Biography
Among the acts promoted as part of the 1968 Bosstown Sound, Ultimate Spinach achieved particular visibility and notoriety. Its name alone ensured notice, ranking among the most overblown and clumsily evocative titles of the psychedelic period and surpassing even such rivals as the Peanut Butter Conspiracy. Although the musicians displayed competence and occasional flashes of invention, their recordings generally emerged as inferior echoes of the West Coast psychedelic bands that plainly shaped them.
Veteran arranger Alan Lorber, a chief architect of the Bosstown Sound, produced Ultimate Spinach. In September 1967 he unveiled a marketing scheme in the leading trade publications that aimed, in his own words from the liner notes to Big Beat’s reissue of the band’s debut, to make Boston “a target city for the development of new artists from one geographical location.” The strategy immediately invited scorn from the hip underground, because authentic regional movements such as San Francisco psychedelia—the very style the Bosstown Sound frequently appeared to imitate—arise organically rather than through deliberate manufacture. MGM issued most Bosstown Sound releases, and Lorber secured distribution for two of his productions, Orpheus and Ultimate Spinach, through that label.
On the first two of the group’s three albums, leader Ian Bruce-Douglas exercised complete control, composing every song, delivering most lead vocals, and performing on numerous instruments, especially electric keyboards. The self-titled debut, issued in 1967, presented an earnestly psychedelic mixture whose results often turned unintentionally comic. Bruce-Douglas’s compositions veered between humorless cosmic pronouncements and equally solemn attacks on mainstream society. The music replicated the structural and textural approaches of West Coast psychedelic acts the Doors, the Jefferson Airplane, and Country Joe & the Fish, yet registered as awkward imitations. Bruce-Douglas devised fluid, reedy keyboard figures on pieces such as “Sacrifice of the Moon,” yet on “Baroque #1” he approached outright plagiarism of Country Joe & the Fish’s “The Masked Marauder.” Occasional vocals by guitarist Barbara Hudson and Baroque-classical flourishes in certain arrangements supplied occasional elegance, and the album achieved respectable sales.
Behold and See, also released in 1968, followed a comparable course but with greater restraint. The change proved mixed: keyboard-centered instrumentals comparable to “Sacrifice of the Moon” were absent, Barbara Hudson contributed no lead vocals (though guest Carol Lee Britt did), and Bruce-Douglas’s writing remained awkwardly grandiose. After completing the second album, the enigmatic Bruce-Douglas dissolved the band, leaving Lorber with a third album already slated for release. A new lineup was formed, retaining only Barbara Hudson from the original roster. Augmented by Ted Myers, formerly of Lost and Chamaeleon Church, and guitarist Jeff Baxter, later a member of Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, this configuration recorded III. The resulting album offered an unfocused blend of psychedelic, hard-rock, and pop elements that suggested the work of multiple ensembles.
Big Beat in the U.K. reissued all three Ultimate Spinach albums on CD during the mid-’90s.
Veteran arranger Alan Lorber, a chief architect of the Bosstown Sound, produced Ultimate Spinach. In September 1967 he unveiled a marketing scheme in the leading trade publications that aimed, in his own words from the liner notes to Big Beat’s reissue of the band’s debut, to make Boston “a target city for the development of new artists from one geographical location.” The strategy immediately invited scorn from the hip underground, because authentic regional movements such as San Francisco psychedelia—the very style the Bosstown Sound frequently appeared to imitate—arise organically rather than through deliberate manufacture. MGM issued most Bosstown Sound releases, and Lorber secured distribution for two of his productions, Orpheus and Ultimate Spinach, through that label.
On the first two of the group’s three albums, leader Ian Bruce-Douglas exercised complete control, composing every song, delivering most lead vocals, and performing on numerous instruments, especially electric keyboards. The self-titled debut, issued in 1967, presented an earnestly psychedelic mixture whose results often turned unintentionally comic. Bruce-Douglas’s compositions veered between humorless cosmic pronouncements and equally solemn attacks on mainstream society. The music replicated the structural and textural approaches of West Coast psychedelic acts the Doors, the Jefferson Airplane, and Country Joe & the Fish, yet registered as awkward imitations. Bruce-Douglas devised fluid, reedy keyboard figures on pieces such as “Sacrifice of the Moon,” yet on “Baroque #1” he approached outright plagiarism of Country Joe & the Fish’s “The Masked Marauder.” Occasional vocals by guitarist Barbara Hudson and Baroque-classical flourishes in certain arrangements supplied occasional elegance, and the album achieved respectable sales.
Behold and See, also released in 1968, followed a comparable course but with greater restraint. The change proved mixed: keyboard-centered instrumentals comparable to “Sacrifice of the Moon” were absent, Barbara Hudson contributed no lead vocals (though guest Carol Lee Britt did), and Bruce-Douglas’s writing remained awkwardly grandiose. After completing the second album, the enigmatic Bruce-Douglas dissolved the band, leaving Lorber with a third album already slated for release. A new lineup was formed, retaining only Barbara Hudson from the original roster. Augmented by Ted Myers, formerly of Lost and Chamaeleon Church, and guitarist Jeff Baxter, later a member of Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers, this configuration recorded III. The resulting album offered an unfocused blend of psychedelic, hard-rock, and pop elements that suggested the work of multiple ensembles.
Big Beat in the U.K. reissued all three Ultimate Spinach albums on CD during the mid-’90s.
Albums
