Quicksilver Messenger Service

[neohippie]

I love my sirius satelite radio, just heard this tune for the first time today. It was as if the clock had been turned back 30 years. This could just as well have been written this morning.

What about me?

You poisoned my sweet water.
You cut down my green trees.
The food you fed my children
Was the cause of their disease.

My world is slowly fallin' down
And the airs not good to breathe.
And those of us who care enough,
We have to do something.......

(Chorus)
Oh.......oh What you gonna do about me?
Oh.......oh What you gonna do about me?

Your newspapers,
They just put you on.
They never tell you
The whole story.

They just put your
Young ideas down.
I was wonderin' could this be the end
Of your pride and glory?

(Chorus)

I work in your factory.
I study in your schools.
I fill your penitentiaries.
And your military too!

And I feel the future trembling,
As the word is passed around.
"If you stand up for what you do believe,
Be prepared to be shot down."

(Chorus)

And I feel like a stranger
In the land where I was born
And I live like an outlaw.
An' I'm always on the run..........................

An I’m always getting’ busted
And I got to take a stand........
I believe the revolution
Must be mighty close at hand.......................

(Chorus)

I smoke marijuana
But I can’t get behind your wars.
And most of what I do believe
Is against most of your laws

I'm a fugitive from injustice
But I'm goin' to be free.
Cause your rules and regulations
They don’t do the thing for me

(Chorus)

And I feel like a stranger
In the land where I was born
And I live just like an outlaw.
An' I'm always on the run..........................


And though you may be stronger now
My time will come around
You keep adding to my numbers
As you shoot my people down


(Chorus)
Repeat
lyrics sung during final chorus
I Won’t go
What about me Now.
I ain’t lookin’ for no trouble

[enigmatic]

1. Quicksilver was a underappreciated band...

They got lost in the whole SF Rock of the late 60's; what a great band nonetheless..

[chicagojoe]

3. W-A-A-A-Y-Y-Y under appreciated.

[ET Awful]

4. So was Moby Grape

Both kind of vanished into the ether.

As to Quicksilver, it wasn't so much that they got lost as that they were more happy to just stay where they were and by not pushing hard enough, they didn't become a widespread phenomenon (for lack of a better word) like the Airplane and the Dead.

They shared many a stage with the rest of the bands of the time and were completely part of the whole symbiotic music scene in San Francisco.

[enigmatic]

5. Moby Grape was a helluva band..

I still play "Omaha" on my show every so often. I loved Skip Spence's solo stuff, too..

[ET Awful]

6. Some company, I think it was Rhino released a two CD set of

most of their best stuff a few years (as in 10 or 15) back. It's the only music of theirs I have :)

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

16. And Electric Flag

I still go see Nick Gravenites up in the wine country...he and Cipollina were Nicksilver

[Blue_In_AK]

2. I had two Quicksilver albums in my collection back in the day. n/t

[Squeech]

7. I got a few years on you guys

so I remember this stuff (almost) first hand.

Back in the actual San Francisco '60s, Quicksilver was considered as good as the Dead, possibly better. Their live album, Happy Trails, ranks with Live Dead and Bless Its Pointed Little Head (Jefferson Airplane) as a document of how far out there musicians could get on stage at the Fillmore (although the most extreme tune, "Calvary," was a studio jam with a zillion overdubs).

Also they were ahead of the curve in terms of style. Check out the cowboy imagery on the Happy Trails cover. The Dead didn't put on cowboy hats until Workingman's Dead, a couple years later.

I can suggest a couple reasons why they didn't make it bigger.

(1) Their guitar hero, John Cippolina, wasn't healthy enough to tour as relentlessly as the Dead did. (He died on tour in 1980 or so, of an asthma attack after a gig.) (1a) They were also kinda lazy-- they barely played out at all the year after Happy Trails, while the Dead were committing themselves to their long strange trip.

(2) Quicksilver didn't have any strong songwriters; most of the songs for which they were best known were covers of old blues or folk standards. When they originally got together, they wanted Dino Valenti as their lead singer and writer, but he inconveniently got busted for drugs just as they were getting started, and spent the Summer of Love in jail. He did join the band when he got out, and in fact did write "What About Me" (above) and "Fresh Air" and a bunch of less interesting stuff. He was also a jerk, and a crappy performer-- I saw this version of the band, and they were godawful; Valenti kept insisting that the soundman turn up the treble, when it was already massively tinny. And he's no longer with us either.

The Rhino collection is quite good. I can only think of one song I'd ever want to listen to again that isn't on it. As a practical matter I tend to play the first disc, featuring the key 1968 material, about a hundred times more often than the second one.

[Atlas Mugged]

10. Uh....didn't we fuck at Altamont?

I was there, too. I despised Valenti, but I didn't go into it too much on my other post because I didn't want to create another McCartney incident. You never know.

Wasn't the album he joined on 'Shady Grove'? Gotta' look it up.

I lived on the corner of 22nd and Church. Used to walk up 22nd and olge Joplin's car(painted by Mouse) on Noe Street. Ran into her all the time. Good times.

on edit: My favorite band of the era was Mad River; were you the one who reacted to my mention of it the other day?

[Squeech]

13. Not me

I never actually lived on the west coast. That's the first thing I'd do differently if I got to live my life over again. Everything I know about it I know from reading, and listening to the records with an active imagination. Dunno about Mad River either; would I like them?

Shady Grove was Cippolina, Freiberg, Elmore and Nicky Hopkins. The good songs on there are "Joseph's Coat" (a Cippolina overdub fest, with words by Nick Gravenites) and "Edward the Mad Shirt Grinder" (where Hopkins blows the lid off), and there's some okay roots-rock stuff and some proto-new-age filler-- certainly not a worthy successor to Happy Trails, but way beter than twaddle like Comin' Thru.

