Ursa Major (1972) Back to the Land

 A rock trio formed in Michigan by Frost guitarist Dick Wagner that almost included Billy Joel on keyboards before he dropped out. This track features a lot of the spacey prog of the band's debut album with a mixture of hard rock and folk picking . With a dark ominous orchestrated riff that featured strings mixing with lyrics about getting back to the land this was a departure from the Sabbath esque feel of Wagners previous band Frost (more to come on them in a later post).

 Though as it turns out not that huge a departure as Wagner as singer/ guitarist/frontman of Frost and Ursa means the heavy parts of the song between the eastern orchestra motif, which on a sidenote must have been influenced by Friends on side one of Led Zeppelin 3, sounds a lot like his old band and slightly dated 60s rock as we head into the era of big riff based bands like Zeppellin, Sabbath and Purple.