A cut-price sampler album opened the doors of perception to those with a yearning for 'progressive' music It cost 14s 11d (just under 75p) and changed my life. The Rock Machine Turns You On , a cut-price sampler of new tracks from the CBS label, was the must-have album in the spring of 1968 for those of us who regarded ourselves, unselfconsciously and without irony, as fans of "underground" or "progressive" music. Alongside a few people we'd heard of – the Byrds, Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel – were weird and wonderful new American artists such as Moby Grape, the Electric Flag, the Peanut Butter Conspiracy and the United States of America, and a Canadian singer-songwriter called Leonard Cohen. Believe me, these people were a lot more interesting than Herman's Hermits and Freddie & the Dreamers. Together with John Peel's new Radio 1 show (launched the previous year), the CBS samplers – Rock Machine I Love You and the lavish double albums Fill Your Head with Rock and Rockbuster followed – opened up an impossibly exciting new world typified by Spirit's exotic Fresh-Garbage. Spirit comprised a brilliant guitarist, former Hendrix sideman Randy California; his 44-year-old stepfather, Ed Cassidy, who on his day hit his drums so hard that you feared ...
Guardian music
11 May 2012