The New Land (1972)

2008 digitally remastered two CD set containing a pair of albums from Felix Cavaliere and The Rascals: Peaceful World (1971) and Island of Real (1972), both originally released on Columbia Records. These recordings, sadly, were to prove the last for the band, though founder Felix Cavaliere went on to a solo career. Comes housed in a slipcase with extensive liner notes.
What's remarkable about both these recordings is how far ahead of their time they were. Cavaliere had become deeply interested in the writings and teachings of the great Sufi master musician Hazrat Inayat Khan, who - through his own tradition - looked at music holistically, as an integral part of earthly and spiritual life. He also came under the sway of the emerging sounds of jazz, gospel, and the emerging uptownfunk and soul of the period…

"What fans heard in these four {Lyceum} shows was both a history of the Dead and a survey of their unique vision of American music, from folk to rock, with blues and R&B and country-and-western and Bakersfield all included, all melded together by the improvisational spirit of American jazz in a small-group format that owed much to European classical music."

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