Consumer Guide Album

Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen: Lost in the Ozone [Paramount, 1971]
Cody takes the country-rock idea that good old boys form a secret counterculture to bleary new heights. Uprooted bozos who handle fast cars and hot music (or vice versa) a lot better than wimmin and booze, they're half at home in every renegade country tradition, rockabilly and Western swing and white boogie-woogie. But not one of the four vocalists achieves the hippie-redneck synthesis--they all sound like they flee to one subculture when they get kicked out of the other. And the only time the songwriting reaches the outer atmosphere is on "Seeds and Stems (Again)," as close to pure hippie as they get. B