Blast from the folk-rock-psychedelic past
Paul Allaer | Cincinnati | 07/31/2009
(4 out of 5 stars)
"First things first, I would have never heard of this album but for the fact that during a recent business trip to Atlanta I was looking on the radio dial for something listenable (no, not you commercial mainstream radio stations), and I fell upon 88.5 FM (WRAS), the Georgia State radio station. It stopped me in my tracks (even though I was in the car), and listened for the better part of an hour. One of the songs from this album was played and eventually (more on that later), I bought this here on Amazon.
"Relatively Clean Rivers" (1976 release; 9 tracks; 33 min.) is nothing short of an obscure blast from the folk-rock-psychedelic past. I had never heard of these guys before, but imagine flashes of Grateful Dead, with some early Neil Young, and Quicksilver Messenger Service, and you get the idea. The opening track "Easy Rider" (not to be confused with the movie of the same name) is the track I heard on the radio show, and sets the table perfectly for the album: easy-flowing but ever so enjoyable. There are a number of instrumental tracks as well ("Last Flight to Eden", the short "Prelude") and near-instrumentals. "The Persian Caravan" is exactly what you would expect it to be, with a Middle-Eastern tone to it. The closer (and longest track on here) "A Thousand Years" sums up the album perfectly. What a great album, and at 33 min, it clips by in no time.
Back to that radio show. After I back to Cincinnati, I looked up the website of the station, where the program is billed as "Tower of Power: psyche, prog and freak-beat" and that sums it up just about. I eventually exchanged some emails with one of the DJ of the program, Andrew Johnson (a student at GA State), and he couldn't have been more helpful, sending me a setlist of what I heard that evening, and steering me to where to find this album. Thanks, buddy! And when I'm next in Atlanta, I know what station I'll be listening to."
Track Listings (8) - Disc #1
