Jefferson Airplane

Just happened to watch this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_to_Love_(30_Rock)

Hm what if I link it this way?

Much better.

Saw a (unconfirmed) report online that Signe Anderson also died on Thursday. Even if this proves to be untrue, I can't be alone in believeing for the longest time that she'd died back in the '70s.

http://psychedelicsight.com/11890-anderson-signe-obituary/

Signe Anderson, who was the band's first female singer before Grace joined, died the same day as Kantner.

Because of this ^, I'm listening to the Takes Off album (I never had before). Quite okay.

Takes Off is really great, I loved her singing, damn it really is gonna be a boomer a day this year huh?

The "Signe's Farewell" archival live album is pretty sweet too--she's in better voice and the band feels a bit more at ease with the material.

Fun Facts from Wiki about RCA's censorship of Takes Off:

RCA executives found some of the lyrics too sexually suggestive. They had the band change the lyrics in "Let Me In" from "I gotta get in, you know where" to "You shut your door, not that ain't fair", and "Don't tell me you want money" to "Don't tell me it's so funny". In "Run Around" they had the line "Blinded by colors come flashing from flowers that sway as you lay under me" altered to "that sway as you stay here by me". With "Runnin' 'Round This World" the executives insisted that "trips" in the line "The nights I've spent with you have been fantastic trips" referred to taking LSD, though the band insisted it was merely common slang. Even replacing the word "trips" with a guitar apreggio did not placate RCA's concerns with the line's sexual connotations and refused its inclusion on the album, and the recording remained unreleased for the next eight years.

Meanwhile RCA was allowing Elvis Presley to sing "Do the Clam" and "Queenie Wahine's Papaya"

This seems to be the only footage of them with Anderson on Youtube. It's the studio version of the song dubbed in, but some good shots of her with the band around 1:06 and 1:33.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw-6-stIFJc

That's astounding about Signe Anderson (the timing). Takes Off remains my favourite album of theirs.

Enjoying this tune "Sketches of China" which popped up in a playlist. Kanter solo project feat. Grace Slick.

Not actually sure whose project it is to be honest.

I've never been a big fan of the Jefferson Airplane, but this performance makes me see the band in a different light.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKtJ0XTwgTE

Their image, at least here, is not the colorful peace-loving stereotypical stuff, they look like they wouldn't be out of place onstage with the Velvet Underground, a band whose image and ethos I much preferred.

This is coming from someone who is too young to have experienced this firsthand. I am 47 and I love dark psyche rock after spending a youth growing up on metal and gothic music. Grace Slick looks particularly goth here to me, actually.

Does this mean there are some deep cuts on Surrealistic Pillow that I would really enjoy? Or is this video an anomaly?

She does look pretty sinister there...They definitely had an edge far beyond what you call peace-loving stereotypical stuff; from Crown of Creation onward they became increasingly militant, and things like "House at Pooneil Corners," "Wooden Ships," and "Mexico" feel doomy and apocalyptic.

SP is a great record -- if you like the 2 big hits here I think you'd dig it. "She Has Funny Cars" and "3/5s of a Mile in 10 Seconds" are probably the 2 best known deeper cuts, but "DCBA-25" is my favorite song by them by a wide margin.

lol at sullen overlooked Marty in that clip

"She Has Funny Cars" and "3/5s of a Mile in 10 Seconds" are probably the 2 best known deeper cuts

Or maybe not, they got 1 vote each when we polled the album 6 years ago.

jefferson airplane were not about peace and love. they were about drugs and blues and loud electric volume.

"when the truth is found to be lies and all the joy within you dies"

"you and me we keep walking around and we see all the bullshit around, you try and keep your mind on what's going down"

"up against the wall motherfucker"

yeah such peace and love

they were also about "lead bass guitar"

"Comin Back To Me" is so good, dunno if that's rated

just get the first four with SLick, they're cheap and mostly worthwhile, 1st one is good too but more of a '66 vibe and different singer

clemenza otm about the dark edge, esp. palpable on Crown Of Creation and Volunteers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3thciHZ8Ve4

sorry, more JS, but this is essetial WTF-ness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Squ_pgiztRI

I'M ALIVE
I AM HUMAN
I WILL BE ALIVE AGAIN
So drop your fuckin' bombs
Burn your demon babies
I WILL BE AGAIN

one more lyric frag from mau mau:

HEY DICK
Whatever you think of us is totally irrelevant

I'd add the following to brimstead's list of lyrics, from the first song on their first album: "I can see my life was meant to fall apart some day."

blows against... is just awesome.

also this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYr5D4lqC0w

"DCBA-25" is my favorite song by them by a wide margin.

