"An obscure late 60s rock opera -- but a pretty great one too, and a set with some rougher, more soulful moments than Hair, Oh Calcutta, or any of its contemporaries! The instrumentation here is really great -- almost in a Melvin Van Peebles mode at times, with basslines that step around in odd, almost skittish rhythms -- and guitar bits and keyboards that get funky, but often in a way that's kind of quirky. Vocals are by both the authors, as well as actor Joe Morton and Yolande Bavan -- the latter of whom makes one of her few rare appearances on record after working with Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks! Tracks themselves have a definite Hair influence -- slightly hippieish, but a bit more soulful -- and produced here by Nik Venet with a style that lets in plenty of the "space" that made similar contemporaneous projects at Capitol so great. Titles include "Salvation", "1001", "Honest Confession Is Good For The Soul", "Ballin", "For Ever", "Deadalus", "Let's Get Lost In Now", "Back To Genesis", and the hit "If You Let Me Make Love To You Then Why Can't I Touch You"."
-From Dusty Groove America
When I was 12, a woman moved into the house next door to us. With her, eventually, came her son, and daughter, 20 and 17 respectively. "Rose" and her children were definitely bizarre for this suburban neighborhood. She practiced Raiki healing, wrote music, and poetry, landscaped her entire yard as a Japanese topiary garden. Her daughter dressed in all black, spray painted her car flat back in the local K-Mart parking lot, wallpapering the inside with images from the weekly world news. (It's true I had a pretty massive teenage crush on her) The son ran around long haired, and filthy, playing guitar, doing LSD, reading comic books, and riding his bike all over the place, day and night. They also opened their house to a slightly troubled and extremely misplaced youth, offering a safe place to read, write, talk, and play music.
Basically they were a clan of hippies and punk-rockers. They are partially responsible for me finishing High School. The ex-husband of "Rose", and father of her 2 children was an asshole, and songwriter/actor. He wrote the book, and performed in this ridiculous post Hair rock musical, Salvation. An off-broadway production about drugs, god, war, sex and abortion.
An interesting snapshot of some of the underground going's on in the Hippy Scene, I just rediscovered this in the stacks, and felt it may be worth some renewed investigation.
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