[ Music ]
>> This is KZSU Stanford.
Welcome to entitled opinions.
My name is Robert Harrison and we have a special edition for you here on the psychedelic
rock music of the 60s in the Bay Area, specifically San Francisco.
And I have with me in the studio J. K. Davis.
We've had his own rock band in the 60s.
Knows personally, a lot of the bands that we're going to be talking about today, including
the one we're listening to right now, which is Country Joe and the Fish.
And let me just bring Jay in right away.
And Jay, welcome to the show.
Thanks Robert.
We're listening to Country Joe and the Fish section 43 and I have a feeling that this evokes
a lot of memories for you.
>> Yeah, laying on the floor in my parents' family room with the headphones on it three
in the morning and KMPX. And basically the first stereo radio that would play more than a two and a half
minute long song.
And it was a revolution for people that were music lovers in the late 60s.
Country Joe and the Fish is a song that we decided, the 43 section 43 is a song we decided
to start with because you believe that this song in many ways is one of the best examples
of the kind of music that San Francisco sound, the very psychedelic rock sound.
And this is the same song by the way, even though there was a moment there of silence.
>> Yeah, there was a little break in it.
Yeah, before the FM revolution in popular radio, most of the music on the radio was heavily
produced and was sort of commercially oriented, which meant that songs were two minutes and 35 seconds long.
And frequently even bands that were well known, the recordings actually were performed by studio musicians,
and sometimes even studio singers.
So the whole idea of a band playing their own music and recording 20 minute long songs was completely
foreign.
And before the FM radio stations started playing full album cuts, in fact full sides of albums, the whole
AM radio format was geared towards very short, very highly produced music.
And it was a pretty much a commercial product.
>> So do you think the Bay Area was special in that regard or was it FM that made possible this new sound?
>> Well, it was a combination of the two.
I'm sure there were FM stations and other venues or other locations, but I don't know
if any that really took off the way KMPX did.
KMPX was kind of the first, as far as I know, really first in the nation,
station to really go with the relaxed format.
And I guess because the cost of running an FM station was lower than the more highly competitive AM stations,
they were able to have a much looser format.
>> Did I get you right before we came on there that country Joe and the fish played at your high school graduation?
>> No, this was at my college.
>> Or your college graduate?
>> No, it wasn't a graduation.
It was just, actually it was more of an introduction.
It was, I think, my freshman year.
It was the first concert I went to at Cal State Hayward where I was going to school.
And this was a very political era, of course.
And for the school to bring in a band like country Joe was kind of interesting.
And I have a feeling that the administration really had no idea who they were.
>> They probably didn't know where their name came from.
>> No, I'm sure they didn't.
Because country Joe is what the, it's Joseph Stalin, I think was subtext of that name, though.
>> Uh-huh.
>> And they were quite political and very overt about it.
It wasn't hidden in the lyrics.
>> Now, do you think being political is something that is common to the San Francisco bands we're going to be talking about?
Or is it more subtle?
>> Well, most cases.
>> In the music, not necessarily.
I think some of the bands were more, you know, over in their political lyrics and stuff.
But most of the bands were really more about other things, I think.
>> Well, Jay, I was reading, you know, in preparation for the show some things about this,
the so-called San Francisco sound.
And let me read you a few quotes from one of my sources and see if you agree with it.
So, it says by 1966, Fresh and Adventurous improvisation during live performance, which many heard as being epitomized by the grateful dead,
was one characteristic of the San Francisco sound.
A louder, more prominent role for the electric bass, typically with a melodic or semi-melodic approach.
And using a plush pervasive tone was another feature.
Exploration of chordal progressions previously uncommon in rock and roll and a freer and more powerful use of all instruments, drums and other percussion, electric guitar keyboards as well as the bass went along with this psychedelic era music.
And brass, such as trumpets and saxones were rarely used unlike in contemporary RMB.
>> I think there's some of that is definitely correct.
I don't know that the bass really was a fundamental part of this, but I think the main thing that strikes me as being really the core of what differentiated the San Francisco sound from everyone else was kind of the looseness, the organic approach,
the, you know, anything goes and we'll try it this way, this time kind of thing.
And the ability to just keep going and to follow up on ideas that you had spontaneously and record it.
