Feedback
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Album Summary
Spirit's 'Feedback' came into the world in 1972 on Epic Records, and baby, it arrived under some heavy clouds. The band had lost their heart and soul — founding guitarist Randy California — and the remaining members, including the soulful keyboardist John Locke and the incomparable drummer Ed Cassidy, had to dig deep and find a way to keep the Spirit flame burning without him. What emerged was a harder, more blues-driven rock record, a different animal than the lush psychedelic journeys the band had taken their faithful listeners on before. It wasn't the Spirit everybody knew and loved, but it was a group of serious musicians refusing to lay down and quit, pressing forward into uncertain territory with everything they had left in the tank.
Reception
- Critics greeted 'Feedback' with a cool reception, with most reviewers pointing to the absence of Randy California as a wound the album simply couldn't heal — the consensus being that the band's distinctive creative magic had walked out the door with him.
- The album struggled commercially, failing to make a meaningful dent on the charts and marking one of the lowest points in the band's commercial history during this rocky transitional stretch.
- A handful of more sympathetic critics tipped their hats to the remaining members for holding the band together and delivering a respectable hard rock effort, even while acknowledging that 'Feedback' occupied a modest corner of Spirit's overall catalog.
Significance
- "Feedback" stands as a raw and honest historical document of Spirit navigating one of the most painful crossroads a band can face — the loss of an irreplaceable creative force — and choosing to push forward rather than fold, a testament to the stubborn survival instinct of early 1970s rock bands.
- The album reflects the wider cultural and musical shift happening across rock in the early seventies, as the dreamy colors of psychedelia faded and a harder, heavier, blues-soaked sound took hold of the landscape.
- Perhaps most significantly in the long arc of Spirit's story, 'Feedback' represents the darkness before the dawn — the difficult chapter that ultimately set the stage for Randy California's return and the band's creative resurrection in the years that followed.
Tracklist
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A1 Chelsea Girls 124
3:26
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A2 Cadillac Cowboys 123
3:33
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A3 Puesta Del Scam 106
2:04
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A4 Ripe And Ready 95
3:48
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A5 Darkness 114
4:47
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B1 Earth Shaker 177
3:55
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B2 Mellow Morning 143
2:25
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B3 Right On Time 174
2:43
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B4 Trancas Fog Out —
2:37
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B5 Witch 96
5:20
Artist Details
Spirit was a brilliant and beautifully strange band that came together in Los Angeles back in 1967, blending rock, jazz, blues, and psychedelia into something that didn't quite sound like anything else on the radio — their self-titled debut and the classic *Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus* from 1970 showed a band operating on a whole other cosmic level, led by the gifted Randy California on guitar alongside his stepfather, jazz drummer Ed Cassidy. They never got the massive mainstream recognition they deserved, but serious music lovers knew the truth — Spirit was one of the most adventurous and soulful acts to come out of the California rock scene, and their influence quietly ran deep through the roots of progressive and psychedelic rock for years to come.
