Charisma

Charisma were a band from the Hartford, Connecticut area, and were very typical of the confused American year of 1970. It basically means that bands were throwing any and everything against the wall hoping it would stick - or in practical terms - obtaining radio airplay. And Charisma falls in line with their mix of blues, hard rock, progressive, psych, and old fashioned rock and roll. It's a mess basically. But some of these albums had gems in the midst of the ordinary, and that's where we come in. Charisma has a strong Hammond organ and overall keyboard presence, and there are a couple of tracks that display this in an instrumental progressive rock format ('Street Theatre', 'Ritual Dance of the Reptiles'). There are other very good proto-prog/bluesy numbers in 'Leopold's Ghost' and 'The Age of Reptiles'. The rest is take it or leave it…