After my initial enthusiasm for Purple, Tull, Man and Wishbone Ash, around 1978, I gravitated to west coast bands and their unique blend of psychedelia, folk and blues. Remember, I was 17 and living in the northeast of England. It was often wet and cold and always polluted. The idea of California was distant, exotic, and attractive. I thought being a flower child in Haight Ashbury was as far away from doing my A levels in what was soon to be a post-industrial town, physically and culturally. So though I was 10 years behind the times, it was magical to me and the music especially so.
While getting records by the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, especially Wake Of The Flood and Volunteers, was relatively easy, others in my NME book of rock were harder to find. I didn’t realise that some didn’t get a UK release, and not living near a US air force base, I just didn’t see second-hand copies of.
The early Steve Miller Band releases were easy to get, especially Sailor, which I still have three copies of. I avidly read sleeve notes for clues to other bands and their work. It was quite hard to get deep into it. Basic info was attainable, but beyond that you just had to piece it together for yourself any way you could. I got the first Moby Grape but didn’t know how many others they had.
I soon found that if you looked up certain musicians, you found out about all the sessions and offshoots they’d played on. This was especially true of members of the Dead. When I got Steal Your Face, which I loved, in the UK it came with a ‘Free For Dead Heads’ sampler. From there I got the Kingfish, Diga Rhythm Band, Keith & Donna, Old and in the Way and Garcia solo releases, initially all of which were on Round Records.
Of course, as an aficionado of Pete Frame’s Rock Family Trees, once you get going and one band leads to another. It pretty much doesn’t matter where or who you start with, pretty soon you’ll have an avalanche of info about bands you’d never heard of. As a result of that For Dead Heads sampler, I had so many doors opened. Soon, I had the Ace records and Mickey Hart’s Rolling Thunder record and several Robert Hunter releases.
But I wanted to get deeper into all things West Coast, and though I was a dedicated collector, I hit a brick wall and there was a point I just couldn’t get beyond. I had got the Copperhead (John Cippolina) album from 1973, not really a West Coast album and a few years late but thereafter, was stuck. Then, as I was looking at my Quicksilver Messenger Service records, I noticed the lettering was by Rick Griffin whose name I’d seen on Aoxomoxa and later Reckoning by the Grateful Dead. I reasoned he must have done other bands' records too.
I looked him up in a book of ‘Influential Freaks’ and found Mad River, Cold Blood, The Ceyleib People, then noticed he’d done the lettering on Man’s Maximum Darkness, one of my favourites and Slow Motion and the Neutrons too and later, I saw he did the illustration for Schon & Hammer’s Here To Stay.
As soon as I unlocked this door, he seemed to be everywhere, including On The Border by the Eagles, Dylan and the Dead and The Cult’s Wildflower. It unlocked a lot of knowledge. Soon, I was buying records no one wanted in the late 70s by H.P. Lovecraft, Blue Cheer, It’s A Beautiful Day, Hot Tuna, of course. Even Sopwith Camel, Mother Earth and The Loading Zone. Even now I’m trying to afford an original Frumious Bandersnatch EP (anything up to £1000 if you can get one), an important band because its members Bobby Winkelman, Jack King, Ross Valory, and David Denny joined Steve Miller and Valory, along with fellow Frumious Bandersnatch member George Tickner and manager Herbie Herbert, joined former Santana members Neal Schon and Gregg Rolie to form the band Journey in 1973.
A lot of records are super hard to find. Your best bet is that some San Franciscan freak’s collection is being sold off by their kids.
The hunt continues and now with the internet, I’ve unearthed more and more late 60s west coast musical relics, which are now effectively cultural artefacts that tell the story of a unique time in history whose social reverberations have subsequently shaped so much.
Collecting vinyl - The hunt continues...
