3503 - ULTIMATE SPINACH III (1969)
ULTIMATE SPINACH
''III''
1969
34:09
1. (Just Like) Romeo & Juliet/2:33
2. Somedays You Just Can't Win/3:22
3. Daisy/2:18
4. Sincere/3:30
5. Eddie's Rush/6:52
6. Strange-Life Tragicomedy/4:13
7. Reasons/3:48
8. Happiness Child/4:44
9. Back Door Blues/2:56
10. The World Has Just Begun/3:20
Jeff Baxter /Composer, Guitar, Vocals
Barbara Hudson /Composer, Guitar, Vocals
Mike Levin /Bass
Michael Levine /Bass, Composer
Ross Levine /Drums, Composer
Alan Lorber /Producer
Ted Myers /Composer, Vocals
Tony Scheuren /Composer, Keyboards
REVIEW
by Richie Unterberger
The Ultimate Spinach were originally a psychedelic/underground band, but by the time of their third and last album, the group had changed personnel so much that their connection with the original lineup was tenuous in both sound and body. (Actually, the original band had broken up after their second album; The Ultimate Spinach heard on III included a couple of musicians that had recorded on the first two records, but was essentially an entirely different outfit.)...III, perhaps due to the somewhat ad hoc lineup, is so diffuse that it sounds like the work of a few different bands. There's an anachronistic (but actually okay) cover of the old pop-soul hit "(Just Like) Romeo & Juliet," pretty psych-pop ballads, and some...hard blues-rock jamming. Collectors may be interested to note the presence of guitarist Jeff Baxter (later to play with Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers)...
BIOGRAPHY
by Richie Unterberger
Ultimate Spinach was one of the most well-known, and perhaps the most notorious, of the groups to be hyped as part of the "Bosstown Sound" in 1968. The name itself guaranteed attention, as one of the most ludicrous and heavy-handed "far out" monikers of the psychedelic era, even outdoing formidable competition such as the Peanut Butter Conspiracy. Although the group were competent musicians with streaks of imagination, their albums were generally poor third cousins to the West Coast psychedelic groups that served as their obvious inspirations.
Ultimate Spinach was produced by veteran arranger Alan Lorber, a main architect of the "Bosstown Sound." In September 1967, he announced a marketing plan in the top music trade papers to make Boston, in his own words (from his liner notes to Big Beat's reissue of Ultimate Spinach's first album), "a target city for the development of new artists from one geographical location." This automatically insured that Lorber and his groups would be the subject of some derision from the hip underground, since vital regional music scenes such as San Francisco psychedelia (which the Bosstown sound often seemed to be mimicking) have to happen on their own, rather than being manufactured. MGM was the label that released most of the Bosstown Sound groups, and it was through MGM that Lorber arranged to distribute two of the bands he produced, Orpheus and Ultimate Spinach.
On the first two of their three albums, Ultimate Spinach was utterly dominated by leader Ian Bruce-Douglas, who wrote all of the material, sang the majority of the lead vocals, and played a wide variety of instruments, most frequently electric keyboards. Their self-titled debut, released in 1967, was a seriously intended psychedelic stew, with inadvertent comically awkward results. Bruce-Douglas' songs tended to be either dippily, humorlessly cosmic, or colored by equally too-serious fingerpointing at mainstream society. The music aped the songwriting forms and guitar/keyboard textures of West Coast psychedelic stars the Doors, the Jefferson Airplane, and Country Joe & the Fish, but sounded like ham-handed pastiches. Bruce-Douglas created some sleek, weedy electric keyboard lines on tracks like "Sacrifice of the Moon," but was sometimes so imitative of Country Joe & the Fish's first album that he crossed the line into plagiarism, as on "Baroque #1," with its close similarities to Country Joe's "The Masked Marauder." There were more graceful touches in the occasional vocals by guitarist Barbara Hudson and a Baroque-classical tinge to some of the arrangements, and the album did actually sell fairly well.
Behold and See, also released in 1968, was similar to the debut album but a little more even-keeled. That wasn't all good news: there weren't any keyboard-dominated instrumentals to rival "Sacrifice of the Moon," Barbara Hudson didn't have any lead vocals (although guest vocalist Carol Lee Britt took some), and Bruce-Douglas' songwriting was still embarrassingly high-minded and pretentious. The mysterious Bruce-Douglas disbanded Ultimate Spinach after the second LP was recorded, leaving Lorber holding the bag, as a third Ultimate Spinach album had already been scheduled for release. An entirely different lineup was assembled for their third and last album, with only Barbara Hudson remaining from the one heard on the first LP. Also including Ted Myers (ex-Lost and Chamaeleon Church) and guitarist Jeff Baxter (later to play with Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers), this version of Ultimate Spinach recorded III. The record was an undistinguished jumble of psychedelic, hard rock, and pop styles that sounded like the work of several different bands.
All three Ultimate Spinach albums were reissued on CD in the mid-'90s by Big Beat in the U.K..
MC
