Spirit (Spirit album)

Infobox Album |
Name = Spirit
Type = Album
Artist = Spirit


Released = January 22, 1968
Recorded = November 11-17, 1967
Genre = Rock
Length =
Label = Epic Records/Legacy Recordings
Producer = Lou Adler
Reviews = *Allmusic Rating|4.5|5 [http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:oat67uq0h0jk link]
Last album =
This album = "Spirit"
(1968)
Next album = "The Family That Plays Together"
(1968)

Spirit's self-titled debut album is one whose multifarious experimentalism owes in large part to the contemporary successes of The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and Pink Floyd's "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn", earmarked the humble beginnings and grand aspirations of its eponymous authors. While the mindset required to produce "Spirit" was ubiquitous, however, the endeavour itself was far from clichèd. The eclecticism of Randy California's writing coupled Barrett's psychotropism with Morrison's West Coast bohemianism; and although the result proved somewhat inaccessible to the masses, it made the project ripe for underground FM airtime. The band would later curtail its psychedelia by focusing on a broader array of genres.

This inchoate release was published first by Ode records in 1968. It has since been reprinted by Sony–repackaged in compact-disc form and remastered from original analogue tapes.

Track listing

# "Fresh-Garbage"
# "Uncle Jack"
# "Mechanical World"
# "Taurus"
# "Girl in Your Eye"
# "Straight Arrow"
# "Topanga Windows"
# "Gramophone Man"
# "Water Woman"
# "The Great Canyon Fire in General"
# "Elijah"
# "Veruska" *
# "Free Spirit" *
# "If I Had a Woman" *
# "Elijah (Alternate Take)" *

*Tracks specific to the 1996 reissue

Miscellanea

The song "Fresh-Garbage" has been sampled in the Pink song "Feel Good Time", found on the soundtrack of ""."Fresh Garbage" was also used as the title (and theme music) of a rock music program on BBC Radio London in the early 1970s.

In 1973 Epic released a two-disc LP repackage of "Spirit" and "Clear" entitled "Spirit".

The opening guitar riff for "Taurus" is said to have influenced Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page in composing his famous intro to "Stairway to Heaven". Led Zeppelin opened for Spirit on an American tour in 1968.

References