Generally before that, all commercial recordings were produced very tightly.
And in fact, like I mentioned, many of the performances were not actually the band, but were studio musicians playing the songs that the band would later essentially cover.
They may have written them or may not have.
And in a lot of cases, songwriters were not in the band.
So one of the big differentiations was that the bands wrote their own material, although that wasn't definitive of just the San Francisco sound.
Because the British bands were doing that too, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones actually began, well, the Beatles especially, well, all of them did covers at first, but they began writing their own material.
And I think that's really a part and performing their own material.
So, you know, the Beatles might switch off on which instruments they played, but they didn't bring in studio musicians that frequently, although they did.
When I think of the San Francisco sound, I often think of a very in-expert musicianship.
I think that's part of the fact that the bands were playing their own material.
So you were used to hearing on the radio the reking crew, for example, in LA, played on Beach Boys and songs that we were familiar with on AM radio.
When it came to FM and playing album cuts from the local San Francisco bands, what really happened was that they started not only experimenting but playing themselves.
And if they weren't expert musicians, you got to hear that.
So you got a lot of the sense of their creativity, and maybe not their skill on their instrument.
Yeah, so it's a very often very imperfect kind of sound, which hasn't appealed to it because it sounds more spontaneous and more authentic.
But, come on, couldn't they tune their guitars sometimes?
Well, the first note in Country Joe is technology has come a long way since then.
We have digital tuners that allow musicians to get their instruments perfectly in tune.
And those days you tune to the piano or we used to tune to the dial tone on the telephone, which was somewhere near B-flat.
So tuning, of course, the other aspect of that was the drug use.
And a lot of that interfered with your senses of pitch and rhythm and all of that.
So I think you can't discount that as being somewhat responsible.
Yeah, it's impossible to listen to this kind of music without putting drugs into the equation, either LSD or pot or both.
Or both.
In a helping of alcohol as well.
That was another element I think that the musicians weren't, you know, the James Brown model where he would find band members if they played a clam, a bad note.
That would not be the case with the San Francisco bands.
So generally you think that it produced a looser sound, a more improvisational, more improvisational.
Yeah, more, would you call it experimental?
Well, yeah, I mean, I think that a lot of times people were playing right on the very edge of their skill, which produces a very, you know, compelling kind of music.
And if it works, it's great. And if it doesn't, well, you just crash and burn and come back the next time.
Yeah. What about the lyrics? Because there's, in many cases, the lyrics seem quite literary and intelligent or thoughtful and not just the...
Well, you can look into that way or you can just get, you know, sometimes I think they just wrote down words that went with the rhythm and the melody and then we read in a lot of that.
So, and of course it varies. Some of the songwriters, I mean, the great full dead, for example, had expert songwriting and, you know, they had an outside songwriter that collaborated with them.
And other bands wrote everything on the fly and, you know, who may actually even compose the lyrics in the studio after they came up with the hook for the song.
Yeah. Well, you mentioned the Grateful Dead. I think if, when people think of the Bay Area bands of the late 60s, 70s, the Grateful Dead is foremost on that list.
And the 2000s and the dead, of course, all the way through. Yeah. And we, you know, we can get going with one of their songs so that we can talk a little bit about the dead.
Do you have any personal recollections of the dead? Would you like to share with us?
I don't think very many people that were there actually have a lot of recollections of the dead.
But I do. I mean, they weren't. It's hard for me to talk about the Grateful Dead because they weren't the band that I most related to.
And yet, somehow they have warmed their way into my consciousness to actually be the representative, even though they weren't my favorite band.
And when I hear like the opening for St. Stephen, which is what we're listening to. It transports me completely back to 1966.
And so obviously the Grateful Dead worked their magic on me.
Well, I agree that they've come to represent something that I admire greatly, although when at the time it was not one of the bands that I enjoyed listening to all that much.
We wouldn't have expected them to be the longest lived of all the San Francisco bands. But as it turns out that the individual members of that band, each had very, very high skill levels and musical intelligence.
That just ended up carrying them through an entire life of career. They had a lot of trouble, Jay, initially at least translating into this recording studio, what was really special and magical about their life performances.
Why was that?
Well, the studio is a very confining environment. And they were used to playing on stage and basically doing whatever substances came to that particular show.
