Music in a Doll's House (Family, 1968)

Pretty much everything that's appeared here I've considered to be good, or at least somewhat above mediocre. You can't win every time. However, this album is one of my absolute favorites. Until very recently it was impossible to find for under $30. The band was a launching pad for various members into other groups such as Asia (John Wetton), Blind Faith (Ric Grech), and Tony Ashton's various endeavors. Also latecomer John Weider brought ties to (Eric Burdon and) the (New) Animals, while a later re-invention of the band (called the Streetwalkers) featured a young Nicko McBrain (Iron Maiden). Yet Family itself, and mainstays Roger Chapman and John Whitney, are largely an unknown factor to most so-called "classic rock" fans.

Music in a Doll's House is Family's debut album. They had been kicking around since 1966, but it took a couple years to finally pull together an album. Sonically, it falls somewhere in the spectrum between Sgt. Pepper-era Beatles and King Crimson and is very much a product of the times bounded by those albums. It's not really a concept album, but it lacks a strong "single" type song, which probably contributed to the lack of large-scale success. While it's an excellent album to listen through, I've never been able to lock on to a track that could stand up with other artists' material from the same time period. It's not just that song "fragments" sprinkled across the 15 tracks - it's all the songs. They are all really nice songs, but they would get totally stomped by other 1967-1968 songs. They belong together, not torn apart to fend for themselves.

Interestingly, the Beatles took notice of Family, enough to ditch their initial proposed name for what would become the White Album ("A Doll's House"). Also, in one of those weird things about this random project I'm doing, this is the second album in the space of the week to borrow the "God Save the Queen" riff - it appears in the final tracks of both this album, and CCR's Pendulum.

Family trooped on until about 1973, enduring heavy lineup changes around the Chapman/Whitney core. The sound of the band toughened up over time to suit Chapman's gravelly vocals, to the point where the whole "Family" thing wasn't making a lot of sense, hence the birth of the Streetwalkers around 1974. Of course the Streetwalkers didn't make much of a splash and their stuff is even more hard to find than Family. Not sure what Chapman et. al. are up to these days but solo careers have been more their focus post-Streetwalkers than working on any kind of band identity.