Jefferson Airplane

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Is her "rock and roll memoir" worth reading? Looks (nice and) trashy - an entire chapter devoted to "her surreal sexual encounter with a nearly autistic-seeming Jim Morrison."

― morris pavilion (samjeff), Friday, 21 April 2006 20:34 (twenty years ago)

Y'know, I've never read the thing, but I have always been turned-on and -off by Slick. I can dig her and I can often think she's full of it but the one thing she ain't is simple. I should read that soon.

― QuantumNoise (Justin Farrar), Friday, 21 April 2006 21:55 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, she's so awesome-slash-cringeworthy. The Great Society CD booklet reprints a really good Airplane-era interview with her (from Rolling Stone?); I'd love to read a collection just of her interviews over the years.

VH1 recently played a JA concert clip that I'm sure is famous, but I had never heard about it... Slick is very very drunk, and starts taunting the audience: "Whooo woonnn the waaaaarrr....."

― morris pavilion (samjeff), Friday, 21 April 2006 22:44 (twenty years ago)

make that German concert clip (left out the key to the story there)

― morris pavilion (samjeff), Friday, 21 April 2006 22:45 (twenty years ago)

Morris, there exists a video of an entire concert from the Baxter's period live at Stern Grove in '69. The group is on fuckin' fire and so OUT THERE. Jorma kicks so much ass. Great shit.

― QuantumNoise (Justin Farrar), Friday, 21 April 2006 23:00 (twenty years ago)

I'll have to track it down! Sounds great.

― morris pavilion (samjeff), Friday, 21 April 2006 23:07 (twenty years ago)

I think "Who won the war?" is shortly followed by "I have a hard-on!"

― AaronHz (AaronHz), Friday, 21 April 2006 23:15 (twenty years ago)

:->

― Bark, Saturday, 22 April 2006 09:56 (twenty years ago)

this thread is now- Grace Slick in JA- Hawt or Nawt?

65-72=hawt n' slue-tay!

― eedd, Saturday, 22 April 2006 14:37 (twenty years ago)

Grace Slick in JA was hott.

― QuantumNoise (Justin Farrar), Saturday, 22 April 2006 14:52 (twenty years ago)

"jane" by Jeff. Starship is %10000000 better than any Airplane song evah…

― veronica moser (veronica moser), Saturday, 22 April 2006 16:39 (twenty years ago)

http://img231.echo.cx/img231/606/grace5zm.jpg

― nervous.gif (eman), Saturday, 22 April 2006 16:49 (twenty years ago)

i don't know what i was on about three years ago, grace slick's voice is awesome! i'm still not quite convinced they're better than the beatles though.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 22 April 2006 19:57 (twenty years ago)

http://www.summeroflove.org/images/wolman/grace.slick.baron.jpeg

― morris pavilion (samjeff), Saturday, 22 April 2006 21:00 (twenty years ago)

eleven months pass...

aww she's purty

― Surmounter, Thursday, 5 April 2007 20:40 (nineteen years ago)

"White Rabbit" is godlike.

― Mark Rich@rdson, Thursday, 5 April 2007 21:18 (nineteen years ago)

the best thing i've heard from them is a version of "3/5ths of mile in 10 seconds" from the fillmore east that's got tighter, faster drums, but looser everything else than on their records. they fucking rock it. It was on a rolling stone retrospective box-set. Leads me to believe they could be deadly live.

― negotiable, Thursday, 5 April 2007 22:01 (nineteen years ago)

if it was the fillmore east, it might have featured joey covington on drums. and yes, they were a different beast with that dude pounding the skins: much heavier, much more physical.

― QuantumNoise, Thursday, 5 April 2007 22:57 (nineteen years ago)

that would make sense -- they do sound like a different band. more physical, exactly. and urgent. is there anything properly released with him on it?

― negotiable, Friday, 6 April 2007 00:00 (nineteen years ago)

some airplane albums' production puts you at a distance cuz of its thinness. you don't really get the physical thing a lot of the time.

