Jefferson Airplane

They should’ve used “Wooden Ships.”

i liek planes

Seaplanes...subaquarian boatcraft.

Baxters is yer man. Or anything live in 1968. I think they started jamming live sometime in 67 and progressively got better over that year. But were playing possibly too fast by 1969.
So 68 is peak them live for me. I think the same year is true for QMS and the Dead were quite good that year too. Also the Big Brother & the Holding Co live from that year is pretty great. Not sure who else. Maybe it's just peak ballroom in general, people having somewhat improved in playing over the previous year and some members changed for other bands. QMS got rid of Jimmy and Grateful Dead gained Micky Hart.
Airplane had pretty stable membership from late 66 to late 69. Think that later date is when Dryden goes and Covington joins though could be 70.
Only recently realised that Covington was only around for one lp before being replaced by Barbata. I find Covington a bit plodding and heavy handed after Dryden being dextrous and sublime,like.

On the topic of live 68 stuff, I had the luck to discover/watch a kinescope recording of an Airplane appearance on the Tonight Show from early 1968 at the Paley Center in NYC when I visited last year. It's part of an undated compilation of various 60s band appearances from the show, and when I talked to one of the curators about trying to dig up the exact date to help them, they didn't seem interested. This is the listing:

https://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=jefferson&p=1&item=B:59554

At the beginning, Carson says: “Jefferson Airplane is one of the most important and influential rock groups around. Originally from San Francisco, they’ve got a big sound, as everybody in Rockefeller Center found out this afternoon when they were running through this. They will be appearing Friday and Saturday night um, where at, I don’t believe I have it here... (Grace and Paul say “Fillmore” off camera) oh, yeah I’ve got it here, Fillmore East, so if you’re in the New York area you might want to drop over, would you welcome please, Jefferson Airplane!”

The performance is live and it kills. The set is really, really weird, with a rocking horse on the stage, a brass bed and lots of beads, random 'hip' junk etc. They open with a really slow version of Today, half the band hidden in the shadows wearing shades. They segue right into Somebody to Love and Grace is in top form, baiting the audience, saying "pick out the guy next to you, get somebody to love - what, is he too fat?". She's also wearing a military jacket with a grenade pinned to the pocket, as seen here:

https://www.gettyimages.ca/detail/news-photo/american-rock-singer-grace-slick-the-lead-vocalist-of-the-news-photo/2996509

There's actually audio floating around of this, mistakenly labeled as coming from the Jonathan Winters show - Crown of Creation at the end is from the Smothers Brothers show:

https://ia801203.us.archive.org/17/items/JeffersonAirplane1968JonathanWintersShowLosAngelesCA/JeffersonAirplane1968JonathanWintersShowLosAngelesCA.mp3?cnt=0

Anyways, as there's pretty much no chance of this ever being 'released' unfortunately, I'd definitely recommend going over to see it if you get a chance.

They played the Fillmore East May 3 and 4 (Fri/Sat), 1968 so the Tonight Show spot would've been just prior

man, I was otm in the oughts, what happened

better to be otm then not, than never to be otm at all is what i say.

dig it. also

/I am listening to Volunteers and I'm here to tell you that Nicky Hopkins is THE SECRET WEAPON.

― Curious George (1/6 Scale Model) (Rock Hardy), /

otm

Not sure this has been posted before, but if ye've never seen the Goddard-filmed rooftop concert in NYC 1968, it is awesome. Jack Cassidy is the coolest ever.

https://youtu.be/vuwMEiNg3B8

jack & jorma (and grace obv) look cool as shit

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

Get you there on time.

Man this is so good. The whole band, everyone's in sync and fired up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9CVLVevm4E

OTM. I used to limit my Airplane appreciaton but once I checked out some live stuff my head exploded.

Still way into Sweeping Up the Spotlight. May put it now.

I agree, their appearance in Monterey Pop is great. (The whole film also encapsulates everything good about the '60s counterculture, catching it early on when it still looked promising and utopian. It's still my favorite concert documentary outside of Stop Making Sense.)

The expanded CD of Bless Its Pointed Little Head is also recommended. I'm actually not a complete convert of the band - they're more or less a time capsule wholly representative of that era for reasons good and bad - but they could put on a great show and Monterey Pop and Bless Its Pointed Little Head are probably the best examples of that. Otherwise, the only studio LP I find wholly satisfying is Surrealistic Pillow (mono mix is ideal, MFSL's SACD is excellent and I got it for only $15).

An imperfect vehicle for sure, but for those couple of blazing years they were pretty special. And I agree about Monterey Pop, it's right on the cusp — documenting the scene and also documenting in real time the commodification of the scene. Such a great movie.

