Of all the psychedelic jam bands that came out around 1967-69 in the San Francisco Bay Area — the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin/ Big Brother and Holding Company, It’s a Beautiful Day — Quicksilver Messenger Service certainly was one of them.
I have tried to get into Quicksilver. John Cipollina plays great guitar. Their two big hits were ‘Take Another Hit’ and, ‘What About Me.’ They were good FM radio type songs. But when I had stop and listen to an entire album from the group, I begin to look askance at Hippies. And I was heavily influenced by the Hippie culture in the 1960s, despite my relative youth at the time.
I had a lifesize Jimi Hendrix poster on my wall right about age 13. I liked the San Francisco band called ‘It’s a Beautiful Day’ with it’s magic violin sounds. And although I’m not a lifelong Grateful Dead fan — I have started an older age appreciation for some of their work.
And don’t get me wrong, there was some talent but Quicksilver’s lyrics were a sequence of hippie cliche’s: “I’m always getting busted … and I believe in revolution …oh oh, what’s you going to do about me? ……If you stand up for what you do believe, be prepared to be shot down. … oooh oooh What’s you gonna do about me?’
Quicksilver is a good name for a heavy metal band, though.
Interesting prophetic(?} lyric from ‘What 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
This one is interesting. But I pulled another Nostalgia buy and bought this for a few bucks after reading how there’s resurgent interest in old rock and roll teeny bop music.
Marie’s path has been country.
Music from groups such as the Partridge Family, the Cowsills, and the Osmonds and the Jackson 5 (a group I see in a whole other realm.)
On their television show, Donnie and Marie did a bit where she sang: I’m a little bit country.”
Donnie: ‘ I’m a little bit rock and roll.’
The qualifiers came off funny to me and I mean ha-ha funny. ‘Little bit is about right’.
On this here record, Marie sings pleasantly, better than I remember. But she’s no Lynne Anderson. I I just found out she just had her 60th birthday. As a recent 62-year-old, I say Happy Birthday, and, yes, there is some age defiance here as she looks much younger.
I have to admit I listened to Donny and bros and watched the show. Enjoyed One Bad Apple .
I used to know the song Paper Laces by heart — (not on this album).
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I watched brother Donny rock it up on Down By The Lazy River where Donny actually shows a little funkability. But in my childhood record collectiion, the Donny Osmond stack of 45s was way less than the Michael Jackson stack.
PS That’s a pretty catchy open on Lazy River. Just pointing it out.
This as many might know here was the theme song for the Linda Blair head spinning vehicle, The Exorcist, AKA ‘Get the Hell out of Me,” AKA as “Rotation, Rotation, Rotation.”
Sorry, I have to laugh to keep from recalling those horrific scenes when the Devil occupied the body of a young Hollywood actress. No wait, Blair was an actress playing a little girl who was definitely not an actress.
This movie was a cultural phenomenon. People actually had to be carried out of the theater or so the reports go.
If there was nothing else to take away from this movie — and it would be hard to take it away once it starts —and that would be that it brought to the national forefront two words.
Projectile vomiting.
Movie-goers learned from this movie that Linda Blair was fed way too much pea soup. I think if they investigate they may find the vomiting was connected to the head-spinning. You do a few 360s with your noggin and tell me you are not a little queasy.
Blair looked like a full-circle water sprinkler, only with gobs of goo instead of water.
Oh sorry. I made up some of that. But I did that to contrast what was an over-the-top extremely dramatic and tension building movie with the music, which is over-the-top, and extremely dramatic. So, perfect fit.
It’ll be interesting to see whether the movie or the music will be the bigger 1970s cultural touchstone. My bet is on the music.
The music fits the movie. It’s orchestral and symphonic in its sweep, not to mention psychedelic and dark.
Did I mention Oldfield, some kind of prodigy who could play dozens of instruments, created this at the age of 19? Wow. He apparently was in several bands as a young teen and due to family problems stayed in his room practicing guitar for hours on end, according to the well sourced Wikipedia page.
This album I bought used for $5 about a month or so ago after my man Willie Moseley, senior writer for Vintage Guitar magazine, suggested Oldfield as a top, if not the top, guitarist of all time. His suggestion was spurred by my posts about lists of greatest guitarists.
I listened. And Moseley had a point. Besides directing and other duties Oldfield spends a good time on his guitar, snapping, ripping through tubulur gongs of sound. Power chords, fuzzed tones and breakneck soloing are all there. And, what’s important it works with the music.
Good finding this record. True 1973 is a long time ago but I still remember the music played on the radio. That radio single was taken from the intro of the two-sided first album. There were many permutations and re-releases to come as the album sold an astonishing 15 million copies worldwide, including 2.6 million in the UK alone.