And in the studio, the engineers and producers really wanted control and they really wanted to keep things moving right in that direction and they knew where the sound was supposed to be at the end.
Whereas the dead were just experimenting with different approaches and they played the same song different every night. And so where do you go with that in the studio?
So a lot of their great recordings like this one were live. And the essence of the Grateful Dead may not have come through in the studio the way it did on their live recordings.
There are probably more live recordings of the Grateful Dead than any other band on the planet.
And I believe that they also were at the Vanguard of bringing the best sound they could to their live performances because they wanted to get the best recording of those live performances.
So they had technologically they were ahead of way ahead of all the band.
And they actually employed the best audio engineers in the Bay Area and developed some different approaches to live sound that basically revolutionized the industry and spawned a lot of the top audio companies, speaker manufacturers in the country in the world for that matter.
And are there some names you'd like to admire sound of course. But ultrasound and Olympic are companies that were associated with them.
A lot of the engineers sort of went back and forth I guess between the different companies that were spawned by this.
But I think the most famous attempt at high fidelity was their wall of sound that Alsley Stanley put together for them.
Now what's the wall of sound it was especially with speakers. Before you know early maybe I should explain how stage sound operated in the 60s.
You were pretty lucky to be able to buy a PA that consisted of like a basement or a showman top and a couple of bottoms.
And basically that wasn't really a PA.
The dead started using voice to the theaters which are you know large cabinets designed for theatrical sound production.
And high quality amplifiers.
And so they you know the kind of fact I remember a show at Golden Gate Park where they had four voice to the theaters and four of the amp power amps sitting in front of them.
And I think it was the dead that came on and after the first couple of notes one of the amps went up and smoked and so one of the speakers was gone.
And a few minutes later one of the other amps went up and smoked so you know into the first song they were playing on half the PA and I think the show ended up with one voice of the theater and one power amp.
So that was the kind of state of the art.
The thing about the wall of sound was that they had dozens and dozens of amps and speakers and each was devoted to a single sound source.
In fact Phil Letches guitar was split a bass was split into four separate outputs that each got its own speaker.
Well that certainly avoids a lot of the problems you get when you mix lots of complex sound and try to force it out through one loud speaker.
But of course it introduced another problem which was you know incredible complexity.
And the sound apparently the first time they used it which actually was here at Stanford I believe.
They blew all the tweeters on the first note.
So it wasn't without its problems.
They also invented a technique of differential miking for the singer so that you could because they had all the sound coming from behind them it would get into the microphones and cause horrible feedback.
So the solution to that was to use two microphones taped together one that you sang into and the other which picked up everything but the vocals and then you subtracted that from the vocal mic and that actually tended to work I think.
But the complexity of that system just meant that it was really very difficult if not impossible to tour with.
The sound quality was excellent.
And their musical influences so there's blue grass there there's blues there's folk music and Jerry Garcia was also played banjo.
Yeah he did he had a really great band with olden in the way.
And yet they have probably the most recognizable Bay Area signature of any of the bands.
Why is that?
Because you don't associate necessarily the musical influences with the Bay Area like blue grass or or.
Well it's the synthesis of all that stuff.
So they kind of combined all those things in a unique way.
And also the fact that they played for so long.
I mean most of the bands lasted three or four years and a grateful dad you know in some sense are still going.
So I think that may have had an effect and they probably played more shows than anybody else.
Now Jake can you explain this huge enigma which is how could the dad become one of the most successful bands in the history of rock music and have the worst kind of singing and vocals.
I've wondered about that. It's you know it's reality. You know if we listen to the radio today you never hear a bad note.
And we can thank auto tune and melodine those are two programs that are used in the studio to correct pitch.
So it sterilizes everything and frankly I don't think that sounds good.
I would just assume here a little out of tune singing I mean you know I grew up on the blues and you know nobody would ever auto tune the
blues. So and I think that the grateful dad come from that aesthetic that you know and having sung on stage myself you know it's not that easy.
You know it might look easy on on TV but believe me it's not hot in it.
They went through several phases obviously they they they also evolved but I from what I can I'm not a one of a dead expert but they seem to retain throughout all their different
stages and phases of development. A very distinct sound of their own.
