164. The Youngbloods - Elephant Mountain (1969)





















Track Listing

1. Darkness Darkness
2. Smug
3. On Sir Francis Drake
4. Sunlight
5. Double Sunlight
6. Beautiful
7. Turn It Over
8. Rain Song (Don't Let The Rain Bring You Down)
9. Trillium
10. Quicksand
11. Black Mountain Breakdown
12. Sham
13. Ride The Wind

Review

Well, this is an exceedingly hard album to get. It's not on Napster, if you want to buy it in the US you have to part with 100$ and in the UK with £147... not fun. Even eMule makes it hard to get, you can download a discography, with very poor sound and that's about it. It occasionally shows up on eBay, and that would be your best bet.

I get why it is so hard to get, as it really isn't that mindblowing. There are some good tracks and it's a nice kind of folksy with some rock elements, but it won't change your life.

The first track on the album is really the best thing in it, sounding very modern in fact and it wouldn't be out of place in a modern "Americana" album, with its clean folk-rock and catchy tune.

Maybe it shouldn't be as forgotten as it is now, as it is a quite pleasant album, but it really doesn't smack you over the head. So if you want to burn some money buy it at Amazon UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Darkness, Darkness
2. On Sir Francis Drake
3. Quicksand
4. Ride The Wind

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

The Youngblood's greatest hit Let's Get Together:



From Wikipedia:

Once the lineup was set, Jesse Colin Young and the Youngbloods, as the group was then known, began building a reputation from their club dates. (Early demo sides recorded in 1965 were later issued by Mercury on the Two Trips album.) Their first gig had been at Gerde's Folk City in Greenwich Village; months later, they were the house band at the Cafe Au Go Go and had got a recording contract with RCA Records. Jesse, though, was not satisfied with the label. "Nobody at [RCA] was really mean or anything; everybody was just kind of stupid," he explained to Rolling Stone. "They never knew what to make of us, and tried to set us up as a bubblegum act...they never knew what we were, and never knew how to merchandise us."

The arrangement did produce one charting single in "Grizzly Bear" (#52, 1967). Several critically praised albums followed--The Youngbloods (1967; later retitled Get Together), Earth Music (1967), and Elephant Mountain (1969). When their version of the "Get Together," a paean to universal brotherhood first appeared, it did not sell too well (#62, 1967). But two years later--after the National Council of Christians and Jews used the song as their theme song on television and radio spots--the track was re-released and cracked the top five.