The music on head phones reveals repetitive riffs jumping on board one-by-one building to big and small crescendos. I flipped to Part. 2, the second side and ran into some parts that wordlessly disturbed me.
There was more tubulur bell dinging but there were unearthly sounds like phantom wolves howling — and snarls and growls of demons in the darkness as the music rose in volume and smothered the room.
I was having a flashback of Linda Blair squealing like a giant razorback. I pushed the off button, backed slowly, out of the room, and shut the door.
ALBUMS: Roy Orbison’s Greatest Hits (1962), 4.5/$$$; All Time Greatest Hits (1986), 4.0/$$$. <both docked a half point for not having Pretty Woman.>
Orbison’s heydey was shortly after I was born. . I probably heard his songs Only the Lonely and Crying at sweaty sock hops in a gym in Indiana.
Hey what’s a guy and gal to do in rural Indy after corning cars, skating at the roller rink, and playing pinball at the laundromat.
So Orbison provided a lot of slow dance material. Sad rejection crying and whining even to some degree but it was slow dance material for sure.
Oh yeah I forgot to mention there were hay rides.
I was the new kid coming from Georgia to a place that didn’t get many new kids. I didn’t know to much about hay rides but I said:
“Hey.”
Now.
Indiana, where I lived for three years growing up — 7th, 8th and 9th grades — is loaded with coming-of-age tales — and I don’t mean that sexually, well maybe I do: we were puppets of a biological force we had no idea how to control or live with. My school was called Klondike Junior High School and our nickname was the Nuggets.
In Indiana?
Where the only gold was corn aging in the fields, awaiting frustrated teenagers to come and get these hard golden kernels to rattle some car radiators.
But I digress. Damn did I digress.
Roy Orbison. His voice was one of the best in rock music. You’ve heard of singers who can break a light bulb with the sonic frequencies. Well Orbison’s multi-octave voice could unscrew the light bulb, set it gently down on a bed of feathers.
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely, hey I want you and I want you only — “Thunder Road,” Bruce Springsteen.
WIkipedia writes: Tim Goodwin, who conducted the orchestra that backed Orbison in Bulgaria, had been told that Orbison’s voice would be a singular experience to hear. When Orbison started with “Crying” and hit the high notes, Goodwin stated: “The strings were playing and the band had built up and, sure enough, the hair on the back of my neck just all started standing up. It was an incredible physical sensation .
The video below was of the Traveling Willburys filmed after Roy died. His voice is on it and note Orbison’s framed portrait on the wall..
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These albums I own have virtually the same line-up, but there is one big difference. The second, newer one, is re-recorded. Yes, they are not the original hits, which ticked me off — and i’m sure others felt the same way when they found out. It’s not prominently mentioned on the cover. But after getting over the initial ripped-off feeling, I listened to it and, you know, it’s not bad. Heck, if Roy Orbison needs to be covered, who better than the Big O.
Musically the sound is a little softer on the re-recorded one, but it’s still Orbison’s voice on this double album.
ALBUMS: Contender w/ the X-Rays (1981); Eye of the Storm (1983)
MVC Rating: Contender 4.0/$$$; Eye of the Storm 3.5/$$
Five-dollar cover was a lot back in the day. That was the cost of a brand new album.
But for that $5 bill you would get into the little roadhouse club called the Casino in Auburn Ala. with live music and 50-cent longneck Budweisers. One of the best bands through was David Olney and the X-Rays. (Not to be confused with David Lindley and EL Rayo X).
He had a whole array of upbeat love songs and gritty story-songs such as Wait Here for the Cops, Oh My Love, Contender and Love and Money.
I found his 1981 album in an Auburn record store and am glad to have it. Many years later after starting this blog I picked up another Olney record for $2 at Charlemagne. It’s called Eye of the Storm. Not as good for me as the Contender album probably due to my emotional/nostalgia hook. But pretty good music nonetheless in a more Americana style.
The a capella ‘Ain’t it That Way” and the title song really stand out
WIkipedia reports that over the last few decades songs have been covered by and co-written with Emmylou Harris, Stee Earle, Linda Rondstadt, Steve Young, Del McCoury and Laurie Lewis.
He was friends with Townes Van Zandt, reported the ‘Nashville Scene,’ who said of Olney:
Anytime anyone asks me who my favorite music writers are, I say Mozart, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Bob Dylan, and Dave Olney. Dave Olney is one of the best songwriters I’ve ever heard – and that’s true. I mean that from my heart.
