AFTER BATHING AT BAXTER'S

Bathing at Baxter's is JA's most psychedelic and experimental album and an important one in the proto-prog genre. Musically, it has a lot of things going on which aren't noticable on the first few listens. From the guitar feedback screech on the opener you can already hear that they were doing their own thing followed by jangly guitars and dramatic harmonizing. Next up is "A Small Package", a weird jingly avante-garde piece that was ahead of its time. Although this is certainly an aquired taste. The blues influenced "Young Girl Sunday Blues" follows and is one personal favourite with Marty Balin's unique vocals. But the best track of all is the acoustic-folk song "Martha", which is very unusual with more great vocals. One thing notable about JA was their excellent rhythm section, especially on "Last Wall Of The Castle" with its rumbling fuzzy bass and drums over the razor sharp guitar. "Rejoyce" is another very interesting piece on the album with its mixture of exotic styles. Again, this was very progressive for its time and still sounds different today. In all however, I much prefer the band's fourth album "Crown Of Creation", but this is worth a few spins to capture the ultimate late-60's San Francisco sound!