The throngs of kids that grew out their hair in the ‘60s resulted in a wash of hippie rock and boogie bands. Pretty frequently these acts wound up sounding like nothing more than your friends getting hammered and playing Bo Diddley songs with extended guitar solos patching things together. Of course, some of those acts work better than others, but seeing as Chicago’s Mountain Bus stayed away from too much of that Bo Diddley beat and opted for a cowboy ethos its recorded legacy isn’t too horrendous.

Surely, the band is all Grateful Dead cops and Quicksilver Messenger Service styled wavering guitar jams. Out of the clutch of impersonators during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, there really weren’t too many second tier acts that reached as close to its source material as this Chicago quartet. The music isn’t perfect – and there are unquestionably moments of utter nonsense – but the faults represented on the band’s first and only long player, entitled Sundance, are overshadowed by the quality instrumentation.

The one draw back to all of this is actually a part of what makes the hippie rock work in the first place. Whereas the entirety of the album has a pastoral feel to it, there are times when Mountain Bus just comes off as acid drenched dullards. The title of “Apache Canyon” is enough to call it into question. Living in Chicago, I’ve not come across a canyon around town – and that’s not to say that there isn’t one somewhere in Illinois somewhere, but the title of this song seems inextricably linked to Topanga Canyon where denizens of the Los Angeles rock thing went for safe harbor. Apart from the name that Mountain bus foisted on this track, the music is all meandering acoustic instrumentation and curious moaning background noises.

Fortunately, the song moves into the strongest instrumental track on Sundance. “Hexahedron” maintains the spacey vibe throughout its nine minutes. Here, though, the Quicksilver Messenger Service similarities are ratcheted up a bit. That’s not really a problem as Bill Kees and his guitar seem to get along famously. The song rambles around a bit, but has strong enough guidance from the rhythm section as to get it over.

No write up of Mountain Bus, though, would be complete without mention of the legal wrangling that wound up bankrupting the band’s label and dissolving the group. Its legal shenanigans began when the label that Leslie West and his band Mountain were signed to forced Mountain Bus to stop performing due to copyright infringement. The name was apparently too close to West’s group. Mountain Bus’ label – Good Records – attempted to fight the bigger label in court and just wound up bankrupting itself. So, for all the positive vibes (yes, that’s meant to be tongue-in-cheek) that Mountain Bus gave off, the band was ostensibly dissolved as a result of a record label’s power play. That’s the music biz, unfortunately. Either way, Gear Fab has re-issued Sundance, so head over there and snag it to prevent any more indie labels from being drowned by the man.