1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 143. Quicksilver Messenger Service – Happy Trails (1969)

 

Now I enjoy a bit of guitar-based rock as much as the next middle-aged white man, but it’s nice to have a change of pace after the full-on assault of the last album. Although the band and album name suggest we’re in for some country or country-rock again, this is more jazz-based psychedelic rock.

The whole of the first “side” of the album is 27 minutes of a lengthy jam around Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love, broken down in the track listings as Who Do You Love (Parts 1 and 2) which sandwich When You Love, Where You Love, How You Love and Which Do You Love, which are more like movements within a large piece.

The jazz inspirations are clear from the soloing going on, and I had to have a think about why this seemed good to me whereas the sax soloing on jazz records got on my nerves. And I think it’s partly because of the greater range. I looked it up – saxophones cover two and a half octaves, guitars can cover four (particularly electric guitars with the cutaway to allow you to reach the squealy high notes). Plus with an electric guitar, especially at this stage in history where effects pedals are starting to appear, the tonal quality of the sound can be altered all over the place – clear tones, fuzzy distortion, a bit of wah-wah, whereas the sax is somewhat limited to what the human player can do. And there’s a difference between stringed instruments and woodwind as well, in what they can do. Strings can bend, can ring and sustain, again the saxophone can only do what is being blown into it. Arguably it takes a lot more skill to sound good on a sax than an electric guitar, but also I’d argue that you could play the same solo, or jazz modes, twice on the same guitar and sound completely different.

After this tour-de-force, where can you go? The second half starts with Mona, something a little like an extended jam on The Rolling Stones’ Not Fade Away, before continuing on some more instrumental trips, including Calvary which is a Hispanic-themed piece that answers the question “What if we did a rock score for a spaghetti western?” and where the album earns its bright cowboy-themed cover (until it then goes into the final track Happy Trails, which is a short little country piece complete with hoofbeat sound effects, I think it’s a theme song from something (Rustler’s Roundup featuring Woody?).

The extended spacy instrumentals are great for soothing the mind, I really liked this one as well.

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