Jefferson Airplane

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!).

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.

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

"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.

Grace Slick was fucking hot

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.

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.

"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.?

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

Surmounter - "Mexico" IS a killer song! Especially when it kicks into that middle section - "I MEAN IT'S NOT AS IF YOU WERE ALOOOONE..." (I think it was the first post-"Volunteers" single, yeah? about a Nixon plot to poison marijunana coming up from Mexico...?)

"Volunteers" is my favorite album too, and I'm with you guys about "Hey Frederick"! Anyone who's into, like, heavy progressive rock and Dagmar Krause stuff (doesn't Grace kind of sound like her in that "Machine Men" part?) NEEDS to hear that song.

<i>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.</i>

Yeah, and it's interesting how the "decay" of everything in the last few JA albums, after "Volunteers," sort of parallels the general "decay" of the "Sixties scene" in the early '70s... everything getting more self-indulgent, confused, self-destructive, into heavier drugs... (or at least that cliche; I wasn't there).

Plus, at the same time, you have the emerging space commune mentality of the Kantner/Slick albums, with the "get the government off our backs, we have shotguns, let's build our own world," in place of the tarnished idea of "changing" the wider world... which leads into big, new success with Jefferson Starship, and what that eventually becomes ("We Built This City")... it's all like a perfect microcosm of a certain idea of how the '60s/'70s/'80s progressed for a whole "generation"...

...or more of an idealized, rock-star-sized, real-time "working out" of a generational "mythology"... even helping to provide the basis for the mythology (which may not apply in its entirety to too many "real" people at all), both in the progression of their "career" and the development of their lyrics/ideas, played out over the REAL '60s, '70s, '80s...

"Hey Frederick" -- thank you! Stunning.

YES morris the middle section of Mexico is gold. Mexico was post-Volunteers?? Huh I guess so (just checked Wiki) but that's SO weird - I could have sworn it sounded like something much earlier.

WHOA actually this really confuses me! 1974 was when Early Flight came out, but it sounds like such a step back (in time, not quality) from Volunteers, no? Also it's fucking GREAT - i'm impressed it came out so late. wow.

yes and re: Early Flight i'm not sure what it was exactly, cuz i don't remember ever coming across it as an actual studio album -- i found it at a used place once

u know, i think it WAS a comp -- it must have been a comp of the early b-sides

Early Flight was oddities and rarities from '65 to around '70 or '71. Some of that stuff is pre-Volunteers and some of it is post-Volunteers.

It's funny how RCA didn't release one of those early singles (which ended up on "Early Flight") because the lyrics say, "Our nights together will be fantastic TRIPS," or something -- and by "Volunteers," they're singing "motherfucker" and "wouldn't mean shit to a tree"...

I've heard at the end of the '60's there was a kind of "frontier" vibe amongst the counter culture. Like the psychedelic era was a new social/psychological frontier. And there were kind of unconscious parallels with the old frontier proper (i.e. it adopted victorian/edwardian modes of dress, typograhy + the interest in traditional/country musics)

Supposedly the closing of the old frontier was a traumatic time in American history - like the end of a vast potentiality.

"Volunteers" kind of mimics that feeling. A key lyric for me is "We are all outlaws in the eyes of America". Pioneers become outlaws once the frontier closes and the natural order is restored.

I'm sort of groping at this, but someone who's more expert in American history might be able to provide a sounder factual basis.

the countercultural frontier vibe amounted to david crosby wearing a fringe jacket. at the same time an actual new frontier was being explored via astronauts and the moon landing tho the freeks greeted this mostly w/indifference or contempt. I remember the cool recordstore/headshop I used to frequent had a poster of Neil Armstrong taking "one giant step for mankind" w/the caption SO WHAT. but Paul Kanter and Grace Slick followed up Volunteers w/a concept album about rocketing off into space and setting up a new utopia: Blows{ Against The Empire, nominally the first Jeff Starship album. I listened to it a few months ago, wondering if it was another If I Could Only remember My Name but it wasn't that great. Some not bad jamming but the "political" lyrics were annoying and/or absurd in retrospect. in general I'd say JA haven't aged well because of the topical bent their songs took at the dawn of the 70s. real good singers, though.

the countercultural frontier vibe amounted to david crosby wearing a fringe jacket.

