Spirit - Model Shop (1968)

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Spirit - Model Shop (1968)

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Model Shop is in ways the soundtrack of a movie made by French director Jacques Demy (funny parallel with Jefferson Airplane working with JL Goddard) but not all of the tracks were originally written for the movie either. This "soundtrack" is a mix of tracks from their second and third albums (some in different version or remixed) and a few originals (some of which were already released as bonus tracks on the remastered reissues. But if you are a fan of the original Spirit, you might want to acquire this and not just completionist's sake.

Starting out on the instrumental dreamy jazzy inflected Moving Van, and the other instrumental Mellow Fellow (a wink to Donovan?), the album veers towards the fabulous with the Now Or Everywhere tracks which is a complete re-work from another classic piece of theirs (won't tell you which so you will get this one if you want to find out ;-) and it is astounding and very powerful, (much?) better than the original version. Comes another atmospheric and instrumental aptly-titled Fog (both Fog And Mellow Fellow where released as bonus on the Family remastered album) and the Green Gorilla (hey we are in a model shop, right? ;-) both being excellent.

The first title track is slightly botched-up but the second part will become the title track of their third album,, while the short Rehearsal theme is reminiscent to the anthemic Elijah. Song For Lola and Eventide are jazzy instrumentals (previously never available before) while Coral (available on the Clear bonus tracks) are all superb tracks (mostly instrumental) where spirit shows us just how great they were at jamming, improvising or writing. The album finishes on a re-recorded (and better imho) version of the great Aren't You Glad.

As for the film itself, this is quite a departure from the usual Jacques Demy's "normal" musical film, like Demoiselles De Rochefort, Parapluie De Cherbourg or Lola. Actually we find the return of that very same Lola some seven years later, modelling erotically in some LA dive. Probably not designed as such, Model Shop became quickly an icon of the hippie counter-culture, much like Antonioni's Zabriskie Point or Blow Up or Shroeder's More or La Vallée, or even Hopper's Easy Rider and The Trip. The scene where Spirit rehearses and then packs up lasts a little less than a minute. Only Jay Ferguson remains, gives the hero a copy of the brand new album (their first one), plays an electric piano tune, lends 100 bucks, discusses the process of creation (the hero is an aspiring architect from Frisco with the Nam draft looming over his head) and then greets manager Grossman.

We won't see Spirit for the rest of the movie, although their music is somewhat present but not necessarily the only one. The main flaw of the movie (besides not using more the band's presence) is that there are many scenes where the background noise is insufferably loud, as if they were always next to an airport's landing strip.. Interestingly enough, this will be Demy's only movie of the genre, as Hollywood had opened him its gates for his musical film capacities and were quite deceived to have this road movie, that foreigner guest's first oeuvre wasn't well accepted by the Middle America, for highlighting its decadence, despite Demy claiming his love in the movie for the city of LA..

If you are a fan like I am, you WILL need this BADLY, as I consider this indispensable "soundtrack" as Spirit's fifth album (rather than that awful Feedback) and while maybe not as good as 12 Dreams, certainly as much as Clear is. You might want to settle for the movie instead or if you got cash to spare, both are worth owning.

by Sean Trane, progarchives

Sony Music and Sundazed Music certainly have gotten a lot of mileage out of Spirit's outtakes. Sundazed head Bob Irwin served as digital producer of Time Circle (1968-1972), a 1991 Spirit compilation issued by Sony's Legacy reissue division, and for that disc he dug up some previously unreleased recordings the band made for its score to the 1969 film Model Shop, which never produced a soundtrack album. (Some of the Model Shop material turned up on Spirit's 1969 album, Clear.) More of this music appeared on Legacy's Irwin-produced 1996 CD reissues of Clear and the 1968 Spirit album The Family That Plays Together, as well as on Sundazed's 2000 rarities LP Eventide. Now, writes annotator Mick Skidmore, "thanks to the discovery of a master that contained the actual mono-mixed soundtrack," this album has been compiled to reconstruct what a soundtrack album might have sounded like if one had been issued in 1969. Although all the material has been heard before, seven of the 12 tracks are previously unissued takes or demos, and the whole disc is in mono. Spirit fans, who in any case have had ample opportunity to encounter the music before, will recognize it as representing the jazzier, more contemplative side of the band. Much of the music sounds, if not completely improvised, at least loosely structured, and it is largely instrumental, although the songs "Now or Anywhere," an outtake from The Family That Plays Together, and "Aren't You Glad," that album's closing song, presented in a previously unreleased demo version, have vocals. For the most part, the music features only the band jamming, but "Model Shop II" has a string arrangement, presumably done by Marty Paich, the film's music director, who also did such arrangements for Spirit's albums of the period. Model Shop gathers together in one place Spirit material previously spread across several albums, but it is only a minor addition to their catalog and should mark the end of the exploitation of this portion of their music.

by William Ruhlmann, AMG

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Spirit - Model Shop (1968)

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Spirit - Model Shop (1968)

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