YOUNGBLOODS The Two Trips US WESTCOAST PSYCH NEAR MINT LP UK PRESS YOUNG BLOODS

	£		24
	$		31

Original UK pressing on the silver on black Mercury label from 1969. The sleeve and the record are in NEAR MINT condition.

Original release with gold-bordered cover. Side A of this LP contains the very first recordings made by the Youngbloods. "Sometimes" and "Another Strange Town" have appeared on a single on Mercury Cat. No. 73068 in 1970. The other 3 tracks on side A were previously unreleased, and have never been after this release. Side B contains selected tracks from Jesse Colin Young's second solo album "Young Blood" on Mercury Cat. No. SR 61005 from 1965.

Here's a review from the record-fiend blog:
Although they're far from my favorite 1960s rock group, I'll concede that the Youngbloods did have some fine moments. Their folk rock sides were always more convincing than their attempts at psychedelia, and they never really recovered from the loss of guitarist Jerry Corbitt before the release of their third album, Elephant Mountain. That's not to say that bassist and erstwhile folk singer-guitarist guitarist Jesse Colin Young was without talent, but as his sweet voice and correspondingly similar songs came to dominate the Youngbloods' sound, the band became a little too soft for its own good.

Despite the fact that Two Trips was an exploitation job of old material released by Mercury to cash in on the belated success of "Get Together," it's actually my favorite album by Young and the Youngbloods since it neatly encapsulates that transitional time when folk music was morphing into folk rock. Indeed, the tracks on this LP were apparently recorded during the pivotal year of 1965, when the 1960s as we understand the decade today seems to have really begun. Side A features demos by an embryonic version of the group that does not always include the contributions of pianist Lowell "Banana" Levinger, while side B includes approximately half of the songs from Young's Youngblood album, which came out earlier that same year. The Youngbloods tracks are cut from a similar cloth as the material from their first two albums, pleasant if unspectacular East Coast folk rock. The beginning of "Hey Babe" sounds like it wants to become "Get Together," but never quite does. The mellow "Sometimes" contains some nice harmony vocals, and "Rider" is a raved-up version of an acoustic song by Young that had previously appeared on Youngblood. The country rocker "Another Strange Town" has a welcome grittiness to it, but "No More Pain" is arguably the most compelling and distinctive performance in this group of songs.

The tracks from Youngblood are fascinating in that they can be described as folk on the verge of becoming folk rock. Even though the songs' arrangements do not employ electric guitars and other amplified instruments, some tunes are notable for featuring percussion and for having a palpable rhythmic quality. My favorite number on this album is a first-rate cover of Mississippi John Hurt's "Nobody's Dirty Business," which is itself an interpretation of Bessie Smith's "'Tain't Nobody's Business If I Do." If it bears similarity to the Lovin' Spoonful, it's because that's John Sebastian you hear blowing the harmonica. Man, I love this song. "Summer Rain" is sickly sweet and a bit overly earnest for my tastes, not to mention that the piano sounds almost out of tune. "Brother Can You Spare a Dime" reveals itself to be a better than expected performance of an old Tin Pan Alley composition. The next two tracks are thoroughly excellent: Young's convincing "Walkin' Off the Blues" as well as a version of "Doc Geiger," which is graced by Peter Childs' lovely dobro playing. In spite of its title, "Lullabye" manages to avoid the pitfalls of being too mushy, which was unfortunately the bane of Jesse Colin Young's post-Youngbloods solo career.

Interestingly enough, even though this album was never reissued on compact disc, a CD version of Youngblood was released in the late 1990s, which included all of the early Youngbloods material featured here as bonus tracks, with the curious exception of "Rider."

Here's another review:
This rather peculiar if worthwhile release, co-billed to Jesse Colin Young and the Youngbloods, slipped out in 1970, though the material had been recorded four or five years earlier. It was peculiar because side one contained five previously unreleased Youngbloods tracks from the mid-'60s, recorded prior to their deal with RCA, while side two was devoted entirely to solo Jesse Colin Young recordings, all of which had appeared on his second LP, 1965's Young Blood (originally issued on Mercury). Most likely Mercury was trying to exploit their Youngbloods-related vault holdings in the wake of the group's huge success with the "Get Together" single. As it happens, however, it wasn't a purely exploitative exercise, since the five tracks on side one are fine original songs (all but one by Young) that show the band's sound fully formed. In fact, they're on par with their early RCA albums -- "Sometimes," "Hey Babe," and "Another Strange Town" are especially good -- and what's more, none of them were re-recorded for those RCA releases. The six solo Young tracks on side two are also very good, and though they're folkier and less fully arranged than the Youngbloods material, they're pretty advanced for 1965 in their early if tentative folk-rock fusion. The Young cuts, admittedly, are better heard in the context of the full Young Blood album, which has a few songs not included on this LP. And in fact, the best way to mop up these pre-RCA Youngbloods/Young rarities is to get the 1997 Edsel CD reissue of Young Blood, which adds four of the five Youngbloods songs from Two Trips as bonus tracks, though that CD is now itself hard to find. Yet the Youngbloods' electric rock version of "Rider" from Two Trips -- which is an entirely different recording than the acoustic folk version of the song Young put on Young Blood -- is not on that CD, so the Two Trips LP remains desirable to completists for that one track. ~ Richie Unterberger, Rovi

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Postage indicated in the auction is not the actual postage as ebay doesn't allow a higher postage then 4 GBP in this category. Postage for this item is 8 GBP for most countries within Europe and 15 GBP for the rest of the world. This is up to 2kg, so you can add up to 5 more LP's for the same postage.
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