The Wizards From Kansas
' eponymous album finds this Midwestern group sounding more like a West Coast hybrid combining rambling, melancholy
country-rock
elements with harder
psych-rock
sounds. Their biggest influences seem to have been Northern California-based groups like the
Jefferson Airplane
,
Quicksilver Messenger Service
, and
the Grateful Dead
, and it shouldn't really come as a shock to discover that
the Wizards From Kansas
was recorded in San Francisco, between July and August of 1970. By the time the album was released, in October 1970, two of the band's five members had already quit the band, choosing instead to focus on playing
jazz
, and so
the Wizards
were essentially kaput, with a new album in the bins but no band available to promote it. The band's guitarist,
Robert Manson Crain
(who is credited here as C. Manson Roberts), wrote six of the nine originals, including the warbling,
country-ish
"Hey Mister,"
"Misty Mountainside,"
"Country Dawn,"
and
"She Rides With Witches."
They also cover
Billy Edd Wheeler
's
"High Flying Bird,"
an awesome
folk-psych
track that was previously waxed by the
during one of their first recording sessions in late 1965 (it wasn't released until their 1965-1970 compendium of unreleased tracks,
Early Flight
). This classic was also covered by celebrated
folk
artists, including
Judy Henske
Richie Havens
, among others, but here it gets a visceral
workout, highlighted by
Crain
's guitar. Their lengthy cover of
Buffy Sainte-Marie
"Codine"
is excellent as well, and obviously inspired by
Quicksilver
's jam version, which approximated the one popularized by
the Charlatans
. In 1993, the
Afterglow
label reissued this long out-of-print album on CD for the first time. Incidentally, the back of the original album jacket credits the bandmembers as
Robert Joseph Menadier
(Monster Bass & Vocal Grace),
Marc Evan Caplan
(Snakey Snakes & Footler Breaks),
John Paul Coffin
(Guitar Lead & Strings That Bleed),
(Twelve String Roll & Songs of Soul),
Harold Earl Pierce
(Rhythm Machines & Vocalized Dreams). ~ Bryan Thomas