Sold Date: August 15, 2021
Start Date: June 21, 2021
Final Price: £24.95 (GBP)
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THE FREE DESIGN

'Kites Are Fun'

Originally released 1967

This is a reissue

Gatefold sleeve

Kites Are Fun

Make The Madness Stop

When Love Is Young

The Proper Ornaments

My Brother Woody

59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)

Don't Turn Away

Umbrellas

Michelle

Never Tell The World

A Man And A Woman

Stay Another Season

"It's a young thing -- and it's a different thing!" -- so proclaimed the back cover of the handsome gatefold jacket on the Free Design's debut album, in words that couldn't have dissuaded more people under 30 from buying the album if the makers had tried. And that's a crying shame, because Kites Are Fun was a glorious product of the same zeitgeist that yielded the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album and a dozen other triumphant pop-psychedelic albums. Kites Are Fun is almost an East Coast answer to the work of the Mamas & the Papas or Spanky & Our Gang, falling between the former at their most subtle and the latter at their most ethereal. The album is very much a product of its era, a lyrical, boundlessly cheerful body of music featuring gentle orchestral accompaniment and glittering sound, and some of it -- such as "Make the Madness Stop" -- possesses a vaguely spiritual content. Sandy Dedrick gets a brilliant solo showcase on "When Love Is Young," while "The Proper Ornaments" returned to a group setting with elegant trumpet and cello accompaniment. There's at least one follow-up to "Kites Are Fun," entitled "Umbrellas," that should have gotten a hearing, and a swinging, upbeat showcase for all of the singers entitled "Never Tell the World"; and, in addition to the group members' originals, the 13 songs include highly ornate covers of Simon & Garfunkel's "Feelin' Groovy" and the Beatles' "Michelle" (beautifully deconstructing both songs and re-imagining them with new tempi and choruses), and the movie-spawned hit "A Man and a Woman." Well worth tracking down.

This reissue LP is brand new and sealed.

If you have any questions,please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks for looking.