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Amidst all of the social/political turmoil and triumph of 1969, just as music was starting to go hard 'n heavy (debuts by Led Zeppelin and King Crimson), Paul Revere and the Raiders released their bubblegum pop masterpiece Hard 'n Heavy (With Marshmallow) to general ambivalence as most of the record-buying public had moved on, falsely assuming the band's best days to be behind them, and critics in the new school of music journalism wrote them off as irrelevant teenybopper has-beens, hopelessly out of step with the more "serious" direction in which rock music was moving. However, those who bought the record and listened to it, unconstrained by such prejudices, were certainly aware of what is now known in retrospect- that this is a brilliantly-crafted pop statement, full of songs embodying all of the Raiders' best attributes to the 10th power.
Seemingly insulated from, and oblivious to, the political/social/musical changes taking place (some for the better, most for the worst), Hard 'n Heavy (With Marshmallow), produced by Mark Lindsay and consisting entirely of original songs, operates apart from, and outside of, the cynicism and excesses that characterized most music by 1969. The album references a time (the early to mid-60s) when music was pure and uncontaminated, free of dark themes, politics, and the breaking of sonic/societal boundaries. The strength of this album as a whole and its individual tracks lies in straight-ahead simplicity and undiluted approach- from the Stones-clone fuzz banger "Time After Time" to the ethereal, haunted, spaced-out "Trishalana" (Mercury Rev would later mine this territory to stunning effect on the otherworldly Deserter's Songs) to the pure pop euphoria of "Mr. Sun, Mr. Moon"- this is easily the band's most consistent effort.
Paul Revere and the Raiders had never been fans of the counterculture (and vice versa), rejecting its principles in songs like "Kicks" and Hard 'n Heavy's own "Where You Goin Girl." They were never going to turn on, tune in, and drop out. This aesthetic served to establish them as true pop-rock outsiders/rebels, the counter to the counterculture. By this point in the band's career, with three Gold Albums (Just Like Us, Midnight Ride, The Spirit of '67) under their belt, Mark Lindsay and Paul Revere were the only remaining original members, supplemented by Freddy Weller (guitar), Keith Allison (bass), and Joe Correro, Jr. (drums). Although Hard 'n Heavy (With Marshmallow) would only reach the peak position of 51 in the U.S., the two outstanding singles "Mr. Sun, Mr. Moon" and "Cinderella Sunshine" would chart at 18 and 58, respectively. Honestly, the entire record is loaded with cuts that could/should have been hit singles. A mixture of hard-rocking songs caked in fuzz tone guitars blended with Mark Lindsay's catchy, hot pink bubblegum psych-pop compositions, Hard 'n Heavy (With Marshmallow) stands as one of the great lost albums from the 1960s, a true ear worm that burrows deeply into your musical DNA.
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