Spirit
Son Of America (Expanded Edition) ESOTERIC
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. ■■■■■■■■■■