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The Family That Plays Together by Spirit

 


My next album is The Family That Plays Together by Spirit. Spirit are a 1960s Los Angeles psychedelic band. Their first album is self-titled Spirit. The four songwriters on this album are Randy California, Locke, Cassidy, and Jay Ferguson. All of the tracks on this album offer something to suggest. One stand-out track on this album is Jewish. While it involves much singing that is either in Hebrew or Yiddish (I don't know Hebrew or Yiddish), it also has much more to offer. It offers tempo changes, and a jazzy feel. The song shifts at one point from 4/4 time to 3/4, and glides effortlessly along.

The guitar work on their first track is energetic and bluesy. It makes that track worth listening to. The fourth track on this album Silky Sam has a dramatic stop-start part near the middle but is otherwise unremarkable. There is a nice slow part on the fifth track, Drunkard, with some nice violin, and overall it is a decent track. The sixth track has a nice gospel feel. It is somewhat reminiscent of The Band. The seventh track starts with a screeching sound and then martial drums, but has a groovy feel after this, and a nice drum solo. The grooviness on this track is quite excellent. On the track Dream Within A Dream one memorable lyric is “stepping off this mortal coil will be my pleasure”. The tenth track on this album has a nice easy feel, but is otherwise forgettable. The last track has a nice feel and some nice guitar work on it. Additionally it has nice horns.   

    Throughout this album there is a nice fusion of r&b/jazz and rock instrumentation. There is baritone saxophone, flute, trumpet, piano, electric piano, electric bass and electric guitar. What you get on this album is fairly typical of what you would get from psychedelic rock of the era.

This is an album that is in the large category of albums that I would not have come across were it not for the cultural historian Piero Scaruffi. His book The History of Rock Music is one that I owe a debt to, as is his online presence. He refers to this kind of music as “acid-pop”. This album definitely has an easy-going pop feel. It's important to know however that the distinction between pop and rock for Scaruffi is a broad one. According to him this band is from the same city as The Doors, Los Angeles. He rates these bands on a numerical scale, and gives Spirit a 3. Scaruffi rightfully analyzes these groups as “pre-dating progressive rock”, by their fusion of jazz, classical, and rock music. There is a track on this album that makes reference to a track on their previous album (Spirit). The previous album track is “Fresh Garbage” the exact lyric was “Remarking on the freshness of garbage...” it is the third track on this album, “Poor Richard”. The same track has a hypnotizing bass line in it. One needs to get a sense of the original album to understand this one (and sadly the topic of review is not that original album). The tracks on this album are decent, but not revolutionary. I give this album a 7/10.

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