“PRINCE OF DARKNESS WENT TO PLYMOUTH, summer all year long, said is this global warming or just some stupid song?” This query, which deserves a resounding double YES! answer, comes from those arch mock-rockers, Spinal Tap, on their 2009 disc, Back from the Dead. The song, “Warmer than Hell,” paints a smoldering portrait of our world superheated by global warming and too hot even for Satan to “enjoy.” Its concluding verse: “Sir Lucifer left London in his chariot of flame. What say I take the credit, then, and you shall take the blame.” After a sardonic chuckle and a little LOL, it got me to thinking about a little cult gem of an eco-conscious record from 1970, psych-rockers Spirit’s Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus, so … Spinal Tap, meet Spirit.

“THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS” was emblazoned across a guitar of Woody Guthrie’s, and when you think “protest singer,” Guthrie might come immediately to mind, as might Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bono, Steve Earle, Rage against the Machine, Public Enemy, just to name a few; but I’d like you to add Spirit to that list, especially as realized on their masterfully odd, equally compelling  Twelve Dreams release (their last with the original five-piece lineup). The album may not have the tub-thumping histrionic humor of Spinal Tap and their goofed-up sonic assault on global warming, but it has a refreshing charm, powerful appeal and poignant message, particularly the anthemic “Nature’s Way” (let’s make this song a rallying cry to clean things up!) and “Animal Zoo,” a barrage on consumerism and toxicity, which brought to mind those puffed-up and spongey future humans in the animated classic WALL-E—more on this in a bit.

Spirit were an eclectic group of talented musicians who made some amazingly influential sounds: their hybrid sound included jazz, rock, proto-glam, space opera, folk and electronic/experimental (they were one of the first bands to use a Moog synthesizer). The band formed in Los Angeles in 1967 and included vocalist-guitarist Randy California (nee Wolfe), his father-in-law (!), drummer Ed Cassidy, plus vocalist-percussionist Jay Ferguson, bassist-vocalist Mark Andes and keyboardist John Locke. California picked up the “California” tag while playing with Jimi Hendrix in New York—there were two Randys in the band and Hendrix needed to differentiate. When Hendrix departed for England seeking fame and fortune, California, then 15, was too young to tag along—but already a talented guitarist. The family moved back to the West Coast and Spirit was eventually born (their original moniker, Spirits Rebellious, was taken from a Kahlil Gibran book). The band existed in numerous incarnations for 30 years until California’s drowning death in 1997.

Twelve Dreams, the band’s fourth album, is by no means a simple rehash of flower-power ethics and us/counterculture vs. them/establishment positioning. It meanders like a dream, each composition reveling in its own oneiric logic and fantastical structure—you never quite know where you’re going to go, but it’s all good, there’s enough melody to latch onto and to power you safely through. Neil Young recommended that the band work with producer David Briggs, and it was a smart choice. In the reissue liner notes, California writes that “[d]uring the five months we took recording Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus, David became a sixth member of the band. David inspired and guided us to our very best studio performances.” Twelve Dreams is a great iPod/headphones download/album, but you can also blast it “old school” through speakers and enjoy the quizzical looks of friends, neighbors and cohorts!

So what gives it a green hue and makes it Green Dynamind fodder for discussion? I have to return to the key tracks “Nature’s Way” and “Animal Zoo.” I first discovered “Nature’s Way” as a cover version by art-rock super-collective This Mortal Coil on their Blood disc (4 AD, 1991). I loved this version but knew I’d have to hear the original. “I wrote this song up in San Francisco while doing a gig at the Fillmore West,” writes California in the liner notes. “Written in the afternoon, I can’t remember another song which flowed out more quickly. [...] Over the years, so many people have related how this song has helped them through difficult times. It is for the benefit of ourselves and others that the message in many Spirit songs has not diminished with the passage of time.” Over a gently strummed guitar, with choice bits of percussion (including timpani and cowbell) and added vocal harmonies, California sings:

It’s nature’s way of telling you something’s wrong,
It’s nature’s way of telling you in a song,
It’s nature’s way of receiving you,
It’s nature’s way of retrieving you,
It’s nature’s way of telling you
Something’s wrong.

He goes on to rhyme “summer breeze” and “dying trees,” before closing with the reminder, “It’s nature’s way of telling you something’s wrong, something’s wrong, something’s wrong.” Boy, we totally get it, there is a resounding power in this simplicity—and it’s time to spread the word!

What I love about the next song, “Animal Zoo,” and why it sparked that cinematic synaptic flash of WALL-E, is its refrain of  ”Oh no, something went wrong, well, you’re much too fat and a little too long.” All this over an uptempo rock beat that opens eerily like a number U2 had copped years ago in Dublin and blueprinted into its stadium-friendly rumble. California drives the eco+health-point home with:

Looking at my body, I’m slipping down,
The air I breathe, the water I drink
Is selling me short and turning me round.

The album-closing twelfth dream, despite the title “Soldier,” is far less sardonic: “You have the world at your fingertips, no one can make it better than you,” Spirit informs, and empowers, us. And that’s how I’d like to close, noting the power of song, of ideas/tropes, of a creative/artistic endeavors—maybe not changing the world in a heartbeat, but uplifting the spirit (no pun intended!) and raising awareness, even if only a listener here, a concert goer there, one at a time and yet forming a chain, growing a network, building a meaningful pathway to change—so Satan doesn’t take the credit and we take the blame.

Addendum
In a recent issue of The Nation, Bill McKibben and Lennox Yearwood Jr. weighed in with their take on the “most-listened-to piece of environmental protest music of all time.” Their take? Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology).” Read the full story.

—Allen