Music in a Doll's House [Import]

Family | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 30, 2003)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Pucka Italy
• ASIN: B00009PBWV
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #38,032 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. The Chase

2. Mellowing Grey

3. Never Like This

4. Me My Friend

5. Variation On A Theme Of Hey Mr Policeman

6. Winter

7. Old Songs For New Songs

8. Variation On A Theme Of The Breeze

9. Hey Mr Policman

10. See Through Windows

11. Variation On A Theme Of Me My Friend

12. Peace Of Mind

13. Voyage

14. The Breeze

15. 3 X Time

Editorial Reviews

Remastered reissue of 1968 debut album from this legendary '60s progressive rock band featuring Roger Chapman & Charlie Whitney. Pucka. 2003.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Very '60's Masterpiece, April 12, 2004

By 

Michael Strom (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Music in a Doll's House (Audio CD)

This may have actually been a concept album. The concept would have been "We're doing drugs and, although we like them, they are really confusing us." Music In a Doll's House is a raging slab of psychedelia run through a blender. It is an astonishing piece of work filled with paranoia, minor keys, and snippets of themes that recur in drastically altered forms listed as "Variations On A Theme of ..." Acid flashbacks, perhaps.

This would all be so much hippie marginalia but for the fact that Family's musicianship, songwriting and vision were incomparable. Although unmistakably a product of the '60's, Music In A Doll's House doesn't sound retro -- it still sounds visionary. This album would sound cutting-edge-original if it were released today, tomorrow or next year. There is nothing else like it, and probably never will be. Family never attempted to repeat this, although one could say the same of any other album they released.

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Trip the Light Fantastic, May 10, 2004

By 

loce_the_wizard "loce_the_wizard" (Lilburn, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Music in a Doll's House (Audio CD)

Sometimes you need to go back and experience what was to wonder what could have been. No other debut album from a band can match the force of this one from Family, and for more than 30 years, this work has remained a testimony to what rock music should be about: creative, mind-bending, pulsing, twisting, strange, engaging, and even failing.

The CD is full of gems, but the crowning glory may be "Old Songs, New Songs." Chappo's unearthly delivery of the main vocals contrasted with the falsetto of reedman Jim King's vocal on the chorus could stop traffic. Charlie Whitney offers up one of the coolest wah-wah pedal-powered solos toward the last minute of the song against the rock solid drums of the great Rob Townsend and the bass line of the late Rick Grech.

Be warned, however, if you cut your teeth on what has been on commercial FM radio for the past 20 years, you may experience osmotic shock when listening to Family. Had Family achieved the popularity it so deserved, then maybe today folks would know that the first and best rock band to ever feature violin, saxophone, guitar, bass, drums, and vocals may very well have been Family, not the Dave Matthews Band.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, October 10, 2009

By 

Bill Your 'Free Form FM Handi Cyber Print DJ ... (Mahwah, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Music in a Doll's House (Audio CD)

All the compositions on Music Of A Doll's House are great. They are organic, and have a English Folk feel. Listening to the whole album, it is like heariang post-Acqualung Jethro Tull but better: no epics or mellow-dramatics. Just well arranged accustic music with a middle ages spice.

Lead singer Roger Chapman has a great, goat like voice. That is in no way insult: his pitch and use of vibrato produce this effect, and there no other singer like him in rock. He also has the pipes to thrust forth extremely powerfully.

The only problem with the album is the production. Dave Mason, then in Traffic, produced. The whole album has a flanged eccho and badly superimposed effects that don't serve this music well. Understood, this was 1968, and musicians were learning how to make music in a post-Sgt. Pepper era. But the writing here is so good and the woody guitar work so warm, it would have worked better to have the clean production of the second Traffic album.

That said, this is worth buying both for the music and to understand English rock during 1968.


PS: I have this on a See For Miles CD from the 1990s. Has the sound improved on reissues? Please Comment.