“Grains Of Sand” taken from the LP ‘Marcus’ | (Kinetic Records Z-30207) August 1970

Marcus | Grains Of Sand | Kinetic | After the release of the Freak Scene album, psychedelic guru Rusty Evans made his way from NYC to San Francisco, a geographic shift that resulted in work for the legendary San Francisco Sound label, producing bands such as It’s A Beautiful Day, Tripsichord, and Indian Puddin’ Pipe.

It also led to a drastic change in style. And so it came to pass that Evans reclaimed his birth name of Marcus, and recorded a very mellow LP in 1969 for Kinetic Records, a label formed by the Kinetic Playground Ballroom in Chicago, and distributed by CBS Records.

Like much of Marcus’ work, the album is a fascinating relic of a particular time and place, in this instance San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district in the post Summer of Love era.

The Marcus LP is richly orchestrated psychedelic-folk music, with a pronounced Donovan and Tim Hardin flavour to it, something that did not escape its creator.

The mood is dreamy, the songs reflective, the voice vibrato, the album a yin to the yang of the Freak Scene “Psychedelic Psoul” album which precedes it by two years.

So we have the hot and aggressive Freak Scene album contrasted – some might say perfectly balanced – by the diffuse and tranquil Marcus album two years later. (Lion Productions)

**** 4 star album in Billboard 22/08/70
“Grains Of Sand” was recorded as “A Million Grains Of Sand” on the Freak Scene LP.