Customer Reviews

Rock Festival

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Like their East Coast counterparts, John Sebastian and the Lovin' Spoonful, Jesse Colin Young and the Youngbloods were a psychedelicized hippie jug band that successfully wed their folk music roots with a profound pop savvy. Their peace and love anthem, "Get Together," was a chartbuster in the Fall of '69 (and remains a staple of classic rock radio to this day), and having scored a Top Ten hit, the San Fran-based Boston expatriates became a hot item at the dawn of the new decade. They signed with the counterculture-identified Warner Records, with a deal that gave them creative control over the albums on their newly-formed Raccoon imprint, and this cleverly-titled, spacy live album was their first release. Yeah, maybe it wasn't the commercial success the Warner suits hoped for, but it sure shows the band in fine form. Their country-roots side is largely subsumed to a mellow space-jazz/jam band style, all full of love and peace vibes. Anchored by Lowell "Banana" Levinger's dreamy keyboards, the group grooves through several of their best-known songs, as well as other, loosely-formed new tunes -- perhaps as professional and competent as hippie rockers got, back in the day. Those who hate stoner bands will find plenty to roll their eyes about here, but anyone with an open mind, and an ear for starry-eyed, rambling melodies, will find this quite pleasant.

You've heard GET TOGETHER and It's still wonderful. But dig deeper and you'll find a lot to treasure. This album is just sheer fun, a great-sunny-day-let's-dance-a-bit-in-the-living-room-between-the-speakers- sort of thing.

The picture of the crowd on the back cover was taken at New Paltz University, the fall of 1969 during a performance of the Jefferson Airplane. The show opened with the Youngbloods, then the Airplane,and the headliner was Joe Cocker. The reason I know is that my friends and I are shown in the crowd on the lp cover and we know where we were during each performance.