Yeah and I think it's the individual players you know I feel less obviously I can sort of recognize his bass playing no matter who he's playing with.
What kind of bass player do you think he do you think he's one of these melodic bass players as I quoted from the.
I don't know that I would say melodic that McCartney is more of a melodic bass player I think that the fill is much more open to other influence.
Stay at home bass. No he's very experimental I think he really is exploring his instrument still and you know it's it's indicative of his approach to music.
And do you believe that the dead have generated successors to their oh sure music yeah fish for example they invented the whole jam band thing I mean whether they did it consciously or not I don't know but as a result of what they introduced you know this is now a very common thing to see and you know I like to do it myself.
So there legacy is alive and well it's even as we speak here so yeah yeah that's great so we have a number of bands that we would like to get into the conversation and the.
Jefferson airplane obviously.
Is a big name yeah well no very well they've had hits now that's another thing about the grateful dead they really haven't ever had a number one hit.
And yet they're one of the most identifiable and note well known bands in the world.
Yeah they've never had a I think they only had one song ever in the top ten yeah I think that's right this which is amazing and what was very late in the career.
Late in their career yeah and whereas the Jefferson airplane is a different story.
Where they had at least. They were a handful of hits they were a little more commercially oriented I think their songwriting was and their approach to music was was a little more.
Studio friendly let's say and they were able to you know to get production in the studio that really.
Accentuated their approach whereas the grateful dead didn't necessarily benefit from that.
Did they record in different studios.
Yeah you have different productions well I you know a lot of them all you know they'd.
Probably used the same studios I know they used the same managers so they probably did use the same studios.
But it was just that their music was different and with the with the.
With the.
With the Jefferson airplane I think that they just they had more defined their songs were more clearly defined.
And so they lent themselves to you know standard production a little more.
And of course like many other bands they might have short songs on their recorded.
Right LPs and then stretch them out sometimes 20 years in shows they would often stretch them out but for the record they played shorter versions.
And one associates them very much with the psychedelic phenomenon yeah because at least some of their songs are very explicitly about.
Well yeah and well you know we can take a listen to one of the their most classic songs which is white bird.
White rabbit I'm sorry white rabbit we're gonna listen to white bird after that there's a lot of white and all of a lot of white.
So if we.
Oh actually this is quick silver.
It was quick silver right I'm sorry I'm gonna get us.
To where we next.
Oh it's in next track yeah after quick silver.
Here we go.
That drum intro probably would tell you what song it was without hearing anything else.
I read that grace slick wrote this song in like 15 minutes one day.
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised.
Oh she's a good singer.
Yes.
Very good.
And the ones that mother gives you don't do anything.
Yeah physical attraction.
It's really good.
It's really denying.
I didn't hurt.
Not the least.
Oh.
Yeah that song is one continuous crescendo until the end of.
Kind of like the trip.
Sure.
and can you explain, as a studio engineer yourself,
how she gets that, it sounds like she's always singing
in a really vast hall with a lot of space and rebirth around.
- Yeah, that's probably a reverb unit in the studio.
There's some interesting aspects in terms
of the recording, not only of that song,
but also of the country, Joe Sonne.
Which you may notice that the drums are paned to one side,
the guitars pan to the other side,
and then the bass and the singing is in the middle.
Stereo was a pretty new phenomenon in those days.
And nowadays, when you listen to a stereo recording,
the drums are centered in the middle
and spread out from left to right.
And there's this distinct continuous panorama.
In those days, no one knew what to do with left and right.
So they did the most obvious thing,
which is to really split things,
and you get a very disjointed kind of sound,
which is representative of that era
because after that, you very rarely heard that.
There were some beetle albums released that way.
When in fact, they were intended not to be released as stereo.
And so in order for them to capture the, you know,
get something out in this new stereo format,
they just took these recordings,
which were supposed to be mixed back into mono
and released them as stereo recordings.
So, but in this case, you know,
with the country Joe's song and white rabbit,
this was done on purpose.
And it was a unique new thing,
and we got tired of it kind of quickly.
- Yeah, so you liked it for a while,
but then you get tired of it.
- Well, it was interesting, and it was cool.
And I remember spending many a night on the floor
in my parents living room with the stereo speakers
off and the headphones on, listening to,
especially the Jefferson Airplane,
because they were one of my favorite bands.
