Day Blindness
Band members Related acts
line up 1 (1967-70 - Felix Bria --
vocals, bass, keyboards
line up 2 (1970 NEW
- Roy Garcia --
vocals, drums (replaced Dave Mitchell) NEW- Johnny Vernazza -- guitar (replaced Felix Bria
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- The Elvin Bishop Band - Boston (Gary Pihl) - Crossfire (Gary Pihl) - The Fox
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Genre: psych Rating: *** (3 stars) Title: Day Blindness Company: Studio 10 Records Catalog: DBX 101 Year: 1969 Country/State: San Francisco, California Grade (cover/record): VG+/VG+ Comments: minor ring, edge and corner wear Available: 1 Catalog ID: 4 Price: $100.00 Cost: $66.00
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In the wake of the commercial successes enjoyed
by San Francisco-based bands such as Country Joe and the Fish, The Grateful
Dead and The Jefferson Airplane, big and small record labels went into a
corporate feeding frenzy, determined to find another act that could bolster
their profit and loss statements. As you'd expect, the results of their
search were mixed, with lots of marginal acts getting a brief shot at the
spotlight.
One of the bands that apparently benefited from that corporate talent search was Day Blindness. Singer/keyboardist Felix Bria, drummer Dave Mitchell and guitarist Gary Pihl started out in 1967. Within a year they'd made a minor name for themselves on the city's club circuit, where they became fairly regular performances at Bill Graham's Fillmore, the Avalon Ballroom, as well as a regular featured at free concerts at Golden Gate Park. Along the way Mitchell was replaced by Roy Garcia, with Bria being replaced by Johnny Vernazza. Recorded at San
Francisco's Studio 10 with Tom Preuss producing, 1969's
"Day Blindness" seems
to fall in the latter category. While I've seen it garner some fairly high
sales prices on recent lists, musically their album isn't anything to get
real excited about. Recorded as a trio in the wake of Vernazza's
departure (he reappeared as a member of the Elvin Bishop Band, followed by a
stint with Norton Buffalo), the remaining trio were certainly
competent musicians, but none of their material was particularly original.
Tracks such as 'Young Girl', 'Middle Class Lament' and 'I Got No Money'
offered up a fairly standard mix of pedestrian electric blues, harder rock
numbers and modest psych moves. That lack of originality, coupled with the
absence of a strong or distinctive singer didn't exactly help the
proceedings. If you had to pick a couple of highlights, go with the bouncy
'Live Deep' (which also sported a nice Pihl solo) and the weird, 12 minute
plus Doors-influenced 'Holy Land'. 1.) Still Life
Girl - 6:22 (side 2) 1.) Live Deep -
2:45
A
typical description of Day Blindness involves references to the
theoretically similar but inherently antithetical West Coast bands the Doors
and Iron Butterfly, and it does in fact play something like a cross between
those two groups, though with none of the musical nuance and aesthetic
vision -- and none of the existential considerations -- of the former and
with all the unrelenting bombast and sonic pretension of the latter. What it
does have in common with the Doors is its organ-heavy, acid-touched
moodiness and its dense blues underpinning, though it is unable to do
anything significantly innovative with either element. And like Iron
Butterfly, Day Blindness draped their music in a sometimes smothering,
cerebrum-numbing blanket of quasi-metal guitar. The band, indeed, took their
hard rock very seriously, and that leads to a good number of earnestly
overblown moments. It also causes the nearly 40 minutes of music to drag as
a whole and to dull one's appreciation for their more enticing aspects. And
such aspects, though few, do indeed exist here. "I Got No Money"
and "House and a Dog" aren't songs so much as chances to jam on
blues changes, but each has some commanding moments. And the 12-minute
"Holy Land" is less atmospheric or disorienting than "The
End" (seemingly its model), but it has some worth nonetheless, though
in a vaguely ham-handed way. This band must have undoubtedly provoked some
gut-thumping excitement for their live audience, blasting from ballrooms
with an accompanying swirl of smoke and a kinetic surreality. The fact that
it has been bootlegged attests to the fascination it still elicits. The
album has not, unfortunately, worn particularly well (though considerably
better than "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"). Still, it provides an
interesting glimpse into the heavier, more straight-ahead side of San
Francisco acid rock.
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