That said, this 1970 release by the sometime Spooky Tooth bassist and future Matthews’ Southern Comfort member, does attempt to scale the heights of anticipation its somewhat wonderful artwork inspires… for the first two tracks anyway.

‘Magician’ and ‘Get Myself Together’ are a pair of corkers. The former begins with a burst of psychedelic recorder – yes, recorder!! The weapon of choice for folkies and five-year-olds everywhere – and electric sitar, before hitting a thoroughly enchanting bluesy groove that bounces heartily along beneath Leigh’s succession of tall, cautionary tales. It’s a more progressive bent that dictates the meditative ‘Get Myself Together’ (featured on last month’s ‘Prog Rock Mixtape‘); a superior blend of ivories and mellotron that incorporates classical elements into its sumptuous arrangement via a sublimely understated electric guitar and the lilting piano coda.

An enviable start, no less. Unfortunately, the rest of the album fails to live up to these early magical murmurings, instead mostly settling into a more traditional (for the time) blues and country-rock ensemble. There are still strains of folkie seraphicalness breaking through, such as on the distant ‘Windy Baker Street’, but it’s predominately routine fare – for instance the Stones-esque ‘Solitaire’ – that Leigh produces from his wizard’s sleeve.

That’s not to say it’s a bad album. Far from it, my friend. Just not as interesting as it might’ve been. Nevertheless, Magician’s original closer, ‘Up the U.S.A.’, is nine minutes of raw, prog-blues loveliness, featuring some great guitar licks, courtesy of young Andrew, and an itchy harmonica groove from Gary Farr that augments the sleazy fug of the track perfectly.

The reissue by the meritorious Sunbeam Records includes a princely bonus track in the shape of ‘The Passing’, later to appear on the 1971 Southern Comfort album Frog City. Here in its original form and underpinned by a solemn (Hammond?) organ lament, ‘The Passing’ provides a fitting conclusion to Magician that touches upon the brilliance of its opening components.

Magician by Andrew Leigh is reissued by Sunbeam Records and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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We may never know. If any of the Native American fraternity happen to be reading this and can shed some light on the matter, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. It has been known to keep me awake at night.

Which brings us to Dog Soldier, the short-lived outfit formed in the wake of the Keef Hartley Band’s collapse, and their 1975 self-titled album. The artwork maintains the American Indian look that Hartley sported in previous incarnations and during live performances, albeit with a futuristic slant, as was the vogue for album covers in the mid-70s, particularly among prog and some AOR acts.

Dog Soldier largely falls under the spell of the second of those musical pigeonholes, which, in my laziness, I am wont to crowbar in at every given opportunity. Those that stay the course, however, through this journey into the innocuous reaches of 1970’s American FM radio, are in for a reet royal treat at its close. One that rewards the perseverance of the less-than-inclined with 11 minutes of loveliness.

Prior to that it’s a festival of mid-Atlantic country/blues rock, occasionally rugged around the edges, whose sun-kissed Californian complexion revisits the likes of Steely Dan, The Eagles and The Band, courtesy of a bloke from the murkier climes of Lancashire.

The rum cove, who not only replaced Ringo Starr in Rory Storm & The Hurricanes but also drummed for – of all people – Freddy Starr in 1963, surrounds himself with talent new and old, pulling in former bandmates Miller Anderson and Derek Griffiths, along with new blood in the form Paul Bliss and keyboardist Mel Simpson. Anderson provides the brassy vocals, as well as writing the majority of the songs, while Hartley lurks behind his drumkit, dressed as Big Chief Sitting Bull. Nice work if you can get it.

It’s all fairly run-of-the-mill; an inoffensive journey along America’s west coast, lightly underscored by some nifty organ swirls. Unfortunately, the likes of ‘Thieves and Robbers’, ‘Long & Lonely Night’ and ‘Stranger in My Own Time’ suffer from an over-familiarity that renders them indistinguishable from a multitude of other album-orientated-rock songs of the 1970s.

However, there is a light, quite literally, at the end of the tunnel. The royal treat I alluded to, what seems like three days ago… Actually it was three days ago. Such would be the piss-poor findings if I was to submit to a time and motion study.

But I digress. ‘Looks Like Rain’ is loveliness in a bag. Eleven minutes long and bristling with driving guitars, Hartley’s powerful drum patterns and the unadulterated joy that is the Hammond organ. The mid-section of the song is even given over to an extended instrumental passage, awash with the enigmatic swell of the erstwhile instrument’s unmistakably affecting cry. If that isn’t enough to tickle the discerning fancy of the prog contingent, then included as a bonus track is the first, slightly uptempo, version of this song, clocking in at an equally pleasing 15 minutes.

Dog Soldier tentatively hands over its GCSE report card to reveal the legend: Must try harder. The A+ and attached gold star for ‘Looks Like Rain’ just about saves it from a term consigned to the corner of the class, sporting a less than fetching dunce’s hat.