― Surmounter, Friday, 6 April 2007 12:35 (nineteen years ago)

Covington joined the band after the recording of Volunteers, so he's in the transition period where the Airplane was slowly falling apart but Jefferson Starship was yet to, uh, "take off." Then again, he didn't even stick around too long. On the J.A. DVD bio, Fly, the band talks about how Dryden (who replaced Spence on drums) had to bow out of the group around this time, because he couldn't play the heavier stuff. That DVD, which is on Netflix, has some great Covington footage. The dude is insane. Plus, he now has an insane tan, really. Also, I recently tracked down a bootleg collection of live Airplane, and it has some really hard-hitting numbers featuring Covington.

As for studio material from '70 to '71, it's real spotty. Covington can be heard on J.A.'s Bark and Long John Silver, but both are real spotty. I do endorse Blows Against the Empire by Paul Kantner and the Jefferson Starship, which isn't the Jefferson Starship of Red Octopus; it's more like a supergroup of Bay Area/L.A. freaks, including Covington -- a great space-rock album with hippie sci-fi concepts floating all about. Great guitars that sound kinda like the guitars on those early Pink Fairies records.

Then again, I think the hardest rocking J.A. album is After Bathing at Baxter's, which predates Covington. In my opinion, the production isn't thin at all. In fact, this thing is such an out there, acid-rock mindfuck -- heavy stuff. I think it's one of the great psych-rock albums, one that proves just how many other psych bands were copping ideas from the Airplane.

― QuantumNoise, Friday, 6 April 2007 13:20 (nineteen years ago)

he's got a website. rockin the gary busey look: http://members.aol.com/bandinusa/j/home.htm
i spent a bout a half-hour looking for the 3/5ths live, but it seems to have disappeared. will post it if it turns up.

― negotiable, Friday, 6 April 2007 14:41 (nineteen years ago)

i can burn it.

― QuantumNoise, Friday, 6 April 2007 14:54 (nineteen years ago)

oh right, i guess you would have it. the version i'm thinking of starts, iirc, with a few seconds of rapidfire snare fills, then everything kicks in.

― negotiable, Friday, 6 April 2007 15:00 (nineteen years ago)

I just realized that the rhythm of "White Rabbit" sounds really middle eastern. Is that pathetically obvious? Sometimes when you hear something at a very early age, it takes years for these things to occur to you.

-- RS £aRue (rockist_scientist), Sunday, 10 April 2005 10:53 (1 year ago)

Isn't it a bolero-based rhythm (just like the repetition-w/crescendo form is reminiscent of Bolero?)

― Sundar, Friday, 6 April 2007 21:04 (nineteen years ago)

Hey Fredrick

― Surmounter, Friday, 6 April 2007 22:07 (nineteen years ago)

yes, white rabbit is a re-interpretation [at least musically] of ravel's "bolero".

― theoreticalgirl, Friday, 6 April 2007 23:38 (nineteen years ago)

"Doesn't the sky look green today?"

― Myonga Vön Bontee, Saturday, 7 April 2007 17:07 (nineteen years ago)

― Surmounter, Saturday, 7 April 2007 19:36 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_-GspDWYt8

― sexyDancer, Saturday, 7 April 2007 20:03 (nineteen years ago)

two weeks pass...

I've had DCBA.—25 on infinite rotation in my head for 2 weeks now. BEAUTIFUL song.

I'm now desperately waiting to find out if the Bathing at Baxter's version is superior...

― gnarly sceptre, Monday, 23 April 2007 16:10 (nineteen years ago)

― Rock Hardy, Monday, 23 April 2007 16:56 (nineteen years ago)

Ohhkay. It's 3/5ths of mile in 10 seconds that's got a second version elsewhere, and it's actually on Bless Its Pointed Little Head.

But it is DCBA which I intended to single out as the killer song, regardless.

my facts = half straight

― gnarly sceptre, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:08 (nineteen years ago)

wait so do people like this band or not? so much hating on this thread.

a couple years ago one of my drama profs was telling me about living in new york in the late '60s. she said she paid $80/month for an entire apartment building on Thompson st. in SoHo because it had large holes in the walls and no plumbing (and no one wanted to live in SoHo anyway). i asked her if she saw the Velvet Underground play live and she said, "no, but jefferson airplane would play in my friend's house." i thought it was kind of lame at the time, but now..

