154. Quicksilver Messenger Service | Happy Trails (1969)

---

Wikipedia Entry

---

Tracks

1. Who Do You Love – Part 1
2. When You Love
3. Where You Love
4. How You Love
5. Which Do You Love
6. Who Do You Love – Part 2
7. Mona
8. Maiden of the Cancer Moon
9. Calvary
10. Happy Trails

---

Happy Trails is a self-indulgent album. Although there are ten tracks listed on this album, the first six are really just the pieces of one song. I thought I read somewhere that Who Do You Love was broken into the six so that Bo Diddley, who wrote it, wouldn't get such a large share of the royalties. Or something like that.

The first half of the album is a live twenty-five minute jam with most of it being a guitar solo. It starts to flag and become tedious in the middle. Where You Love, How You Love and Which Do You Love should have been cut. There are two other extended songs, Mona and Calvary, on the second half. They also could have been shortened to make them better. Calvary would have been such an awesome song if it had been shortened because there is some really wonderful-sounding guitar in it.

It's nice to hear a good extended jam. However, a long jam must reinvent itself every so often. Jimi Hendrix's Voodoo Chile is a great example, especially since it didn't get too long to wear out its welcome. Unfortunately, nothing like that happens here on this album.

I think the music is good and the album would have been much better if the longer songs had been tightened up. The stand out songs are Who Do You Love – Part 1, When Do You Love, Who Do You Love – Part 2, (a shorter version of) Mona and (a shorter version of) Calvary. Happy Trails is a throwaway song.

★★★★★★★☆☆☆