Thought I was the only one that liked that one. The interplay between Marty and Grace is great. It's hard to describe but there's something about those earlier era songs - they're almost straight folk-rock but just turning a little colourful and psychedelic around the edges, giving a sense that things are about to change in a big way. There's a sharpness in those clean ringing guitars (very early solid state amps, believe it or not) that they lost after this album. It's a morning song, a San Francisco spring song - the air is cold but you can feel the sun's warmth on your skin.

re Sahm/Kantner, Sahm had better hair, glasses, more appealing voice, but K's voice, compared to Henry Kissinger's pretty early on, was effective contrast/grounding to Balin and Slick. Speaking of Signe etc., she's also featured on some of the live sets Collectors Choice brought out on CD in 2010, along with Slick's Airplane debut on stage. These discs, sold sep, really seemed like they would have done better as a single, maybe 2-CD release, because you get JA blowing sometimes it out in the first set, not so much in the late show, at least with some songs (as can happen to any band; see even VU's The Matrix Tapes). And some of this might not be as noticeable if we didn't get to do comparative studies. Nevertheless, lots of raw material for your very own Best of Live Series onesy, if you like: https://www.discogs.com/artist/58687-Jefferson-Airplane
After all that, listening to Bless Its Pointed Little Head again was even more amazing; it still seems like one of the very best albums to come out of that tyme & place-space.

I've never really given that live album a chance, I should check it out

When I was in college one of my friends got a compilation called Psychedelia: San Francisco Legends (which actually had very little psychedelia on it) for 4 quid, with 10 songs each by Jefferson Airplane, The Flamin' Groovies, canned Heat, and Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen.

http://cdn.discogs.com/PHinh-UUFTSkGWuXtKT-nOhFAPI=/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb()/discogs-images/R-468471-1423346154-8430.jpeg.jpg

The Jefferson Airplane songs were nearly all from Bless Its Pointed Little Head. I love the way Somebody To Love coalesces into this loose-limbed, rubbery jam driven by the bass. I think Casady and Kaukonen are more prominent on the live stuff in general than the early studio albums.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yV607yyUkI8

this song smokes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w25xghugIdg

YES

Trying to wrap my head around Volunteers. Seems like by this point the hippie dream was dead, songs veering from flimsy idealism (like the living on a farm track) to the bleak war commentary “hey Frederik”. One of their finest records

The first track also sounds a lot like zappas
“Mother people”

Surrealistic Pillow generally gets the most attention of all the Airplane records, but ...Baxters and Volunteers are more interesting, I think. When I listen to those records, I find it a bit comical and a bit sad that Grace Slick ended up in Starship.

And Crown of Creation!

All the albums through "Volunteers" are incredible. They were "one of those bands"...

(I also don't think "Living on the Farm" = flimsy idealism -- it's an ironic/"funny" song.)

^ yeah Morris I was poorly thinking out loud. It’s a fun song sure

(didn't mean to sound curt!) Listening to "Volunteers" right now -- "Hey, Frederick" is playing -- a thought I'm not sure I've ever written down is how much Grace sounds like Dagmar Krause in the bridge (when she sings, "How many MACHINE MEN will you see.....?").

jorma is such a force on volunteers

i found Volunteers and Bathing At Baxters thru my grandma's record collection (she's a yung one), and it was one of those mind-expanding moments for me—both in terms of my own listening habits and also realizing what my older relatives had been exposed to

like turrican said, neither of them get as much attention as Pillow, but to me they're huge validations of that time when psych was evolving into prog as something more than just "transitional"

Pillow is my least fave of that run actually (and I'm not saying that to be "interesting" or whatever, as I know it's the canonical choice; I've just never listened to it as much as the others). I think "Takes Off" is way underrated, love that one...

Baxters has been one of my favourite lps for the last few decades.
They were pretty great live in 68 too.

& I love the song Good Shepherd from Volunteers. As well as Hey frederick & Eskimo Blue Day. Gun Club covered that last one too.

I think Spencer Dryden is one of my all time favourite drummers. I don't like Joey Covington much seems to be too heavy handed and not as fluid or something.

Spencer was Charlie Chaplin's nephew apparently too.

There's so much to like about them, but I think Paul Kantner's songwriting is really my favorite aspect of the group. I haven't really studied it, but he seems to have a style that is very intricate and very much his own. He is so brilliant throughout the Baxter's album.

Yeah, those vocal lines are so distinctive... I don't think I was really attuned to his songwriting "voice" until I got into the Kantner/Slick/etc. offshoot stuff.

Seems like by this point the hippie dream was dead, songs veering from flimsy idealism (like the living on a farm track) to the bleak war commentary “hey Frederik”.

I think they got even bleaker and better after that: there was their 1970 single "Mexico" (rousing, but also bleak and weary), and--I'm probably alone on this--Bark's "Thunk" is brilliant.

I'm listening to Baxter's right now - the dual gtr break that comes in at 1:16 is so f'n gnarly

("Mexico" is an awesome song, btw -- the bridge kills me. "There are brothers everywhere...!")