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Jim Murray and David Freiberg came up with the name.
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It was a band without a name, Cipollina recalled: Drummer Greg Elmore and guitarist Jim Murray were added to fill out the original band. This new version of the group played its first concert performance in December 1965, playing for the Christmas party of the Committee (improv group).
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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. Balin, in search of a drummer for the band he was organizing (which became Jefferson Airplane), convinced Spence to switch instruments and groups. The band also added Skip Spence on guitar and began to rehearse at Marty Balin's club, the Matrix. "We were to take care of this guy Freiberg," Cipollina recalled, and though they had never met before, Freiberg was integrated into 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. The next day Dino got busted.ĭavid Freiberg, a folk-guitarist friend of Valenti, was recruited to the group. 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. 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: Well, when his own career didn’t do so well, he had more interest in playing in Quicksilver! 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. When he’d been looking for a band, he’d talked to Cipollina, and everybody somehow put two and two together. But according to Dino, that wasn’t the case at all. That’s the story Cipollina told everybody. The next day, Valenti was arrested for possession of marijuana and spent the better part of the next two years in jail. 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. We were going to have leather jackets made with hooks that we could hook these wireless instruments right into. 'We were all going to have wireless guitars. There is some confusion as to the real origins of the group. In 2009, original members Gary Duncan and David Freiberg toured as the Quicksilver Messenger Service, using various backing musicians. After many years, the band has attempted to re-form despite the deaths of several members. The style he developed from these sources is evident in Quicksilver Messenger Service's swing rhythms and twanging guitar sounds. Member Dino Valenti drew heavily on musical influences he picked up during the folk revival of his formative musical years.
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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."
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With their jazz and classical influences and a strong folk background, the band attempted to create an individual, innovative sound. Though not as commercially successful as contemporaries Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver was integral to the beginnings of their genre. They were part of the new wave of album-oriented bands, achieving renown and popularity despite a lack of success with their singles (only one, " Fresh Air" charted, reaching number 49 in 1970). 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. Quicksilver Messenger Service is an American psychedelic rock band formed in 1965 in San Francisco. 2009–present (David Freiberg's Quicksilver Messenger Service).
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