01	White Bird						06:08
	02	A Hot Summer Day						05:46
	03	Wasted Union Blues						04:05
	04	Girl With No Eyes						03:48
	05	Bombay Calling						04:30
	06	Bulgaria						06:13
	07	Time Is						09:34
	08	Don And Dewey						05:17
	09	The Dolphins						04:28
	10	Essence Of Now						03:17
	11	Hoedown						02:30
	12	Soapstone Mountain						04:16
	13	Waiting For The Sun						00:53
	14	Let A Woman Flow						04:00
	15	It Comes Right Down To You						03:09
	16	Good Lovin'						03:54
	17	Galileo						02:59

It's A Beautiful Day - 1969

David LaFlamme - violin, vocals
Linda LaFlamme - organ, piano, electric piano, celeste, harpsichord
Hal Wagenet - guitar
Val Fuentes - drums
Pattie Santos - vocals, tambourine, bells, block, gourd

Marrying Maiden - 1970

David LaFlamme - violin, vocals, guitar, flute
Hal Wagenet - vocals, guitar
Fred Webb - vocals, keyboards, frenchhorn
Val Fuentes - vocals, drums
Pattie Santos - vocals, percussion




It's A Beautiful Day [USA]
It's A Beautiful Day (69), Marrying Maiden (70) Choice Quality Stuff/ Anytime (71), Live At Carnegie Hall (72), Today (73), 1001 Nights (74, comp.)

San Francisco area band toured with likes of the Grateful Dead, New Riders of the Purple Sage... Music style could best be described as psychedelic folk. Also, some members of the Santana band appeared on one album, which shows a strong Santana rhythm influence.

The origins of IABD go back to the 1967 timeframe, when a band called "Orkustra," led by Violinist/Vocalist David Laflamme, released an extremely obscure independently produced LP that is so rare that it's not even listed in any of the collector books I have lying around. Anyway, personnel changed and so forth, and promoter Matthew Katz picked them up for his brand new label "San Francisco Sound," gave them the cool name "It's a Beautiful Day," and began grooming their sound. In these early years they consisted of Laflamme, his wife Linda on keyboards, vocalist Pattie Santos, Hal Wagenet on guitar, Mitch Holman on bass and drummer Val Fuentes. The first album is a masterpiece of finely crafted classically inspired folk-rock, with a wide range of influences; accesible, inspired and idealistic, it lent strong evidence of musical credibility to the otherwise haphazard and self-indulgent San Francisco music scene of the late 60's. Two years later, after Fred Webb had replaced Linda Laflamme on keyboards (who left after being struck in the head by a bottle thrown from the audience), they were back in the studio recording their second album Marrying Maiden. The new album had far more variety, with some country influence, some cajun, jazz, folk, and good-timey rock n roll, with guest appearances by Jerry Garcia and other Bay Area musicians. Where their first album seemed to be an excersize in perfection, the new one was a step out in many new directions. Then the problems began to take over. David, now embroiled in a nasty divorce, seemed to lose all his creative energies, and yielded to other less skilled writers within the band to take over the task of writing new material. Katz was suing the band for the rights to their name (that's a whole story in itself), and wholesale personnel changes became the order of the day. It was no surprise that after Maiden, the band went downhill fast. Their third, Choice Quality Stuff/Anytime attempted to present two sides of the band on opposite sides of the LP, but unfortunately, all it presented was a band coming apart at the seams. Definitely start with the first album, and don't go beyond the second.

Their eponymous release is a classic of the "San Francisco" psych sound. Many of you may have heard "Hot Summer Day" or "White Bird" on FM radio. The band is lead by the violin and vocals of David LaFlamme and his (now ex-) wife Linda. I've never heard, nor do I know anyone who has heard, their other albums. Lots of folk influences plus some acid guitar leads. This was one of my favorite tripping albums.




IT'S A BEAUTIFUL DAY
Columbia CS 9768, 1969

David LaFlamme arrived in California in 1962. He was twenty-one years old; he had been playing violin since he was five. During the Sixties he picked up all manner of musical influences: he played jazz with John Handy, he jammed with the band that would eventually become Big Brother and the Holding Company, and he was one of Dan Hicks' very first Hot Licks. Some time during all this activity, he fronted a band called Orkustra, which at one time also included the legendary Bobby Beausoleil; their one and only album is apparently lost to history.

