Most underrated album on this CBS inner sleeve from ~1970

Secondary question: are any of these records better than In A Silent Way in your opinion?

Terrible confession: I have never knowingly heard In A Silent Way, and I am listening now to see if I like it any better than The Garden Of Jane Delawney

(will wait and see if this is one for the 'classic albums you have been knocked out by' or not)

I had a beaten-up copy of the Black Widow album I played to death in my teen years. Not just Come to the Sabbat but all of it - In Ancient Days, Conjuration, Way to Power, you name it. Actually it tails off a little on side 2 but no-one rates it at all so that's my vote.

Is it better than In A Silent Way? Well, I've played it more.

Steamhammer and Skin Alley are mere names to me.

None of these albums is as good as In A Silent Way. Not even close.

I would probably go with The Garden of Jane Delawney in the poll.

Skin Alley sounds like it could have been released by Vertigo or Deram instead of CBS--love that hard hippie proggy blues '69/'70 sound, so went with it.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSTnLgyuAiwmyE6CV2xjQ8IgJSH8IGl8bPyvg&s

Miles liked Laura Nyro and New York Tendaberry is prob her best album, and it has the best cover too.

Listened to In A Silent Way and was a bit... underwhelmed? It was pleasant enough but nothing grabbed me.

I am now listening to Black Widow and finding it hilarious. Goth is just endemic to the midlands, isn't it?

i've got that Black Widow album somewhere too, but Matt you reminded me that i've never listened to any of it other than Come To The Sabbat. Will fix that this afternoon!

Listened to that Moondog album for the first time this morning and was surprised by how polished it was. Was expecting something a lot more ramshackle and much more 'jazz', but it was actually a lot more straight-up 20th century classical. Really good though!

Trees are an interesting call cos they're really highly rated among psych folk fans, but yeah, you never see them on any kind of general album lists

New York Tendaberry

I don’t think the 60s Nyro albums have quite the legacy they deserve.

I'm sorry, but if you can get through the lounge suite about halfway through Black Widow's Seduction without bursting out laughing, you are a more open-eared listener than I.

Moondog is probably the best, but the question being most underrated made me click Black Widow immediately too. Tbf mostly for 'Come to the Sabbat', one of the greatest songs of all time, but the rest of the album is decent/fun/ridiculous (complimentary).

It’s A Beautiful Day is an amazing breathtaking record, probably my favorite SF psych album

It’s not psych though, it’s…. Something

I also immediately clicked Black Widow (which will likely not surprise Nick)

I own 2 of these but don't like either of them v much (inherited them) - Blood Sweat & Tears and Simon & Garfunkel. I also have a Steamhammer record which I actually like but it's not this one, it's their 3rd album.

I don't think I've heard any of the others except the Byrds which I didn't like. maybe I'd like it better if I gave it another shot, I did a bit on Sweetheart of the Rodeo which I also didn't like the first time I heard it

Listened to that Moondog album for the first time this morning and was surprised by how polished it was. Was expecting something a lot more ramshackle and much more 'jazz', but it was actually a lot more straight-up 20th century classical. Really good though!

That particular self-titled album (not to be confused with the earlier one) is very much his symphonic music, various other releases from the 50s/60s are more in the ramshackle jazz-inspired vein.

yeah i'd only heard random tracks off the earlier stuff before. didn't realise that moondog had orchestration chops!

Second Winter, and his cover of Highway 61 is what made Dylan click for me. Loved that record, including the weird blank fourth side. It's been a very long time since I've put it on.

Was there a industry term for those typographic layovers to make album covers legible on these inserts, Columbia House ads, etc?

ngl i get so confused when we poll "most underrated" instead of best

Just treating "underrated" as "best" because wtf knows who is rating things and by what criteria. Anyway it's Moondog, which is not quite as good as In A Silent Way but feels like more of a personal favourite.

Yes - agree it's hard to assess 'underrated'....I like the Spirit album a lot.

ngl i get so confused when we poll "most underrated" instead of best

― c u (crüt), Monday, August 11, 2025 9:05 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is what i was thinking. how does one go about determining which record is "most underrated" ?

it's subjective for sure, voted Santana

If we're talking records that garner little respect in the modern era (or are largely unknown), then that'd probably be:
Johnny Winter
Argent
Chicago
Steamhammer
The Byrds (this particular album anyway)
Al Kooper ft Shuggie Otis
Skin Alley
The Flock
Al Stewart
Blood. Sweat & Tears
Michael Bloomfield
Leonard Cohen
Black Widow
V/A - Live At Bill Graham's Fillmore West
Taj Mahal
It's A Beautiful Day

Maybe Janis too, does anyone actually listen to her these days? She seems like more of a legendary figure to be invoked for non-musical reasons.

Underrated is just my lazy shorthand for records that aren't in the canon. I sort of wanted it to be a thread where people could be sold on stuff that they hadn't heard already. So for instance i wanted it to be a chance to talk about the likes of Black Widow and not have the thread get swamped in Bob Dylan chat instead. Not a value judgement on him, there's just plenty of other threads where you could talk about that record, everyone one already knows whether they like Dylan or not. Tell us about Tom Rush or Argent instead, i'm clueless!

That Live At Bill Graham's Fillmore West record seems to be more like a jam session rather than a compilation of various acts like you'd expect? How confusing, I wonder why they didn't give the ensemble a name? The ubiquitous Mike Bloomfield is of course involved, maybe that's him on the front.

https://www.discogs.com/release/6966102-Various-Live-At-Bill-Grahams-Fillmore-West

That Fillmore album was a special revue with Bloomfield, Nick Gravenites, Taj Mahal etc. Some other material from that show ended up on Gravenites' My Labors lp.

