Quicksilver Messenger Service’s Shining Debut

Sometimes waiting is the hardest part. Quicksilver Messenger Service, originally formed in 1964 to back singer-songwriter Dino Valenti, was one of San Francisco’s original psychedelic bands, but committed fans and the merely curious didn’t get an album from the group until May 1968. In part this was, as guitarist-singer Gary Duncan told an interviewer:

“We had no ambition toward making records. We just wanted to have fun, play music and make enough money to be able to afford to smoke pot.”

To everyone’s benefit, that lack of ambition and herbal-life preference combined with years of playing and professionalism to produce one of the era’s best records, whose sheer musicality shines as brightly today as it did more than a half-century ago… read more >