The convoluted history of San Francisco’s Quicksilver Messenger Service is almost as entertaining to hear as its music – but not quite.

The ‘60s were rife with political tomfoolery in the States and abroad. Here, though, as the government sought to augment its laws regarding drugs and controlled substances, a number of people soon found themselves wrangled by police. Amidst the shifting cultural trends, the younger folks and what would get referred to as the establishment, a San Francisco rock and psych scene sprung up. The most popular proponents of the sound that became so affiliated with the Bay don’t need to be revisited frequently. The Quicksilver Messenger Service, for whatever reason, didn’t quite make as much of an impact as the rest of its cohort.

When the band got together it was helmed by Dino Valente – a local musician and writer. Due to all those ratcheted up sentences that the government began levying upon the public, Valente was inside a jail cell when the band that he cobbled together actually started playing out and recording. So while he was initially supposed to be the central figure in the group, the Quicksilver Messenger Service recorded two long players without him. And as much as it could be debated, both the self titled disc that was released ’68 and its live follow up, Happy Trails, should be considered the band’s pinnacle.

That’s not good or bad for Valente. He clearly possessed a different perspective on how the band should come off than those who helmed over those few, early years. During the singer’s incarceration, though, the band’s guitarist John Cipollina exerted a significant influence on how the band was presented. He may not have been a featured song writer, but there’s a reason why Cipollina’s guitar and its accompanying rig are prominently featured in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The six tracks that make up the Quicksilver Messenger Service’s first studio disc are a bit dicey given some of the vocal stuff included. It’s not that members of the band couldn’t carry a tune, but the vocal melodies appear to be largely cribbed from other groups. And while something similar might be said about the bluesy stuff that the music consisted of, Cipollina was able to manipulate his guitar in a way that separated it from anything happening concurrently.

What this first release did for the band was to allow the ensemble to suss out a few tracks that it’d revisit for the duration of its career. The extended “Gold and Silver” was everything that ‘60s music was meant to be: a bit jazzy, progressive and yet maintained a hard edge by dint of Cipollina’s guitar. The song isn’t really heralded today as anything special, but there’s no question that band’s like the Grateful Dead were paying attention to the tempo changes and oddly cobbled together portions of the song.

The Quicksilver Messenger Service may have persisted for a good long while after its first two albums were released, but that doesn’t mean it’s worth wading through all of those dusty grooves.