Christopher - Christopher

Christopher - Christopher - 1970

Christopher were an underground acid rock trio featuring future Josefus drummer Doug Tull. They evolved from United Gas, a psychedelic band from Houston who rubbed shoulders with legends like The 13th Floor Elevators and Moving Sidewalks . After relocating to Los Angeles, where they changed his name to Christopher, they played at numerous biker parties and recorded their sole album in 1970 for the Metromedia label. It’s an amazing example of West Coast psychedelia / acid-rock featuring strong fuzz-wah guitar, great compositions and superb musicianship.

01. Dark Road

02. Magic Cycles

03. Wilbur Lite

04. In Your Time

05. Beautiful Lady

06. Lies

07. Disaster

08. The Wind

09. Queen Mary

10. Burns Decision

Richard Avitts - Guitar, vocals

Doug Walden - Bass, Piano, vocals

John A. Simpson III, Terrance Hand - Drums

Doug Tull, Ron Kramer - Percussion

+@320

The Bridge - The Bridge

The Bridge - The Bridge - 1971

Bridge materialized in April 1971 consisting of three accomplished musicians: Francis and John Webster and Tony Lecaillon. The Webster brothers have been performing together since 1964 when they started a group called "The Marcatos". In 1967 they moved to Toronto where they joined forces with Tony and reorganized "The Marcatos" into a seven-piece group. In 1969 the group recorded an album at Sound Canada.

The album, entitled David, contained nine original tunes and two commercial tunes, (Hey Jude and House of the Rising Sun), and was played frequently on CHUM FM and other stations. The following Spring Francis and John moved to their farm in the Georgian Bay area where they began cultivating original material and sounds, playing in local churches and nightclubs with great success.

Meanwhile, Tony travelled around England (his native land), and Europe, to open his ears and eyes to the scene there. Francis, John and Tony rejoined last year to produce a unique combination of country, folk, jazz and rock, with original lyrics and music. Bridge answer the question, for anyone who wishes to know, what happened to the Canadian band David after their lone record on Sound Canada in the late 60s.

Guitarist Francis Webster, bassist John Webster, and drummer Tony Lecaillon from David make up Bridge who recorded this ultra obscure and rare record at the same Sound Canada studios in 1971. Next to each song is a brief description of the musical genre of each ranging from "Ego Trip" to "Country" to "jazz shuffle."

What this album is differs drastically from what you'd expect from David.The best way to describe Bridge's album would be "Sweetheart Of The Rodeo" on tons of acid! There is no fuzz guitar, but a clean west coast shimmering tone on all tracks, bizarre vocal effects on ; the tripped out "It's My Life" and plenty of weirdness present for the whole album.

The tracks that are labelled "Country" all have a strange bent to them . despite being early back-to-the- roots country rock influenced by Graham Parsons and "real" country artists like Hank Williams. The long "Ego Trip" version of Little Richard's "You're My Girl" is great fun and the only good version I've heard of one of his songs.

There is something here very enjoyable for anyone looking for a bizarre i twisted record of fun music, especially "Brand New Day" with echoes of Spirit and a bit of Freeborne. Very rare and a good one.

01. I Had It But I Lost It

02. It’s My Life

03. Ain’t My Day

04. Simple Blues Form

05. Running Away

06. Brand New Day

07. You’re My Girl

08. Born To The Country

09. Barnyard

Francis Webster - Guitar

John Webster - Bass

Tony Lecaillon - Drums

+@320

B.B. Blunder - Worker's Playtime

B.B. Blunder - Worker's Playtime - 1971

In the mid-to-late 1960s, during the height of the mania stemming from the British Invasion, the UK was teeming with psychedelic rock bands of all shapes and sizes, many of whom enjoyed the din of obscurity beneath the gargantuan shadows of such titans as the Who, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, Pink Floyd and, of course, the Beatles.  Among those bands was Blossom Toes, an acid-pop group signed to famed English rock impresario and Yardbirds/Soft Machine manager Gorgio Gomelsky’s Marmalade Records label. The band did not receive the commercial success enjoyed by their peers in the British Invasion, but released two albums to massive critical acclaim and counted Frank Zappa, with whom the group once jammed (as documented on the recently released double-live compilation Love Bomb: Live 1967-69), amongst their fans.

In December of 1969, Blossom Toes were on their way back from a gig when they suffered a terrible auto accident that didn’t kill anyone in the band, but left the lads shaken up enough to decide to dissolve their union shortly thereafter. While guitarist Jim Cregan went on to join the equally underappreciated UK group Family (who also counted Blind Faith’s Ric Grech amongst its ranks), second Blossom git “Little” Brian Godding and bassist “Big” Brian Belshaw still remained tight, temporarily backing up UK folk chanteuse Julie Driscoll for her 1970 tour. The duo continued to casually jam together after the Driscoll gigs, eventually bringing former Toes drummer Kevin Westlake back into the mix. They rechristened themselves B.B. Blunder, picked up on the heavier, more California-inspired sound the Toes left off on with their 1969 swan song, If Only for a Moment, and took it to new creative heights on their single album, 1971’s Worker’s Playtime.

