MR. FANTASY

Mr. Fantasy seemed like a no-brainer - - an album that had to be good. First, I'd been very impressed with Traffic's 1970 album John Barleycorn Must Die and its follow-up, The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys. I also liked Traffic's debut single, "Paper Sun," released a few months before Mr. Fantasy. There was also the fact that I knew of and liked the title track, "Dear Mr. Fantasy."

In opening the proceedings, "Heaven is in Your Mind" signals that this album would at least acknowledge the Motown affinity singer-pianist Steve Winwood had displayed on the Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'." A good start - - but as it turns out, "Dear Mr. Fantasy" and "Heaven is in Your Mind" are the only strong tracks on Mr. Fantasy.

According to Wikipedia, Traffic recorded Mr. Fantasy between April and November of 1967. At the end of May, the Beatles' monumental Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released, and it's hard to picture what Mr. Fantasy might've sounded like without the Beatles influence. The individual songs on Traffic's debut don't sound like Fab Four knockoffs, but from the stylistic approach (including having two divergent songwriters) to the diverse instrumentation to the juxtaposition of thoughtfulness (e.g., "No Face, No Name, No Number," "Hope I Never Find Me There") and amusing irreverence ("Berkshire Poppies" and especially "Hole in My Shoe," which appeared on the US release of the album), Mr. Fantasy is heavily Beatlesque. But unlike other late-1960s LPs sometimes considered "proto-prog,"Mr. Fantasy has not aged well.

Aside from the derivative feel, a major deficiency is the mismatch between Dave Mason's clever, from-the-head compositions, and the more from-the-heart songs jointly credited to Jim Capaldi, Winwood, and Chris Wood (or sometimes just to Capaldi-Winwood). Thus, the album is a collection of disparate songs rather than a synergistic whole à la Sgt. Pepper. But ultimately, my issue with Mr. Fantasy is the quality of the material. "No Face, No Name, No Number" and "Coloured Rain" are decent album cuts, which leaves six sub-par tracks. Replacing three of these with the singles "Smiling Phases," "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush," and "Paper Sun" would probably have made for a three-star album.

If you're a Traffic enthusiast or a fan of any of the individual members, you probably already have Mr. Fantasy and/or the superior US variant Heaven is in Your Mind. For anyone else I'd suggest any Traffic compilation which includes both of the title songs: "Dear Mr. Fantasy" and "Heaven is in Your Mind," including the two-CD Traffic Gold, the single disc sets 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection: The Best of Traffic and Feelin' Alright: The Very Best of Traffic, and the four-CD Winwood collections The Finer Things and Revolutions - - The Very Best of Steve Winwood. Most of these also have "Smiling Phases" and "Paper Sun."

P.S. There are just over a thousand singles and albums inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Sixty-nine of these are rock albums released after 1966 (this includes punk, country rock - - any kind of rock). So we're talking about albums like Abbey Road, All Things Must Pass, Born to Run, Blood on the Tracks, Hotel California, Rumors, Tommy, and the White Album. Mr. Fantasy is also one of those albums. So take my advice with a proverbial grain of salt.