Dog Soldier receives its first official CD release courtesy of Esoteric and is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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Well they took elements of all these disciplines and brewed their own concoction, which if a category must be applied, would fall somewhere within the progressive-country-blues bracket… probably. MAN, their eponymously titled third album from 1971 is a suitable example of this eclectic clash of styles, as it veers from one to the next over the course of five songs.

Kicking off with the bluesy, pub-rocker ‘Romain’, a first-time listener may think they have Man sussed as it slips into the Tennessee-tinged ‘Country Girl’, which wouldn’t sound out of place blasting from the stage of the The Grand Ole Oprey. However, what follows most certainly would.

‘Would the Christians Wait Five Minutes? The Lions Are Having a Draw’ is as progressive as seventies progressive rock comes, right down to the unwieldy, tongue-in-cheek title. The thirteen minute instrumental, complete with occasional ethereal chanting, takes us beyond the realms of deepest space on a gentle, sometimes searing, voyage into the unknown and is a damn sight better than that equally unwieldy description might have you believe. It also appears to be a completely different band to that playing on the first two tracks. More Pink Floyd than Floyd Tillman.

Then as your coming down following the spaced out trip of ‘Would the Christians Wait Five Minutes…’, Man let rip with the hard-edged rock ‘n’ roll of ‘Daughter of the Fireplace’, which despite a few progressive elements thrown in for good measure, once again casts the listener’s expectations out the window.

MAN concludes with the twenty minute ‘Alchemist’,  a psychedelic prog rock magnum opus that sounds like Pink Floyd’s ‘Echoes’ off of the same year’s Meddle colliding headfirst with a Hawkwind freak-out.

Reading through the liner notes provided by vocalist and guitarist Deke Leonard, reveals the album to have been made on a diet of finest homegrown and industrial strength LSD. With such a liberated attitude to their intake of mind-altering substances, Man created in MAN a spacey, tripped-out, sometimes conventional but always erratic dichotomy of an album. And a damned fine one at that.

The Esoteric Recordings reissue contains two bonus tracks. The single version of ‘Daughter of the Fireplace’, and the longer, first version of ‘Alchemist’.

MAN is remastered and reissued by Esoteric and available from Amazon.co.uk

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Howlin Rain, the 2006 debut album by the San Franciscan band of the same name, is like the return to civilisation of an old friend who has spent a week wandering California’s Death Valley, with nothing for company other than a guitar, a quart of Jack Daniels and a boot-heel full of mescaline.

Yes indeed, setting aside an inveterate prejudice of this writer and breaking the cardinal rule within the HFoS camp, we once again take tentative steps into the often seizure-inducing territories of “modern music”. But hang on just one ruddy minute there. It appears that in our eagerness (honest) to sample some of this so-called “modern music”, we’ve caused a Doctor Who-style rift in time and space and landed right back in the altogether more pleasing era of the early-70s.

Howlin Rain harks back to a time and music defined by groups such as The Byrds, Poco and to a certain extent the over-commercialised Eagles, throwing in the best elements of psychedelic garage bands such as The 13th Floor Elevators, The Bubble Puppy and Kaleidoscope (US), for good measure.

This heady mixture of the psychedelic, blues and country rock wears its late 60s/early 70s West Coast sound with obvious pride, like a thick layer of dust and grime earned during those days  of enlightenment in Death Valley. The spirits of not only Dennis Wilson, but Gene Clark and every other Golden state musician who lived fast, made their presence felt, then died before their time, lurk deep beneath the sonic tapestry that Howlin Rain weave.

The eight songs on Howlin Rain keep firmly to the darker side of the trail, touching on the imagery of death throughout, amidst sudden bursts of psychedelic distortion, rattling banjos and sultry slide guitar. In places, particularly on the epic ‘Calling Lightening with a Scythe’, they sound like the Rollng Stones doing and impression of Primal Scream doing an impression of the Rolling Stones (do Primal Scream ever do anything else?) during their early-70s country rock phase. The opener ‘Death Prayer in Heaven’s Orchard’ is a triumph of fire and brimstone, and the closer ‘The Firing of the Midnight Rain’ is outlaw music, riding into town, shooting up the bar and quickly leaving in a sunbaked cloud of dust and buckshot.

Howlin Rain as good as fell into my lap. I came to it with eyes closed, completely unaware of the band beforehand. And if the truth be known I still know next to nothing about them. What I do know is I like this album, and to me that’s all that ruddy matters.

So if the relentless heat of the Californian sun and perhaps a touch of brain-frying sunstroke doesn’t faze you, grab a bottle of Jack, bite down on a button of peyote  and let Howlin Rain do the rest.

Howlin Rain is released by Birdman Records and available from Amazon.co.uk

Howlin Rain website

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