Recorded at Olympic Studios at the same time that the Stones were laying down Sticky Fingers (Godding claims that Mick Jagger even lent the band a right-handed guitar for the album sessions), Playtime was looser and more AOR-oriented than the Blossom Toes material, featuring guest spots from the likes of Driscoll, electric piano guru Brian Auger, and Stones guitarist Mick Taylor. The songs B.B. Blunder were creating signified a sonic evolution similar to that of the way the Faces emerged from the Small Faces, or the Pretty Things circa Freeway Madness, with one foot in their British rock roots and the other pointing towards the sounds of the Los Angeles canyons, resulting in a warm, freewheeling sound effectively symbolic of the times while signifying something more progressive altogether. At the same time, songs like “Research”, “Seed”, and “Rise” were quintessential ‘71, and would certainly not sound out of place during a WNEW rock block alongside Bowie’s “Queen Bitch” and “Under My Wheels” by Alice Cooper.

01. Sticky Living

02. You're So Young

03. Lost Horizons

04. Research

05. Rocky Yagbag

06. Seed

07. Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

08. Rise

09. Moondance

10. New Day

11. Backstreet

12. Freedom

13. Black Crow's Nest

14. When I Was in the Country

15. A Hard Day's Night

16. Come on Eyes

17. Snippet with Tippett

18. Square Dance

19. Earache

20. Robots

21. Waltz

+@320

Randy California & Spirit - The Euro-American Years - 1979-1983 - 6 CDS

Randy California & Spirit - The Euro-American Years - 1979-1983 - 6 CDS - 2020 

In mid-1979 the trio incarnation of spirit broke up and randy formed a new solo band and embarked on a european tour supporting Ian Gillan. After recording a series of demos further studio sessions produced the recordings which would form his solo album euro-american, released in 1982 (and included in this set). The original boxed set of the euro american years was compiled by spirit archivist mick skidmore and was issued in 2006. The original concept for this box (which sold out very quickly in its first pressing, only to be consistently bootlegged in various countries via downloads and separate cdr discs for which the artists received no compensation) was to pull together the vast amount of music that randy released during 1979-1983 period (although some tracks were recorded earlier and were shelved due to lack of a record deal).

Due to demand from fans, Mick Skidmore has recovered from the archives an additional two cds worth of previously unreleased material, namely a live concert by spirit recorded in greensboro, north carolina in april 1981 before a wildly exuberant audience, along with the randy california band’s entire set at reading festival in 1982 and a part of the band’s set at glastonbury festival from the same year.

Disc 1 

THE RANDY CALIFORNIA BAND

01. You stole my heart

02. California man

03. Song for laura

04. Thinking of you

05. Reeling in the night

06. Lani by the sea

07. Shattered dreams

08. Rock of ages

09. Magic wand

“EURO AMERICAN” – THE ORIGINAL ALBUM

10. Toy guns

11. This is the end

12. Mon ami

13. Rude reaction

14. Calling you

15. Wild thing

16. Easy love

17. Fearless leader

18. Five in the morning

19. Skull and crossbones

20. Breakout

Bonus tracks

21. Man at war

22. Write you a letter

Disc 2

01. Hand guns

02. Come on woman

03. Trouble in mind

04. Cabin de telephone

05. Shane

06. All along the watchtower

07. Don’t bother me

08. Downer

09. Brittany

10. Second child

11. Man at war

12. Killer weed

13. Radio man

14. Superchild

15. Run to your lover

16. Love’s not a game

17. Love is war

18. Childhood’s end

19. Overloaded ships sink (previously unreleased)

Disc 3

SPIRIT LIVE 1980 AND 1981

01. 1984 

02. Turn to the right

03. Five in the morning 

04. Hungry driver

05. I want somebody 

06. Hey joe 

07. Shattered dreams

08. Fish fry road

09. Magic wand

10. Come on woman

11. Breakout 

12. Downer 

13. Song for laura

14. Wild thing 

Disc 4

01. Grosser herrscher

02. His spirit is travelling on (previously unreleased)

03. Pt 109

04. Whispers from heaven

05. Trying to get closer to you

06. Since she’s gone

07. Past love

08. Stepping son

09. Otter in the sea

10. California man

11. Childhood’s end

RANDY CALIFORNIA BAND LIVE IN AYR, SCOTLAND – OCTOBER 1979

12. Downer 

13. You stole my heart

14. Move on up

15. California man

16. Rebel’s flight

17. Breakout

18. Song for laura

Disc 5

SPIRIT – LIVE AT LOUIE’S, GREENSBORO, SOUTH CAROLINA 1981: PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED

01. 1984 

02. Turn to the right

03. Animal zoo 

04. Magic wand 

05. Nature’s way

06. Five in the morning

07. So little time to fly

08. Mr. Skin 

09. Come on woman

10. All the same 

11. I got a line on you

12. Fish fry road

13. Wild thing 

14. Like a rolling stone

15. Come and get it (magic spirit) 

Disc 6

THE RANDY CALIFORNIA BAND LIVE AT THE READING FESTIVAL 1982 - PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED

01. Second child

02. Downer 

03. Man at war 

04. Like a rolling stone

05. All along the watchtower

06. Come on woman

07. Nature’s way

08. Killer weed 

09. Run to your lover

10. I got a line on you

11. Song for laura

12. Wild thing 

THE RANDY CALIFORNIA BAND LIVE AT THE GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL 1982 – PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED

13. Hand guns

14. Lisa 

15. Don’t bother me

16. Rebel on attack

17. Killer weed

+@320

or

+@320 (other mirror, but interchangeable) (outro servidor, mas intercambiáveis)