Quill opened up the Saturday festivities at
Woodstock in 1969, though some may say the real claim to fame for
Jo Unk Khol (aka
John Cole) is the sound effects he makes (uncredited) at the beginning of
Andy Pratt's 1973 classic
"Avenging Annie." The group's self-produced album is one of the better offerings from "The Bosstown Sound," as was
Pratt's 1971
Polydor release
Records Are Like Life. Perhaps it is no coincidence that both were recorded by the mysterious Boston-area engineer who went by one name,
Aengus.
Steven McDonald originally wrote in AMG that "
Quill came and went in 1970, leaving a single album behind as evidence of their existence. The band hurtled into the depths of
psychedelia with results that are both painful and entertaining."
McDonald went on to call the music "a self-indulgent mess with some promise and much racket." Actually, the six compositions by
John and
Dan Cole, along with
N. "Red Rocket" Rogers'
"Too Late," deserve to be remembered a little bit better than that. Perhaps the entire album was too far out to include
"I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night" or
"Journey to the Center of the Mind," titles like
"Thumbnail Screwdriver" and
"Tube Exuding" giving the impression that these were bad
Ultimate Spinach or
Eden's Children outtakes. That's far from reality. The music is more toward the entertaining than the painful end of
McDonald's spectrum. And though they, like
Sweetwater, failed to catch on as other acts from the
Woodstock festival did (unlike
Ten Wheel Drive, who were said to have turned the gig down to settle in near obscurity), there is something special in these grooves and the pastel/half-
psychedelic cover with esoteric lyrics spread across the inside of the Unipak gatefold. Despite the zany pseudonyms the bandmembers embraced, this record has more smarts than anything
Zager & Evans ever put to plastic. There are jazzy overtones mixed in with the mayhem and experimentation far beyond anything
Ultimate Spinach, the dreadful
Eden's Children, and even the beloved
the Beacon Street Union from that "Bosstown Sound" era attempted to create. Maybe it was the marketing, maybe it was the damage caused by
Eden's Children, there's no doubt
Quill deserved a better fate. If only
Cotillion, the label that released the
Woodstock triple and double LPs, had put this and other groups out as part of a "
Woodstock" series. ~ Joe Viglione
