A DIFFERENT SPIRIT

After 4 successul LP's Spirit began to crumble internally. Exiting the band to pursue other paths were Jay Ferguson, Mark Andes and Randy California. Not to be discouraged the band moved ahead with drummer Ed Cassidy and Keyboardist John Locke recruiting the Staehealy brothers Al and Chris to carry on. The result was the fifth Spirit album "Feedback" This was the only Spirit album to feature John and Al Staehely as band members. Musically it was a different turn for the band, in favor of a country influenced hard rock style and lyrics mostly dealing with conventional male-female love topics, with only the tracks "Darkness" and the instrumentals "Puesta Del Scam" and "Trancas Fog-Out" recalling Spirit's earlier psychedelic rock. Although the album wasn't widely heard in later years, it has finally surfaced on cd and has received some extremely satisfying notices. The Feedback tour saw the remaining original members (Locke and Cassidy) leave the band during the tour, and Chris and Al Staehely regrouped the band under a new name, Sta-Hay-Lee, recording another album self-titled under the Sta-Hay-Lee name in 1972. Chris Staehely would later join Jay Ferguson's band Jo Jo Gunne. This LP charted as high as the previous "12 Dreams" and is in fact a very fine record overall.

Here is a show taped the same week as the LP release. 

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