Ultimate Spinach - “Gilded Lamp of the Cosmos”
Precisely how does one go about manufacturing a credible rock scene for profit? The answer remains elusive, but in the late sixties one would-be impresario thought the concept marketable enough to give it the old college try.
Alan Lorber had already been kicking around the music industry for awhile by 1967, and had built himself an impressive resume as a producer and arranger, having worked with Neil Sedaka, Jackie Wilson, the Lovin’ Spoonful and numerous other acts who, in aggregate, had amassed several million units sold. Perhaps due to hubris, boredom, avarice or a combination of the three, Lorber took it upon himself to prefabricate a local underground rock scene patterned after the San Francisco psychedelic movement that was then making quite a few folks rich, foist it upon a buying public he figured must be primed for the next big thing, and cash in. He chose Boston as his point of conception, partly because of its proximity to New York (and, by extension, most of the record industry), and partly because, he said, Boston had a rich musical history, most recently evidenced by its heavy contribution to the folk revival. To be fair, Lorber chose bands for his marketing experiment that were already extant, although they were all quite young and still in various larval stages artistically - in other words, they were nowhere near ready to match the musical prowess then being displayed by Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messanger Service or even It’s a Beautiful Day. No matter: Lorber gave his initial three projects (Ultimate Spinach, Orpheus, and Beacon Street Union) the best production and arrangements of which he was capable, recording their debut albums in New York’s finest studios. He then passed the tapes off to his pals at MGM Records, who proceeded to launch an unprecedented hype campaign touting the new “Bosstown Sound,” even scoring a coup in the form of a feature article in Newsweek. Strong initial sales for Ultimate Spinach’s album resulted, but the scheme quickly began to unravel. Lorber made a fatal mistake by taking all his acts to one label, and an especially square one at that. MGM had been hemorraging money by propping up mainstay acts who peaked in popularity several years previous, and the Bosstown campaign became the company’s misguided attempt at drawing the ever-growing “underground” demographic. However, the underground press immediately smelled a rat, deeming the Newsweek article an inside hype-job and the acts derivative and unready for prime time. An unofficial anti-Bosstown smear campaign was quickly underway, headed up by the new West Coast press powerhouse, Rolling Stone.
By the time Ultimate Spinach’s second album, Behold & See, rolled around, the jig was up. The band disintegrated soon after its release, leaving Lorber to cobble together an ad hoc group for the purpose of recording a scheduled third LP. It’s too bad, because the original “jolly green giant of rock” (as they were once nicknamed) displayed some serious promise, even if they often favored goofy, heavy-handed lyrics and owed much of their sound to the Airplane and Country Joe. Heavy.
