MR. FANTASY

What I know of this album is its UK version, and it's one of my favourite albums ever. Prog- Folk, here, is not the right definition, being the 1968 Traffic an amazing proto-prog- psychedelic band which could (and can) dare facing any other competitors (early Pink Floyd included) and influence "Their Majesties" The Beatles (who openly admitted inspiring themselves to Traffic's "Mr Fantasy" - the song - while composing their classic "Hey Jude"). Someone wrote "it sounds old-fashioned", but I really think that Mr Fantasy is timeless, and better of any other album Traffic recorded since then. It witnesses the open-minded, free, courious and fearless musical and cultural environment of the late 1960s, when musicians dared without pretending to be too self-concious and just for the love of music, and with the guts of sounding divinely "naive", spontaneous and even outrageous. So, the humourous "Berkshire Poppies", with the band laughing and even burping, is everything punk rock has never been, and ten years before the Sex Pistols would pose on TV."Heaven is in Your Mind" is an optimistic and lively psychedelic crescendo, while the strange structure of "House for Everyone" (most of all for its use of drums and mellotron) seems to foreshadow contemporary techno music. "No face, no name, no number" is one of the most intense and beautiful ballads you'll ever happen to hear, while "Coloured Rain" manages to render in less than three minutes what Canterbury bands tried to express in their lengthy suites. This was the spirit of early prog-rock, and the whole genre had better remember it!