Gary Duncan is still around, and still occasionally plays out with a band he calls Quicksilver, and everything I've heard from that project has been IMHO absolute crap-- stuff that, if I were in my local bar and the band on stage played like that, I'd want to throw my beer at them. It's arguable (in fact my wife says it all the time) that my standards are too high...

[Atlas Mugged]

15. Wow - you've certainly absorbed the details very well

The Altamont reference is my take on the classic 'Didn't we fuck at Woodstock' opening line. I was at Altamont, but not Woodstock.

Yes, by all means get the two album CD by Mad River. It's available on Amazon. The first, eponymous, is horribly dated in some songs, but is an essential time piece. They were still doing those jarring, atonal (like Country Joe & The Fish) guitar solos that were so popular at the time. However, certain songs are classics, like 'Amphetamine Gazelle'; fastest song ever recorded. And I still play 'Merciful Monks' just because I love the damned song. All in all, it's a definite keeper for the completist collector of the era. Their second album, 'Paradise Bar & Grill', is more seasoned and they embraced the country flavour popularized by The Byrds 'Sweetheart Of The Rodeo' (among others) during that eclectic shift. Some outstanding songs on that album. They also knocked themselves out improving their musical skills and it's quite obvious. The lead singers voice (Lawrence Hammond)is a love-it-or-hate-it instrument. Very eccentric and soaring, and he can hit and sustain some unbelievable note. I often wonder how he manages to breathe and sing at the same time, it's so intensely performed. And the tell some amazing stories with their lyrics. 'Cherokee Queen' and the title track are worth the investment, alone.

I checked out Gary Duncan's recent oeuvre. Thanks for the warning because I was about to get the plastic out.

Pears Before Swine? Ever hear of them? Led Ledereer was the founder and leader. I knew his best friend, Daniel Caldwell, from their college days, back in Washington, D.C.. Imagine my surprise one morning, looking at the front page of the daily paper in Seattle and seeing his face as an arrested criminal. He and some others robbed a Maryland bank, killing one of the guards. One of the "partners in crime" was a girl name Heidi, who was the daughter of Baltimore's mayor at that time. I never, in a million years believed that Daniel could pull something like that off. It's filed in the bulging "you never know" folder.

But, above all, get anything with Tracy Nelson & Mother Earth. 'Down So Low' is one of the greatest songs ever written - and her performance will leave you checking your pulse.


Moby Grape, The United States of America (with Trixie on bass; the whole band surrounded by incredible conspiracy theories leading to Bohemian Grove), It's A Beautiful Day...what an amazing musical gumbo that era was. Oh, and then there's Blue Cheer....

On edit: Mad River were close friends with the poet Richard Brautigan ('Trout Fishing In America' - "...sweet as the kisses of Esmerelda") and they did colaborate on a song on Mad River's second album.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

17. Pride of Man is still one of my all time favorite songs

[neohippie]

8. but what about the message here

I love the music and although I know little about the band and it's history, it was the communication that seemed powerful here.

I guess it just seems as if the problems created by Bush&Co, might make the volatile issues of the 60s seem pale in comparison.

We have spent any political goodwill we may have had, rolled back envionmental protections and regulations, drifted away from dismantling the military industrial complex, allowed policy to be hijacked by fundementalists and are infused with elected officials that prefer propaganda to truth, reject science and would like to impose financial road blocks to higher education and dismantle social welfare.

I guess it was the lyrics of that song at the time I heard it that slapped me upside the head and re-awakened my outrage.

Sorry for the rant!

[Squeech]

12. Once more with feeling!

They're good words. They're not visionary. If it seems like they were prescient, it's only because Smirky is building on the "successes" of Richard Nixon.

The context is that this song was written in the aftermath of Kent State, which was when the National Guard fired on anti-war protesters and killed four students. The message Valenti took from that was that the powers that be were prepared to go to any lengths to preserve their prerogatives, and he's saying he's not gonna take it. (It's known that, during the recording of the Just for Love album, the members of the band had guns and practiced shooting. One song on that record has gunshots in the percussion track.)

The reason why I'm not enthused about the song is the chorus: "Whatcha gonna do about me?" At this point it seems to me to be as much defeatist as defiant: yeah, we know all about this whole catalog of injustices, and we already expect the worst from this establishment, and we admit we're arguing from a position of weakness ("always on the run"), so exactly when is the hammer gonna come down? Might work if Dino Valenti was Gandhi, but I never believed he was that smart or enlightened.

[Atlas Mugged]

9. Was this when Dino Valenti joined the group?

I prefered them before he tainted the group. They were still good, but.....

EDITED, because I screwed Dino's name up, which I didn't realize until I read someone else's post "who was there", also.

[blindpig]

11. you're right

Dino's addition was a net loss for the band despite the progressive lyrics.

Happy Trails, THAT was an album! I still get a chill down the spine when the openning notes of Who Do You Love? comes on the radio in my head.

[DancingBear]

14. If there was ever any doubt about the old adage...

"it's not what you play, it's what you leave out" then listen to Cippolina on "Who Do You Love." Mercy.

The only thing bad about that record is that it was recorded just horribly - the tape hiss on that thing makes it (almost) un-listenable in the quieter parts.

As an aside, if anyone has visited The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame you'll see Cippolina's amp stack on display. There are (literally) air horns wired into the top (head) stack of a Fender r(Dual Showman? - can't remember) amplifier, which is how he got his very distinctive sound.