Our Final Week - The Closing of the Fillmore West, Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 7-3-1971, Part 3: Quicksilver Messenger Service

Here's the third (and final) set from the fourth day out of five days of concerts that closed the Fillmore West venue in San Francisco in 1971. (See my write-up on the Boz Scaggs set for general information about the closing.) This set features the band Quicksilver Messenger Service.

Here's the Wikipedia intro paragraph about the band:

"Quicksilver Messenger Service is an American psychedelic rock band formed in 1965 in San Francisco. The band achieved wide popularity in the San Francisco Bay Area and, through their recordings, with psychedelic rock enthusiasts around the globe, and several of their albums ranked in the Top 30 of the Billboard Pop charts. They were part of the new wave of album-oriented bands, achieving renown and popularity despite a lack of success with their singles. Though not as commercially successful as contemporaries Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver was integral to the beginnings of their genre. With their jazz and classical influences and a strong folk background, the band attempted to create an individual, innovative sound. Music historian Colin Larkin wrote: "Of all the bands that came out of the San Francisco area during the late '60s, Quicksilver typified most of the style, attitude and sound of that era." 

Here's the link to the entire entry:

Quicksilver Messenger Service - Wikipedia

The band gained and lost a lot of key members by the time this concert took place. The idea of the band came from Dino Valenti, a songwriter, and John Cipollina, a talented lead guitarist. But before the band could really get started, Valenti was arrested for drug possession and had to spend a year in prison, causing him to miss out on the first couple of years in the band. However, he rejoined in 1969. After that, the vast majority of the band's songs were written by Valenti. (He was a very talented songwriter, best known for writing the classic "Let's Get Together," made famous by the Youngbloods.) But by the end of 1970, Cipollina left the band.

At the time of this concert, the band consisted of Gary Duncan (lead guitar), Greg Elmore (drums), Dino Valenti (lead vocals and guitar), and David Freiberg (bass and keyboards). While the loss of Cipollina and his lead guitar playing was unfortunate, Duncan was a talented lead guitar player as well, who had been with the band from the beginning (though he quit and rejoined in 1969). 

So, to sum up, this band was different from the version that peaked in 1967 and 1968, mainly due to Valenti dominating the new version of the band. But it was arguably just as good, only different. Valenti's songwriting definitely helped matters. Around this time, he write the band's two most successful songs in terms of radio play, "Fresh Air" and "What about Me." Both of them were performed in this concert.

The song "Fresh Air" was included on the "Fillmore - The Last Days" album. Everything else here is unreleased.  

This album is two hours and 14 minutes long.

01 Fresh Air (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
02 Baby Baby (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
03 talk (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
04 Dr. Feelgood (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
05 Much to Say (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
06 Words (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
07 Mona (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
08 Subway (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
09 Ain't That a Shame (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
10 Doing Time in the U.S.A. (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
11 Mojo (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
12 Come On Along (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
13 The Truth (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
14 Roadrunner (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
15 The Hat (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
16 Who Do You Love (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
17 What about Me (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
18 Call on Me (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
19 Motorcycle Blues (Quicksilver Messenger Service)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/HUCUfCi8

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/qLyxl34v56of6zw/file

The cover image is from this exact concert. It's a screenshot of band member Gary Duncan I took from the "Fillmore" movie. 

Quicksilver Messenger Service - Fillmore East, New York City, 6-7-1968

First off, I want to say this post is all due to the excellent audio editing work of Prof. Stoned. It's taken from his blog, "Prof. Stoned: Rare and Deleted," which you can find here:

Prof Stoned: Rare & Deleted 

This is probably the very best full-length concert by Quicksilver Messenger Service when they were at their peak, in 1968.

The music has been officially released, but it was done so badly that Prof. Stoned ended up doing a ton of work to fix it. It was first released in 1983 as the album "Maiden of the Cancer Moon." However, that didn't use the best quality sources, had been partly mislabeled as being from a different concert, and wasn't complete. Then it was released in 1999 as "The Unreleased Quicksilver Messenger Service: Lost Gold and Silver," which was basically just a renaming of the 1983 released. Then it was released again in 2013, as "Live at the Fillmore June 7, 1968." But, as Prof. Stoned put it, this was "little more than a cash grab with its horrible mastering, shuffled track order and lame packaging."

Prof. Stoned found the best version publicly available, which is a soundboard made by the band, and then made some improvements to it. Here's more quotes from his notes, which I've included in full in the download: "The original stereo image is wonky with drums and vocals on one channel; I'm guessing this was the mono house mix. The other channel had a bit of everything except vocals. This new mix set to rectify the poor balancing where possible but also to create a much more satisfying stereo image, which vocals and drums in the center and guitars spread left and right. It proved to be a long arduous process to achieve that, requiring lots of manual work, but here it is."