And listening to where the engineer put things
in that stereo panorama.
And it got more and more interesting,
and they really worked with that.
Not all the bands did,
but that was one of the attributes of their production
that they really worked the stereo intensely.
So, I do recall many a night with the headphones
laying on the floor, listening to the separation
of the different aspects or elements of the mix.
- Well, this might be the place to mention
that you are the producer and town engineer
of our album, Glass Wave.
And let me ask you,
did you, when you put all the instruments together there,
are you, you're going with the contemporary dogma?
- Had I to do it over, I think I would do it this way.
Just because it's, I know it gets people's attention.
It's really at least one of the songs.
- So you would have separated them?
- Well, if we do another album,
I will definitely, I will definitely do that
on at least one of the songs.
But I have to tell you, you know, when RCD came out
and then have friends in Italy who had friends
and didn't know that we were from, you know,
California or anything like that.
And they were telling, people there were saying,
well, this has a very bay area sound, by audio.
Quasue multo by audio.
- Yeah.
- And this struck me as something
that what were they hearing?
Is there a bio regional thing that is seeped into
our album, even though none of us accept the drugs?
- Oh, Robert, it may have just been your guitar playing.
- It could be the guitar playing that I think your solos
are very 60s and you know, you would have fit right in.
- Well, it could also be that, you know,
that you produce it also in a way that allowed for
a certain kind of looseness of style,
letting the instruments breathe,
and maybe this idea of bringing the bass to prominence
if what I read earlier is true, that you did favor the bass
sound of the bass.
- Yeah, I like bass.
But I think that was a kind of a general trend in rock
at that period.
I don't think that was limited to San Francisco.
I think in part it was a technical thing
because bass amps got better.
I used to have a fender bassman and played bass through that
and you could barely hear it.
But, you know, when the SVTs and the, you know,
really huge, big, powerful bass amps came out.
Suddenly on stage you could actually hear the bass.
And so I think that that may have translated
as well into the recordings.
- Another band we wanna talk about,
I didn't bring any music from Big Brother
and the holding company, but we've, you know,
we've been talking about Jefferson Airplane
and they're female singer Grace Slick
and obviously Janice Joplin who was not a Bay Area native
but became a Bay Area adoptive child
and the Big Brother and holding company,
they would definitely also fit in this kind of loose style
is an important, poor way of summarizing it
but that's what we're talking about.
- They were about as loose as you could get
and still be on stage.
And they were pretty good musicians.
- Well, I think maybe individually they were
but I don't know what a count for it
but they produce some of the sloppiest stuff,
I think, of that era.
And, you know, really out of tune to the point
where it wasn't just, you know, it wasn't even arguable
and personally I didn't care for that band very much.
Grace, I'm sorry, Janice.
- Janice obviously was a tremendous singer
but she really, she was a blues singer, I think.
And her later stuff where she got some, you know,
some more organized musicianship behind her
really shown her abilities, more, more sudden
she did with Big Brother.
- Well, Jay, I'm actually gonna deviate from the order
that we thought that we would play this stuff in
in the spirit of, you know, loose improvisation style
because-- - Yeah, that's pretty appropriate.
- Having listened to, you know, white rabbit
I would really like to listen to another white song
which is the white bird by a band
which I think is highly underestimated
at least their first two albums
which is it's a beautiful day.
Is that a band that you liked at the time?
- Well, you know, that was one of my brother's favorite bands
because he was a violin player
until he managed to, you know, pick up a guitar
and hang up the violin.
So I think he kind of introduced me to them more
and of course you heard them on the radio quite a bit.
The white bird obviously was a pretty popular song
back in the '60s.
- And who is that horrible manager
that they had the misfortune of contracting with?
- Watch out, now he's very litigious.
- Is he? - Oh yeah, well,
Matthew Katz, he can come after us,
managed a lot of bands and a lot of rank or developed
and a lot of lawsuits.
And I think the quote on his,
I believe it was on his Wikipedia page
and someone asked him what he did
and he said he sued people.
- Yeah, well, yeah, I have always wondered why
it's a beautiful day was not much more of a big name band
of the era in general.
