Linda’s B-3 organ provides the undercurrent. “Hot Summer Day” features lovely call-and-response vocals, with Santos and Laflamme both evoking the vocals of Martin Balin. The Spanish/Django guitar gives the song a sophistication rare for the time. It’s hard to hear “White Bird” with fresh ears, but notice how Laflamme keeps his powder dry, introducing his bowed violin only at the 1:35 mark. Sonically, both songs offer mystery and revelation. “White Bird” and “Hot Summer Day” open the album with a mid-tempo groove that holds up beautifully for the most part, but the songs do suffer from some dated passages. “White Bird,” sung by Laflamme and Pattie Santos, became an FM radio staple (and cliche). While neither the album nor the single, “White Bird,” were smash hits, the records performed respectably and their popularity grew over the decade. The debut album “It’s a Beautiful Day” was released on Columbia in 1969.
The “White Bird” line “the leaves blow across the long black road to the darkened sky and its rage” came from the view Laflamme and his (first) wife Linda had looking out the window.Īfter returning to SF, the band got its break opening for Cream on its Farewell tour. “We had no money, no transportation, the weather was miserable.” “We were like caged birds in that attic,” Laflamme says. (Katz also managed and fell out with Moby Grape.) The song “White Bird” came out of these days, when the band had little but a place to stay - the attic of an old Victorian mansion. Laflamme’s own band was formed in San Francisco in the summer of love, but got its start in Seattle, playing a residency at the Encore Ballroom, at band manager Matthew Katz’s insistence. He helped form Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, bringing echoes of the great Stéphane Grappelli to the acoustic band’s mix of gypsy jazz, swing and roots music. The former symphony orchestra violinist played with all of the heavy Bay area bands. Singer/violinist David Laflamme was there at the beginning of West Coast psychedelia, a fixture on the hippy scene. The band It’s a Beautiful Day was a late bloomer out of the psychedelic boomtown that was San Francisco. In any case, the album has been going in and out of style over the past 50 years. Yet the overwrought singing, awkward classical musical interludes and hippy-dippy lyrics betray the work’s 1960s roots. The LP’s influence no doubt extended as far as Dead Can Dance (and its demon spawn). The forward-looking touches of world music ring true enough these days. “It’s a Beautiful Day” plays rough here and there, but for the most part it’s psychedelic lite, a 4 a.m.
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