★ The Free Design - Kites Are Fun (1967)

•• Kites Are Fun • Make the Madness Stop • When Love is Young • The Proper Ornaments • My Brother Woody • 59th Street Bridge Song • Don't Turn Away • Umbrellas • Michelle • Never Tell the World • A Man and a Woman • Stay Another Season ••"It's a young thing—and it's a different thing!"—so proclaimed the back cover of the handsome gatefold jacket on the Free Design's debut album, in words that couldn't have dissuaded more people under 30 from buying the album if the makers had tried. And that's a crying shame...Kites Are Fun is almost an East Coast answer to the work of the Mamas & the Papas or Spanky & Our Gang, falling between the former at their most subtle and the latter at their most ethereal...very much a product of its era, a lyrical, boundlessly cheerful body of music featuring gentle orchestral accompaniment and glittering sound, and some of it—such as Make the Madness Stop—possesses a vaguely spiritual content. Sandy...gets a brilliant solo showcase on When Love Is Young, while The Proper Ornaments returned to a group setting with elegant trumpet and cello accompaniment...Umbrellas ...should have gotten a hearing...swinging, upbeat showcase for all of the singers...Never Tell the World...highly ornate covers of Simon & Garfunkel's Feelin' Groovy...The Beatles' Michelle (beautifully deconstructing...and re-imagining them with new tempi and choruses)...movie-spawned hit "A Man and a Woman..." Bruce Eder AMG http://www.allmusic.com/album/kites-a... failure of the Free Design remains one of the most baffling mysteries in the annals of pop music—with their exquisitely celestial harmonies, lighter-than-air melodies, and blissful arrangements, the group's records were on par with the work of superstar contemporaries like the Beach Boys, the Association, and the Cowsills, yet none of their singles even cracked the Hot 100. The Free Design originally comprised siblings Chris, Bruce, and Sandy Dedrick, natives of Delevan, NY, whose father Art served as a trombonist and arranger with Vaughn Monroe; when Chris moved to New York City in 1966 to attend the Manhattan School of Music, he recruited Bruce...and Sandy...to form a folk group, and soon the trio emerged as a popular attraction on the Greenwich Village coffeehouse circuit. In time, Chris began composing original material for the Free Design to perform, and with the assistance of their father, the siblings cut a demo, ultimately signing with producer Enoch Light's...label Project 3...title track...Kites Are Fun was also their first single, cracking the Top 40...Billboard adult contemporary chart but...only number 114 on...pop char—...it was the Free Design's biggest hit..." Jason Ankeny AMG http://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-fr... group playing jazzy pop music...sunshine pop...baroque pop...Chris Dedrick wrote most...songs...Their uncle Rusty Dedrick was a jazz trumpeter with Claude Thornhill and Red Norvo...formed the band while living in New York City...influenced by vocal groups like The Hi-Los...along with Peter, Paul and Mary and the counterpoint experiments of Benjamin Britten...trademark sound involved complex harmonies, jazz-like chord progressions, and off-beat time signatures, all products of Chris's classical training... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free... them squarely in the realm of sunshine pop acts like The Association and Curt Boettcher and Gary Usher's Sagittarius, but with the unmistakably precious Greenwich Village sound...songs...uniformly well arranged and performed, sparkling with some of the clearest sound of the era, and are also consistently pleasant and inoffensive, offering an amiable take on the counterculture's message of peace, love and freedom...intricate vocal lines...sophisticated harmonies normally associated with jazz or chamber classical music, carry out its beyond-innocent charms. The Proper Ornaments adds in "ba-ba" vocal counterpoint reminiscent of the Beach Boys and The Mamas & the Papas, in addition to a baroque arrangement featuring harpsichord and trumpets; it's as refined a piece of music as was released in the decade... ~ Dominique Leone http://thefreedesign.com/discography/... singing folk music and creating their sound...group's name, Chris...explained, "had to do with our way of singing—there was a lot of counterpoint and individual lines going on all the time...We tried to make our own arrangements. People who heard us said, 'Boy, what a great blend.' So I decided to try writing some songs of our own." His first effort was Kites Are Fun...his father heard it—and complimented him on it—he suggested that Chris try writing something with trumpets in it. The result was The Proper Ornaments... https://thefreedesign.com/bio/ 1967 pop psych jazz 1960's popsike 60's vocal harmonies NYC '67