I must admit, the band named "Ultimate Spinach" hasn't aged well. I think a lot of people pass them by just due to their name. But in my opinion, they were one of the better psychedelic bands. They were probably the most famous band to come out of Boston in that era.
Their main creative force was Ian Bruce-Douglas. He played several instruments including guitar, keyboards, harmonica, sang lead for most of the songs, and wrote most of the songs. But they also had a female vocalist, Barbara Jean Hudson, who sang lead a fair amount. They released two albums, "Ultimate Spinach," which came out just a few days into 1968, and "Behold and See," which came out later that same year. They were well received critically, and sold okay. (Their first album made the Top Forty on the U.S. album chart.) However, the band essentially broke up by the end of the year. They released one more album in 1969, but it was mainly just a contractual obligation thing. Most band members, including Bruce-Douglas, left by then.
Here's a link to the band's Wikipedia page:
This concert took place a good six months before the release of their first album. According to their Wikipedia article, for a time, they were the "house band" at this venue, the Unicorn Coffee House. But they must not have been very well known when this was recorded, because the audience only numbered a couple dozen, at best, judging by the sound of the cheering. So it's a very pleasant surprise that we have this excellent sounding soundboard recording. It appears to be the only worthy sounding bootleg by the band, and no live album was ever released.
Most of these songs appeared on the band's debut album. But one, which many fan consider their best song, "Mind Flowers," wouldn't appear until their second album. They started out with two covers, "Hey Joe" and "Let's Get Together."
The sound quality here is great. However, the applause was missing for most of the songs. This was common in that era, when people would often turn off tape recorders between songs to save tape. But there were about three songs that did have complete applause. So I basically used those bits to fill in the missing applause for the other songs. I used various tricks, like combining applause from different songs, so each one sounded a bit different.
This album is 46 minutes long.
01 Hey Joe (Ultimate Spinach)
02 Let's Get Together (Ultimate Spinach)
03 I Don't Know (Ultimate Spinach)
04 Funny Freak Parade (Ultimate Spinach)
05 Don't Let These Years Go By (Ultimate Spinach)
06 Don't Cry for Me (Ultimate Spinach)
07 Follow Me (Ultimate Spinach)
08 [Ballad of The] Hip Death Goddess (Ultimate Spinach)
09 Mind Flowers (Ultimate Spinach)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/6yy3cXXf
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/en/0dguPrIeUuq8mf2/file
There are very few photos of this band at all, and I couldn't find any of them actually in concert. I don't know any details about this one. The original was in black and white, but I found a colorized version. Then I used the Krea AI program to improve the quality a little bit.
Wow-nice find!
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