Captain Beyond

When I'm digging the crates at record stores or crawling through the blog swamps of the Internet looking for music to listen to I almost always go on intuition based off the cover, a title or even the packaging design. Names of artists are a dime a dozen, either you know them or you don't, but you can always let your ears decide. Captain Beyond is such an album that not only did the cover speak to me, but combined with titles like Dancing Madly Backwards (On a Sea of Air), Raging River of Fear and As The Moon Speaks (To the Waves of the Sea) it resonates deep within me.

From beginning to end the album has heavy guitar work from ex Iron Butterfly guitarist Larry Reinhardt and bassist Lee Dorman, backed by ex Johnny Winter drummer Bobby Caldwell and fronted by Deep Purple founder Rod Evans. Together they perform one of the most jaw dropping musical pieces I've ever had the pleasure to listen to. The production work on this album is all high quality and not one song is a filler piece. Because the tracks intertwine with each other the album has a feeling of being just one long song or a series of visions during a road trip.

After releasing three albums the band broke up, but reunited in the late 90's. Larry Reinhardt passed in January of this year and Lee Dorman passed away earlier this month. Below are two videos of Captain Beyond performing tracks from their self titled debut. Check it out, they had a real thing going on.