Best live band ever...
Often hailed as such...this 1969 video does little to change that view. FANTASTIC!! Though Dino was the "founding" member, I really only loved Gary Duncan's QSMS on their first two LPs while Dino was still in jail on a drug charge.
Cippolina was the best guitarist ever...opinions welcome but he was a genius! Dino couldn't keep up with the bluesy psych sound after his release (IMHO), and moved the band in another direction completely. Granted they had they had their big radio hit with Dino, but that is when they lost me...
Though even with Dino in tow, they could really JAM!!!!
MONA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D79ujli ... -4qNvZTuGE
Who Do You Love? (1973 B&W) - Quicksilver Messenger Service...no one does it better! Amazing 19 minute jam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olnbwZxjcbI
There is some confusion as to the real origins of the group. According to John Cipollina:
It was Valenti who organized the group. I can remember everything Dino said. 'We were all going to have wireless guitars. We were going to have leather jackets made with hooks that we could hook these wireless instruments right into. And we were gonna have these chicks, backup rhythm sections that were gonna dress like American Indians with real short little dresses on and they were gonna have tambourines and the clappers in the tambourines were going to be silver coins.' And I'm sitting there going, 'This guy is gonna happen and we're gonna set the world on its ear.[4]
The next day, Valenti was arrested for possession of marijuana, and spent the better part of the next two years in jail. But Gary Duncan notes:
That’s the story Cipollina told everybody. But according to Dino, that wasn’t the case at all. When he’d been looking for a band, he’d talked to Cipollina, and everybody somehow put two and two together. He actually lived with us when he got out of prison, and while we played some music together and wrote songs, he had no interest in playing in Quicksilver; he wanted to start his own career. Well, when his own career didn’t do so well, he had more interest in playing in Quicksilver!
Whether or not Quicksilver Messenger Service was what Valenti had in mind, it appears from Duncan's recollections that he had at least talked with Cipollina about forming a band; Cipollina remembered that:
I was recommended to Dino, probably because I was the only guy playing an electric guitar, let alone lead, at the time…We talked about rehearsing one night and planned to rehearse the following night but it never happened. The next day Dino got busted. -wiki
Formation
David Freiberg, a folk-guitarist friend of Valenti's, was recruited to the group. He had previously been in a band with Paul Kantner and David Crosby but like Cipollina he had been arrested and briefly jailed for marijuana possession and had just been released. "We were to take care of this guy Freiberg," Cipollina recalled, and though they had never met before, Freiberg was integrated into the group. The band also added Skip Spence on guitar and began to rehearse at Marty Balin's club, the Matrix. Balin, in search of a drummer for the band he was organizing (which became Jefferson Airplane), convinced Spence to switch instruments and groups.
To make up for poaching Spence, Balin suggested that they contact drummer Greg Elmore and guitarist–singer Gary Duncan, who had played together in a group called The Brogues. This new version of the group played its first concert performance in December 1965, playing for the Christmas party of the Committee (improv group). Drummer Greg Elmore and guitarists George "Quick", and Jim Murray were added to fill out the original band.
It was a band without a name, Cipollina recalled:
Jim Murray and David Freiberg came up with the name. Me and Freiberg were born on the same day, and Gary and Greg were born on the same day, we were all Virgos and Murray was a Gemini. And Virgos and Geminis are all ruled by the planet Mercury. Another name for Mercury is Quicksilver. And then, Quicksilver is the messenger of the Gods, and Virgo is the servant, so Freiberg says "Oh, Quicksilver Messenger Service".
