Steve Miller Band, Children of the Future, 1968, Still Sealed, shrinkwrapped

$

40

I am offering a still-sealed and shrinkwrapped original 1968 first printing of Children of the Future by Steve Miller Band from my private collection. Gatefold album cover, Capitol Records SKAO 2920, stereo. Only blem is the small punchout safely in the upper right corner. How this classic psychedelic album ever ended up in a cutout bin is totally mystifying. This was Steve Miller's debut album and features Boz Scaggs, too. Sorry about the high starting price, but this is not just another old album in "like new" condition. This year is the 50th anniversary of the album, and it's still new! Refunds given only if album isn't opened. Insurance optional at buyer's expense.
Here's what Allmusic has to say about it:

A psychedelic blues rock-out, 1968's Children of the Future marked Steve Miller's earliest attempt at the ascent that brought him supersonic superstardom. Recorded at Olympic Studios in London with storied producer Glyn Johns at the helm, the set played out as pure West Coast rock inflected with decade-of-love psychedelia but intriguingly cloaked in the misty pathos of the U.K. blues ethic. Though bandmate Boz Scaggs contributed a few songs, the bulk of the material was written by Miller while working as a janitor at a music studio in Texas earlier in the year. The best of his efforts resonate in a side one free-for-all that launches with the keys and swirls of the title track and segues smoothly through "Pushed Me Through It" and "In My First Mind," bound for the epic, hazy, lazy, organ-inflected "The Beauty of Time Is That It's Snowing," which ebbs and flows in ways that are continually surprising. The second half of the LP is cast in a different light -- a clutch of songs that groove together but don't have the same sleepy flow. Though it has since attained classic status -- Miller himself was still performing it eight years later -- Scaggs' "Baby's Callin' Me Home" is a sparse, lightly instrumentalized piece of good old '60s San Francisco pop. His "Steppin' Stone," on the other hand, is a raucous, heavy-handed blues freakout with a low-riding bass and guitar breaks that angle out in all directions. And whether the title capitalized at all on the Monkees' similarly titled song, released a year earlier, is anybody's guess. Children of the Future was a brilliant debut. And while it is certainly a product of its era, it's still a vibrant reminder of just how the blues co-opted the mainstream to magnificent success.
Here's another review:
The infectious Children Of The Future was miles from the grand mainstream rock that would bring Miller his life long fame. So it’s no wonder that fans of “Fly Like An Eagle,” or “Take The Money And Run,” will hardly recognize these prolific tracks. While one would certainly not characterize this record as being “far out,” it does rank right up there with the first outing by Moby Grape, and floats with the same intelligence and grace as The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper, where Miller and his band can be heard embracing a solid album of rhythm and blues laced together with enough psychedelic attitudes, effects, and solid instrumentation to carry the band headlong in the arms of those tripped out nights. 

If you weren’t there during those heady days, there’s no way that I’m going to try and convince you that this is a timeless album, even with it’s use of [at the time] the unheard of Mellotron, where the release reaches in various sonic directions at once, though it does manage to come off as a cohesively seamless inspired creation, delivered smoothly and cleanly, with vocals that are laid up front, in a true blues tradition, showing how brilliant a psychedelic album can be in the hands of the right artist, who knows what and when to deliver, and when to hold back, keeping things in check and balanced. I use the world ‘balance’ with purpose, as this was a time of musical transition, where too much of the over the top psych could easily alienate, and just enough sounded fresh, intoxicating, and exciting … while still managing to be linked to the pop music culture we’d grown up with during the late 50’s and early 60’s.

All and all, the album moves and ebbs effortlessly, almost lazily from one track to another, at times swirling with its atmospheric organ riffs, though never rises above a sleepy hypnotic flow of musical washes that would open the gates for later bands such as Spacemen 3 to follow.

*** The Fun Facts: During the year of this album’s release, Steve Miller was working as a janitor in a Texas music studio.

The album artwork was created by the legendary artist Victor Moscoso, who was responsible for countless venue posters and record jackets of the day. I won’t kid you, the album art was what drew many of us in, with those bits of confused lettering becoming crystal clean with a dose of the Sandoz Blue … reading The Future.

Review by Jenell Kesler

Track Listing