Spirit were a California based band lead by guitarist Randy Wolfe. He was renamed Randy California by Jimi Hendrix, when he played in Jimi´s band in 1965 as there was already another Randy in the band. Anyway, there is a brief history of the bands before Spirit to lead into the book and then we are straight into the first album in 1968. Each chapter has a bit of introduction to the era before heading into the tracks. There is a lot of information in this book and nice comments from a lot of the different band members (and there were a lot!).
In general, it is considered that the first 4 albums are the classic Spirt (Spirit, The Family that Plays Together, Clear and 12 Dreams of Dr Sardonicus). I have to admit, I am really only familiar with the last one, which is pretty cool. For most of the many albums in the Spirit discography, their has been a number of unreleased tracks, or versions, many of which have later appeared in box sets, compilations, reissues, etc. and all of this is described very well. At the end of the book Randy´s solo albums and Spirit live albums are discussed in separate sections.
Overall, this is very interesting and informative book about a pretty groundbreaking band when they came out and one that never really got huge recognition. An interesting read for sure..
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