Mamas & the Papas "If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears" [1966]

About as jamming as a Perry Como record, folk-popster singing group Mamas & the Papas slyly crossed over between Lawrence Welk fans as well as Beatle fanatics by growing their hair long and dressing stylishly (for the mid-60s, so it's a relative term), then recording the squarest, most un-rock album every given a glowing review by Rolling Stone. The aggressively whitebread arrangements and delivery of the otherwise disgracefully-hippie'd-out John Phillips sound today like nothing so much as a gigantic prank on everyone who thought they were properly gauging the direction of popular music of the time. All the swing and groove of the modern (and not-so-modern) standards has been ironed neatly away and shrouded in the linen gauze of their four-part harmonies. In fact, listening to "If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears" makes me finally realize what made Brian Wilson freak out -- he thought for a moment that the Beach Boys might have actually sounded like this unfathomably sugary swill. Made worse by Cass Elliot's modernized Mae-West-in-a-mumu lead singing jaunts, apparently the only people not in on the joke are the baby boomers who were duped by Mamas & the Papas when they first came out. It's like if Pat Boone had started smoking pot and joined a singing group; there's a good reason that toilet was there on the original front cover.