Lovin Spoonful

With a fun, bright, and wonderful run of hits like "Do You Believe in Magic," "Daydream," and "Summer in the City" behind them, the Lovin' Spoonful began running out of gas by the spring of 1967, and the two albums paired here, You're a Big Boy Now and Everything Playing, both released later that year, show a band that was creatively exhausted. You're a Big Boy Now, the soundtrack to a film written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, did generate a couple of good songs, the title tune and the lovely "Darling Be Home Soon," while Everything Playing yielded the joyous "She Is Still a Mystery" and "Six O'Clock," but these were really the last great gasp of a truly great American band. Serious fans of the group will want to have these for the sake of completion, and this two-fer is a good way to get both of them at once, but taken together, it's a swan song.

The band's second LP was very strong; this time, most of the tunes are originals, with the exception of a cover of "Bald Headed Lena." Joe Butler and Yanovsky are featured on some lead vocals, and the album includes two more hits, "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice" and "Didn't Want to Have to Do It."

The Lovin' Spoonful had a marvelous run on the pop charts in the mid- to late '60s, and hits like "Do You Believe in Magic," "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice," "Daydream," "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind," and "Summer in the City"…