By the time you make your way through their considerable bona fides—“Happy Together,” “Elenore,” five albums as members of Zappa’s Mothers Of Invention, backing vox as Flo & Eddie on T.Rex’s “Get It On (Bang A Gong)” and Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart” and a lawsuit vs. De La Soul that essentially changed sampling clearances and hip-hop economics forever—it’s easy to lose sight of just how musically adventurous the Turtles really were. Aside from the inescapable radio hits, this L.A.-based combo evolved, over the course of six LPs issued from 1965 to 1970, from early Byrds- and Dylan-influenced folk rockers (“It Ain’t Me”) to a strangely ingenious fusion of the Animals and Zombies (“You Baby,” “Happy Together”), whatever you’d call the track-by-track impersonation act that is “The Turtles Present The Battle Of The Bands” to their shambling West Coast approximation of the Lovin’ Spoonful (the Ray Davies-produced “Turtle Soup”).
Along with a posthumous odds ’n’ sods collection largely drawn from the group’s early outtakes, Wooden Head, the Turtles’ long-out-of-print catalog of original albums is given a fresh recasting here, plus bonus tracks salvaged from throughout their run as the thinking-man’s pop group for the 1960s. The sheer depth and breadth of the body of work is stunning—it’s hard to believe the Elephant 6 posse wasn’t name-dropping the Turtles in the same fell swoop as Brian Wilson and Left Banke—and Zappa’s talent for unearthing eccentric weirdos is validated repeatedly over the course of a baker’s half-dozen of the finest slices of frizzle-frazzle pop the Woodstock era managed to serve up.
—Corey duBrowa