The band performed two sets on this night. Unfortunately, this is most of what they played, but not all of it. The first ten tracks make up the first set. But there are an unknown number of songs before the first track that apparently didn't get recorded. But the second set is complete, from track 11 to 21. 

This album is an hour and 28 minutes long. 

01 talk (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
02 Smokestack Lightning (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
03 talk (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
04 Codine (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
05 talk (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
06 Light Your Windows (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
07 talk (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
08 Mona (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
09 Maiden of the Cancer Moon (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
10 Mona [Reprise] (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
11 Pride of Man (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
12 If You Live (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
13 Dino's Song (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
14 talk (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
15 Back Door Man (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
16 talk (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
17 Acapulco Gold and Silver (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
18 talk (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
19 Who Do You Love (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
20 talk (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
21 The Fool (Quicksilver Messenger Service)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/9Hj35ufP

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/bbhlXr2N6XjyBNl/file

There are surprisingly few good photos of this band in the late 1960s, and almost no color ones. After some digging, I found this one, which might be from a TV appearance. It was in black and white, but I colorized it with the Kolorize program.

Various Artists - Monterey International Pop Festival, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA, 6-17-1967, Afternoon Show

Here's the second out of five albums I'm posting that make up the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. As I mentioned in the first album, the festival was broken up into five parts, and one had to buy tickets for each part. This part consisted of the afternoon show on June 17th, the second day of the festival.

Generally speaking, the different parts didn't really have musical themes, except for this one, because most of the musical acts in this part were heavily influenced by the blues.

As I mentioned in the write-up for the first part, I'm mostly just posting what a person named Simon put together in 2022, with some additions based on material made available since then. As with all the parts, I'm including a PDF Simon made that explains the different sourcing for each of the songs.

Also in my write-up for the first part, I mentioned a Wikipedia link that lists the known songs from the festival, including the ones where there's no publicly available recording. It's worth mentioning that link again:

Monterey Pop Festival set list - Wikipedia 

Let's review what's still missing. Canned Heat is known to have played the three songs included here, but also an unknown number of additional songs. The Big Brother and the Holding Company set is complete. This was the concert that turned that band's main lead singer, Janis Joplin, into a big star. In fact, they're the only band to play two sets in the festival. That's because their set here was one of the highlights, but a documentary film crew headed by D.A. Pennebaker failed to record any good footage of the band. So they were brought back to play a few songs on the third and final day.

Al Kooper had been a keyboardist for the Blues Project since 1965, but he quit that band shortly before this festival. The Blues Project got their own spot later in the festival, but Kooper got a solo spot too. (He would go on to form Blood, Sweat and Tears a year later.) According to the Wikipedia set list above, he only played two songs, and one of them is here. But according to a Newsweek article I linked to in the first part, Kooper's set lasted about half an hour, so he probably played more.

There are eight songs here performed by the Butterfield Blues Band, led by Paul Butterfield. Apparently there did more songs. But each act was allowed to up to 40 minutes, and their set already totaled 33 minutes, so there's probably just one or two missing songs. There are just two songs here by the Quicksilver Messenger Service, and they played five. One of the missing ones is a cover of "Who Do You Love," which they usually ended with a long jam.  There are two Steve Miller Band songs here, but they played at least one more, "Living in the U.S.A." 

The last act for this part of the festival was the Electric Flag. This band was formed in the spring of 1967 by guitarist Mike Bloomfield, and it was led by him, Barry Goldberg, and Buddy Miles. This actually was their very first concert. They would put out a studio album in early 1968 called "A Long Time Comin'," but by then the band's sound had already changed, with founder Bloomfield having less of a role. In fact, he left the band just a couple of months after the album was released. This concert is truer to the original vision he had for the band. There are six songs by them here, which actually is two more than the ones on the Wikipedia set list, so I don't know if there are still more missing ones.

I could say a lot more about all the different performances, but I think the music is all good and generally speaks for itself. The sound quality is excellent throughout, especially considering the time period. A lot of that quality is due to the unusually good sound system. Here's what the Wikipedia article on the festival has to say about that:

"Also notable was the festival's innovative sound system, designed and built by audio engineer Abe Jacob, who started his career doing live sound for San Francisco bands and went on to become a leading sound designer for the American theater. Jacob's groundbreaking Monterey sound system was the progenitor of all the large-scale PAs that followed. It was a key factor in the festival's success and it was greatly appreciated by the artists. For instance, in the 'Monterey Pop' film, David Crosby can clearly be seen saying 'Great sound system!' to band mate Chris Hillman at the start of the Byrds' soundcheck."

