Search - The Sir Douglas Quintet :: Mendocino

Crapiest album heard in 10 years

Alan Carmichael | Para Vista, South Australia Australia | 10/31/2005

(1 out of 5 stars)

"This album is a poorly produced thin live album, poorly mixed at that. If you are looking for the Mercury label original hit versions of Mendocino, Dynamite Woman and She's Abour a Mover look elsewhere. Amazon.com should be ashamed to let this rubbish onto their website mine is off to the trash can, it only arrived today. Another album of counterfeit music. I have been taken for a ride at a cost to me. No indication in the original description as to the validity of the tracks on this album. If I could give a rating of minus 5000 stars I would."

Great 60s rock like Dylan, the Beatles, and the Sir Douglas

Peter E. Johansen | 09/10/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I'm generally a believer that there are enough intelligent people seriously listening to music that the best stuff tends to, over time, become both popular and respected. If you're looking to absorb the greatest late 60s and early 70s rock, then the Beatles, the Who, the Rolling Stone, Dylan, Hendrix, etc. are all worthy places to start. And while certain songs and even albums rival the quality of individual works by such artists, few if any musicians match them both in terms of quality and consistency. Doug Sahm and his Sir Douglas Quintet is one obscure artist that comes to mind for me as producing a body of work that easily matches that of virtually ANY other comparable artist. And even amongst rock snobs he is relatively unknown (at least in most parts of the county) when compared to other similarly influential artists such as Graham Parsons, the Band, or Townes van Zandt. And Mendocino is his masterpiece that to me ranks among the best albums ever produced by anyone.



Recorded in San Francisco during the hard-drug fueled decline of the "love and peace" counter culture, Mendocino is filled with longing for Texas. (Apparently, the band couldn't return after a pot bust in '66.) All the eclectic elements that Doug Sahm would return to again and again are here - Tex-Mex, country, blues, soul - with perhaps a stronger psychedelic rock influence than anything that came later. Although everything he recorded - at least that I've heard - is worth spending some time with, I don't think he ever reached the passion present in these songs, and it is beyond comprehension that he is not better known. There are no weak songs here, and each works in such a different way that I don't even want to get into the individual tracks. The consistent quality of such eclectic material brings to mind the best Beatles albums.



The only sad part of discovering an album this good is realizing that not only are there so many people out there who would just love this music who will likely never even hear the name Doug Sahm, but that so many of his albums are tragically still not even available on CD.



IMPORTANT NOTE: After I wrote this review I realized that many more earlier Sir Douglas Quintet albums are available on Amazon than I thought. However, they are listed under Douglas Quintet rather than Sir Douglas Quintet. So if you include the Sir in the search they will not come up."