The Ultimate Prophecy ［LP+CD］

J.D. Blackfoot's first LP -- recorded when future Pure Prairie League member Craig Fuller was in the lineup -- was a curious affair that very much reflected prevalent trends in the world of album-oriented rock in 1970. The songs were diverse enough that they sounded as if they could have been the work of several bands, and emulated more famous acts in both good and bad ways. The first side of the album was definitely the more song-oriented one, and while the better tracks are derivative, they're pretty good derivations. Fuller's "One Time Woman" is very much in the mold of journeyman Creedence Clearwater Revival; "Angel" quite credibly approximates the kind of light, wistful folk-rock that Jesse Colin Young sang with the Youngbloods; and "I've Never Seen You" brings to mind the lightest, sweetest material of the young Neil Young. The second side, however, takes a turn for the more bombastically progressive, offering a song suite of sorts with much of the pretentious lyricism-mysticism to which this genre was particularly prone. The multi-movement structure used by some British art rock bands of the time is dusted with some West Coast psychedelic-influenced guitar arrangements, and the lyrical vision dragged down by such passages as (in "Cycles") "for my mind is but the sperm, and this earth be the womb," spoken a la some of the Moody Blues' portentous narrations. ~ Richie Unterberger