Can you feel the Spirit of the Seventies?

Never underestimate the power of Randy California. My re-imagining of Spirit's Spirit of 76 immediately proved to be one of the most popular items around here. So while I'm prepping my trio of album that never were, here's a little something to tide Spirit fans over. A sampler of any Spirit-related adventures from the Seventies once the original band was finished. Although I boldly declared Spirit Mark II to be starting from Spirit of '76 onwards, that is of course strictly speaking not true. Actually, since the original and beloved group imploded, there was a lot of activity in all corners of the Spirit camp, or make that Spirit camps. But not all of it led to greatness, obviously. I already talked in detail about the fractured nature of the post-original band incarnations of Spirit, and Free Spirit Of The Seventies will not dissuade anyone from this notion. 

I originally created this compilation for myself to keep the good stuff from the extremely mixed Spirit years, while throwing away the chaff. Some people might find every guitar doodle of California worth drooling over, but I am far from that guy. As a matter of fact, I find that almost every album of the Spirit Mark II era has stuff on it I'm not digging, the one exception being Farther Along, incidentally also the only album with the returning Andes and Locke. So I culled my favorite moments from those albums to create Free Spirit Of The Seventies. It's essentially a 'best of the rest' type selection from the rest of the decade.

The selection of tracks is nothing if not democratic, covering pretty much every base. Which means that the diverse adventures from 1972 onwards also find a home here: California's Hendrix-inspired solo album Kaptain Kopter And The (Fabulous) Twirly Birds, Ed Cassidy and John Locke's subsequent attempt to form a new Spirit, led by the Staehely brothers, and the first attempt from Ed Cassidy and Randy California to mount the concept album Potatoland, rejected by Epic Records as a follow-up to Kaptain Kopter.  All of these find some representation here, and make the argument that once Spirit entered Mark II everything is more or less at the same level of consequence, and then you have to delve straight into a matter of personal preferences. So these are mine. 

Feedback, the infamous album of the 'fake', California-less band isn't as bad as most would have you believe, nor is it as good as some revisionist history critics would have it. It's okay and not particularly memorable, but has some nice moments, four of which are collected here. Same thing for Potatoland 73, which not only suffers from uneven fidelity, but also from really uneven songwriting and performing. Still, it's good moments, like the George Harrison soundalike "We've Got A Lot To Learn" or "It's Time Now", are good to very good. And I personally don't have much use for most of California's solo album, which to my unwashed ears often sounds too noisy and unfocused, but his versions of Paul Simon's "Mother And Child Reunion" and the Kingston Trio's "Greenback Dollar" - unreleased at the time - plus his own "Rainbow" are nice. 

Some of the selections that didn't find place on my reworked single edition of Spirit of '76 find a new place here, as do select tracks from Son Of Spirit, Farther Along and Future Games. As is, Free Sprit Of The Seventies has five tracks each from Potatoland and Son Of Spirit, four each from Spirit of '76 and Feedback, three from Kaptain Korner and two each from Farther Along and Future Games, plus an unreleased track ("Zandu"). Several tracks are edited to my personal taste and to fit the purposes of this compilation. The cover art continues the patriotic theme of Spirit of '76, though with a, uh, free spirit kind of twist, wouldn't we say... 

All in all, this should give everyone whose love affair with the band ended when the band proper did in 1971 after Dr. Sardonicus a decent sampler into everything Spirit-infused that came afterwards. So, folks, are you ready to get into the Free Spirit Of The Seventies?