BFI

It's the late '60s. Three brothers, Doug, Daryl, and Dennis Dragon are living in Malibu, surfing and gigging around the Los Angeles area, and having their minds blown by the music of The Beatles, Hendrix, and The Doors. The multi-instrumentalist sons of a symphony conductor and an opera singer, the brothers decide it's time to create their own psychedelic soul/rock masterpiece.

They call the sessions Blue Forces Intelligence and co-produce the album with high school friend, Donn Landee (a future producer for Van Halen). They find themselves layering their instruments in new ways, adding deep, bassy vocal lines and then ramming them up against falsetto harmonies, adding organs and space age sound effects, recording spirituals and pop and crazy rock opera. The effect is increasingly spacey and weird, but also funky, a missing link between new directions others are exploring in jazz and soul as well as rock music.

Unfortunately, the suits at the West Coast offices of the major labels aren't ready, complaining that they don't hear a hit. After shopping the record, now called just BFI, for a few months, the boys become disillusioned and focus instead on their session work. They all end up working in the Beach Boys' backing band. Doug moves to Hawaii, tours Australia. Dennis becomes a successful record producer. Daryl hooks up with Toni Tennille and experiences international chart success as The Captain. The Dragons BFI is forgotten.

Jump on 37 years. Strictly Kev/DJ Food, influential mixologist, designer for Ninja Tune and obsessive record collector, discovers a 500-run private pressing of the soundtrack to a surf movie called A Sea For Yourself. On it is a track called Food For My Soul by a band called the Dragons. Amazed at finding a true psychedelic original from a band he's never heard of, Strictly Kev uses his extensive contacts in the world of vinyl mania, and tracks Dennis Dragon down to license Food For My Soul for the latest Solid Steel mix CD. Dennis agrees and then blows Kev away with a whole unreleased album from the same sessions.

Ninja Tune is finally releasing The Dragons debut album after it sat on a recording engineer's shelf for almost 40 years. Beautifully played and produced, full of crazy invention and a loveably naïve lack of self-consciousness, BFI is a miniature masterpiece, a lost classic of psych-whimsy, West Coast sexiness and serious musical chops. Surely we re ready by now?