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The Plastic Cloud
The Plastic Cloud
Allied - 1968
Michael Panontin
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In July of 1967, the Jefferson Airplane took up a week-long residence at the massive O'Keefe Centre in Toronto. They followed that up with an additional free concert in the sun-drenched and still new Nathan Phillips Square. There were estimated to be 20,000 souls in attendance that day, and it's not a stretch to say that Grace Slick's soaring vocals and Jorma Kaukonen's searing electric guitar must have had a huge influence on young bands in the Toronto area.
The most obvious ones were actually located in the suburbs to the east of the city. Reign Ghost (from Oshawa) and the Plastic Cloud (from Bay Ridges in present-day Pickering) recorded superb and highly sought-after psychedelic LPs for the Allied label, with both discs changing hands for upwards of four figures these days.
There hasn't been a lot of ink spilled on the Plastic Cloud, and so the group remains one of the true remaining mysteries out there in the Canuck cyberlands. The group were a four-piece led by their 22-year-old guitarist and lead vocalist Don Brewer, with guitarist Mike Cadieux, bassist Brian Madill and drummer Randy Umphrey rounding things out. They formed in 1967, and by the tail end of 1968 - RPM made mention of it in its 23 Dec '68 issue - the guys had issued their only LP, the self-titled The Plastic Cloud.
Brewer penned all eight songs on The Plastic Cloud, which like most of the records released by Jack Boswell on Allied was extremely limited, with allegedly just 500 copies pressed up. The album sort of feels like two discs in one, bookending the summer of love with alternating mid-sixties folk-rock gems and extended tracks of blistering late-sixties guitar work.
The somewhat wooden harmonies on 'Epistle to Paradise' and the bucolic guitar of 'Bridge under the Sky', which open sides 1 and 2 respectively, are fine examples of the former, recalling the pre-psychedelic work of the early (pre-Grace Slick) Airplane or the starry-eyed folk of the Youngbloods. 'You Don't Care', the ten-minute swath of lysergic fuzz guitar that closes out the first side and which is by far the best of the latter, and the equally acidic 'Civilization Machine' over on the back side are simply brilliant. Brewer's singing hints at George Harrison, especially on 'You Don't Care', and his mesmerizing guitar solos will virtually sear themselves onto your brain. These tracks are surely what all the fuss is about in collectors' circles.
Unfortunately, the record was perhaps a little too out there for the still relatively staid domestic record industry. According to RPM, the group had "taken a plunge into the unwelcome world of Canadian originality for which they deserve an 'A' for effort". Add to that the fact that it was released right at the tail end of 1968 and thus had to fight for shelf space with the Beatles' White Album, Hendrix's Electric Ladyland and Led Zeppelin's first LP, and it's hardly a surprise that The Plastic Cloud drifted into the bargain bins without much notice.
These days The Plastic Cloud has gone positively stratospheric in value, with a clean copy selling in 2019 for nearly USD$1400. (Record geeks can salivate over the fact that a sealed copy actually turned up at a thrift shop in Windsor, Ontario in the late 1990s...though, alas, not in these hands.)
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