― poortheatre, Thursday, 3 May 2007 19:56 (nineteen years ago)

JA are one of my all-time faves, which, I guess, is obvious after reading this thread

― QuantumNoise, Thursday, 3 May 2007 20:05 (nineteen years ago)

i LOOOOOOOOOVE this band :-)

― Surmounter, Thursday, 3 May 2007 21:08 (nineteen years ago)

the hating is WEIRd man

― Surmounter, Thursday, 3 May 2007 21:09 (nineteen years ago)

I didn't buy "Bark" second-hand this weekend. I heard it's "meh," but it does feature Joey Covington on drums. Should I go back and get it? 15$

― negotiable, Thursday, 3 May 2007 21:26 (nineteen years ago)

i wouldn't buy it for $15.

― QuantumNoise, Thursday, 3 May 2007 21:35 (nineteen years ago)

unless, some inflation has kicked in that i'm unaware of, that record can be obtained for $5.

― QuantumNoise, Thursday, 3 May 2007 21:36 (nineteen years ago)

...*with* the brown paper sack!

― Stormy Davis, Thursday, 3 May 2007 22:05 (nineteen years ago)

four months pass...

I recently got into "Takes Off" (the one I slept on) -- it's KICK ASS. I thought it would be good but sorta generic folk rock (there's a touch of that, like in their version of Dino Valenti's "Get Together"), but it's really this dynamite debut rock album! The original (Balin et al.) songs are terrific... I love the swaggering, self-actualized-rock-guy attitude. A must-hear is "Come Up the Years" - a hilarious tale of hipster chutzpah, embellished with cute bells that mock the narrator's pain (Google the lyrics for Marty & Paul's sad plight!).

― morris pavilion, Friday, 14 September 2007 23:36 (eighteen years ago)

I love these guys 90% of the time, but I went to listen to a concert of theirs at Wolfgang's Vault and thought it was the most horriblest shit in the world. I like them a lot better in the studio than live.

― Rock Hardy, Saturday, 15 September 2007 01:52 (eighteen years ago)

mebbe so but i recently (finally) watched monterey pop, and they're great in that.

― tipsy mothra, Saturday, 15 September 2007 04:04 (eighteen years ago)

"Volunteers" is a great song and great album.

And I'm not normally into West Coast hippie stuff. JA always seem to take several listens before they yield anything of value. But the value is definitely there.

― PhilK, Saturday, 15 September 2007 08:30 (eighteen years ago)

Grace Slick was fucking hot

― President Evil, Saturday, 15 September 2007 10:18 (eighteen years ago)

i love volunteers

SO FUCKING MUCH

at first i thought it could never compare to Crown of Creation -- too modernized and different -- but the piano, textures and melodies are FUCKING AMAZING. dammit what is that one song? number 4 i think? i always forget the name, where she goes

"how many [something something] before you

stop your believing?

and the [something something] down on you..."

i swear, that is one of the most beautiful bits of songwriting ever. it's so rallying.

― Surmounter, Saturday, 15 September 2007 14:27 (eighteen years ago)

and BTW morris Takes Off, i don't think i've ever heard but have you heard Early Flight? so good! Mexico is a killer song.

― Surmounter, Saturday, 15 September 2007 14:30 (eighteen years ago)

"Hey Frederick"?

I dunno, there's loads I love on this album - "We Can Be Together", "Good Shepherd", "Turn My Life Down", "Eskimo Blue Day".....

It's a very emotional non-BS album. It's got a feeling of persecution about it - that these people are standing for a political vision that's about to be erased. So the fervour is tinged (and oddly heightened) by the first murmurs of defeatism.

Is "Early Flight" a comp.?

― PhilK, Saturday, 15 September 2007 16:38 (eighteen years ago)

Yeah, "Hey Fredrick". Google says these are the lyrics

One more pair of
Wire wheels bear down on you
Gear stripping the willow
How many machine men will you see before you
Stop believing that speed
Will slide down on you
Like brakes in bad weather

― Rock Hardy, Saturday, 15 September 2007 16:43 (eighteen years ago)

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