In 1967, Matthew Katz signed up what remained of Orkustra; the new group was christened "It's A Beautiful Day", and they made a trek to Seattle in November to appear at a recycled Twenties ballroom that was newly devoted to, and named for, the San Francisco Sound, a name later adopted by Katz for his record label. Their debut LP, issued by Columbia, was a startling amalgam of folk and psychedelia, driven by David LaFlamme's electrified five-string violin playing off Hal Wagenet's guitar, and anchored by David's wife Linda, who provided sterling keyboard work. "White Bird", the first track, established itself at once as an FM-radio staple, although as a single (Columbia 4-44928) it never bubbled above #118 in Billboard. Other tracks got airplay as well, notably the raveup "Wasted Union Blues" and the atmospheric instrumental "Bombay Calling"; "Hot Summer Day", which intertwined vocals by David LaFlamme and Pattie Santos, is reminiscent of the early, non-political Jefferson Airplane. The set ends with the tumultuous "Time Is", a LaFlamme setting of a 1904 poem by Henry Jackson Van Dyke.

A revamped IABD - Linda had split from the band and from David - issued a second LP in 1970 (Marrying Maiden, with a cameo appearance by Jerry Garcia and a song dedicated to the legendary Don "Sugarcane" Harris), but by then things were already starting to unravel. The LaFlammes' divorce and seemingly endless personnel changes took their toll on IABD, until you practically couldn't tell who was in the band anymore, a situation no doubt noticed by Matthew Katz, who claimed that he owned the rights to the name "It's A Beautiful Day". Litigation ensued. Litigation, in fact, continues to this day; in 1993, Columbia's Legacy label was scheduled to release a two-CD IABD compilation (on C2K 53038; don't ask them when it's going to show up), presumably comprising tracks from all six IABD albums, produced by reissue ace Bob Irwin with David LaFlamme consulting, but Sony and Matthew Katz couldn't come to any agreement. As of this writing, they still haven't; Katz has also apparently been upset with Napster. Presently Katz sells It's a Beautiful Day (SFS 11790) and Marrying Maiden (SFS 04800) through his San Francisco Sound label; in the United Kingdom, Sony has issued both those LPs on a single CD (Columbia/Rewind 489449-2), which seems to drift in and out of print, and the German TRC label has reportedly issued both albums separately (TRC 001 is the first). David LaFlamme redid "White Bird" for the Amherst label in the late Seventies and released two albums; more recently, he and the current Mrs LaFlamme have been touring, and in the spring of 2000, one of his violins turned up at auction. And if your classic-rock radio station is anything like mine, you're still hearing the original "White Bird", all six minutes and six seconds of it, in all its California glory, and remembering a beautiful day of your own.

Further exploration: DavidLaFlamme.com has surfaced under the direction of Webmaster (and occasional LaFlamme sideman) Toby Gray. There is a mailing list called White-Bird, operated by JW Anderson, whose Rock Garden features an IABD fan site. Jeff Webb is keeping a log of the Katz-LaFlamme litigation and other developments. There's even a Matthew Katz page, which can be described as "unflattering". In short, there's no shortage of IABD stuff out there.

Track listing:


White Bird (Linda LaFlamme-David LaFlamme)
Hot Summer Day (Linda LaFlamme-David LaFlamme)
Wasted Union Blues (David LaFlamme)
Girl With No Eyes (Linda LaFlamme-David LaFlamme)
Bombay Calling (Vince Wallace-David LaFlamme)
Bulgaria (David LaFlamme)
Time Is (David LaFlamme)


Personnel:
David LaFlamme, violin, vocals
Linda LaFlamme, organ, piano, electric piano, celesta, harpsichord
Hal Wagenet, guitar
Mitchell Holman, bass
Val Fuentes, drums
Pattie Santos, vocals, tambourine, bells, block, gourd
Bruce Steinberg, harmonica on "Hot Summer Day"

Produced by David LaFlamme
Engineer: Brian Moss-Myring


Last updated 25 January 2003