Ultimate Spinach - Behold And See

It was legendary record producer Alan Lorber that came up with the concept of "The Bosstown Sound" - "The Sound Heard 'Round The World" to market and promote the best and brightest of the Bean Town sixties psychedelic scene. (Boston's key groups at the time included Orpheus, Beacon Street Union, Ultimate Spinach, Chamaeleon Church and others). The Ultimate Spinach, arguably the finest of them all, produced magnificent examples of surreal psychedelic record-making, now prized by crate-diggers and outsider music fans alike. The Spinach's self-titled debut album is now considered a psychedelic classic, but it's the group's second record, Behold and See, that is perhaps their finest achievement. Ostensibly a concept album, it's centered around lead singer/songwriter/keyboardist/guitarist Ian Bruce-Douglas' cynical worldview. He skewers "normal" society with all the fervor of Zappa and all the surreality (and insanity) of Bob Markley on songs like "Visions of Your Reality" and the four-part "Suite: Genesis of Beauty." Add in the lush, floating vocals of Barbara Jean Hudson, fuzz guitar and some great late-60s psych jangle and you've got the formula for an unhinged classic that stands up to the best of the non-coastal psych sounds of the late-60s.