Wolfgangs Video- Quicksilver Messenger Service

Y'all remember this band? Jaime

Quicksilver Messenger Service, Winterland, Dec 28, 1975 (http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/quicksilver-messenger-service/video/fresh-air_2146595475.html?utm_source=NL&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20120614video)

I thought Quicksilver was great. Big favorite, earlier on.

But this is the end of 1975, and just in general I think we had all gone off the rails.

The musical inspiration has dried up here, and the fashion is oh well.

I thought Quicksilver was great. Big favorite, earlier on.

But this is the end of 1975, and just in general I think we had all gone off the rails.

The musical inspiration has dried up here, and the fashion is oh well.

The first 3 QSM albums were it for me (through Shady Grove, although I have to admit a certain guilty weakness for Valenti's contributions of What About Me and Fresh Air), and Cippolina and Barry Melton (The Fish) were (in retrospect) a surprisingly long-lived influence on how I play----especially Cippolina's "hummingbird" vibrato.

Funny, I was thinking about that today while I was listening to Lee Renaldo's latest (non-Sonic Youth project) CD, Between the Tides and the Times because he was using the same sort of Quicksilvery (there's a neologism) element. That CD has, to me, a lot of obliquely psychedelic tonal/stylistic referents that pull up the '60s...(at least as much as I can remember of them).

I don't tire of early Quicksilver - and I've had electric music for the mind and body since it came out. I guess I should be playing an SG through a dual showman.

some of the sentiments expressed I find rather blather, but the sonics can't be beat.

edit - freeway flyer on that link is very Quicksilvery, and some focus on Cipollina and his amp on the last tune

the Music Man stacks are pretty cool too. thanks for posting.

I'd almost forgotten how hard it is to watch/listen to Valenti.

I'd almost forgotten how hard it is to watch/listen to Valenti.

Yeah, really. His voice was whiney, high pitched, and annoying beyond belief. I have always been a Quicksilver fan, but IMO, he destroyed that band once and for all. I saw QMS in their early days and later with Valenti. Their sound was based around the guitars of Cipollina and Duncan. Add Valenti, and it goes to hell.

Happy Trails... I've got that album here in the old stack...
that LP got into our party list back in teen years....
I knew a few guys that had hundreds of LP's.. all these bands I'd never heard of on radio..
If they liked a band they sourced every available LP.. local, bootlegs or import... and we listened to them.
Then to follow those musos on to other bands .... a great journey..

Happy Trails,,,

Happy Trails is my favourite vinyl longplayer currently .

Got a near mint copy at a flea market 4 weeks ago .
I must have listened to it at least a thousand times ever since .

+ the only Copperhead lp

I'd almost forgotten how hard it is to watch/listen to Valenti.

From a live standpoint, I see what you mean and his voice got more affected over time.

I think his early vocals, in recorded form, are fine.

What's going wrong here is the personnel changes are indicative of something else amiss with the band, and Valenti offered the promise of doing a lot of the key songwriting and inspiration and he fizzled out and it appears from a distance the others just got tired of him. John looks so withdrawn and distant in this video.

Visually he really doesn't deliver what we (think we) hear on the records. or at least what I thought I heard. A front man especially, has to be someone you think would be a blast to hang out with. Chet fails, or at least circa 1975 he does, IMO.

I saw Quicksilver in 1969 with Dino and Nicky Hopkins. Best freakin' band on the planet (that night). Dino's ego hadn't totally taken over and poisened the band yet. If they could have kept it like it was then, they would have made the other SF bands look pathetic.

I think the video the OP posted was from the reunion tour for the Solid Silver album. And David Freiberg missed most of that tour as he was in Jefferson Starship and they were taking off at that point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D79ujliNh4Q&feature=related

mona live 69 or 70

I saw Quicksilver in 1969 with Dino and Nicky Hopkins. Best freakin' band on the planet (that night). Dino's ego hadn't totally taken over and poisened the band yet. If they could have kept it like it was then, they would have made the other SF bands look pathetic.

I think the video the OP posted was from the reunion tour for the Solid Silver album. And David Freiberg missed most of that tour as he was in Jefferson Starship and they were taking off at that point.

I saw them at the Fillmore with Nicky Hopkins also and thought they were OK, but I also saw the four of them at the Fillmore a couple of years or so earlier and was knocked out. They played "Mona," "Who Do Love," "Pride Of Man," "Dino's Song," "Codine," etc. I have a board tape of the show.

Cipollina became one of my favorite guitarists that night, and still is. There was nobody like him. His attack, his tone, his licks were like nobody else. The man was a sorcerer. It was that amp and effects rig that helped generate those sounds, along with his use of the Bigsby. Totally original. I met him years later and got to play his batwing SG, the one that's now in the RNRHOF.

"I have a board tape"

POST IT!!!!

there is so little of their early live stuff out there, you have a moral obligation!