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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply trippy; you won't believe this is the same band!, February 6, 2003
No doubt about it, it is Steve Miller's mid-1970s music that remains the most popular & well-known, thanks to it being replayed over & over on classic rock radio stations. So naturally, it's hard to believe that before he became a purveyor of almost-perfect AM radio pop, Miller was a psychedelic blues-rocker with just as much credibility as pioneers of the form like Cream & Vanilla Fudge. Nevertheless, Miller's long road to pop music legend began with 1968's CHILDREN OF THE FUTURE.While it's almost certain that a great deal of the psychedelic music created in the late 1960s was by people who were high on hallucinogens more often than not, Steve Miller doesn't strike me as a person who was into that stuff. So it's even more of a wonder if music like that on CHILDREN OF THE FUTURE was created with almost no LSD or the like involved. It is high quality acid rock that was just as worthy of the best of its kind, even if commercially it was ignored by most of the marketplace. The trippiest stuff is most certainly found on the first half of the album with songs like the folk-rocking title track (the harmonies are to die for), the epic soundscape "In My First Mind" (could have been from Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd) & "The Beauty Of Time Is That It's Snowing" (basically a continuation of the sound of "In My First Mind" with instrumental improvisation). One doesn't need to have been around in the Summer of Love to get the feeling of free love & peace that surrounded the making of music like this. "Pushed Me To It" & "You've Got The Power" (later used as the base for an epic jam in concert) are less-than-a-minute long sound bites that should be heard as part of the seamless suite that makes up the first half. The second half of FUTURE is more raw & down-to-earth with songs that feature Steve & his band (he's had more revolving members than a banana republic) having some fun. Early member Boz Scaggs contributes two songs that are quite different from the polished soul-pop that would make up his solo work. "Baby's Callin' Me Home" is a precious piece of folk-pop that literally typifies the San Francisco scene; "Steppin' Stone" is a louder slice of blues-rock that shows Boz can sing Black almost like no other White singer. He would go solo after the next album, but these two songs show Boz was just as equal to his childhood friend Steve Miller in talent & songcraft. Steve's "Roll With It" is definitely the most traditional entry of his on the album with a laid-back excursion into country rock about a year before it was "officially" invented by Gram Parsons & the Flying Burrito Brothers. The album then closes out with three covers, one obscure & two semi-famous. The obscure one is "Junior Saw It Happen", originally recorded by forgotten '60s rockers The Disciples, and is a jumpy little number given a barnburning performance by the band (almost like hearing the Blues Brothers a decade earlier). Buster Brown's early-rock standard "Fanny Mae" is given a similar treatment, while Big Bill Broonzy's "Key To The Highway" is much more sedate, the country blues pedigree of it being articulated perfectly. "Highway" is certainly a good way to wind down after a half-hour of unabashedly trippy psychedelia. While the low sales of this album may have belied the commercial dominance of his 1970s work, CHILDREN OF THE FUTURE showed that Steve Miller was an equal contender in the psychedelic rock sweepstakes who was unfortunately looked over by the music-buying public. Perhaps it was too trippy or bluesy for AM radio (FM was still coming into its own at the time), but CHILDREN OF THE FUTURE is an album that should be right up there Cream's DISRAELI GEARS or Vanilla Fudge's self-titled debut as a classic of the very heady & experimental decade of 1960s pop music.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Significant, albeit unrecognized bit of American psychedelia/proto prog, October 31, 2005
Children of the Future (1968) is divided into two "halves" including: (1) the (nearly) 18-minute "Children of the Future" suite; and (2) six songs.
The Children of the Future suite is presented as a five-part song cycle/multi-movement suite hybrid (with the opening theme restated at the end) and is a superb example of proto-progressive rock. Although I enjoyed the entire piece (including the first five minutes of psychedelic pop), as a huge prog rock fan I was especially delighted with the spacey Hammond organ and mellotron playing on the haunting, achingly beautiful, and classically-influenced fourth part, "In my First Mind" (7'38") (as a side note, the fourth part was co-written by Steve Miller and keyboardist Jim Peterman, who obviously contributed the proto-prog aspects). The mellotron with the string setting is featured prominently throughout "In my First Mind" (to an even greater extent than the Moody Blues), and anticipates similar use of the instrument by British proggers King Crimson on their 1969 debut. This is but one example (of maybe five or less) where an American band actually used the mellotron. The fifth and final part of the piece, "The Beauty of Time is that it's Snowing" displays use of the avant-garde "found sound" technique that other experimental bands were exploring at the time. For example, atop a soft organ drone there is the sound of calling gulls, a subway, a conversation, a human voice shouting, a door sliding shut, a "radio" playing blues music, and the howling wind. In summation, Parts 4 and 5 collectively span 13 minutes and are simply excellent.
The second "half" of the CD is situated 180 degrees away from the experimental material of Children of the Future and features six, simpler songs. The songs range from the pastoral, psychedelic, and slightly jazzy blues of Boz Scaggs "Baby's Calling me Home" (which features just a harpsichord and acoustic guitar), to the heavy, "Cream-like" blues rock of "Stepping Stone", to the traditional (straight) blues pieces "Fanny Mae" and "Key to the Highway", which feature the harmonica as a solo instrument.
This recording is a great example of how late 1960's proto-progressive rock bands mixed disparate styles into what was (at the time) heralded as the new music that would "change the world". Ultimately this "third stream" style morphed into the prog rock of the 1970's. Chances are that if you liked this recording, you may also like two recordings by the English proto-prog band Procul Harum: "Shine on Brightly" (1968), which also features a lengthy multi-movement suite, and "A Salty Dog" (1969), which has a similar mixture of blues and psychedelic pieces.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not Your Average Steve Miller, December 17, 2001
This is the first Steve Miller Band recording, when they were known in the Bay Area as The Steve Miller Blues Band. It's what was then known as a "concept" album, i.e., there are no clear cuts between songs--it segues from one selection to the next. If you can get past this rather dated affectation, the music is very good. It bubbles along, one song up, the next slow blues. It has been unfairly ignored for lack of a Top 40 cut, but that made it all the more endearing in its day because it was played almost entirely on what were then referred to as "underground" FM radio stations, most notably KSAN and KMPX in San Francisco. The lineup included Steve Miller, Boz Skaggs, Lonnie Turner, Jim Peterman and Tim Davis, all fine musicians who were more bluesmen than rockers at that point in their recording careers. If you like your blues with a psychedelic twist, you'll enjoy this one.
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