“Spirit of ‘76” was a record born in a half way house somewhere between Woodstock, CSNY, Voodoo Chile and Reagan, MTV and the Miracle On Ice. A milestone marker between the opiated 60s reverie and the birth of 21st century man in all his and her ironic, detached, careless, dystopian, greed-is-good, self-grandour. The half decade just before all the Patti Hearsts decided being uber fucking rich at the expense of the uber fucking poor was going to be just fine dandy with them.

It maps an era defined by Donald Defreeze, by Nixon’s unpardonable pardon, by Johnny Wadd, by the final collapse of South Vietnam and by the Broad Street Bullies. Sex as sport. Sport as war. War as spectator pastime. Politics as soap opera. America on the brink of apparently inevitable economic and social disaster. 

Class war. Race war. Gender war. Manson logic. My Lai logic. Karantina logic. Revolution was gonna be televised. Or so it seemed.

If you want a zeitgeist listen from that era then “Spirit Of ‘76” is the record most deserving of the critical plaudits latterly showered by Mojo Man upon the tawdry, smeared, compact mirror that is “Hotel California”. 

It’s the ultimate low-energy, end-of-the-hippie-party album made by the baddest loosest bar band in the west, out on their feet and stationed permanently on some purgatorial highway of the imagination between Big Sur and Erewhon. 

It’s soft rock with sharp edges. Crystalline, all at sea, bobbing around with no visible means of floatation on the oceans of inner space. The sound is gossamer thin but rocks hard with enormous delicacy. Randy California’s out of phase channelling of Hendrix and Dylan allows for none of the faux funk, proto-disco and jazz-rock elitism that were the escape hatches for bloated soul-sellers like the Doobie Brothers, Little Feat and the Dead. 

“Spirit Of ‘76” is the husk of west coast rock and roll cast in the role of a unmasked, defrocked, pants-down, serially gang-banged phoney saviour. Where The Eagles felt sorry for themselves (pity the poor cokeheads) Spirit say “fuck it, all things must pass”. 

And all these things, all these bad vibes, are redeemed by a core optimism that is born out of very un-English notions of patriotism — a core belief in the essential beauty and goodness of home soil rather than tribal nationalism. Literally a love of the land come-what-may*. 

Play this back to back with Bowie’s “Station to Station” and you can visualise, with stunning lasarium-like holographic clarity, mainstream mid 70s Anglo-American rock and roll as a field of broken hearts and bodies just aching for fat line of speed and a fresh dream.

Sadly this is the last we see of Spirit before the Randy California band brand joined George Clinton in space fantasy, afro-hippie cosmic utopianism. And it’s the last we see of Randy California in the studio as a vital, optimistic (rather than escapist or nostalgic) forward-thrusting musical force.

* if this sounds kind of familiar check out the “Silbury Moon”-like chat on the Rainbow 78 version of “Looking Down”