IT'S A BEAUTIFUL DAY

The late 60s psychedelic scene produced a huge number of exciting bands, many of whom created exciting music that destroyed prevailing boundaries that existed within the music industry and paved the way for progressive rock. Whether It's A Beautiful Day is more progressive than its comtemporaries Love, Jefferson Airplane, Sprit, The Doors, Quicksilver Messenger Service and The Grateful Dead is certainly debatable. What is not in doubt is that this is an outstanding psych classic by an underrated band.

White Bird is one outstanding song, with great flute (or is it the celeste imitatiting a flute) and violin passages. Some might claim that David LaFlame's vocals should not have been allowed to drown out Pattie Santos' contributions and while I'd like to have heard more of her over the course of the album I think the combination works for this wonderful track. Hot Summer Day continues in a similar vibe with organ, harmonica and wah-wah guitar added to the mix, while the heavy blues-rock Wasted Union Blues proves a surprising change of pace, with some fiery violin work from LaFlame, whose then-wife Linda also deserves a mention for her great keyboard playing throughout this record.

The delicate Girl With No Eyes is a real heartbreaker. With a glorious mixture of harpischord, flute, organ, violin and classical guitar, this delightful slice of Baroque-pop alone should be enough to win any hard-core proggie over. The funny thing about this song is that every time I hear it I decide that its my new favourite song on the album, but when I spend time away from the album, White Bird sticks in my mind more!

If you've never heard the instrumental Bombay Calling before, it will come as a real surprise to you, because Deep Purple ripped off the intro and melody for their stunning song Child In Time. With another heady mix of organ, violin and wordless vocals, this is a lovely psychedelia-drenched song. Bulgaria is a deeper darker stoned exploration that I really enjoy. Time Is another surprising stomper that really rocks along for nearly 10 minutes without getting boring. Piano and bass does most of the driving, the organ solo is very nice, and even the Val Fuentes drum solo is very much to my taste (although perhaps a little too similar to some of the work Iron Butterfly's Ron Bushy laid down on In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida).

I must say that of all the great psych records I own, this is the one I can see appealing most consistently to prog-rock fans. ... 78% on the MPV scale