Re Moondog's orchestral chops, at one point I read that he had written 100 symphonies, and he lived several years after that, so who knows. A German lady had installed him in a castle, with lots of musical resources, incl. an orchestra, I think (he came back to NYC for a concert, freaking out all the people, incl. music pros, who thought he was long dead).
I hope that xpost Joplin has not become musically underrated---I'm among those who thought she was an innovator, as much a mutant blues artist as Hendrix. And Ellen Willis pointed out that her approach seems to prefigure the noize-and-genderppenetrating vox of young Robert Plant, Axl Rose, the Nazareth dude (who even covered Joni Mitchell), and many pre-Cookie-Monster metal mouths (actually it prob started w Little Richard, but Janis may have been the first to do amidst big loud hot sheets of hard rock, although I haven't heard Richard when Hendrix was working for him).

I have that s/t Moondog on a Sony CD reissue w the follow-up, I think they're billed as Moondog and Moondog 2, don't have it at hand--def worth looking for. His writing for percussion alone is amazing enough, choreographers should check it out.

In that vein, my gateway to Moondog was Bracelli, drums (sounded like tymphani and/or frame drums, which his daughter used to dance barefoot on when they performed duo on Manhattan streets) and celli: I heard it as Viking surf music.

I like the version of "These Days" on that Tom Rush album

It’s A Beautiful Day is really something, like bearded fantastic baroque folk rock dreamworld with some scary caterwauling fuzz and echo at times, really do check it out yall

it's good! they also did at least six more albums after that, lol

Really?! I will check out that first one at least, thanks.
Speaking of Janis and Moondog, my gateway to him, way before hearing any of his own albums, was "All Is Loneliness," on that s/t Big Brother And The Holding Company: a round, just voices and drums, or that's all that stuck in my head, and that was/is enough, very effective. And they did some different versions of it live, that I've come across on YouTube.

listened to Black Widow cuzza this, thought it was dismal

checking out Spirit record now, cool band who i have a soft spot for. but this is a little too bloozey for my tastes. Spirit is such an interesting band. i especially love the drummer Ed Cassidy, who looks like Foucault, and who would've been in his mid 40s when the first Spirit record came out, almost 30 years older than Randy California!

Satan is lonely now

I thought of the original Spirit as forerunners of Steely Dan, their cool sound and songs like "Fresh Garbage" and It's Nature's Way."
Ed was Randy's stepdad---take it, wiki!

Cassidy was born...on May 4, 1923...Cassidy began his career as a professional musician in 1937.
...In 1950, Cassidy enrolled at college to get a musical teaching credential. However, after a year, he decided to move to Southern California to meet more jazz musicians and perhaps form a group of his own. During this period, Cassidy performed together with many leading jazz musicians including Art Pepper, Cannonball Adderley, Roland Kirk, Lee Konitz and Gerry Mulligan.

With Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder, Cassidy formed the Rising Sons[2] in 1964. After that, he formed the Red Roosters in 1965, with his fourteen year-old stepson Randy California, Jay Ferguson and Mark Andes. Adding John Locke, they became Spirit in 1967. Cassidy sported a shaved head, which was unusual at that time,[3] and he always wore black. He used a single bass drum, and two large parade bass drums as floor toms. Because California stepped out of the group for a period of time in 1972, following the death of Jimi Hendrix, Cassidy was the only member who played with all various line-ups of Spirit on almost 20 albums over almost 30 years. Spirit finally disbanded following California's death in 1997. Cassidy later performed with Merrell Fankhauser in the Fankhauser Cassidy Band.[4]

From the mid-1970s, Cassidy also worked as an actor, including live improvisation.

listened to Black Widow cuzza this, thought it was dismal

You've pissed off Astaroth now, on your own head be it

no no, you see, i meant "dismal" like gloomy, horrifying, dark . . .

Any excuse to post a picture of Ed Cassidy and his giant drums.

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/fa/05/6f/fa056fbe73fddf994d3c06e73e0cfc9f.jpg

Autographed!

i quite enjoyed the rest of that Black Widow album, even the bits where they're trying to be the Doors

love the Spirit albums i have (s/t, Family That Plays Together, Dr Sardonicus, and also Kapt. Kopter) always lots of ideas going on. have never heard Clear though, will give that a go later

Logic puzzle: Of the nine I've heard, best is Leonard Cohen but most underrated is Laura Nyro, and I prefer both to In a Silent Way. Clear is probably the weakest of the first four Spirit albums but it's also the one I know the least. Most overrated is certainly Simon and Garfunkel, though it's far from the worst!
My streaming service doesn't include Sony (CBS) recordings so I don't have most of these at my fingertips.

I don't like Blood Sweat and Tears but "Sometimes In Winter" is a nice bit of folk-rock with jazzy overtones that is devoid of David Clayton Thomas. I've only heard a few songs from the Taj Mahal record but "Six Days on the Road" is charming speedy rock-blues.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

have only heard the not-underrated ones. curious about the results

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

It’s fucked up that the first Santana album is underrated. What a world.

You could read that everyone who didn't vote for it doesn't consider it underrated?

yeah just figured all the options were preemptively deemed underrated, facts is santana is a very un-underrated album and sounds great in the summer.