youngsters looking to put harmony and melody back in pop music. More power to them!

Vollman and Kaylan have the rights to their catalog and last year they licensed the first two albums to Manifesto Records, which issued in mono The Turtles (MFO 48021) and Happy Together (MFO 48023). These were modestly packaged and well-pressed on 180g by I assume Rainbo but there was no mention of how these records were sourced or who did the mastering. They sound like good digital transfers, but then given who originally engineered you'd have to expend energy to mess them up sonically—though of course these are dated recordings in many ways. Still the transparency and spaciousness of these analog recordings shines through.

Now comes an 8 45rpm singles box from FloEdCo that's well-boxed and well pressed (though the labels were reversed for "It Ain't Me Babe"/"You Don't Have to Walk in the Rain" ( I'm wondering if that was a "test" to see if any of the reviewers actually played through these familiar singles before writing about them).

Like the LPs, there's no attribution as to who cut or from what source but they too sound very good but definitely digitally sourced. If not I'll eat yet another CD.

I say that because I am a Turtles fan and I have their White Whale album The Turtles! Golden Hits (WW115) and it's got the analog wet while these singles (some mono, some stereo) have the digital dry heaves. Of course The Turtles are so Rhino-friendly for so many reasons, the group got many vinyl reissues on the original Bronson/Foos Rhino including a greatest hits package mastered by Stephen Marcussen at Precision Lacquer but cut by Ken Perry at K-Disc (RNLP 160) so I'm thinking this 1982 release was early digital and it sounds like it, or just so-so in any case. Seymour Stein's Sire Records released a two LP Turtles compilation so if you're at all curious you can find stuff out there including a Rhino reissue from 1986 of Turtle Soup(Rhino RNLP 70157) the only non-Kinks album ever produced by Ray Davies. That one was recorded at United's Studio B by Chuck Britz. The reissue is a re-mix by Bronson and Howard Kaylan and was cut by Marcussen at Precision.

Okay, it's kind of foolish worrying about analog/digital here. There's really only one place where these singles are going and that is in a juke box unless you actually like playing singles, in which case you have permission to play them on a Crosley groove chewer because that's what singles are made for: cheap kid's record players where they sound best.

In my opinion a more carefully curated Turtles reissue program is well-deserved and a singles box, especially for juke box owners, is cool. I just wish FloEdCo would take themselves and their recorded output a bit more seriously! If you're going to do vinyl, do it right and not just for "vinyl's sake".