SOUNDTRACK: QUICKSILVER MESSENGER SERVICE-Quicksilver Messenger Service (1968).
For me, QMS have always been mythical–like a unicorn or a gryphon–I had no real proof that they existed, but I have seen glimpses. I think that this record, along with Steely Dan’s Aja and all of the records of Lee “Scratch” Perry were on every first page of every Columbia House ad and catalog ever. And yet, I had never heard them or known anyone who listened to them.
Well, thank you vacation house iPod! The first QMS album was here and I got to listen to it! All these years I assumed that QMS, with that weird name were some kind of southern rock band like Molly Hatchet or Badfinger. Boy was I wrong! They are steeped in the psychedelic sounds of the late 60s (their lead singer even wrote the sixties’ anthem “Get Together”–although he never recorded it). Much of the story about the band seems to involve the main guy’s drug bust which kept him, well, out of the band.
But anyway, the music sounds not like Jefferson Airplane, and other psychedelic bands of the era. But I think mostly it’s the recording style more than the music (lots of echo and reverb and very tinny guitars) that keeps that sound together. It’s a sound that I like in small doses (and in big hits) but one which I don’t enjoy a lot of–it seems like if I’ve heard it on classic rock radio, then I like it, otherwise, not so much.
The disc has a couple of long instrumental sections which are interesting. The 12 minute “The Fool”, in particular is home to lots of exploration. But it feels like they didn’t go far enough since none of the songs are fully instrumental.
Nevertheless, it’s nice to finally know what the band sounds like; maybe it would have been a penny well spent.
[READ: July 3, 2010] “What You Do Out Here, When You’re Alone”
This story begins in medias res. We know that something has happened, that Max calls it the Accident and that his wife doesn’t. Max’s wife Lilli was disliked by his brothers (they’d even had an intervention, trying to convince him to dump her), but Max was always defending her, so that was no big deal. She always acted like she didn’t care what anyone thought of her. Until they moved to the Oaks, when she became Martha Stewart in an attempt to fit in with everyone else. Max didn’t try to fit in.
But that has nothing to do with the accident. Rather, the accident concerns their son, Harley. He did not adjust to the Oaks well at all, and he goes off and gets into trouble and has, well, an accident. Lilli blames Max, and Max has been stuck in inertia for three weeks since it happened.
The story starts out confusing but intriguing. The confusion was deliberate, I believe; the reader knows very little of what is going on with this accident, even when all the details are revealed. And yet it’s the glimpses of the hidden information that keep you riveted. Especially as more details, more horrible details, come to light. (more…)
This week’s New Yorker contains a list of the 20 authors under age 40 that they predict we’ll be talking about for years to come. Their criteria:
I Just Read About That... 