no brainer
love
oh come on! well, let’s hear your argument anyway.
“no brainer”
Forever Changes > any Spirit album
But Spirit had a greater number of excellent LPs. I’ve said before that I don’t care much for the s/t Love LP or Da Capo. I LOVE the first four Spirit records.
Dude, Ian, you got Four Sail?
And you don’t care much for side one of Da Capo??
I actually only have this one:
which is really good but is not Da Capo or Forever Changes or Four Sail.
I actually don’t have Four Sail.
I guess side one of Da Capo is good, but I never ever listen to it. :\
how representative is Sprit’s music from the film “Model Shop” compared to the rest of their output? It sounded fairly whatever (see the movie if you dig them, they’re in it, more or less as themselves)
Funny, I was just discussing Spirit and Love with my aunt. Gonna go with Love here.
spirit were great! but i love love with a love that loves to love.
ian OTM.
forever changes is better than any one spirit album, but spirit burned bright longer.
Four Sail is criminally underrated (or at least was, the reissue has helped a bit)
four sail is awesome. lots of people love four sail.
I’ve never heard a whole Spirit album, but none of them could be as half-assed as Forever Changes, so Spirit.
arthur lee always ordered the full bottle of wine
calling forever changes half-assed is the most WTF thing i’ve ever heard you say, dude.
*DONOTFEEDTHELOVEHURTSTROLL*
spirit doesn’t hurt like love hurts.
Not liking Forever Changes very much is the *RAREST OPINION I POSSESS*
Alone Again Or is a great song though.
I like “Forever Changes” just a little bit better than any Spirit album, though both “12 Dreams of dr Sardonicus” and “The Family that Plays together” are pretty close (& “The Family...” would maybe be as good w/a better number in place of “Darlin’ If”) but I don’t much like any of Love’s other albums, Spirit’s 1st 4 albums are fucking awesome as a whole, so I guess Spirit, just.
Spirit and love are inextricably intertwined. While it’s true that what we perceive as love proceeds from (and could not exist without) spirit, pure love is the fundamental essence of all spirit. Spirit is composed of love just as love is born from spirit. Chicken, egg, chicken, etc., infinitum.
That said, I’ll go with Love. Forever Changes is flat fucking brilliant, and let’s call Da Capo a great EP. While I’m not as up on my Spirit, they don’t have a single album I’d be inclined to call “brilliant,” and even their best tunes fall short of Love’s finest.
gotta go with LOVE but I have not heard that much Spirit (just Dr. Sardonicus and a best-of)
p.s. Da Capo has “Seven & Seven Is” !!
for me it’s a tie. love have better peaks (forever changes and the best songs on four sail) but spirit were more consistent as norman says. 12 dreams of dr sardonicus is a neglected classic.
wow, i would have expected some votes for spirit. not one?
personally, i prefer spirit, if only because i think “the family that plays together” just nudges out “forever changes”. maybe i’m just a fool for randy california’s guitar tone? or maybe i just like that “1983 (a merman i should be)” trip-mode jazz orchestra psych style better than flower power psych style.
love cuz they were heavier.
Love is pretty weird Flower Power psych.
really? what am i missing? maybe it’s just hindsight but i think something like “alone again or” is pretty standard flower-power sentiment and the sound is not that weird to me either ... it’s just west coast psych w/ added jose feliciano, right?
what am i missing people?
(a brane HAHA)
also i like spirit’s david axelrod soundalike instrumental jams. A LOT.
Yeah but “Alone Again Or” and “Old Man” are by far the lightest tracks on there. The rest of it is much darker/more paranoid/disjointed and lost sounding.
Vahid’s arguments are making me think my hunch is right. What Spirit album should I start with?
12 Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus is regarded as thier Forever Changes, but any of the first four are pretty good.
yeah the first four are all good.
be sure to get the remasters/reissues, because the bonus tracks are really, really great.
“alone again or” is a bryan maclean song, and his songs are softer/sweeter than arthur lee’s songs, which could be tender but more often aggressive/paranoid/trippy. someone who actually listened to the first 4 love albums, and highlights from the later stuff, would not be apt to describe them as hippy dippy, it’s not really accurate and way too restricting. there is some hard & fucked up shit on their records. when you read about arthur’s life, you understand why that is.
those posthumous bryan maclean records are oddities—dude had a heavy showtunes influence
12 Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus is regarded as thier Forever Changes,
didnt remember i was giving this comparison to the same guy who said:
none of them could be as half-assed as Forever Changes
!
...but you catch my drift anyway.
With Love, I always liked their more rocking sounding tracks like My Little Red Book, so I prefer their first album. Oddly enough, in the many records I have tried on other people, Forever Changes doesn’t have that good a success rate. Maybe it was always a bummer in the summer when I would put it on the turntable, but I have failed to convert people into Love.
Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus is great. I have had some pretty good luck playing when some Spirit for others, so I will vote for them.
i saw a mint copy of 12 dreams today in albuquerque for $3.99. wtf is wrong with people that it would be sitting there, unsold?!?!?
also this taking sides stuff is nonsense, both love and spirit were great.
also hurting is now verifiably insane. i always suspected as much but this thread really nails it.
My Little Red Book!!!! great song.
My mom was an ardent supporter of both bands when she was fourteen and knew both of them. She said she went out on a date with a member of Spirit when “Line On You” came on the radio once. My mom’s teenage years are still hipper than mine forty years removed from the trends being at their most fashionable.
also this taking sides stuff is nonsense, both love and spirit were great.
sure but this is just a thinly-veiled compare/contrast thread. i think “RFD” is a pretty lame thread-starter compared to “TS” anyway.
