Spirit of '67 [Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered]

Paul Revere & The Raiders | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 19, 1996)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording reissued, Original recording remastered
• Label: Sundazed Music Inc.
• ASIN: B000003GZJ
• Also Available in: Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #41,025 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Good Thing

2. All About Her

3. In My Community

4. Louise

5. Why? Why? Why? (Is It So Hard)

6. Oh! To Be A Man

7. Hungry

8. Undecided Man

9. Our Canidate

10. 1001 Arabian Nights

11. The Great Airplane Strike

12. (You're A) Bad Girl

13. Hungry

14. The Great Airplane Strike

Editorial Reviews

By the time they recorded their third Top Ten album The Spirit of '67, Paul Revere and the Raiders were firmly established as one of America's best and most popular homegrown rock 'n' roll acts. The band had also begun to spread its wings creatively, expanding the garage-flavored rock 'n' roll of their early hits into more ambitious and sophisticated musical territory. Along with such classic Raiders smashes as "Hungry," "Good Thing" and "The Great Airplane Strike," The Spirit of '67 finds the quintet embracing psychedelia on such tunes as "Oh! To Be a Man," "1001 Arabian Nights" and "Undecided Man," while delivering memorable showcases for bassist Phil "Fang" Volk ("Why? Why? Why?") and drummer Michael "Smitty" Smith ("Our Candidate"). This expanded edition augments the original 11-song album with three rare bonus tracks, including an alternate version of "Hungry" and the single mix of "The Great Airplane Strike."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clipped Audio Fixed!, June 24, 2005

By 

kyspentay2 (Central GA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spirit of '67 (Audio CD)

Earlier reviews of this CD made reference to a problem involving distortion caused by clipping. Well, I'm very pleased to report that Sundazed HAS corrected this problem on all three of the PR&TR CDs they released in 1996. You might still want to be careful, however, when purchasing this CD. Bad copies may still be floating around the marketplace. To distinguish good copies from bad without even removing the cellophane wrapper, look carefully at what name is written directly above (or, in the case of "Something Happening", below) the CBS "eye" logo on the front cover. If it says "Columbia" there, you have a good copy. If it says "Sundazed" there instead, you have an older copy that may be bad.

As for the artistic content of this CD, I think this is The Raiders' finest album. Even "Collage" doesn't pass the repeated-listening test as well as this one. The late Terry Melcher was at the top of his game when he produced this gem. Thank you, Sundazed, for repairing the audio deficiencies in this release.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I Love This Album, But....., May 9, 2000

By 

Kyle T. (Central GA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spirit of '67 (Audio CD)

...somehow Sundazed screwed up the remastering. Several tracks sound overmodulated. It's the same sound you get when you overload a digital recorder, and I suspect that's what happened somewhere along the line when this CD was made. It is a loud CD. It's frustrating because it's obvious that Sundazed used the session tapes. If not for the added distortion, this would be a great sounding CD from start to finish. If this had happened to one of the Beatles CDs, the problem would have been corrected by now. But since it's "only" a Raiders album, I guess we just have to put up with this sloppiness. By the way, Sundazed did do a "fix" on their "Revolution" CD, which had the same problem. The noise was very obvious on that release, so I guess Sundazed felt they had to redo it. As for the other PRR CD they released in '96, "Something Happening", it has the same problem and apparently no fix has been done. Luckily, some cuts on "Happening" are totally free of the noise.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The greatest Raiders album, by far, March 15, 2006

By 

David Goodwin (Westchester, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spirit of '67 (Audio CD)

This is the album I wanted "Headquarters" to be. With all of the retroactive respect generously ladled on various "lesser" 1960s groups nowadays--The Association, the aforementioned Monkees, anything related to Curt Boettcher--it's somewhat surprising that the Raiders haven't experienced a similar hip renaissance. Part of this is likely due to Mark Lindsay's teen idol persona, or the fact that the Raiders' career trajectory goes from deeply respectable (they started out as a fierce little pre-Beatles Northwest rock band) to very, very mainstream.

If the Raiders ever do get their due, though, this album will be at the epicenter. To be sure, the Raiders had released plenty of quality output--and not just on singles--before Spirit of '67. But never before and never after would the band hit a consistently high standard of quality.

Yes, to a certain degree the album is prefab (studio musicians make up the bulk of the instrumentalists, and producer Terry Melcher compositionally assists a few tracks), but it hardly matters; the songs are excellent, the playing convincing, and the attitude still intact. The two big hits ("Hungry" and "Good Thing") are excellent, but everything else is pretty spot-on as well, from the Stonesy "The Great Airplane Strike" to the best-Eleanor-Rigby-alike-tune-EVER "Undecided Man." Not nearly enough praises have been sung about "All About Her," where Lindsay gives one of his best performances. And while Mark dominates the proceedings, the other members get their vocal turns as well, and "Why? Why? Why?" is Fang's best showcase with the group.

Again, this is the album I wanted "Headquarters" to be. It's inconsequential, doesn't make a statement, and is a bit silly (the "Indian drone" on Arabian Nights). This matters not one bit, as "Spirit of '67," short as it may be, is one of the most enjoyable albums of the mid sixties. If you're going to buy one Raiders album, make this it.