Customer Reviews

Castles In The Sand

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The record is about this: Dino Valente was Cesar Millan, and the great musicians of QMS were his dogs. He was pack leader from the end of 1969, they obeyed his every command. Valente was good at lyrics and lousy at instrumentals. QMS were Meister instrumentalists. But Valente took charge of the instrumentals. "Castles in the sand" shows how ordinary--and even less than ordinary--QMS musicians became with Valente as pack leader. They know it; as a fly on the wall, you get to hear Elmore and Duncan get explicitly berated by Valente for being asleep while playing. When Cippolina starts to do more than just play rhythm backing, Valente stops the tape. No other egos allowed. This record shows that QMS musicians lost their spirit and their ability to play extraordinary music. The result: this record is really boring. Flat line boring.

I do not want to discourage Charly from putting out unreleased QMS material; there is lots of great stuff out there. Charly just needs to hire someone who knows good music from bad... this record is in reality not a QMS record---these guys were just dependent sidemen for Dino session.

By the way, a third of this record was previously made available as a bonus on the live Kabuki cd release.

I strongly believe that this quicksilver Messenger Service release "Castles In The Sand", which consists of tracks, recorded in a Jam situation, and works in progress, (from 1969-1970) whilst not being the first port of call for people new to Q.M.S, is still interesting enough for a casual listen. In retrospect it really plays like a country blues jam, on the porch, and is very laid back, which is o.k for a relaxing listen.

Dino Valente's vocals, are high pitched and quite soulful in these improvisations, Greg Elmore's drums are workmanlike and confident, David Freiberg's bass is good, and Nicky Hopkins piano playing is o.k too, John Cippollina's amazing guitar work is NOT evident on this release, it's all strumming and fills, NO electric freakout on display here. If you want the electric Q.M.S, get "Happy Trails" or the excellent, "Q.M.S - Sons of Mercury" compilation. (2 CD set) All up. It's still vintage material, by a band striving for a new direction, finding roots and picking fruits from the vast orchard of American musical history, it's great to hear this, I think.

Once you get over any initial disappointment, regarding this release, I would still recommend this to anyone who thinks being in a band, and recording music is easy, this really drives home the fact that all art is 99 percent perspiration, and only One percent inspiration!

This recording confirms that QMS was a much better band when Dino Valenti was in prison. Compare this to the first QMS (great album) and Happy Trails (ditto) and there is no comparison. I admit to being a "guitar freak" and Cipollina is one of my all time favorites, but he is used as a background player here. I bought this to add to my collection but it will likely collect dust from here out like some of the later QMS albums.

The bottom line is this: Younger fans of the 60s - 70s era of San Francisco Rock often find themselves puzzled by the vehement dislike aging hippies (many of whom considered QMS their "favorite" group) display toward Dino Valente and his "contributions" to the band.

If you weren't there to watch it all go sideways on ballroom stages across San Francisco, and you enjoyed Quicksilver's first two albums, these tapes should tell you all you need to know.

Rarely do we have aural documentation this clearly preserved and unambiguous of how things can go so terribly wrong in the creative process.

To be as "fair and balanced" as possible: Valente, with his early folk singer background, was an accomplished songwriter, and the group badly needed help in that area. Nor were any of the Quick's other musicians strong lead vocalists, and God knows Dino wasn't bashful about fronting a band.

But in the process of creating a dynamic and tightly structured backup group for himself, Valente (deliberately or not -- who can say?) squeezed the vitality out of the very elements which had made QMS a perennial crowd favorite on the San Francisco scene.

The demise of Quicksilver's signature sound was just one of many elements of "life in the golden age" that went sour around the same time, and Valente certainly doesn't deserve blame for even a small percentage of "what went wrong with the scene". But, in many ways, the rapid and highly visible collapse of one of the iconic elements of that brief flowering in the sunshine offered a symbolic pivot point into a darker and harder-edged time, where selfishness seemed to rule the day.

And here it is, preserved in remarkably clean audio fidelity (when many of the other taped artifacts of the era sound, frankly, like crap); a sadly compelling time capsule from a bleak and discouraging moment. Thanks for nothin', Dino.

It is hard to believe that this is the same powerhouse of a band that gave us stellar stuff like the jaw-dropping Pride of Man and the perfect psych pop of Dino's Song! QMS was, in my opinion, the most exciting of the SF bands of that era!! However, here we get Dino Valente crooning like a sloshed party crasher! "I don't ever want to spoil your party Babe!" Well, Dino does exactly that on this session! The band is barely noticeable! Plodding through these numbers, the guys seem like they're reading the Berkely Barb while Dino warbles - awful stuff from a great band! I bought this dreadful CD today and I'm freaking out because I can't find the receipt to return it! Let's hope someone releases the Quick's early live stuff some day!! Avoid this folks!!

This is not the best QMS release.Its some rehearsal tapes of songs that aren't that great...if Gary Duncan is on this release as they say,you can't hear him at all.Try Just For Love or Shady Grove instead