The Electric Flag Views
The Electric Flag was a blues rock soul group, led by guitarist Mike Bloomfield, keyboardist Barry Goldberg and drummer Buddy Miles, and featuring other well-known musicians such as vocalist Nick Gravenites and bassist Harvey Brooks. Bloomfield formed the Electric Flag in 1967, following his stint with the Butterfield Blues Band. The band reached its peak with the 1968 release, A Long Time Comin', a fusion of rock, jazz, and R&B styles that charted well in the Billboard Pop Albums chart. Their initial recording was a soundtrack for The Trip, a movie about an LSD experience by Peter Fonda, written by Jack Nicholson, and directed by Roger Corman.[1]
With his great appreciation for blues, soul and R&B, Mike Bloomfield wanted to create a group of his own that would feature what he called American music. He was inspired not only by the big band blues of B.B. King, T-Bone Walker, and Guitar Slim (Eddie Jones), but also by the contemporary soul sounds of Otis Redding, Steve Cropper, Booker T & the MGs, and other Stax recording artists. He also drew inspiration from traditional country, gospel, and blues forms. He organized the Electric Flag, initially called the American Music Band, in the spring of 1967, not long after he produced a session with Chicago harp player James Cotton that featured a horn section. Bloomfield decided that his new band would also have horns and would play an amalgam of those American musics he loved.
Bloomfield and Goldberg developed the group in San Francisco, under Albert Grossman's management, and immediately began working on the band's first project: the soundtrack for the film The Trip. Actor Peter Fonda approached Bloomfield for the project, as a replacement for Gram Parsons' International Submarine Band. Director Roger Corman did not find the music of Gram Parsons' band appropriate for a movie about the LSD experience. At the time, the Electric Flag was rehearsing in Gram Parsons' Laurel Canyon home.
Bloomfield was solely credited for all of the compositions on the album.[3] He hired keyboardist Paul Beaver to add texture to the soundtrack, through the use of one of the first Moog Synthesizers on record. The soundtrack recording was reportedly completed in ten days. While the movie received mixed reviews, the soundtrack attracted positive critical notice. As described by David Dann in his biography of the Electric Flag, The record was also one of the most adventurous for pop music in 1967, sampling freely from jazz, rock, blues and classical idioms, and doing so with wit and intelligence. It very much favored the eclectic approach toward American musical forms that Bloomfield wanted the new band to embody. That Michael could create such unusual and wide-ranging pieces said much for his appreciation and knowledge of those forms, and displayed his characteristic fearlessness when it came to experimentation. [4]
The Electric Flag Images
