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Dave Bainbridge

Dave Bainbridge founder of Celtic Progressive Rock band Iona in conversation with Jon Kirkman about his debut solo album Veil Of Gossamer.

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Release
Cover scan for Live at the Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco 4th Feb 1967
 
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Catalogue number
BEARVP107CD
Release date
03/11/2008
Format
2CD
Label
Bear Recordings
Quicksilver Messenger Service
Live at the Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco 4th Feb 1967
Disc 1
1. You Don't Love Me 2. I Hear You Knocking 3. Gold and Silver 4. All Night Worker 5. Codeine 6. Get My Mojo Working 7. Mona 8. A Fool For You 9. I Can't Believe It 10. Look Around (excerpt)
Disc 2
1. Dino's Song 2. Walkin Blues 3. Babe I'm Gonna Leave You 4. Hoochie Coochie Man 5. Stand By Me 6. Drivin Wheel (It's Been Too Long) 7. Duncan and Brady 8. Pride of Man 9. Who Do You Love

Quicksilver Messenger Service is considered to be one of the most important bands to come from the San Francisco music scene of the sixties along with their contemporaries The Grateful Dead and The Jefferson Airplane.

The band initially came together in 1965 and proceeded to play a great many gigs across America.

 

The band became one of the most popular draws in the Bay area of San Francisco and built a solid reputation as a strong live act built around a mixture of good material and what would essentially become their calling card long extended jamming pieces.. The original line up was guitarists John Cippolina and Gary Duncan alongside drummer Greg Elmore, bassist David Frieberg and vocalist Jim Murray. Originally vocalist Dino Valenti was also in line to become a member however he was arrested and jailed on drugs charges whilst the band was still in its formative stages. He did however join the band at a later date. The original line up lasted from the bands inception in late 1965 until they signed with Capitol Records in late 1967. Just before the band signed to Capitol Jim Murray left the band and the band elected not to replace him

 

The bands debut album the self title Quicksilver Messenger Service was released in May 1968 and was an eclectic affair including key songs that still stand up to scrutiny forty years later. The album includes Pride of Man, Dino’s Song (Written by Valenti), Gold and Silver and the extended song The Fool.

 

The following year the band released what many consider to be their best album. Entitled Happy Trails the album broke into the top 30 and included a side long suite of songs based around the Bo Diddley song Who Do You Love. Happy Trails also included another Diddley song Mona and also the Gary Duncan composed Calvary. The album set the seal on the bands reputation as one of the key bands of the time and certainly one of the key bands to come from the San Francisco music scene. Shortly after the release of Happy Trails however Gary Duncan departed and he was replaced by English keyboard player Nicky Hopkins. With this line up the band recorded Shady Grove which was another top thirty success for the band.

 

By the time of the 1970 release Just For Love Gary Duncan had returned and Dino Valenti also joined up. Further albums including What About Me (1970), Quicksilver (1971) and Comin’ Through (1972) were released although by the time of the Quicksilver album both Frieberg and Cippolina had gone.

 

The band folded in 1973 although there was a reunion in 1975 and an album entitled Solid Silver. The band reformed in 2006 led by Gary Duncan and David Frieberg and they have continued to perform regularly since then sometimes alongside Jefferson Starship. John Cippolina, Dino Valenti and Nicky Hopkins have all subsequently died and the current whereabouts of Greg Elmore are unknown.

 

By the time of this recording on February 4th 1967 Quicksilver Messenger Service were attracting a great deal of attention from both critics and fans alike. This double disc captures the full concert performance from the band with key songs such as Mona, Pride of Man, Codeine, Babe I’m Gonna Leave You and a lengthy Who Do You Love which would become such a highlight of the Happy Trails album some two years later.

Reviews

Released as one of a series of lavishly-packaged in-concert discs, 'Live At The Fillmore...' represents QUICKSILVER MESSENGER SERVICE in their natural habitat: turning on the heads in the flower power capitol of the world in the months leading up to the long hot Summer of Love.

