Flow's Greatest Hits, the

Psychedelia is back! Oh shit, wait. This WAS recorded in the early 70s. At least the tracks are concise and are not the monumental sagas that other prog-rock and psychedelia of those days were selling by the pound. As someone who was just about getting used to life outside the womb when the tracks were recorded, it is hard to assess how original or significant this band is. Do not be confused by the “greatest hits” title – these are the band’s ONLY hits; or even more accurately, their ENTIRE set of recordings. Including tracks that would not even count as a “recording” but rather “screwing around in the studio”. The music is all over the place, sometimes leans towards the early hard-rock, and some other times towards the more folky psychedelic acts. WARNING: remastering very poor on some tracks (all are originally 4-track recordings…).
The faith of the trio, as indicated by the liner notes, is appropriate to the era: one became a world-renowned Tarot expert; another – a software engineer. The leader, Pete Fine, is still doing music in Tucson and has a son named Tree. Did anyone say “movie rights”? They wear togas on the sleeve’s largest image. Togas!
In summary: some tracks are worth playing, some are utterly redundant. Try 2,4,8.

1. Start off with 20 secs of low-volume synth slow beat; turns into dramatic guitar/drum intro, and into a high tempo Jef Airplane meets Led meets the Dead piece.
2. Nice ballad, slower tempo with some flashy (a little too long) guitar solos.
3. Fast tempo yet softer, holts in the middle for some studio voices.
4. CSNY style acoustic. Mid/high tempo.
5. Bach’s Toccata for electric guitar + feedback. Interesting.
6. Back to Jefferson Airplane style; woowing guitars; ends with weird “Yeah” chants.
7. Instrumental, high tempo, synths and guitar, a noisy early Genesis (2 minutes).
8. Fast tempo yet subtler track,
9. Acoustic instrumental, little bit of CSNY and Genesis.
10. High tempo, more hard-rock track.
11. Short track, weird keyboard effects.
12. Very short track, more weird scratches and sounds.
13. Hendrix intro into some hard rock style ballad with fast tempo guitar solo.
14. Rather bombastic (uncredited!) cover of Lennon/McCartney. Extra-bad technical quality.
15. Weird psych guitar, fast drumming, instrumental. Bad quality.
16. Slow tempo, 12-string picking, very bad remastering.