History Quincy Conserve

Quincy Conserve was a Jazz-Rock Band of the 70s with a touch of 60s. Founded in Wellington, New Zealand in 1968 by lead guitarist and vocalist Malcolm Hayman, Quincy Conserve were one of the more popular local bands of their era.

Their sound progressed more in the direction of jazz-rock, and they had success with audiences at jazz festivals.

" I'm not here to reinvent the wheel on this blog. A fantastic review of the history of one of New Zealand's best ever bands can be found on Sergent's website here. The band was the country's first 'supergroup' made up of the best musicians of the time. They got their start in Wellington and held a number of residencies at various venues. The group released four albums and a dozen or so singles on a few different record labels.

The four albums released by QC are reasonably well-known in collector circles. Their 1970 debut LP contained the Bruno Lawrence-penned hit single Ride The Rain and also included a fantastic instrumental cover of James Brown's I Feel Good on the flip. Their 1971 sophomore included a few great breakbeat-heavy cuts, one of which was sampled by Australian hip-hop producer Katalyst for the breakbeat mega mix that was his lead single from his acclaimed debut LP. Their third LP from 1973 contained a rock-oriented cover of Curtis Mayfield's Move On Up, and their final LP is arguably their funkiest, with a hard-hitting Kool and The Gang cover.

In the middle of their four full-length releases, they cut perhaps the best thing that they ever released. The A-side of the single in question was a cover of the Steve Miller Band's Somebody, Somewhere Help Me. The QC's take on this tune is much punchier than Miller's original, with a tougher, bolder brass section, and even more attitude in the vocals, to my ears at least. But the B-side is where the gold is at: an American instrumental funk number penned by Harvey Faqua and released as a single by his band The Nite-Liters. Tango Boo Gonk was itself the B-side to The Nite-Liters own hit single K-Jee released on RCA in 1971. I say this tentatively though, because a number of on-line references to this single list the sides the other way around. My 7” copy of the Nite-Liters single does not obviously prioritise one side over the other, making it difficult to ascertain which is supposed to be the A-side.

The fact of the matter is, this 45-only release by The Quincy Conserve remains very hard to find, rivaling anything that appeared on their albums in terms of quality and downright funkiness. It's obscurity remains because it was left off the full-length releases. Many discussions of the group merely reference its existence and some completely omit it. Here's a full 320 mp3 clip to the B-side of this forgotten piece of NZ brilliance." (http://aussiefunk.blogspot.de/2012/10/the-quincy-conserve.html)

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