And from what I read that guy had something to do
with really inhibiting or prohibiting them
from really coming out and fulfilling their potential.
And from what I gather, he wouldn't allow them
to perform in the Bay Area for,
he sent them up to Seattle or outside of Seattle
and then that's where this song,
they're maybe their best known song,
White Bird was written and where the White Bird,
at least at one level, is also expressing the fact
that they felt all caged up by this agreement
that they had with this guy, you know?
- Well, that's something that happens not infrequently
in the music business.
And sometimes it works terrifically well,
but sometimes it just doesn't.
And I think that Matthew Katz,
he managed a lot of the best bands.
And, you know, there was some really great material
that came out of that,
but you just wonder how much things would have progressed
had he not stifled the bands the way he did
and been such a, you know, controlling interest
that basically took the steam out of bands
like, for example, Moby Great, who he really derailed.
- You did.
- Is a manager really that was a manager that important
for a band in those days?
- Yeah, I think it was, you know, the internet wasn't there.
So you couldn't like book your own gigs
and, you know, the way you can now.
So you really needed somebody who spent the time
on the phone, who knew where the venues,
knew the promoters and could just hook things up.
And, you know, we had a manager too.
And, you know, there were some questionable deals
that went on.
- The Mizzentro.
- Yeah, right.
It's just, I guess, the factor of the way the business is
that, you know, everybody's trying to get their own piece of it.
And, you know, the band's benefited from it,
to some degree.
And it was just a question of how sophisticated you were
and how well you worked with your specific management team.
And some of them were great.
And some of them were just out, you know,
just to get what they could.
- Yeah.
Well, here we go with,
White Bird.
(upbeat music)
♪
♪ White Bird ♪
♪ You're golden cage ♪
♪ On a winter's day ♪
♪ In the rain ♪
♪ White Bird ♪
♪ In a golden cage ♪
♪ On a low ♪
♪ The leaves blow ♪
♪ Cross the long black rock ♪
♪ To the dark inside ♪
♪ In its rage ♪
♪ But the white bird ♪
♪ Just sits in her cage ♪
♪ A no ♪
♪ White Bird ♪
♪ A fly and she will die ♪
- We better talk over this song a little bit
in case he comes after us, Jay,
because he can say, "He's gonna come after you, it's your show."
(laughing)
- He's not gonna come after me,
you can't get anything to me,
but you might come after Stanford,
you might say they-- - Oh, well, Stanford,
they have their own protection.
(upbeat music)
♪ White Bird ♪
♪ Dreams of the asth dream ♪
♪ With the dying heat ♪
♪ Turning low ♪
♪ White Bird ♪
♪ Just sits in her cage ♪
♪ Moving on ♪
- The harmonies are quite extraordinary, right?
It's very good for ducks.
(upbeat music)
♪ White Bird ♪
- I never noticed the flange on the drums before.
(upbeat music)
Well, in fact, this CD I have
is a double CD that can't have a, I think,
and it was made in Europe,
and because of all these legal reasons,
it can't have the cover of the fan.
I think my price is out of it.
- Oh, yeah, yeah.
- But it's an excellent, actually,
an excellent, productive double album.
- Yeah.
♪ The other words I do always know ♪
♪ And she must know ♪
♪ She must know ♪
- Very original solo that was coming up.
(upbeat music)
(light music)
(upbeat music)
That's masterful.
Yeah, I can safely say that that's the best violin solo in any San Francisco band
recording.
(upbeat music)
♪ Oh no one to stay ♪
♪ Here's my name ♪
Was it his name David LaFlam?
Yeah.
(upbeat music)
Songwriter and violin player.
He's wife Linda LaFlam.
But the vocalist, I think was not Linda LaFlam.
No, it's Patty Santos.
How do you Santos?
♪ White and my smile she will die ♪
♪ White and my smile ♪
There you go.
I think that they tried to get back together again in the 90s,
but of course it's never the same thing.
This is another thing about the period of time we're talking about,
the golden age of this psychedelic rock music of the Bay Area.
It was really just a couple of years, maybe three years before
it all started burning out too fast.
Yeah, and obviously the drugs had something to do with that.
Yeah.
But yeah, I think that the golden age was, you know,
67, 68, 69.
And then you were telling me off air that the drugs changed
from, you know, pot and LSD to something much more aggressive.
