Buzzy Linhart

Buzzy Linhart's first of two albums for Kama Sutra, three if you include the band Music's on the Buddah-distributed Eleuthera Records, 1971's The Time to Live Is Now has the songwriter playing with different styles and sounds in a setting that is not as refined as the Eddie Kramer co-produced Music album or Barry Beckett and Roger Hawkins' production of 1974's Pussycats Can Go Far…

Linhart's debut album is a strange, unfocused affair, the kind of thing that would have only been issued by a major label in the late '60s. The singer varies between relatively short songs and way-extended workouts that mix folk with rock, Indian music (Big Jim Sullivan plays sitar), and even some mellotron. Linhart uses drawn-out blues-folk phrasing that owes quite a bit to Village folk-rockers like Tim Hardin and Fred Neil, and in fact a five-and-a-half-minute workout on Hardin's blues, "Yellow Cab," opens the LP. The ten-minute "Willie Jean" is next, and actually Phil Ryan's mellotron here gives the song an unusual lift that helps to differentiate what would otherwise be an OK but unremarkable anguished folk ballad. The 18-minute "Sing Joy" takes up most of side two, and its Indian-oriented improvisation gets tedious after a promising opening burst of ominous orchestral drone…