Rock In My World

Hole In My Shoe - Traffic

Steve Winwood was still a young teenager when he and his older brother joined up with Spencer Davis and Pete York to form The Spencer Davis Group. He quit the group in 1967, when he was still only 19, and joined up with Dave Mason, Chris Wood, and Jim Capaldi, to form Traffic. Although a great deal of Traffic's sound leaned toward blues-rock, particularly when Winwood sang lead, some early Traffic is truly psychedelic. Mr. Fantasy, their first album (also released as Heaven Is In Your Mind in the USA), holds more psych than the rest, including Paper Sun, Utterly Simple, Dear Mr. Fantasy, and Hole In My Shoe. I chose Hole today, mainly because of the sitar music, the odd spoken-word break by a child, and one of the early uses of the Mellotron.

Quicksilver Messenger Service - Mona

It's high time I revisited one of the most highly lauded of the San Francisco scene bands, Quicksilver Messenger Service.

Their second album, Happy Trails, was recorded live and peaked at #27 on Billboard's Pop Album chart in 1969. Side one of the album was an entire suite based on Bo Diddley's Who Do You Love, which I'd love to feature here on Psych. Sunday, but it's quite a marathon piece for short-attention span listeners. (If I get email requests, perhaps I'll just post it anyway.)

Even presenting Mona, another Bo Diddley cover, is challenging, since there is no clear cut-off between it and the following song on the album, Maiden Of The Cancer Moon. (And this is true, really, for the entire album and song segues, since it was recorded live, and this is a jam band piece.)

Here, John Cipollina's guitar work shines in its energetic fluidity. I'm sure Diddley had no idea his song could be so hippified, but, indeed, it works in the psychedelic cowboy style.