ALBUM: ‘What About Me? (1969)
MVC Grade: 3.5/$$$
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