The Flock

It feels like a thousand years ago – actually 1970 – and the must have album amongst the younger types was a CBS sampler entitled ‘Fill Your Head With Rock’ It had tracks from almost all of the Columbia roster of the day – Janis Joplin, Chicago, Santana, Blood Sweat & Tears and Laura Nyro to name but a few. It also featured a front cover picture of The Flock’s Jerry Goodman and ‘Tired Of Waiting’ by The Flock.

So that was my introduction to one of the most forward thinking bands of their day – lead violin!

They started life as a garage band in their native Chicago but after bringing in Jerry on violin and guitar they moved into a kind of jazz/rock fusion with classical overtones and got themselves signed to a major label.

The first half of this 2CD set consists of the whole of the first album plus some alternative takes and a couple of tracks that were left off the album and the first thing that struck me, 47 years on from that first exposure, is just how confident they are together. This is a band that features horns and violin as well as the sublime vocals of Fred Glickstein and Jerry Goodman and you can hear elements of the New York folk scene touching on parts of the music – especially ‘I Am The Tall Tree’. The album calls to be listened to at high volume – demands really – and I was amazed to hear just how good Jerry Smith’s bass playing is. When the album was first released the bass was somewhere down in the bass drum murk, but this remaster has really brought it out.
Of course, they also have similarities to It’s A Beautiful Day – David LaFlamme’s outfit also featuring violin – but The Flock have so much more power and avoid all the prissy clichés.

Fred Glickstein’s guitar solo on ‘Tired Of Waiting’ is a perfect gonzo psych freakout but short and punchy too.

Their second album ‘Dinosaur Swamps’ came out less than a year after ‘The Flock’ and after some changes in the personnel they found themselves playing a more complex sort of arrangement with all the instruments seemingly driving in different directions but the overall result holds together brilliantly.
A lot of credit to their producer John McClure on both albums but especially on ‘Dinosaur Swamps’ where the music has much more feedom to it.

The mammoth ‘Hornschmeyer’s Island’ is the stand out track from the second album and it was instrumental in Jerry Goodman being poached by John McLaughlin for the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
It has different elements all being pulled together into a tripped out number that crosses all sorts of borders but just makes you want to cue it up time and again.

As usual with Esoteric, the bonus tracks make sense and the booklet that accompanies the album is excellent. One reissue that really needs to have a wider audience than it did originally.