I bought this album for its cover. Look at it: It comes in colors, everywhere. It’s like a rainbow. In fact, it’s a bright psychedelic lovefest of colors, a cross between the Kinks’
Face to Face and the Chocolate Watch Band’s
No Way Out. And check out Virgil Fox: He has pipes sprouting from his head. And that bow tie, might it have belonged to the Electric Prunes? While
Into the Classics: Meditations and Sonic Spectaculars may have psychedelic connotations in the title, this is no psychedelic record. It wasn’t even released in the ’60s, during the psychedelic era, but the early ’70s. Virgil Fox plays the Aeolian-Skinner Organ—without accompaniment. And he’s not guiding you on a wild magic carpet ride into new sonic and sensory realms; he's taking you to church. Yep, Virgil was letting the flowers of his imagination sprout not in some incense-clouded harem, but in some incense-clouded cathedral. On this album, he sticks to the classics, working his dizzy fingers through Tchaikovsky, Grieg and Bohm. Psychedelic or not, his choice of material is inspired, his performance superlative. Just imagine yourself seated alone one lazy summer afternoon in the cool comfort of a gothic cathedral, the sun gleaming through stained-glass windows, letting dusty rays of beautiful colors shower down on you as you take in Virgil’s virtuosity. This record may venture down some well-trodden paths, but with a little imagination, you can set your sights for the center of the sun.
I wrote this piece a few years back. I pulled it out of mothballs (and gave it an editorial bath) after listening to Fox’s record on my hi-fi last week.
