SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Prog Folk Researcher
...the last Spirit album he released just a few weeks before his untimely demise.
The music here isn't as important as the fact that California finally seemed to have found peace after many years of personal struggles and lack of recognition for his inspiring songwriting skills, and for his incredible oneness with the guitar. This album demonstrates the ease with which he was able to pick up a guitar and make it sing any way he wanted to. If you ever get a chance to see some video footage of Spirit live you'll see that he played almost effortlessly, yet managed to lay down licks that still amaze and inspire guitarists today. His idealistic lyrics seem out-of-place today; indeed, they kind of seemed out-of-place when he wrote many of them in the eighties and nineties. But he was never a slave to fashion, preferring instead to make a path in his own way and let the rest of us get on board, or not.