Like other "lost" rock albums such as
the Beach Boys'
SMiLE,
Spirit's
Potatoland has been "found" periodically, notably in 1981, when a version of it was released, eight years after it had been rejected by Epic Records and shelved. According to
Spirit scholar
Mick Skidmore, however, that version "was to all intents and purposes a bastardized version of the original concept" for which
Spirit leader
Randy California recorded numerous overdubs in an attempt to update its sound.
Skidmore prefers the acetate he heard -- and taped -- on a BBC radio show in 1973, and now that he is in charge of the
Spirit archives, he has attempted to reconstruct the album as it was originally intended for this reissue. In his annotations, he explains that
Potatoland was not actually begun as a
Spirit album per se, for the simple reason that, at the time,
California and drummer
Ed Cassidy, the only other original member of the band involved, had lost the rights to the name
Spirit.
California had recently released his debut solo album,
Kapt. Kopter & the (Fabulous) Twirly Birds, and having reconnected with
Cassidy, began the project as a duo album. (The full title is sometimes rendered as The Adventures of Kaptain Kopter & Commander Cassidy in Potato Land, and a revised, still unissued version was called Randy California and Ed Cassidy -- Back Together Again.) The concept, as delineated in spoken word interludes between the songs, had the two veering off the highway to a mysterious place called Potato Land, where they encounter, among other things, a giant chocolate eclair. These bits of dialogue, reminiscent of the stoned interplay of
Cheech & Chong, served as introductions to the songs, a typical collection of catchy, guitar-driven pop/rock, including, in this version, reprises of such old
Spirit songs as "1984" and "Nature's Way."