Lewis 1 Daniel Lewis Ajax Peris GE Cluster 60 20 February 2014

Musicology Interpretive Essay In Quicksilver Messenger Services (QMS) album Happy Trails, the entirety of the Who Do You Love performance was partitioned into six different track titles. However, the piece seems to suggest four, rather than six, syntactic units, consisting of a blues instrumental and vocal solo (Who Do You Love Pt. 1), a psychedelic rock instrumental (When You Love), an avant-garde collective solo (Where You Love), then a fourth section which combines elements from the previous three sections into a three track long finale (How You Love, Which Do You Love, and Who Do You Love Pt. 2). Through the paradigmatic elements within each syntactic unit which associates that unit to a specific style of music, and through the arrangement of the four syntactic units, QMSs performance of Who Do You Love becomes a model of the evolution of blues into psychedelic and avant-garde styles of rock over time, and how all three subgenres have developed the collective genre of rock. The blues style of rock is embodied in the first syntactic unit, which spans from the beginning of the performance to just before the end of Who Do You Love Pt. 1, consisting mainly of two solos: a slightly distorted electric guitar solo and a vocal solo. Paradigmatic elements within this section [0:00-3:20] include a fairly standard blues rock style rhythm section, with electric guitars strumming a consistent two-chord progression in a clave rhythm, bass playing a consistent, almost completely unchanging bass line, and drums playing a subdued, maintained beat throughout the entire syntactic unit. The initial guitar solo [0:20-1:41] stays almost completely within the blues scale, and the vocal solo consists of multiple verses and the chorus of Ellas McDaniels original Who Do You Love, also sung within the blues scale.

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Collectively, these paradigmatic elements seem to suggest this first syntactic unit as one consistent with traditional blues rock formats, with a steady, unchanging rhythm section over which a solo musician- a guitarist and then a vocalist in this case- performs a blues melody, sometimes accompanied by harmonies by other voices or instruments [2:12]. The second syntactic unit, which deviates from the structure established in the first unit, begins with a transition from the blues section into a style reflecting the psychedelic rock of the late 1960s. When Who Do You Love Pt. 1 draws to a close, the chord progression drops out, and the drummer plays more freely, adding in fillers between the guitarists phrases, ultimately starting a new, less subdued, beat at 3:32, marking the beginning of When Do You Love. A noteworthy element in this section is the absence of an apparent chord progression, which has been switched out for a more melodic and articulated bass line than that of the first unit. Though a guitar can be heard in the background playing some countermelodies and chords [3:45], there is little emphasis on it, suggesting that the chord progression is not as significant in the performance of this second section. Musical freedom is also notable in this section, with the bassist frequently adding melodic lines into his bass line and the guitarist beginning with a melody based on the blues scale but deviating from in increasingly until by 8:14, the blues scale is no longer an apparent foundation for the melody. It is also significant that as the guitars melodic style changes over the course of the section, increasingly using more distortion, with a distinct change at 7:24 into an overdriven guitar sound commonly found in the psychedelic rock genre. There is more interaction among the musicians, as seen at around 5:52, when the main guitarist mimics the motif played by the bass and develops a few motifs of his own around it and at 8:15, when the entire band comes together to play a single motif. These paradigmatic elements suggest a rock style with more musical freedom, more interaction among musicians,

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and a new distorted sound, all consistent with the characteristics of the psychedelic rock of the 1960s. As the piece progresses into the third syntactic unit, Where You Love, the music becomes increasingly less structured, reflecting the notion of the avant-garde. By 9:26, both chord progression and bass line have dropped out, leaving only the drums to establish a foundation for the music. The musicians depart from traditional instrumental sounds and begin experimenting with elements such as overtones and harmonics [9:40] as well as electronic feedback [11:56]. In addition, a new instrumental sound, similar to that of a cello, is brought into the musical scene as well [10:49], a sound far from conventional in the rock genre. As the song progresses through the third unit, the music becomes more and more minimalist, sometimes being nothing more than the tapping of a hi-hat and the electronically altered sounds of an electric guitar [12:09]. The section eventually graduates into a climax of aggressive call-andresponse chanting among members of the audience with instrumental sounds interspersed throughout. By this point, there is almost no distinguishable structure in time nor melody- only a disorganized conglomerate of sound. Through the increasing lack of conventional music structure and the use of musical elements unconventional for rock music, such as the cello-like sound and the call-and-response form performed by the audience, this third syntactic unit reflects an avant-garde style that results from further experimentation with musical freedom introduced in psychedelic rock. The final unit, composed of tracks How You Love, Which Do You Love, and Who Do You Love Pt. 2, comes to represent a more developed rock music that has resulted through exploration of psychedelic and avant-garde rock by taking the initial Who Do You Love tune and imbuing it with elements taken from the freer musical forms found in When You Love and

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Where You Love. This is immediately apparent at the beginning of the last unit, which starts at 14:54 with the characteristic pitch-bent notes that opened up the song. Instead of the subdued drum beat played at the beginning, the drummer plays a much freer beat [14:56], much like that in the second syntactic unit. In the same way, the solo guitarist no longer limits his melodies to the blues scale but uses multiple notes from without of the scale, and the bassist adds several melodic phrases into what was an unchanging bass line in Who Do You Love pt. 1. Ultimately, the last section leads to the finale of the performance, starting around 25:09 with invigorated and unrestrained vocals and instrumentals, continuing to build up to the climax, a musical freak-out that suspends all tempo and melody to create an intense wall of sound to conclude the song. Thus the final syntactic unit finalizes the development of the song, having taken the musical structure of blues rock and adding to it the stylistics of psychedelic and avantgarde rock to create a final section composed of three tracks, just as the musical style of the section is the combination of three rock styles. In the entire Who Do You Love suite, the order of the syntactic units plays the purpose of illustrating the evolution of blues rock into psychedelic and avant-garde rock, and how all three subgenres contribute to the development of rock music. Considering the notion of all musical events relating forward through anticipation and implication and backwards through memory (Longhurst 167:5), the specific forward progression from one syntactic unit to the next in Who Do You Love can be seen to model a chronological progression from blues to psychedelic to avant-garde, consistent with the historical development of rock. The last syntactic unit (How, Which, Who Do You Love Pt 2) uses the backwards relation of musical events by using melodies and stylistics that reflect the characteristic paradigmatic elements of the previous three units and combining them together, suggesting development through the collaboration of

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past styles, revealing how (How You Love) Who Do You Love Pt. 1 becomes Part 2, and the styles through which (Which Do You Love) Part 1 develops into Part 2. Who Do You Love Part 2 thus becomes a product of explorations into the freer music forms of psychedelic and avant-garde music, and the implementing of those styles to develop the music from Who Do You Love Part 1. Through the division of Who Do You Love into four syntactic units, the first three units being individual tracks characterized to reflect a certain rock style using paradigmatic elements derived from the respective styles, and the last being a three track long finale combining elements from the blues, psychedelic, and avant-garde sections, Quicksilver Messenger Service creates a work that illustrates the development of rock music in the 1960s. The specific order of a blues rock syntactic section leading into a psychedelic section, then into an avant-garde section, and the increasing amount of musical freedom exhibited by musicians and audience alike through this progression ultimately suggest the development of rock music through the exploration of unconventional music forms and the expansion of musical freedom, creating the epic finale with which the performance concludes.

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Works Cited Longhurst, Brian. Popular Music And Society. (1995). Quicksilver Messenger Service, Happy Trails (Capitol Records ST-120), 1968, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi0e7brHdMQ.