Various Artists - San Francisco Nights (discs 5-8)Â
The bottom four on this unofficial compilation of bay area and related bands may not be quite as surprising as several of the shows on the first half, but many of the shows are generally more representative for band and era. The fifth CD consistently transfers from a rather short but excellent segment of early 67 Moby Grape to a very representative 45 minutes of Quicksilver Messenger Service before the band would become a split personality. Cippolina’s at his best and the atmosphere is perfectly redolent of the era. QMS strike me as so arcane in some ways, they’re not as instantly identifiable as the Dead or Airplane and so much of their brilliance lies in the spaces and sly, sinuous reworkings of what could be rather dull blue songs.
Disc 6 might be the weakest disc of the set, unless, of course, you’re a big Steve Miller Band fan, however at this point they struck me as somewhere in between the band’s earlier blues oriented style and the psychedelia they were starting to embrace for Children of the Future. But this too strikes me as rather representative given a lot of the bay area band’s yin/yang penchant for earthy Americana and psychedelic flights. I’ve never heard a Steve Miller show from this era that really impressed, unlike many of the contemporaries on this disc, so this struck me as slightly forgettable.
Like one of the discs in the first half, the seventh disc focuses on less known groups from the era, with a couple tracks by the Daily Flash and a good half an hour with the Sons of Champlin, who always strike me as one of the better, less known bands from the milieu. Unfortunately the filler in this sandwich is more rather weak Country Joe & the Fish who seem fairly stilted considering how great they were around their first album, before the band became better known for protest music. The Daily Flash lived up to their name in the annals of music history and there’s really nothing here to make you wonder longer.
Finally, we’re given a good 30 minutes or so of 1969 Santana, which to my ears sounded the same nearly every time out that year with very similar sets made out from the first album. While this makes the music very representative, you’re really better off checking them out at Woodstock than this. It’s a Beautiful Day also only get a short segment but at least you’re approximately at their peak.