(Sunshine Pop #7)
For the past couple of months, I’ve been mining the mountain of ’60s Sunshine/Psychedelic music, and I continue to dig up gems that I might have just forgotten or really missed hearing about. After all, there are certainly an insurmountable number of great albums released in the decades of old, that deserve reintroduction to the current music community at large.
Of the dozens of whose discographies I have been immersing myself in, there’s this group that really caught my fancy–The Free Design, whose music is best characterized by its sunny Pop songs laced with light-jazzy instrumentation of acoustic guitar, piano, strings, horns, and woodwind; playful and tuneful vocal harmonies; and poetic lyrics.
Formed in 1966, in New York, USA, The Free Design consisted primarily of chief songwriter Chris Dedrick and his brother Bruce and their sisters Sandy, Ellen, and Stefanie. The group released seven studio albums during their original run–from 1967’s Kites Are Fun to 1972’s There Is a Song–and the final one, 2001’s Cosmic Peekaboo, when they reunited in 2000, only to retire most likely for good soon after.
Recommended tracks are “The Proper Ornaments,” “Umbrellas,” “I Found Love,” “Daniel Dolphin,” “Now Is the Time,” “Hurry Sundown,” “Kije’s Ouija,” “Starlight,” “Canada in Springtime,” “Felt So Good,” and “McCarran Airport.”