Which probably suggests it'll be an exercise in the kind of mind-numbingly extended soloing and free-form experimentation for which the whole acid-drenched San Fran scene has been excessively documented, certainly if you've ever dipped into the Grateful Dead's 'Dick's Picks' series of live performances. After all, weren't QSM known for their extended improvisations, with their version of Bo Diddley's 'Who Do You Love' taking up an entire side of their landmark 1969 album 'Happy Trails'?

Well, yes they were, yet this splendid Fillmore Concert captures a considerably more disciplined band at the top of their game and reminds us that while the classic QSM – with duelling lead guitarists Gary Duncan and John Cippolina – could stretch out with verve and panache, they could also operate within tighter structures and three minute pop song formats when the mood took them.

And, for the most part, that mood took them on the night of February 4th 1967 when they opened for fellow San Fran scenesters Jefferson Airplane. The opening numbers such as 'All Night Worker' and Willie Cobbs' 'You Don't Love Me' are dispatched with a hard-edged, gritty economy redolent of Creedence Clearwater Revival , while 'Gold & Silver' provides a 'Take 5'-style jazzy interlude with a surprising lightness of touch. The sound quality's good-ish, with a slightly rough-around-the-edges, polished bootleg feel, but more than adequate enough for drummer Greg Elmore's snare to cut through crisply and marshal Duncan and Cippolina's liquid interplay.

As always, the way Duncan and Cippolina play off each other remains phenomenal. They're like a West Coast Keef'n'Ronnie, they way one finishes and the other begins being impossible to define. It's still a joy, however, to hear the way they work the spaces around the vocal on a very Chess Studios-sounding version of 'All Night Worker' or turn up the heat and energy on 'A Fool For You' and their heavy and diseased version of Buffy Sainte-Marie's cautionary 'Codeine'. Indeed, the only real concession on the lengthy, jam-friendly QMS on disc one is delivered via an eight-minute take of Bo Diddley's 'Mona', but with its' rattlesnake shakers and scratchy, vibrato-heavy guitars, it soon proves that improvisation doesn't always equate with taking your eyes off the prize.

CD2 has plenty to recommend it, too, not least the numbers where they link up with future full-time QSM mainstay Dino Valenti. His cunningly-titled 'Dino's Song' injects a surprisingly sharp'n'chiming pop sensibility into the ranks, while even prior to their debut album, 'Pride Of Man' already sounds dramatic and punchy, even allowing for a few fashionable acid-rock guitar slashes. Actually, the only time they sound slightly at sea is when they try a little soulful tenderness on 'I Can't Believe It': a nice idea, but the execution's a little too wobbly to really come off.

They do finally give in to temptation, rounding off with their tumultuous, freight train push'n'pull through Bo Diddley's 'Who Do You Love?', but once again it's an exercise in truly inspired, energy-first emotional bloodletting, rather than the sort of bloated, corpulent wankathon that would gradually become part of rock's established order in the next few years. Context is everything, of course, and we need to remember that this live set was recorded in a pre-Monteray world where extended jams had only just begun to register on the scale, ensuring it must have blown minds at the time. There again, even with 40 years of history on our side, it still sounds pretty damn seismic.

Thanks to Bear/ Voiceprint's enthusiasm and attention to detail, there are a selection of QSM gigs from this period to choose from and we'll be getting to some more of them soon. For the uninitiated, though, this Fillmore Set may well be a very pleasant surprise. Yes, it showcases proficiency and virtuosity where necessary, but it's also a testament to a committed rock'n'roll band every bit as much in hock to the purity of the blues and the thrill of rock's formative years and comes thundering impressively down the decades. If you thought of Quicksilver Messenger Service as hoary old dinosaurs, I'd suggest you listen again. Without prejudice.

Tim Peacock www.whisperinandhollerin.com