Spirit - Our Topanga Home - Non-Album Tracks (1967-1968)

I've posted a couple of live albums of the band Spirit, but this is the first stray tracks album from them. There's more coming.

Spirit was formed in 1967, and they did some recordings that year. But their debut album, simply called "Spirit," wasn't released until 1968. All but the last two songs here are from 1967, so it turns out they had enough stray tracks from 1967 for a pretty decent album of originals. (I think the only cover here is the often covered "Hey Joe.") One might call the band "psychedelic," but maybe it's more accurate to say they were good at combining rock with jazzy elements. That's definitely the case here, with many of the songs being jazzy instrumentals.

All the songs here are officially released, so the sound quality is generally excellent. They come from a variety of sources. Some are bonus tracks, others are from later archival compilations. One, "Eventide," comes from an obscure movie soundtrack released in 1968.

There are two live songs here, "Soundtrack for a Moth" and "Our Topanga Home." The band had an extended residency at a Los Angeles club called the Ash Grove. Both of these songs, plus all three of the bonus tracks, were recorded there. There's a lot more live recordings from there as well that I didn't include. Unfortunately, nearly all of these recordings suffer from problems with the vocals. It sounds like the singer sang too close and overwhelmed the microphone. "Soundtrack for a Moth" avoided that problem because it's an instrumental. "Our Topanga Home" has a slight problem with the vocals, but I guess mostly that was a lucky exception.

You can definitely hear the problem with the three bonus tracks. They're all nice original songs that I would really like to include as more than bonus tracks. But the vocals are all messed up. If anyone thinks they can fix or at least improve this problem, please let me know. That could fix even more music than just these few songs. For instance, I have a bootleg concert of the band at Ash Grove in 1967 that would sound great but for that exact same vocals problem, so I'm currently not posting it because of that.

This album is 41 minutes long.

01 Veruska [Instrumental] (Spirit)
02 If I Had a Woman (Spirit)
03 Free Spirit [Instrumental] (Spirit)
04 Darlin' (Spirit)
05 Hey Joe (Spirit)
06 I Can't Stand It (Spirit)
08 Soundtrack for a Moth [Instrumental] (Spirit)
01 Our Topanga Home (Spirit)
10 Elijah [Alternate Version] [Instrumental] (Spirit)
11 Green Gorilla (Spirit)
12 Eventide [Instrumental] (Spirit)

Say Your Name (Spirit)
She Gave Me a Present (Spirit)
Tell Everyone (Spirit)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15323013/Spirt_1967-1968_OurTpangaHome_atse.zip.html

This promo photo was taken in 1967 or 1968. The colors were washed out, but I did some fixes using Photoshop. I think a version of it appeared on one of their archival albums.