The Turtles - All The Singles FLAC download

It was April of 1967, the Summer Of Love was about to reach it’s apex with the release of Sgt. Pepper in another month, and if you can believe this, when The Turtles’ single of the day, “Happy Together” hit the store shelves it manage to knock The Beatles brilliant epic “Penny Lane” from the charts. “Happy Together” was not a psychedelic song in any sense of the imagination, it was a breezy laid back west coast experience that was simply impossible to ignore, making full use of harmonies, bombastic embellishments, vocal arrangements worthy of Brian Wilson, often filled with double meanings, melodrama and a good bit of tongue in cheek humor. With that in mind, there was something more here, there was an under current of sophistication with The Turtles that seemed to smack at the pop music attitudes and sensibilities of the day, yet was subversively part of it in the same breath.The Turtles were not a pretty boy band, they were more in line with Mama Cass, impulsive energetic satirical and yes, even uncompromising in their musical vision, often sharing the stage with headlines such as The Doors. By the time Happy Together was released, long gone was the folk rock and cover band that had brought The Turtles to our attention, where on their first outing they played renditions of Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone,” “Love Minus Zero” and even “It Ain’t Me Babe,” then going on to do a note for note word for word edition of “Eve of Destruction,” all followed by the most off the wall and for what reason I’m still asking myself, “It Was A Very Good Year.”But this was what AM radio gave us during those years, and the record companies built an album around a single hit, in this case two, “Happy Together” and “She’d Rather Be With Me,” instead of incorporating a theme, and with today’s ears I will more than agree that the album is almost unlistenable. Though with that in mind, what The Turtles did mange to do was to string a brilliant series of hit singles together that will never be forgotten by those of us with nothing but an AM radio and a single dashboard speaker in mom and dad’s car. This collection was a surprise to me, as several of the numbers I’d not heard before, and sparked me to find listenable vinyl copies of the six formal Turtle albums just so I’d know what I was talking about. Without a doubt you’re going to find a handful of songs here that will roll you back and sound very good in rotation on one of your listening devices, or better yet, burn yourself a copy of those songs and play them on an actual stereo, pretend it’s 1967, flash the peace sign and smile with a silly grin of satisfaction.Review by Jenell Kesler

What an awesome set this is. This is the definitive hits collection for The Turtles, unless you want everything in stereo. If you do, there's approximately 1,435,246 other CDs out there that will fit the bill.A few of these mono mixes have crept out on CD over the years but never once have they been compiled in this manner. This is also the first time the stereo mix of "Who Would Ever Think That I Would Marry Margaret?" has shown up on CD (It was previously included on More Golden Hits.) Up to this point, an incomplete mono mix of unknown origin has been used. We know that said mono mix was not on any 45, promo or otherwise.It's hard to find fault with this collection, although I'm sure the folks on a certain site (y'know, the one full of people who buy music for the sole purpose of looking at waveforms) will probably be more than happy to produce a few.