TOUCH [AKA: 20-20 SOUND]

When it comes to the history of progressive rock it is the English scene that pretty much gets most of the credit for transmogrifying the disparate genres of jazz, psychedelic rock and classical music into a potpourri of innovative art rock that has waxed and waned in popularity over the years but nevertheless elevated the rock paradigm to the same standards as the most highly developed art forms. When one ponders the question of just exactly where ground zero was for the world of prog, it is often cited that King Crimson with its revolutionary "In The Court Of The Crimson King" was spark that set off the explosion of creativity that followed the 1969 game changing album. But things in the world of music are really never quite so black and white of course.

If one were to pinpoint an exact moment of where the seeds of prog were sown, it's fairly agreed upon that The Beatles and its groundbreaking 1967 album "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club" single-handedly raised the bar of art rock for many generations to come and thus was the primary impetus for taking the rock and roll scene into the hi brow sophistication of contemporary jazz and classical music only without eschewing the attributes of what make rock music, well rock and roll! After The Beatles dropped their bomb on the world it became somewhat of an arms race to take rock into strange new worlds never considered and by the end of 1967, The Moody Blues released its classic "Days Of Future Passed" which hybridized its 60s beat music with the classical backing of The London Festival Orchestra. A new era of rock music had clearly begun.

While it would take a couple more years for the prog rock perfection of KC's "Crimson King" to hit the scene, the world of nascent prog rock was by no means solely an English phenomenon. The Swedish Hansson & Karlsson with its emphasis on tricky psych fueled keyboard sophistication is often considered the first progressive rock album while bands like The Savage Rose and Burnin Red Ivanhoe were brewing in nations like Denmark. Even the Eastern European nation of Hungry spawned a band named Omega which dropped its debut "10000 Lépés" in 1969. Despite the fact that prog wasn't exclusively an English phenomenon, the truth is the bands from jolly ole England were the most successful and most recognized internationally having nurtured the world of symphonic prog with The Moody Blues and The Nice as well as the more jazz-fusion oriented Canterbury sounds of The Soft Machine and Caravan.

The United States may have not been on the radar for most but on that side of the Atlantic, Frank Zappa and his Mothers of Invention were hard at work crafting some of the first avant-prog infused jazz-fusion workouts and although the most famous of the American scene was not the only one by far to craft some of the first expressions of fully developed progressive rock. The Los Angeles based TOUCH has remained an underground enigma since it entered the scene in 1968 when it emerged from the prior band The Kingsmen followed by Don and Good Times. The band was led by Don Gallucci (vocals, keyboards) and included the members Jeff Hawks (vocals), Bruce Hauser (vocals, bass), Joey Newman (vocals, guitars) and John Bordonaro (vocals, percussion).

TOUCH existed for only a brief moment in time and lasted barely long enough to record and release its sole eponymously titled album before moving on. Gallucci would become more famous as a producer for The Stooges however despite being virtually ignored upon its 1969 release (some claim this to have been released in November 1968), TOUCH has in many circles become considered to have crafted the first true progressive rock album from the USA since even though Frank Zappa was up to his shenanigans as early as 1966, the earliest recordings are nowadays considered experimental blues rock as opposed to fully developed prog. Same goes for other prog tinged bands like Boston's Earth Opera.

Although emerging from the psych scene that permeated the late 1960s, TOUCH took things to the next level on its sole album with extended compositional grandiosity, virtuosic musicianship and a total disregard for commercial acceptance by nurturing every aspect of over-indulgence. The result was an album that sounded like a direct predecessor of both Yes and King Crimson although admittedly not quite as satisfying melodically speaking. While the elements of prog rock had clearly been established on TOUCH's album, the band was still relying on the aesthetics and zeitgeist of the 60s psychedelic pop and soul rock bands rather than taking the musical approach into the fully mature prog that KC would launch at the 11th hour of the 1960s. Nevertheless, TOUCH's sole album is a beautiful transition album from the proto-prog leanings of bands like Procol Harum and Spirit to the the real shebang with extended compositional fortitude, oddball time signatures and a daring brashness missing from the more pop oriented bands that preceded.

The album exudes sort of a drunken party vibe that was graced by a whopping $25,000 advance by the Coliseum Records label and a celebratory giddiness that embraced as many stylistic approaches as possible. The recording of the album became legendary within the inner circles and even attracted Grace Slick, Mick Jagger and Jimi Hendrix to the recording studios to watch the band unleash its unique potpourri of early progressive rock. This is one of those albums that really sounds like absolutely nothing else that has ever been recorded. The album was crafted at that unique juncture where the psychedelic rock of yore was quickly evolving into a higher art form that vacuumed up as many attributes as possible from the world of jazz, Western classical and the myriad of ethnic folk flavors from around the world. One minute the album exudes a trippy psychedelic haze and then abruptly and without warning can erupt into a Turtles-like sunshine pop sequence that evokes an early rendering of a rock opera like "Jesus Christ Superstar." At certain moments on the closing track "Seventy Five" vocalist Jeff Hawks is a dead ringer for Jon Anderson and briefly sounds like an early version of Yes.

TOUCH's sole offering is a difficult release to get into at first. The album seems unsure of itself and where it wants to go therefore it simply throws down the gauntlet and indulges in as much excess as possible. While many could consider this a meandering mess, the album has grown on me after really letting it sink in and lapping up the flavors of that unique moment in time when the hippie ideals of the Summer of Love were swerving into a more grounded realism of the nuanced gray colored nature of the world. The music reflects this period and offers a glimpse into how the first ambitious hunger pangs of progressive music were taking their first baby steps into the greater world of hi-brow sophistication that would require the English artists to bring to fully implemented fruition. Sure the album sounds a bit naive and cluttered at times but the beauty of this one is in how utterly unpredictable one moment is to the next. A veritable mix of psychedelia, heavy psych, jazz rock and full blown prog offer mind blowing hairpin turns and exotically crafted jaunts into never never land. A full blown masterpiece? Not really but definitely an excellent display of transitional psych prog that doesn't leave you bored for even a scant moment. The enthusiasm on this one is rather infectious.