Mike Bloomfield was an in-demand guy for a bit during the sixties and even early into the seventies. Of course, if his name doesn’t ring out exactly, it has to do with the Chicago born guitarist ran into a bit of trouble with heroin, curtailing his substantial talents and making him a problematic session man.

If you do recognize his name, though, it well may be as a result of playing on some of Bob Dylan’s most well received electric work. Apart from that, though, Bloomfield did time in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and was a member of the ensemble during the time during which it issued some of the most essential updated blues albums of the decade.

All of that, though, was Bloomfield functioning as a sideman – that’s not to say he wasn’t given an opportunity to work out his own solos and such. But there’s a distinct difference between walking into a studio and recording someone else’s music and recording your own, or at least songs you and your buddies wrote.

In mentioning Buddy – Buddy Miles, that is – the Electric Flag were a super group of sorts counting the form Jimi Hendrix drummer behind the set, Bloomfield on guitar as well as a few lesser known figures.

Coming together in order to record the score for a Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson feature entitled The Trip, the Electric Flag seemed to be the perfect ensemble for such a task. The resultant work didn’t do too much for either the film or the band, but did serve as entre into the Columbia Records stable all proper like (as a side that’s the same label Dylan issued some of his work through).

Either way, the band with such a crop of diverse players was capacious of ratcheting up the distorted blues solos to untoward levels – it was only 1967, after all. Despite the year of its release The Trip soundtrack included work that easily shuffled from blues, to light psych and even a bit of drawn out, accidental boogie.

No, the band wasn’t on par with Canned Heat’s finest moments, but it could have been. A few more albums were released under the Electric Flag banner, but just a couple of years forward, the band had become a substantial joke with 1974’s The Band Kept Playing ranking as one of the worst albums to be levied a blues (related) album buying public. Bummer, but true.