This weekend I’ll mostly be listening to… Spirit

Ah feck it. Let’s go the whole hog with Spirit. I posted up I Got a Line on You, from their 1968 album “The Family that Plays Together”… a drollish joke at their own expense given that Ed Cassidy, the drummer, was Randy California’s step-dad (and by the way, still alive today) and a mere 45 or so. Which didn’t stop him from being remarkably cool, all things considered and should in no sense be seen as the defining aspect of the band.

Now, critical plaudits often go to Love, and rightly so, but for my money this is a better album than Forever Changes, which was released a year earlier. Firstly it’s broader in its palette, secondly it’s just a little bit ropey in parts with a raw edge – something I like, thirdly, well, it’s just that bit rockier, which isn’t quite the same as the second point although it is linked. Give me a bit of grit, a bit of garage rock and I’ll be fairly happy at whatever jazz or classical noodling is thrown at me. From the most out and out pop/rock moment with “I Got a Line on You” through to curiosities such as ‘Jewish’… which is near inexplicable but good, this combines classical, jazz, rock in such a way as to be similar, but not the same by any means, as the experimentation of the Beatles on the other side of the world (splintered sunrise mentions the Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus which is also pretty great – perhaps splintered might be interested in tackling that album, but I think this one shades it ever so slightly).

I know, I know, I’m a sucker for any band that can produce a gem such as ‘I Got a Line…’, a song which Robert Christgau once noted was…

…that great shining 2:39 of hard rock guitar

And there’s a thing, for all the supposed excesses of the late 1960s and early 1970s this is an album where only one track on the original vinyl album exceeded 5 minutes and most averaged about 3 minutes or so. That speediness assists immeasurably in making this an absorbing listen.

I mentioned in the other post that Taurus, from their first album, has a great big surprise a short way in in terms of a sound that is… well… very… reminiscent of someone else.

I got a line on you

It shall be

Dream within a dream

Taurus