John Cipollina/Raven: John Cipollina/Raven 2006

 

American rock 'n' roll / blues-rock band from the San Francisco bay area of California. The group was born out of a rehearsal at John Cipollina's Black Dragon Studio on December 9, 1975, and was first

assembled as a "super-group" of musicians from groups such as Terry And The Pirates, Copperhead, and others. Raven's first show was on June 27, 1976 at Sundance, a small club up in the mountains near Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Unfortunately the group only played a handful of shows before dissolving later that year, with their last performance on September 4, 1976 at the Keystone in Berkeley. However, they recorded an album's worth of studio demos before breaking up, which were eventually released on the Line Records label out of Germany.
                         

San Francisco Bay Area acid rock guitarist John Cipollina (1943-1989) was a member of many rock groups in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, most notable among them Quicksilver Messenger Service. Cipollina never really had a solo career, but his discography does list one album under his own name, sort of, a

record usually referred to as John Cipollina Raven. It isn't actually a solo disc, either, however. In late 1975, a year in which he had already participated in a Quicksilver reunion (Solid Silver) and served as a member of Man (Maximum Darkness), Cipollina hosted the first of a series of rehearsals at his studio that resulted in the formation of Raven, a new band made up of Bay Area stalwarts who, like him, had been members of other area bands. Pianist Nicky Hopkins, for example, had been in Quicksilver, while singer/keyboardist Jim McPherson had been in another Cipollina-led band, Copperhead, a couple of years earlier.
                         

But in addition to Cipollina, the other main member of Raven was guitarist Greg Douglass. The band rehearsed for six months and then played, according to annotator Mike Somavilla, "at best, maybe, 11 shows" at such venues as the Keystone nightclub in Berkeley, CA. Then they drifted apart. That

NICKY  HOPKINS

probably would have been it, except that in 1980 Cipollina sold some of the group's demos to the West German label Line Records, which issued them as an LP under the name John Cipollina Raven. Now, the British Acadia label has undertaken a fresh assessment of the material on this disc, titled Raven, retaining seven of the tracks from the earlier version, resequenced with seven new tracks, some of them recorded live. They reveal Raven to be a band of between five and seven pieces, depending on the track, that plays densely arranged '70s album rock in a style roughly similar to that of Jefferson Starship, but without that band's distinctive vocals.
                    

Some of the musical elements are distinctive, however, starting with Cipollina's stinging guitar playing

and Hopkins' bright piano runs. The sound quality sometimes betrays the rudimentary character of the sessions, but this is clearly a talented rock band that had promise for a successful run if somehow it could have gotten past this point. That, of course, is largely the story of Cipollina's journeyman career in general and of some of the other musicians in the band.
By William Ruhlmann.

LINE - UP
      

John Cipollina    1 - 14
Greg Douglass    1 - 14
Nicky Hopkins    1 - 4, 6 - 8, 12
Jasper "Hutch" Hutchinson    1 - 3, 5 - 12, 14
Skip Olson    1, 5, 7, 13
Olson or Hutchinson    4
David Weber    1, 3 - 14
Andrew Kirby    1 - 14
Dave Walker    13

John Cipollina / Raven – John Cipollina • Raven
Label: Acadia – ACAD 8092
Format: CD, Compilation, Reissue
Country: UK
Released: 2006
Genre: Rock
Style: Blues Rock, Hard Rock

TRACKS

                       

01. Rock & Roll Nurse    5:29
02. True Golden Touch    5:20
03. Do What You Do    6:31
04. Unvicious Circles    6:51
05. True Reward    3:05
06. Grass Is Always Greener    4:14
07. Clouds    4:42
08. All Worth The Price    5:27
09. Ride (Highway Song)    6:17
10. Burning Corte Madera    3:33
11. The Truth    4:02
12. Bad News    3:57
13. Razor Blade & Rattlesnake    5:04
14. Prayers    3:33

NOTES

1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 12, 14: His Master's Wheels, San Francisco, CA
2, 6, 11: Black Dragon Studios, San Rafael, CA
5: Keystone, Berkeley, CA, June 7, 1976
9, 10: Blue Bear Studio, San Francisco, CA, October 15, 1976
13: Venue unknown, Berkeley, CA, September 2, 1976

MP3 @ 320 Size: 157 MB
Flac  Size: 409 MB 

John Cipollina on Urban Asoirines HERE