THE ADVENTURES OF KAPTAIN KOPTER & COMMANDER CASSIDY IN POTATO LAND

If you took a little bit of Zappa’s odd self-musings, added some Gap Band funk, some detached Bowie-meets-Barney vocals, maybe a little Prince for style, and wrapped it all up with a catchy dance beat, you’d be pretty close to matching the sound of this album. This is Randy California’s belated Sgt Pepper’s, and although I think it would be a stretch to call this progressive music, it’s definitely way better than simple pop.

California recorded his first solo album, also the first Kaptain Kopter album, shortly after his brief departure from Spirit, which was also shortly after whacking his noggin falling of a horse and turning kind of goofy. The three events were presumably all related. Anyway, this is the follow-up, and features most of the band except keyboardist John Locke, and the most obvious difference besides the H.R. Pufnstuf cartoonish- psychedelic feel, is the obvious lack of jazz-influenced tempos or arrangements. So I guess Locke was the one who fed that into the band, not drummer Ed Cassidy as was commonly thought.

There’s really no point in belaboring each track here. They are woven together into some sort of PG-rated acid trip, full of oddly articulated vocals like Bowie (only not as good), simple but catchy beats, and most of all some of the best guitar strumming and picking California ever did after Dr Sardonicus. I believe this was actually recorded in the early seventies, but was shelved as unmarketable until fan demand and a soft market led to its release in 1981. I’m glad, because it’s an interesting album full of great guitar, funky keyboards, and brain-candy rhythms.

The strongest tracks are the trippy “Potatoland Theme”; the surprisingly lucid “Turn to the Right” (which features a ripping guitar solo by California), and the down-home bluesy “Donut House”, probably the only rock song I’ve ever heard about eating donuts.

The one that sounds most like Spirit (really the only one that sounds like Spirit) also features a guest appearance by Locke, “Fish Fry Road”. Excellent fuzzy guitar, Utopia- like blended vocals, and that darn jazzy keyboard. This one is almost worth the trip, although this CD could set you back a bit unless you can find a used copy somewhere. Fortunately, there are still cutout copies of this floating around some old record stores if you’re willing to look.

This isn’t really excellent, especially not for Spirit, but it’s pretty good, so three stars isn’t really a stretch, and that’s what I’ll give it. Recommended if you can find it cheap.

peace

A record with an interesting story. A goofy concept album originally recorded in 1974, it was shelved for years before it was cleaned up an finally released on Rhino Records in 1981. The original lineup of Spirit was long defunct by 1974, but Randy California and Ed Cassidy had still been putting out quality material as a duo (albeit much different from the original Spirit sound) for a few years.

The concept itself is pretty light, just a science fiction thing depicting a world in which the people are potatoes and carelessly march to their own demise in the fryer, or something like that. Within this scenario, our heroes, adventure seekers Kaptain Kopter (California) and Commander Cassidy (Cassidy) wander the landscape and comment on what they see. Bits of dialogue and sound effects come between some fully-fleshed out songs. Nothing really happens, though - it's just kind of goofy fun. On the other side of the record, we just have a few stand alone songs, including one that had to have been recorded in the 80s, the corny synth-dance piece "Potatoland Theme". On the whole, the album is mostly just a curiosity, not really the "lost classic" that true believers maintain it is, but it's a bit of fun and the songs are generally good to great - the best being the insanely catchy instant classic "Turn to the Right" and the even more jangly melodic "My Friend".