The first band to really play the "frontier" role -- 19th century Wild West/gentleman look -- was the Charlatans. They nailed the look as early as '65. Quicksilver soon followed suit, as did the other groups, including Crosby, who actually never played the role nearly as over the top as the Charlatans. The cover art for the Deja Vu LP cover is totally behind the times in this respect.

via astronauts and the moon landing tho the freeks greeted this mostly w/indifference or contempt.

I don't think the counterculture held a consensus attitude towards mankind landing on the moon. "indifference or contempt" simply isn't accurate.

um by the way? the "bridge" in hey fredrick makes it like 9 minutes long? and it's amazing -- i all of a sudden thought i was in another fantastic song

ugh Eskimo Blue Day, we've prolly talked bout that one by now -- i know i saw the lyrics up there. really great

lov the waves of piano.

Finally getting around to the Jef

Takes Off is great, but this extended version of "And I Like It" is killing me in a good way.

Hopefully this isn't predictable to say, but I'm guessing Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 must have heard a lot of Jefferson Airplane? I just this as such a prototype for one major facet of the Fellers.

Listened to the first half of Crown of Creation this afternoon. Has really nice "Soundtrack for Spring turning to Summer" feel. "In Time"...woah.

the countercultural frontier vibe amounted to david crosby wearing a fringe jacket. at the same time an actual new frontier was being explored via astronauts and the moon landing tho the freeks greeted this mostly w/indifference or contempt.

With maybe the exception of Roger McGuinn who was tinkering around with Moogs and songs about Apollo 11 while just before recording Sweetheart Of The Rodeo

Yeah, JA is excellent all the way up through Volunteers... then I got the fuck away.

ack vhere is love for the jorma & jack? und marty balin is excellent crooner on song like "It's No Secret"

but honestly, I like quicksilver, moby grape, the dead and even big brother better than JA.

I always heard them as collegiate folkies who tried (and failed) to learn how to rock. "White Rabbit" is about the only thing I can stomach from them (Sleater-Kinney having given me a new perspective on it). Slick's singing is light-years beyond her band's fumbling.

The only other song of theirs I can get into is "Miracles". No idea why. It just works. But that's Jefferson Starship, so maybe it doesn't count.

Crown Of Creation is so beautiful.

Jorma and Jack are amazing in JA, but I never thought all the Hot Tuna records I bought were all that great. Revisit maybe.

Yeah, JA is excellent all the way up through Volunteers... then I got the fuck away.

The albums that followed were really erratic, but each has its moments, and it's worth seeking out the sometimes-hard-to-find Kantner/Slick/David Freiberg album Baron Von Tollbooth and the Chrome Nun. "Harp Tree Lament," a Robert Hunter lyric, may be the most gorgeous harmony they ever sang.

Avoid the Kantner/Slick Sunfighter, though - nothing to hear there.

The only post-Volunteers by JA i have is the Last Flight 2-CD, which was their complete final show.

It's the most triumphant, climactic, bombastic trainwreck of a rock show i've ever heard, and that's having heard GBV's Crying Your Knife Away.. except Last Flight is extra bloated and less funny. Still trying to convey what the fuck that show was.

Sppokwatch Alert -> anyone notice how the Surmounter answered his/her own question twenty-one posts (and five months) before he or she asked it??...v. suspicious, surmie...

What's the Great Society stuff like?

Is this run off from the krautrock thread?

It's all over the map. A huge chunk of it is post-Yardbirds/post-Spoonful folk-rock with some eastern/garage vibrations. However, there's a core of it that's utterly mind-blowing. As I said in that thread, if you dig psych rock, track down their version of "Sally Go Round the Roses." Utterly hypnotic. In fact, seek out this album:

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/13061.jpg

I actually prefer the Great Society's versions of "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love." They're less anthemic, more moody. Of course, not all of their stuff is awesome. But they're definitely a key foundation of psychedelia.

jack vhere is love for the jorma & jack?
Jack is cool. The great Anthony Jackson credits Jack with inspiring him to play bass with a pick.

haha, i added an extra 'j' at the beginning of the italics.

Listening to the 1968 Live at The Fillmore East album tonight. It's sorta this shambling randomness until POW - then it all makes sense.