Hallock Hill

Dino Valente, “Birdses,” single (Elektra, 1964)

Bob Brainen closed his show on WFMU yesterday with this scarce song, prefacing it by saying that he’d been waiting to hear this song for decades and had only first heard it a few days before. A lead in like that will surely wake up any listener, and the song itself is a strong tonic. Here is an LA mid-60s track laced with the bizarro, and once you hear it you’ll have to Google away for all you can about this mad scientist called Dino Valente. Valente was born Chester William Powers, Jr. in 1937, and used a number of pseudonyms, most notably Dino Valente (or Valenti) and Jesse Orris Farrow. The recipient of a number of career derailing drug busts, the sometime member of the Quicksilver Messenger Service and the writer of “Get Together” (on Jefferson Airplane’s first record and a hit for the Youngbloods), Valente released a lone solo album on Epic in 1968, produced by Bob Johnston, who oversaw most of Bob Dylan’s classic work in the 60s. This cult psychedelic folk classic remained a hushed-tone rarity until it was re-released by Koch in 1998 and then RPM in 2005.

For a while, Valente shared a houseboat in San Francisco with David Crosby, and knew the Byrds in their early days. Gene Clark said that when trying to name the band, he suggested “Birdses” in honor of Valente’s peculiar single. It was later transformed into “The Byrds” and although there there was the suggestion that Valente might join the group, he instead went with three San Francisco musicians who would become the Quicksilver Messenger Service. His drug bust and arrest before their first rehearsal derailed him. When paroled, he recorded his solo album, then formed the Outlaws with Quicksilver guitarist Gary Duncan, and joined Quicksilver for a time in the 70s. Valente died suddenly in 1994 in Marin County, where he continued to play and perform with local musicians after brain surgery in the late 80s.

When a DJ of Bob Brainen’s caliber tells you they were hoping to hear a track for decades, it means something. And listening to the song, you can hear a cauldron of singer-songwriter style stirred with the looming psychedelic drug culture. It is a surreal bridge from old timey folk primitivism to 60s mind blowing psychedelia. And you need not wait decades yourself, for here it is (and for those wondering… it is easily available on all those digital music stores in the compilation Forever Changing: The Golden Age of Elektra Records, 1963-73, Elektra 2007).

Image from www.dinovalenti.com.