Nicksilver
unknown location & date
1980-11-xx


unknown gen. analog audience

might really be: 1980-11-13 Treibhaus, Kassel, West Germany - please read notes below!!
traded in 1982

Set 1 - Disc 1 - 45:07
1. Blues In My Bottle 6:01
2. "Born in Chicago" > Born In Chicago > "We've been playing all through Germany & hustling records..." 7:03
3. Signs Of Life * > "Working in a liqour store, back in 1963..." 4:24
4. Small Walk-in Box 9:59
5. Southside 3:39
6. chat > Trust Me * > chat 4:19
7. Pride Of Man 3:59
8. I'll Pull The Trigger 3:38
9. You Can't Hurt Me No More (instrumental set closer) > "We're gonna take a little break now, be back & do aother set for you a little later on. Thank you very much folks." "Don't go away" 2:02

Set 2 - Disc 2 - 61:47
1. Junkyard In Malibu 6:53
2. Bad Luck Baby 8:25
3. Six Weeks In Reno 4:50
4. Trouble In The Teepee * 7:01
5. Keep On Running # 4:21
6. Hot Rods And Cool Women * 3:52
7. My Party 9:05
8. Lucille # ../x 1:35
9. "We're gonna scrape the barrel & give you an old song cos we're old people, you've been a very good audience. We'd just like to say thank you and leave you with a musical question.", band intro 1:45
10. Who Do You Love? 10:40
11. Goin' Down (instrumental) > "OK then. Thnak you very much" 3:13
Total 106:54


Band
Nick Gravenites - Guitar, Vocals
John Cipollina - Guitar
Al Staehely - Bass, Vocals *
Marcus David - Drums, Vocals #


Notes:
- incomplete recording (this is all I have)
- taper paused the machine between songs
- given as: Treibhaus Club, Kassel-Zierenberg, West Germany - but they did not perform there in 1980
- definitely recorded in Germany (Nick and Al thank the german audiences twice)
- German tour dates from November 2nd to November 15th 1980 (13 shows)
- on the Kassel 1982-10-19 recording after "Buried Alive" Nick introduces the band and states that "...we've been here before and very little has changed...". They played just 4 spots in both years (1980 and 1982): Hamburg (different venues for 80 and 82, recordings of 1980-11-06 and 1982-10-21 exist; 1980-11-05 is missing), Hof (both at "Alter Bahnhof", no confirmed recording from 1980 show exists, 1982 recording exists), Bonn (confirmed recordings for both), and Berlin (different venues for 1980 and 1982; no recording of the 1980 in the rounds)
- my records of touring schedules do not list Kassel for 1980; also there was only one day off during the german tour (Nov. 13th).
- this suggests that they did a show in Kassel too in 1980.
- this "unknown" recording from 1980 really might be 1980-11-13 Treibhaus, Kassel, West Germany



About the band's name: This came to me as by Nicksilver, but I don't think that is correct; around this time they were The Gravenites-Cipollina Band (for the 1979 Scandinavian tour, they were billed as The Nick Gravenites Blues Band). Nicksilver, as I understand it, was only used for an East Coast tour, at the promoter's behest.

From Relix, February 1984, Vol. 11 No. 1 ( http://www.michaelcross.me.uk/jc/r-ns.htm )

J.C.: The promoter asked us to come out last year as Quicksilver and we said no. Then they said we'll book you as yourself, but we want to say former members of Quicksilver and we said I don't know, yeah... that sounds okay and they said we want you to play at least 50% Quicksilver stuff and we said forget it.

N.G.: I didn't want to use the name Nicksilver. It was the idea of this promoter in New York named Michael Gaiman. He has been trying for a long time to put together a band that would in some way resemble Quicksilver that he could use to take advantage of that name. We were going to have Nicky Hopkins in the band as well at first, but we just couldn't take Nicky away from what he is doing now. It is just too lucrative for him. He gets double and triple union rates and everything. He is working in Hollywood doing sessions and film scores and all kinds of stuff. We just couldn't afford to have him on tour with us, but he is so good. He makes you sound good. When he plays with the band he makes us all sound good. When we couldn't get Nicky I wanted to go out as a four piece, but Gaiman insisted that we have a keyboard player and he insisted that we take Merl. He was intent on having a band tour that he could connect with the Quicksilver name, so in the end we agreed. I didn't care. I just wanted to get out and tour in my own country. I haven't toured here properly in years, and I just wanted to show everyone just how good I play the blues.

Relix: Will there be any more Nicksilver tours or any records coming out?

J.C.: Well, Nick's recording an album right now, but I don't know if it will come out in the states. As for Nicksilver, I would hope that there will be more tours. I kind of hoped that we could use our original line-up. If the promoters back east would stop being so chintzy, maybe we could. We had a band out in California called Thunder and Lightnin', which is basically Nicksilver except instead of Merl we had Nicky Hopkins. I love Merl; he is very good and he was a real big help and there was no problem with Merl at all, but I am used to Nicky. He is not only a close and dear friend, but he is also an excellent pianist, and I like the rhythms I work off of with Nicky.



NB John Cipollina recordings can be found in various collections within the Live Music Archive ( https://archive.org/details/etree ):

John Cipollina - 223 - http://www.archive.org/details/JohnCipollina
Dinosaurs - 77 - http://www.archive.org/details/Dinosaurs
Barry Melton Band - 55 (many without Cipollina) - http://www.archive.org/details/BarryMeltonBand
Zero - 573 (with Cipollina from 1984 to July 1988) - http://www.archive.org/details/Zero



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