The first of Kevin Fisher, another lost US progressive opus from 1975

This time, lazily, I'm going to pass it over to a user on rateyourmusic for a fairly accurate review:

" For some reason, judging by the homemade cover, I thought this baby was going to be an outing in progressive excesses ...  The leadoff instrumental 'Overture' didn't exactly change my impressions, but so much for first impressions ... 

So what do we know about namesake Kevin Fisher and 1977's 'The First of Fisher'?  Next to nothing.  It's clearly a home grown vanity project and what few references we can find indicate that only 75 copies were pressed.  As far as we know, this hasn't seen a CD reissue.  Technically the album has a fairly primitive sound, but in musical terms it's all over the spectrum.  The acoustic ballad 'Lullabye' has a heavy classical feel (Pentangle came to mind the first time we heard it), while 'Flying' sports a 1950s' vocal group feel and the horn-propelled "Pirate's Song" recalls a post-David Clayton Thomas Blood, Sweat and Tears.  Of course first impressions are seldom entirely wrong and in this case the second side sports some mundane progressive moves in the form of 'Indian Dance' and 'In Search'  Again it's fairly raw, but not without it's low-keyed charms, including the pretty ballad 'A House for Wendy'. "


He wasn't impressed perhaps, but I was really charmed by the aforementioned raw, DIY aspects.  Check out the first and to me quite stunning track, "Overture:"





While the final track, "The search" (for El Dorado) starts relatively  unpromisingly with an A minor riff featuring the descending chromatic blues scale, which we've heard before many times, but abruptly a smashing open or sustained guitar chord brings it to a halt and the insane singing starts up again, recalling to me my old favourite Karlos Steinblast:





So although a bit uneven, I think we as prog fans will not be overly disappointing at adding this album to our ever-expanding (and furthermore acceleratingly expanding) like the universe collections.  If only we were coterminous with said universe too!  Sadly there was no second of Fisher, though I wish there had been.

Notice how little comes up in a basic google search for this work.  So how come Tom missed this work on the cd reissue wishlist?  Well it seems he is lagging behind us a bit these days...