Songs You May Have Missed #493

Nektar: “Magic is a Child” (1977)

For all intents and purposes, Roye Albrighton is Nektar. Lead guitar wizard, lead vocalist, main songwriter–he’s everything to the band Ian Anderson is to Jethro Tull.

The last thing Nektar fans would want is an album without Albrighton. But when he left the band for a brief period that’s what they got in 1977’s Magic is a Child. And though it’s the least Nektar-like (and least prog-sounding) album in the band’s catalogue, it’s actually a pretty decent record.

Most of it sounds like straight-ahead 70’s British rock, stripped of the lofty space rock tendencies that are Albrighton’s forte. But the title track sounds a different note entirely. What it sounds like is exactly what it was to me as teenager: a sort of anthem for hyper imaginative, inward-turned, Tolkien-reading misfits.

Oh, and that happens to be a young Brooke Shields on the album’s cover and inner sleeve–speaking of the genre of fantasy.

At the time I was a little boy
All my senses were in bloom
The forests were adventure
There dwelt the legends of my mind
I was the keeper of the golden key
I made all the rules
I only had to dream to create the scene

Magic is a child
Imagination is alive
Magic is imagination
A child is alive

How the trees were so high
The cheese in the sky
Were part of my imagination
I was goblins and elves
With small mushroom shelves
As Brothers Grimm would tell their stories

Opening my eyes in the morning I would see
Patterns in the trees making shapes that were a
Face to me

In those tireless times
And those carefree lines
That we draw ourselves
But they’re never kept
I know magic is a child
Imagination is alive
Magic is imagination
A child is alive
Magic is a child
Imagination is alive
Magic is a child
Alive as a child’s imagination

Every Moment Has A Song