Released as one of a series of lavishly-packaged in-concert discs, 'Live At The Fillmore...' represents QUICKSILVER MESSENGER SERVICE in their natural habitat: turning on the heads in the flower power capitol of the world in the months leading up to the long hot Summer of Love.
Which probably suggests it'll be an exercise in the kind of mind-numbingly extended soloing and free-form experimentation for which the whole acid-drenched San Fran scene has been excessively documented, certainly if you've ever dipped into the Grateful Dead's 'Dick's Picks' series of live performances. After all, weren't QSM known for their extended improvisations, with their version of Bo Diddley's 'Who Do You Love' taking up an entire side of their landmark 1969 album 'Happy Trails'?
Well, yes they were, yet this splendid Fillmore Concert captures a considerably more disciplined band at the top of their game and reminds us that while the classic QSM – with duelling lead guitarists Gary Duncan and John Cippolina – could stretch out with verve and panache, they could also operate within tighter structures and three minute pop song formats when the mood took them.
And, for the most part, that mood took them on the night of February 4th 1967 when they opened for fellow San Fran scenesters Jefferson Airplane. The opening numbers such as 'All Night Worker' and Willie Cobbs' 'You Don't Love Me' are dispatched with a hard-edged, gritty economy redolent of Creedence Clearwater Revival , while 'Gold & Silver' provides a 'Take 5'-style jazzy interlude with a surprising lightness of touch. The sound quality's good-ish, with a slightly rough-around-the-edges, polished bootleg feel, but more than adequate enough for drummer Greg Elmore's snare to cut through crisply and marshal Duncan and Cippolina's liquid interplay.
As always, the way Duncan and Cippolina play off each other remains phenomenal. They're like a West Coast Keef'n'Ronnie, they way one finishes and the other begins being impossible to define. It's still a joy, however, to hear the way they work the spaces around the vocal on a very Chess Studios-sounding version of 'All Night Worker' or turn up the heat and energy on 'A Fool For You' and their heavy and diseased version of Buffy Sainte-Marie's cautionary 'Codeine'. Indeed, the only real concession on the lengthy, jam-friendly QMS on disc one is delivered via an eight-minute take of Bo Diddley's 'Mona', but with its' rattlesnake shakers and scratchy, vibrato-heavy guitars, it soon proves that improvisation doesn't always equate with taking your eyes off the prize.
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CD2 has plenty to recommend it, too, not least the numbers where they link up with future full-time QSM mainstay Dino Valenti. His cunningly-titled 'Dino's Song' injects a surprisingly sharp'n'chiming pop sensibility into the ranks, while even prior to their debut album, 'Pride Of Man' already sounds dramatic and punchy, even allowing for a few fashionable acid-rock guitar slashes. Actually, the only time they sound slightly at sea is when they try a little soulful tenderness on 'I Can't Believe It': a nice idea, but the execution's a little too wobbly to really come off.
They do finally give in to temptation, rounding off with their tumultuous, freight train push'n'pull through Bo Diddley's 'Who Do You Love?', but once again it's an exercise in truly inspired, energy-first emotional bloodletting, rather than the sort of bloated, corpulent wankathon that would gradually become part of rock's established order in the next few years. Context is everything, of course, and we need to remember that this live set was recorded in a pre-Monteray world where extended jams had only just begun to register on the scale, ensuring it must have blown minds at the time. There again, even with 40 years of history on our side, it still sounds pretty damn seismic.
Thanks to Bear/ Voiceprint's enthusiasm and attention to detail, there are a selection of QSM gigs from this period to choose from and we'll be getting to some more of them soon. For the uninitiated, though, this Fillmore Set may well be a very pleasant surprise. Yes, it showcases proficiency and virtuosity where necessary, but it's also a testament to a committed rock'n'roll band every bit as much in hock to the purity of the blues and the thrill of rock's formative years and comes thundering impressively down the decades. If you thought of Quicksilver Messenger Service as hoary old dinosaurs, I'd suggest you listen again. Without prejudice.
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