Newbury Park

Newbury Park (Cream CR-9003)

Most Christian albums in the 1970’s eschewed secular labels and concert venues, nurturing the developing Christian sub-culture and being evangelistic in the process. This album and group were an exception, although their later work was more distinctively Christian.

But if you like the 1960’s with its “Sunshine music” (like the Mamas and the Papas,) social commentary and strange love songs, this is the album for you. It is an unabashedly “period piece,” and sounds good in the process. In spite of pieces like “I Wanna Come Home”, it’s a fun album. (Personally, after putting this together, I smile at “My Own 1889”.) Newbury Park could have been a much bigger group had others not beaten them to their genre, but the passage of time makes this album an enjoyable–and sometimes spiritual–voyage through an era that haunts us to this day.