Note that that, like all the parts from this festival, this sounds even better than what Simon put together, because I boosted the vocals for the songs that needed that, using the UVR5 audio editing program. About half of the songs needed the boost, though there didn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to it. Some musical acts had low vocals across the board, or not, but often that was only the case for certain songs. Perhaps that's because this is a patchwork, put together from many different sources, both released and unreleased. 

By the way, here's a quote about the festival by Steve Miller: "I remember being really happy to be at Monterey, really excited. It was the first event I attended that was organized in such a really first-class way from top to bottom." 

And here are some quotes about the Big Brother and the Holding Company set, since that was the clear highlight of this part of the festival. Rock critic Keith Altham: "Janis Joplin was the staggering thing I saw on the whole show to me. Because I had never heard a woman sing like that. 'I told her afterwards, "you're the best female rock singer I've ever heard in my life.' She looked me up and down, smiled, and said, 'You get out much, honey?' I thought it was funny. She was very friendly. I liked her."

Record company executive Clive Davis: "When Janis (Joplin) took the stage, it was an unknown group to me totally, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and right from the outset it was something you could never forget. She took the stage, dominated, and was absolutely breathtaking, hypnotic, compelling, and soul shaking. You saw someone who was not only the goods but was doing something that no one else was doing. With that fervor, that intensity, and impact. So yes, that in effect, coupled with everything around me, the way people were dressing, what was going on in Haight Ashbury [the hippie district in San Francisco], the spirit in the air, and the feeling... I just said, 'You know, I am here at a very unique time. I'm feeling it. I'm feeling it in my spine. I'm feeling it in my sense of excitement. I'm feeling it in the impact. It's not only musical changes, but in societal changes.'" 

Davis immediately had the record company he was working for, Columbia Records, sign the band to a record contract, even though they had to buy out the band's existing contract with another company to do so.  

This album is two hours and 27 minutes long. 

01 talk (John Phillips)
02 talk (Canned Heat)
03 Rollin' and Tumblin' (Canned Heat)
04 talk (Canned Heat)
05 Dust My Broom (Canned Heat)
06 talk (Canned Heat)
07 Bullfrog Blues (Canned Heat)
08 talk (Chet Helms)
09 Down on Me (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
10 Combination of the Two (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
11 Harry (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
12 Roadblock (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
13 Ball and Chain (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
14 talk (Country Joe & the Fish)
15 Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine (Country Joe & the Fish)
16 talk (Country Joe & the Fish)
17 I-Feel-like-I'm-Fixin'-to Die Rag (Country Joe & the Fish)
18 talk (Country Joe & the Fish)
19 The Bomb Song (Country Joe & the Fish)
20 Section 43 [Instrumental] (Country Joe & the Fish)
21 Wake Me, Shake Me (Al Kooper)
22 Look Over Yonders Wall (Butterfield Blues Band)
23 Mystery Train (Butterfield Blues Band)
24 Born in Chicago (Butterfield Blues Band)
25 Double Trouble (Butterfield Blues Band)
26 Mary Ann (Butterfield Blues Band)
27 Driftin' Blues (Butterfield Blues Band)
28 One More Heartache (Butterfield Blues Band)
29 Droppin' Out (Butterfield Blues Band)
30 Dino's Song [All I Ever Wanted to Do] (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
31 If You Live (Quicksilver Messenger Service)
32 Mercury Blues (Steve Miller Band)
33 Super Shuffle [Instrumental] (Steve Miller Band)
34 talk (David Crosby)
35 Groovin' Is Easy (Electric Flag)
36 I'm Sick Y'All (Electric Flag)
37 Texas (Electric Flag)
38 talk (Electric Flag)
39 Over-Lovin' You (Electric Flag)
40 Night Time Is the Right Time (Electric Flag)
41 Wine [Drinkin' Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee] (Electric Flag)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/1mXxvn3Y

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/hpdZuZUHcB1hh9t/file

Like most of the cover art I've made for this festival, I had too many good options to choose from, so I broke the image into four smaller ones. From top left clockwise: Janis Joplin of Big Brother and the Holding Company, Country Joe McDonald of Country Joe and the Fish, Mike Bloomfield of the Electric Flag, and Paul Butterfield of the Butterfield Blues Band.