Classic Rock

Spirit

Son Of America (Expanded Edition) ESOTERIC

- Chris Roberts

Box of band’s late-period outtakes boosted by newly-found live album.

Guitarist Randy California sticks it to the man here, complainin­g about music being caged into genres and singing the phrase ‘the 1990s’ as if that was the nadir of human existence. He even embarks on a sarcastic rant about his music being labelled ‘alternativ­e’. He drowned in 1997, aged 45, so at least he was spared emo rap.

Spirit, his band, had shifted personnel by then, and interest in their psychedeli­c jazz-rock stylings had waned. This remastered album, first released in 2005, gathers demos and jams recorded between 1983 and 1996, including alternativ­e takes from the albums California Blues and Cosmic Smile. Newly added is a previously unreleased live show for an LA radio station, and it’s worth the ticket price. The cheerful, spontaneou­s dialogue snippets sit well beside lovely renditions of Nature’s

Way, Fresh Garbage and Hendrix’s Red House, on which California reasserts that he was no slouch as a guitarist. “Wowee, zowee!” the DJ exclaims after one intoxicati­ng solo.

When he was 16, California had been a bandmate of Hendrix, but suffered a jinxed career, which drugs didn’t help. What’s uplifting about these later captures is that he sounds at ease, enjoying himself, playing well and letting his freak flag fly. ■■■■■■■■■■

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