Yeah, there was a very interesting dichotomy between the East Bay
and the West Bay.
You know, the San Francisco, you know,
the milieu of the 60s was always considered to be LSD and marijuana
and all happy and peace and love.
The East Bay was more of the Hell's Angels and methamphetamine.
Now, in the late 60s, a drug came on the scene called Fenceyclidine,
or PCP, and it completely changed the complexion of the East Bay.
And it was a rougher area to begin with, but PCP is a drug that makes people potentially violent.
I mean, very violent.
Violent to the point of absolutely no self-control.
And, you know, where this all came to fruition was alpha-mon.
Yeah.
And the Rolling Stones, you know, were somewhat naive, I guess,
in thinking that the whole Bay Area was San Francisco and it was all golden gate park.
And of course, it wasn't.
And when they originally, Altamont was supposed to take place at the Speedway up in Marin County.
And that fell through.
So they found the Altamont Speedway, which is a racetrack out in between Livermore and the Central Valley.
And they figured, well, okay, we'll just do it there.
Well, this was, you know, East Bay.
This was not San Francisco.
And then, of course, you know, hiring the Grateful Dead, I'm sorry,
hiring the Hells Angels to be the enforcers was not a good idea.
Paying them in beer was even a worse idea.
But the whole tenor of that era in the East Bay was oriented towards this different drug scene.
And I think that that really spelled the end of the whole, you know, flower power San Francisco era.
And not that that, you know, declined immediately afterwards.
But there was a shift in sort of the public drug use thing in towards these, these rougher drugs.
And I really think that played a role in the whole dissolution of the, you know, the flower power idea.
Jay, what can you tell us about the Quicksilver, which is one of my favorite Bay Area Bay?
Well, at one time I could play every every note on their first album.
I don't believe I ever saw them live, but I, I really loved that, that first album.
Now, the first album is the one that has one whole song is at the site.
Side B was one track. Right.
Right. And this is, I think this, the album is just called Quicksilver, or Quicksilver messenger service with that great cover.
The guy on the horse, the cowboy kind of.
No, that's their second album.
That's that second album.
Yeah.
Oh, that's right.
But that one too, I think has a whole cut on one side.
Oh, it has two albums in it, I think.
Yeah.
But, actually, I guess Quicksilver was a somewhat different sound.
It was identifiable, I guess mainly because of the lead guitar playing was, was just, you know, it was, you know,
I guess Jerry Garcia had his style, but you, you heard three or four notes and you knew who it was.
John Chipolina was the same way, you know, he just had this style, and you could identify it.
Immediately.
So we have a song here called the fool, is that from their first album?
Yeah.
That's, this is just the way I used to hear it all night.
And it's in fact taken from the actual LP that I had, you know, in 1967.
So, you'll notice there's a place where it skips.
And that's from where.
[Music]
There you go.
Just like the old days.
[Music]
I think that, you know, music obviously always has some sort of mood of voking power.
But the way this stuff, that maybe it was the spontaneity or the, I'm not sure why it was different.
But the fact that it wasn't a, you know, two minute focused blast of whatever, you know,
the song was trying to put over gave them much more breath to kind of work the themes in and out and see where things could go.
So, you know, if you have seven or eight minutes in a song, you can take your time in developing the themes and build multiple
for shindos and, you know, really, really kind of work it.
It's opposed to a two minute song where you got to get it out there and blast it out and be done with it.
And I'm amazed at how many of the, in the guitar solo, how much of it is a minor key.
Yeah, minor scale and, and, I think that's a blues influence.
Is it?
It's hard to solo in a major key, yeah.
I don't know if you've noticed that.
Yeah.
Well I mean the pentatonic.
Yeah, I think that that's a blues relation related phenomena.
All of these guys, you know, whether they were admitted or not, have blues influences.
All the guitar players, I think.
And then you hear things like this, this wall-wall pedal thing that he's doing in there.
Technology actually added a little bit to these things because you, you had the ability to play with these things in a live sense,
which before had to be done in the studio.
So, you know, a lot of the, I think, you know, we're beginning to see the first instances of where technology is starting to, you know, influence the music.
And maybe next year Jay will do a show on the LA bands of the same era.
