![]() Quicksilver Messenger Service released their eponymous debut album in 1968. At the same time, Capitol signed the Steve Miller Band, with whom Quicksilver Messenger Service had appeared on the movie and soundtrack album Revolution, together with the group Mother Earth. Capitol was the only company that had missed out on signing a San Francisco “hippie” band during the first flurry of record company interest and, consequently, Quicksilver Messenger Service was able to negotiate a better deal than many of their peers. QMS initially held back from signing a record deal at the time but eventually signed to Capitol Records in late 1967, becoming the last of the top-ranked San Francisco bands to sign with a major label. Sound engineer (and infamous LSD chemist) Owsley Stanley regularly recorded concerts at major San Francisco venues during this period, and his archive includes many QMS live performances from 1966–67, which were released on his Bear Recordings label in 2008-2009. The band began a period of heavy touring on the West Coast of the United States where they built up a solid following and featured on many star-studded bills at the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore West. Jim Murray left the group not long after they performed at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967. Recently, original members Gary Duncan and David Freiberg have been touring as the Quicksilver Messenger Service, using different musicians to back them up. The style he developed from these sources is evident in Quicksilver Messenger Service’s swung rhythms and twanging guitar sounds.Īfter many years, the band has attempted to reform despite the deaths of several members. Member Dino Valenti drew heavily on musical influences he picked up during the folk revival of his formative musical years. With their jazz and classical influences and a strong folk background, the band attempted to create a sound that was individual and innovative. ![]() ![]() Though not as commercially successful as contemporaries Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead, Quicksilver was integral to the beginnings of their genre. Quicksilver Messenger Service gained 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. Moscoso was also an illustrator for Zap Comix, the underground comic magazine started by Robert Crumb.Quicksilver Messenger Service – “Quicksilver Messenger Service” This feature of psychedelic art - that it took time and energy for one to decipher - became the movement's trademark, a way to evoke the era's social and political instability and mark the underground scene with a singular visual identity apart from mainstream culture. ![]() His designs, which included several pieces for the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore Auditorium (San Francisco's main concert venues in the 1960s), featured a swirling array of bright colors, dense imagery, and almost illegible lettering that was hand-drawn rather than typeset. Moscoso's academic training as a designer helped to lend artistic credibility to a flourishing medium of commercial art - the rock poster and handbill. After studying art at the Cooper Union in New York City and at Yale University, he moved to San Francisco in 1959 to attend the San Francisco Art Institute, eventually becoming an instructor there. Victor Moscoso is known for his eponymous designs of rock posters and underground comics in the 1960s.
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