Addendum Review
4
By David Lenander
I have to take a little issue with the description of this album as totally overlooked. Maybe that was true nationally, but in MN "Hope" was a hit single. I don't think it probably made the top 20, but it definitely got a lot of airplay on the two pop stations, so it had to be at least top 40 in that market. And the album was definitely displayed in stores and bought by others. It was, however, on Ampex, as I recall, the place that Ian & Sylvia's GREAT SPECKLED BIRD experiment languished without adequate national distribution. This was one of the first albums I ever bought, mainly because I couldn't get their first album, WANTED, which was then unavailable, being on the regional label, Wooden Nickel. At least I think it was Wooden Nickel. Eventually, it and the second record would be released by Warner Bros. as COME & GONE, after the two Warner releases and the breakup of the band. This was their rockingest album, and I could talk about all of the tracks not mentioned above: "In the Country/Sparrow" is a weird marrying of what I suspect is a Terry Talbot song with a John Talbot song, though I really don't know. It moves from a rolling country intro to an almost mystical progressive rock sort of place. A bit later, the group would overlap with a progressive/jazzy group called Passage, which would often open for Mason Proffit, but maybe that's hinted at here. "Hope" occupies some of the same space, and is also kind of anthemic, while the title song, a cover of a famous antiwar folk protest song, I think by Ed McCurdy (on one of Joan Baez's early albums, for example) is done more resignedly than I would've expected, not really a dirge, but kind of determinedly and not especially hopefully. "Freedom" is really catchy, I used to think it should've been a hit, a bit of a protest song about their first album song, "Two Hangmen," being banned in some radio markets for being antiwar and celebrating a sort of hippie ethos. 500 Men" is another kind of pretty song with their harmonies & lyrics hinting at the faith that would later lead them from the band to Christian music (also in "Sparrow" and "Hope"), but no less a protest song of social critique. "Mother" is another antiwar song, about dying on the battlefield, but with a kind of powerful, uptempo and very dramatic performance by Terry. And the final snippet is a slow-tempoed reading of "My Country Tis of Thee" following very much on the style of "Last Night..." which helps close out an album that is kind of a concept album, one that hangs together more than the subsequent albums, as fine as they were. Incidentally, although none of their records were huge hits, they were in those years one of the more successful touring bands. I remember reading that they were the top–grossing rock band one year, though it'd also been pointed out that the really big bands were busy not touring as they were all aping the Beatles model of not really touring and just making albums. So it had a lot to do with incessant touring, and they were a pretty hardworking and energetic performing unit.
