John Cipollina

Man were one of the most promising rock bands to come out of Wales in the early '70s. Along with Brinsley Schwarz, they helped establish the core of the pub rock sound, but they played louder and also had a progressive component to their work that separated them from many of their rivals…

Without question, this follow-up to Quicksilver Messenger Service's self-titled debut release is the most accurate in portraying the band on vinyl in the same light as the group's critically and enthusiastically acclaimed live performances. The album is essentially centered around the extended reworkings of Bo Diddley's "Who Do You Love?" and "Mona," as well as the lesser lauded - yet no less intense - contribution of Gary Duncan's (guitar/vocals) "Calvary." This album is the last to feature the original quartet incarnation of QMS. The collective efforts of John Cipollina (guitar/vocals), Greg Elmore (percussion), David Freiberg (bass/vocals), and the aforementioned Duncan retain the uncanny ability to perform with a psychedelic looseness of spirit, without becoming boring or in the least bit pretentious…

Have you heard The News? The sweet pop/rock/soul sound of San Francisco's Huey Lewis & The News has sadly gone silent in recent years, thanks to its one-of-a-kind frontman's battle with Ménière's disease, which causes intermittent hearing loss. But a surprise new reissue campaign courtesy of Universal Music Group's Japanese division promises the most comprehensive look at the band's blockbuster catalogue of the '80s and early '90s.

By licensing these previously unreleased live and studio tracks (plus some previously released but rare material) from the Special Markets division of EMI-Capitol Music, the mail-order company Collectors' Choice Music has legitimized Quicksilver Messenger Service recordings that had floated around on bootlegs and quasi-legal discs for many years. The performances all date from 1967-1968, a period during which Quicksilver consisted of lead guitarist John Cipollina, rhythm guitarist and singer Gary Duncan, bassist David Freiberg, and drummer Greg Elmore. As Richie Unterberger points out in his liner notes, "They were not so much singer-songwriters as they were virtuoso players and creative interpreters and stylists. They were not the greatest of vocalists or composers." True, but in Cipollina, with his tremolo-laden leads, they had one of the great San Francisco guitarists of the '60s…

Friends of Extinction is basically an expanded two-CD reissue of Dinosaurs' sole album, 1988's Dinosaurs, with two outtakes and an entire disc of previously unreleased 1985-1989 live material. It's a little mean-spirited, perhaps, to criticize the recordings of a band that - as the liner notes make clear - approached music-making primarily as fun, with virtually no ambitions to make a steady professional career out of the group. Still, their album was no doubt not wholly what fans of the San Francisco bands that had spawned the players were expecting. The opening synth pop rhythms of "Lay Back Baby" seemed to indicate a band determined to get in tune with the sound of the mid-'80s, rather than one set on re-creating past psychedelic glories…

The music of the Gravenites-Cippolina Band was unlike any other. It can't be compared to Quicksilver Messenger Service…which band was the apple and which the orange?The Gravenites-

Cipollina Band created unique blues rock. It picks up where Mike Bloomfield left off.This is a very rare release of what the band was doing at the time…at their best.