Paleo Retiree writes:
The English rock band Traffic formed during the druggiest of the drug years of the mid and late ’60s and, probably not coincidentally, experienced a super-checkered history, with members joining up and falling out, substance-abuse problems, ego clashes and such. But for their second album, recorded in 1968, all their talents and energies synched up and elevated each other. The album’s an eclectic-to-the-max near-masterpiece, IMHO, an unstable, fragrant mix of trancey psychedelia, jug band singalongs, folk-rock, soul music beats, and jazzy jams. It’s also loose and quirky in a ballsy way that might intrigue anyone who has come to associate those two qualities with anorectic indie films and wan hipster rock; the raucousness, exuberance and experimentalism on display here definitely come from another age.
In these current days of insane hysteria about teens and sex, I also can’t resist highlighting some of the lyrics from the song “Vagabond Virgin”: “Born like you were in a terrible mess / Didn’t know what it was to have a new dress … Till somebody said, ‘Let me take you to bed,’ / And with money and lies / They filled up your head. / You were barely thirteen, / A child from the villages, / So fresh on the scene.” Hey, teens are sexual beings, and some of them start having sex very young. Once upon a time it was possible to take note of these facts without needing to getting all hyper-moral and judgmental about them.
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- I also love this solo album by former Traffic member Dave Mason.
- A quick appreciation I wrote about Jimmy Miller, the brilliant guy who produced not just “Traffic” but such great Rolling Stones discs as “Exile On Main Street.”
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
Odd how it goes but everything you say about their second album I say about their first. The second one never grabbed me as much. I am a big fan of that Dave Mason solo album (repeated listenings to many of the tracks even recently) but I never really felt Mason worked well with Winwood. Mason is a balladeer and can sometimes knock the ball out of the park. But he can also write happy white-bread ditties, like the opening track ‘You Can All Join In’, that I find hard to reconcile with Winwood. I remember putting the stylus down with anticipation after Mr. Fantasy, hearing that opening Mason track and thinking “what the fuck?”.
That’s because the earlier album was such a blizzard of styles and influences. Psychedelia could be mind-numbingly bad (Iron Butterfly) but at its best it had an endearing eclectic quality, especially when in the hands of people with real musical gifts, like Lennon/McCartney, Clapton/Bruce, Zappa and Winwood. Winwood’s flirtation with kitchen sink psychedelia didn’t last all that long (nor did it with most other artists) and it was already fading by the second album.
Mason was around for Mr. Fantasy and wrote some of the songs. But he was well in the background. Winwood’s domination of Mr. Fantasy while in a psychedelic frame of mind turned out a classic. It’s got all the soulfulness the youngster showed in earlier recordings (14 when he joined Spencer Davis; 18 when he started recording Mr. Fantasy). But he tossed in all of those kitchen sink elements that were the glory and the bane of psychedelia: a jazz-inflected instrumental (Giving to You), a trippy Alice in Wonderlandish piece of spun sugar (House for Everyone) and a host of other styles. Still fun.
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That’s a great evocation, tks. I find the first album too trippy and too Winwood — I like the contrast in the second disk between the more visionary stuff and the downhome tunes. Fun tensions. But I definitely know what you mean. Fun note: both disks were produced by Jimmy Miller.
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