It's always fun when something obscure pops up here. Today it was the Illinois Speed Press (ISP), a band that actually got around quite a bit around 1970, rubbed shoulders with more famous bands (Chicago), and contributed to other, quite different bands (Poco).
ISP was born out of various garage groups around Chicago with rapidly shifting personnel (Peter Cetera was part of this prehistory), coalescing around a steady lineup and more aggressive sound by 1968. Producer James William Guercio packaged them with three other up-and-coming bands from the area: Aorta, The Flock, the Chicago Transit Authority, and ISP. Aorta sort of crashed and burned (I just read an unfortunate story about an ill-advised acid trip prior to a show), The Flock was best known for contributing violinist Jerry Goodman to the Mahavishnu Orchestra, the Chicago Transit Authority shortened its name to Chicago and the rest is history, and ISP, while not experiencing any Aorta-style disasters, slipped into obscurity. Outside of Chicago (the band), the package deal was kind of a bust.
On paper ISP had a lot to offer. Guitarist Kal David provided raw blues energy and other guitarist Paul Cotton was more versatile, with country and acoustic tendencies. Their support, though a little shaky (they changed bassists right before the album was recording), was able to provide enough energy to match the twin guitar sound of David and Cotton. It's pretty clear which compositions are the Kal David ones (they are heavy) and which were penned by Paul Cotton (more laid back). Occasionally there is a mismatch ("Sky Song") which doesn't quite work, but overall its a good blend of heavy and rollicking ("Pay the Price") and wistful/introspective ("Here Today" and "When You Come Around").
Supposedly this album had a strange opening "collage" of the different songs, something so abhorrent to the band that when it was released on CD they cut that part out. According to replies to very upset customers on the World's Largest Marketplace, this intro track was relegated to the CD-ROM bonus tracks. Unfortunately it seems to work best with obsolete technology, so I still have not heard this introduction that apparently is the best or worst track ever. I happened on the disc (packaged with Duet, their second and last album) by pure dumb luck while at Amoeba in Hollywood. It was a little pricey, but nowhere near what online sellers are demanding for it these days!
To conclude the ISP story, a promising start (with a regular gig at the Whisky) quickly disintegrated into nothing. Never able to overcome continuous lineup trouble, the entire band save for David and Cotton were sacked between albums and replaced with session musicians. Duet is a little more country than the first album and more lush in a few spots, but still a decent album. However, David saw the writing on the wall and exited the band to join the Fabulous Rhinestones. Shortly thereafter Cotton saw no problem with putting ISP to rest by joining Poco, a band he would stick with for a good deal of their extensive history. Oddly enough, Kal David was the voice of "Sonny Eclipse", an animatronic robot at Disney World, in addition to lending his talents to other Disney stuff, all stuff you would probably overlook if you knew nothing of ISP.
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