People “Prayer - Part 2,” Ceremony - Buddha Meet Rock (1971, reissued by Phoenix Records in an addition of 1000)
My push has always been for art that expands the mind, whether through a liberation of method — e.g. free form jazz, heavy psychedelia — or the adoption of strict form — e.g. Trabadour lyric poetry, the inventive constraints of the Oulipo. Each has a place in the destruction of ego and rigidity of thought, both of which have the power to slowly erode you. Break it down. Build it back up.
Of course I’m not a Cartesian, at least not in the knee-jerk version of him as a body-mind dualist. Where the mind goes the body follows, and obviously vice versa.
People (or The People) was a Japanese band of the early 1970s, using rock to speak a Buddhist message. Their sole record has been one of the rarest Japanese psych records until its reissue. I say “psych” because that is how they are typically classified. Ok, sure, they’re a psych band, fuzz guitar, loping percussion, vocals a reverberant drawl. (And yes, that is part of a David Axelrod track “sampled” into one of the other tunes on the record….) But maybe another depth exists, beyond checking them off on a “rarities” list.
The album builds slowly to this big bang, the singer in ecstatic physical release, and who doesn’t want to be there with her. In mind and body. This album teaches of the viral pleasures of sound, remolding the mind and body into… dare I say spirit? Enough proselytizing. Listen and be free.
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