Every couple of years the thought pops into my head that I needed to hear the song, “Fresh Garbage”. Spirit lead off side one of their eponymous debut album with this 190-second track, way back in January of 1968.
Fresh Garbage, Fresh Garbage,
Look beneath your lid some morning
See those things you didn’t quite consume
The World’s a can for your fresh garbage…
The lyrics seem to me to suggest that there may have been little in the way of psychedelics that the members of the group didn’t consume. But, I like the song, so draw your own conclusions.
The album was produced by Lou Adler and is, as a whole, an excellent example of late 60s Psychedelic rock. The only single released from the album was the third cut, “Mechanical World”, which failed to chart, perhaps because, in those days top 40 radio stations shied away from any song much longer than 2 or 3 minutes in length, and the single only listed it’s playing time as “very long”. Or it could have been the songs lyrics, which featured the opening verse:
Death falls so heavy on my soul
Death falls so heavy, makes me moan
Somebody tell my father that I died
Somebody tell my mother that I cried…
But the album itself was a hit and reached number 31 on the charts.
Spirits second album was released the same year in November and featured the single, I've Got A Line On You, which actually peaked at number 22 on the charts and propelled Spirit to appearances in several show bookings with Led Zeppelin in 1969. And, the rest, as they say, is history. The fourth track on Spirit’s first album is a little two and a half minute ditty named, Taurus, that was later made famous for the decades-long lawsuit (still going on) filed by the remaining band members on behalf of Spirit’s acoustic fingerpicking guitarist, Randy California, (Randy Craig Wolfe, February 20th, 1951- January, 2nd, 1997) against Led Zeppelin for “virtually lifting note for note”, the opening for Stairway to Heaven. Listen and decide for yourself which side you land on in this argument. And then you can Google “Led Zeppelin plagiarize”, or go straight to Rolling Stone’s list of Led Zeppelin's 10 Boldest Rip-Offs.
My copy of the first album is a Sundazed Mono Reissue from 2005, which sounds great, but does miss some of the psychedelic stereo antics from the two-channel recording, though I have the CD for that.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M072im1HRws
Qobuz: https://open.qobuz.com/album/0074646496527