QUICKSILVER MESSENGER SERVICE
Quicksilver Messenger Service (sometimes credited as simply Quicksilver) is an American psychedelic rock band formed in 1965 in San Francisco. They were most famous for their biggest hit, the single “Fresh Air” (from the album Just for Love), which reached #49 in 1970. (More from Wikipedia)
The San Francisco sound covers a lot of what used to be called “acid rock” (music designed to be enjoyed while under the influence of LSD): Country Joe and the Fish, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and the Grateful Dead. This music is much calmer and more meditative than one might think; there is enough going on during an acid trip without having your head blown off by a lot of bombastic music.
(March 2011)
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A side man can be a wonderful thing for a musician. For rock bands without keyboard players (and that was true of many in the 1960’s), Nicky Hopkins was the go-to guy if you wanted a pianist: He played with everybody from Jefferson Airplane to Jeff Beck Group to Steve Miller Band, and with simply every big British Invasion group: the Beatles, the Kinks, the Who, and especially the Rolling Stones. His name appears on dozens of albums from the late 1960’s into the 1980’s. Hopkins released a couple of solo albums that I have never gotten around to buying, but I sure remember one of the first songs that I heard on college radio at North Carolina State University. It was “Edward the Mad Shirt Grinder”; Hopkins was officially a member of Quicksilver Messenger Service at that time, and the song was the final track on their album, Shady Grove (1969). Hopkins wrote it, and it was all his piano work along with a backing band.
(August 2011)
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I didn’t know that Hamilton Camp was also a folksinger until I got to college and discovered that his 1964 album Paths of Victory was a favorite album of the College Republican crowd that I began running with. For some reason, they considered it to be the perfect album to play if you were really depressed; for myself, I loved Paths of Victory because it included covers of seven – count them, seven – Bob Dylan songs, most of which were unfamiliar to me. The album also includes Camp’s best known song, “Pride of Man”, later covered by Quicksilver Messenger Service and Gordon Lightfoot.
(June 2013/2)
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What Rev. Nicholas T. Freund found there was a revelation, and did he show up on a good night that first time: The performers were Cream, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Big Brother and the Holding Company. He recounts in the CD’s liner notes: “Eric Clapton’s guitar playing amazed me. . . . Janis Joplin . . . blew me away. The next day, the kids said: ‘Get your records out! Nick’s been to the Fillmore!’ I became interested in adapting the San Francisco sound to church music.”
As Nick Freund puts it: “I enjoy Bach and Gregorian chant. But I don’t see it as an expression of today. It’s like a beautiful old painting in a museum – you admire and appreciate it, but it has no relevance to ‘Now’. We should express our worship of God in terms we use today.” Also: “I could spend years writing a classical concert, and nobody would ever hear it.”
(September 2014)
