My personal favourite from Dino Valente (Chet Powers), my pick for his absolute
highlight with Quicksilver Messenger Service, the one time his annoyingly reedy
voice actually wasn't annoying and maybe the best song he ever wrote . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBvjXhUSUpUValente was actually supposed to be in the founding lineup of Quicksilver but
a bust for marijuana took him out of action and Quicksilver became a very
different proposition, becoming one of the best jam groups of the original
San Francisco scene, hooked around the twin guitars of John Cipollina and
Gary Duncan . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCHsV-zDypghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDIkBtKOq1Ihttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMvh3Qi0KKcDuncan left the group abruptly after
Happy Trails, rumoured to have
been shall we say a guest of California law enforcement. His unlikely
replacement: British pianist and session titan Nicky Hopkins (at the time,
only Jimmy Page was a more frequent go-to guy for recording sessions).
Hopkins's arrival nudged Quicksilver into a slight change of direction, but
Valenti's return changed it completely when he re-joined in 1970---he
became the dominant songwriter (often under the pseudonym Jesse Oris
Farrow) and the group's unchallenged leader. I don't know what that says
about his personality or their increasing lack of real direction, but he did
write a couple of classics including "Fresh Air" and the aforenoted "What
About Me." It wasn't enough to restore Quicksilver's fading momentum;
the band died quietly circa 1973-74. (A brief comeback bid in 1976 bombed.)
Valente recorded one solo album after his parole in 1968 and before re-joining
Quicksilver. It has something of the legend attached to former Moby Grape
co-founder Skip Spence's
Oar, though Valente wasn't quite as intriguing
as Spence as a musician or lyricist and that impossibly reedy voice was bound
to guarantee that no matter how interesting the songs---he did most of them
with just his voice and 12-string acoustic guitar---anyone who bought it would
barely be able to sit through one complete listening. He probably should have
stuck to songwriting and let others record his material; if he'd re-joined
Quicksilver and contented himself only with writing material, the group might
have survived.