Yeah, it would be interesting because, but it just says a preview, of course,
LA is not exactly the same sound.
In fact, it might be a little quite different, but it's California, but no, no, no, unless you have bands like the doors, the birds, spirit, love,
Buffalo Springfield, Buffalo Springs, and Zappa also.
Oh yeah.
But I gather that they were, they were much more produced.
Yes, LA was the home of music production, you know, New York and LA, basically, where the, you know, the main, you know, sort of pop music production centers.
And there was a real sort of music mill in LA.
I mean, the, you know, the, the, the wrecking crew played on virtually everything.
And the record companies, you know, would hire the same, who are the wrecking crew?
They were, they were, well, they were, well, they were a group of studio musicians who played on virtually everything for all the different record labels.
I think if we do, we maybe want to do a show and specifically go into who they were and all.
But it was the same group of people that would do the Beach Boys in Buffalo Springfield and basically whatever was, was coming down.
And as opposed to the San Francisco sound where the bands just played their own music.
And occasionally they would get a ring or to come in, but, or the producer would insist on, you know, having somebody play a soul or what.
But generally the San Francisco bands were doing their own thing.
And the LA bands were, were being manufactured in a sense.
So I think that's really the critical difference.
And, and it's pretty obvious in the music.
You think it's obvious and, it is until you get to Moby Gray.
Yeah.
So Moby Gray was the first example of a San Francisco band that had the chops.
They didn't need studio musicians.
They were essentially their own studio musicians.
And they were, because they were that good.
They were that high caliber of players and singers and, you know, they all sang in tune.
They all played, you know, great on their instruments.
So, and, in a sense that band was manufactured by being, you know, put together or assembled, you know, for that purpose.
But the individuals were, were fully competent musicians and, you know, writers and performers.
So, they were able to, to do the same thing that it took the record for the, you know, for the LA bands.
Although there are LA bands, I don't think the doors brought in outside people too.
You know, I'm not sure in their particular case.
I think they, they had a various stereotypic sound.
And it wasn't much more bay areas kind of.
It kind of was.
Yeah.
And, and they were, they were excellent musicians and they really didn't need any help.
Yeah.
Well, that's great.
So did Mo, our last track is on, is a Mobi great track called in difference that we'll play in a minute.
But what should artists know about them?
Very, very bay areas as well.
But, but it's, well, it's the end of the, they come.
They were kind of late.
They were coming in later in the scene.
But, for my money, they're the best, the best band technically that came out of this whole scene.
And, you know, their first album, every song on it was great.
And I, I learned every single, you know, guitar lick on that album as well.
And that can still play them, you know.
And they wrote songs that were covered by other people considerably.
And they're, they're pretty widely, you know, considered to be the best technical bay area band in.
And not only technical, but just playing the best band, all, all things considered.
Best band, but did they make the best albums?
I think that the Moby-Great album is probably my favorite, if that qualifies as best.
It's my favorite of all these albums.
Of all these albums.
Yeah, that right.
Yeah.
And, this is your choice, I guess, in difference, yeah.
Okay.
[music]
That's my favorite ending of any song I've ever heard.
Yeah.
You know, I looked there at the tape deck and I said, "Oh, there's only five seconds.
That's the end of the thing."
And you were right, that last card.
That's why I wanted to put that last.
Right.
Because I think that just sums up everything.
That's beautiful.
And now I can see, I've never heard the Mizzan throats, but I know you're banned the offbeats.
And there's a lot of them.
I'll be great resonances I can hear.
Yeah, I can't get it out of my system.
It's been like 40 years.
Well of course, we should tell that we're early PM hours.
This is a kind of music that I guess at the later PM is better.
And not in this kind of stone-cold sober state that when we come to Stanford to do our day
jobs.
Yeah, we have to say that, don't we?
[laughter]
Great.
Well, Jay has been great to have you on entitled opinions again.
You will have to do another show maybe on the LA.
It would be good to compare the two.
I think there's some significant differences.
And I think that what I'm going to try to leave us with is one more song by, it's
a beautiful day.
And this is again the song from that same album is called "A Hot Summer Day."
Great.
So thanks for coming on.
Thanks for having us.
And for entitled opinions, be with you again next week.
Thanks.
Bye.
[music]
You