![\"\"](\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/mamas_papas_gathering.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
By my rough count, there have been more than twenty \u2013 yes, twenty \u2013 compilations attempting to distill the catalog of The Mamas & The Papas<\/strong> down to a disc or two. For me, the 1969 LP 16 of Their Greatest Hits<\/em> was my introduction to the group. And while it was good \u2013 hell, they’re all<\/em> good, seeing as they feature the foursome’s AM radio hits, among the best of the sunshine pop genre \u2013 it wasn’t the best single-disc summation of their music. That honor goes to the long out-of-print A Gathering of Flowers<\/em>. Released in 1971, two years after the group petered out, it not only includes their biggest hits (\u201cMonday, Monday,\u201d their Beatles<\/strong> cover \u201cI Call Your Name,\u201d the scintillating \u201cI Saw Her Again Last Night,\u201d and of course \u201cCalifornia Dreamin’\u201d) but it also features some lesser-known but equally worthy album tracks.<\/p>\n Yet that’s not what makes A Gathering of Flowers<\/em> \u2013 newly reissued for the first time on CD by Real Gone Music \u2013 a treasure. No, that’s thanks to the snippets of interviews with the group\u2019s members that are interspersed between the tracks. Artfully done, the mixing of spoken passages and music makes for a sort of audio verit\u00e9 document of the group, and in doing so, captures their vibe \u2013 happy, melancholy and all points between \u2013 better than any other collection. Essential.<\/p>\n Follow \u201cthe_musoscribe\u201d on <\/a> By my rough count, there have been more than twenty \u2013 yes, twenty \u2013 compilations attempting to distill the catalog of The Mamas & The Papas down to a disc […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,51,64,65],"tags":[1383,1796],"class_list":["post-5720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-compilation","category-pop","category-reissue","category-review","tag-mamas-and-the-papas","tag-real-gone-music","cat-19-id","cat-51-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/musoscribe.com\/images\/icon_twitter_small.jpg\"){kind=icon}
<\/a> Twitter<\/a> and get notified
\nwhen new features, reviews and essays are published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"