The Nick Gravenites & John Cipollina Band – Monkey Medicine (1982)

Two great musicians:

Nick Gravenites (born October 2, 1938) is an American blues, rock and folk singer, songwriter, and guitarist, best known for his work with Electric Flag (as their lead singer), Janis Joplin, Mike Bloomfield and several influential bands and individuals of the generation springing from the 1960s and 1970s. He has sometimes performed under the stage names Nick “The Greek” Gravenites and Gravy.

In the early 1980s, Gravenites performed and recorded with a revolving group of San Francisco Bay area rock, blues, and soul musicians called the Usual Suspects. Their first album, The Usual Suspects, was released in 1981.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Gravenites played with Cipollina as Thunder and Lightning. Gravenites and Sears played together in front of 100,000 people on Earth Day 1990 at Crissy Field, San Francisco. Sears also joined him for a tour of Greece. Gravenites still performs live in northern California. Gravenites’ song “Born in Chicago” was honored by the Blues Hall of Fame in 2003. He has toured with the Chicago Blues Reunion and a new Electric Flag Band.

John Cipollina (August 24, 1943 – May 29, 1989) was a guitarist best known for his role as a founder and the lead guitarist of the prominent San Francisco rock band Quicksilver Messenger Service. After leaving Quicksilver he formed the band Copperhead, was a member of the San Francisco All Stars and later played with numerous other bands.

Cipollina died on May 29, 1989, at age 45. His cause of death was alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, which he suffered from most of his life and which is exacerbated by smoking.

In 2003, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Cipollina 32nd on their list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. (wikipedia)

The short-lived * The Nick Gravenites-John Cipollina Band * originated in Nick Gravenite’s 1980 solo album * Blue Star *. The musicians Nick Gravenites (vocals, guitar), Al Staehely (bass, vocals), Marcus David (drums) and Quicksilver messenger service legend John Cipollina came together and went on tour together. After the tour ended, they went to the studio in Hamburg to record the only studio disc * Monkey Medicine *.

The music is based on the blues rock of the late 70s. The sound is combined with country and folk influences. Since the songs on the previous tour had already been presented to the audience live, it was easy to capture the live feeling in the studio. The songs were mainly written by Nick Gravenites (pronounced Gr-ä-ven-ei-tiss-). His whiskey-soaked, powerful voice has a lot of blues. Bassist Al Staehely is included as a composer and singer on three songs and offers a very good opposite pole with his bright, clear voice. The characteristically scratchy game by John Cipollina, which is not named as the author, but with his game contributes a lot to the soul of the songs.

As playing tips you can confidently name * Blues In The Bottle *, * Trust Me *, * Buried Alive In The Blues *, * Bad Luck Baby * and * Signs Of Live *. As a surprise and as one of the highlights, the CD offers a new recording of * Pride Of Man * by Hamilton Camp, the Quicksilver Messenger Service, which was already published in the late 60s and which can probably also be seen as a contribution by Cipollina to songwriting. Another highlight is * Small-Walk In Box *, a song on which only the two guitars sing, rock each other and Gravenites, and Cipollina present all their skills in a beautiful melody (by Markus Schmidl)

The German edition:

This album was first released in Germany on the legendary Line Records label.

And here is the french edition with 2 bonus tracks !

Personnel:
John Cipollina (guitar)
Marcus David (drums)
Nick Gravenites (guitar, vocals)
Al Staehely (bass, vocals)

Tracklist:
01. Blues In The Bottle (Hopkins) 4.06
02. Six Weeks In Reno (Gravenites) 4.31
03. I’ll Pull The Trigger (Gravenites) 3.34
04. Trust Me (Staehely) 3.50
05. Buried Alive In The Blues (Gravenites) 5.16
06. Bad Luck Baby (Gravenites) 7.35
07. Signs Of Life (Staehely) 3.50
08. Pride Of Man (Camp) 3.52
09. Hot Rods And Cool Women (Staehely) 3.33
+
10. Small Walk-In Box (Staehely) 7.44
11. Born In Chicago (Gravenites) 4.10

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The German CD edition:

More from Nick Gravenites in this blog:

More from John Cipollina in this blog: