Quicksilver Messenger Service - Anthology (Reissue) (1973/1995)

This 16-song collection on two LPs was the way that a lot of people first picked up on the Quicksilver Messenger Service. Without a string of charting singles to help drive album sales in the manner that the Jefferson Airplane enjoyed, their original LPs mostly passed unnoticed outside of the locales where they played regularly. But for those who came along a little later, here were most of the highlights of the band's first six LPs, opening with "Pride of Man," "Dino's Song," etc., and all in a cool-looking silver-on-black jacket that, one suspects, just may have influenced the design of the Grateful Dead's What a Long Strange Trip It's Been some four years later. Rhino's Sons of Mercury double-CD set ranges wider, but for a single-CD compilation or a basic introduction to the band, Anthology is hard to beat, which may explain why Beat Goes On re-released it on CD in the 1990s with new notes by John Tobler. That -- or the vinyl version if one is still wedded to that format -- are the versions to get.