Absolutely. That run of albums from Surrealistic Pillow through Volunteers really is special, and even if three of those LP's feel a bit flawed and uneven to me, they're still a fascinating listen. ("Volunteers" was probably the first Airplane song I listened to long before I heard anything else, most likely because of the Forrest Gump soundtrack. I thought it was great and still enjoy it quite a bit.)

The band was probably my first real introduction to San Francisco in the psychedelic era, and as a kid growing up away from the city in the Midwest, it was like Mars, completely alien to anything I was familiar with and probably the kind of world that would've scared the shit out of my parents. They may be a time capsule, but I don't think time capsules are necessarily a bad thing - their best work can be pretty great simply for freezing that time on record and making it sound alive and exciting rather than forgotten.

Long John Silver is a really solid album... sick guitar, great songs throughout.

I found it mostly lackluster; you can argue with the slickness of Jefferson Starship, but by 1973 they needed a change from these desultory, hookless loose jams coated in non-stop lead guitar. They'd been pursuing that style since Volunteers and it was used up.

I mean to check out Baron von Tollbooth & the Chrome Nun to see where it falls in the Airplane/Starship continuum.

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, Friday, September 14, 2007 8:52 PM (fifteen years ago)

The Monterey "High Flyin' Bird" tipsy posted is good but I still agree with 2007 me. Balin and Slick wrestle control away from the instrumentalists onstage and unbalance the performance.

I like planes

Long John Silver is pretty bad. Even the “best” song, “Eat Starch Mom,” is basically a rewrite of “Plastic Fantastic Lover.”

"Alexander the Medium" would be the one song I'd save.

That one to me just sounds like a slightly tweaked/improved version of “When the Earth Moves Again,” from the previous album (which was itself just a degraded carbon copy of “We Can Be Together”).

I love this band, but it’s hard to think of a better example of “spent creative energies” than those two post-Volunteers LPs (notwithstanding the incomparably bitchin’ “Law Man”).

It’s odd they never put “High Flyin’ Bird” on any of their main albums, bc that’s gotta be one of their hottest tracks.

Yeah pretty odd. IIRC they recorded a version of it for their debut (with Signe Toly Anderson on vocals and Skip Spence on drums), but they left it off the album. (The outtake was eventually released in 1974 on Early Flight.) They could've at least re-recorded it for a B-side or something.

xp But yeah, no getting around that steep decline, one that's sadly reflected in any compilation that tries to cover the whole lifespan of the band. I'm not a Jefferson Starship fan, but I can't say their work after Volunteers made a great case for them to continue on.

Not sure I’ve even heard anything post-Volunteers tbh.

I absolutely love (the admittedly bizarre--not for everyone) "Thunk" from Bark.

Even the “best” song, “Eat Starch Mom,” is basically a rewrite of “Plastic Fantastic Lover.”

Is that one of the earliest anti-hippie trolling songs (outside of Zappa)?:

"You say nothing's right but natural things
Ah, you fool
Poison oak is a natural plant
Why don't you put some in your food?
Natural food makes you slow and stupid and it tastes like cabbage
I don't care if there's chemicals in it
As long as my lettuce is crisp"

I absolutely love (the admittedly bizarre--not for everyone) "Thunk" from Bark.

I absolutely love (the admittedly bizarre--not for everyone) "Never Argue with a German If You're Tired or European Song" from Bark. It's admirable how Grace Slick wrote such a beautiful melody and chord progression and then resolved to present it in as obnoxious a manner as possible.

Is that one of the earliest anti-hippie trolling songs

I think I think that verse may be in the voice of the car-loving guy?

this revive inspired me to grab the Complete Monterey bluray from that Criterion B&N sale, so thanks

Early Flight is kind of essential! I am also partial to the mono Takes Off

For a long time, the only LP where you could get "Runnin' Round This World" and "Mexico," two of their greatest.

It’s funny how they put those three later songs on a comp called Early Flight

FWIW, The Essential Jefferson Airplane is actually a really solid overview of their career, even though there's an inevitable dip in quality towards the end. I'd probably add a few more selections from Surrealistic Pillow, Baxter's and Crown of Creation, and I think Surrealistic Pillow and probably Baxter's sound better in their original mono mixes (the stereo mixes feel a bit diffuse and they load too much echo on the former). But beyond that, the two-hour set nearly has all the "essentials."

If you're looking for a really good live period I'd pick sometime in 1968. Seems that they found their flow live then. I think they had started intentionally improvising at some point in 67 and found out how to do it really well by 68. By 69 you get to a point where people are complaining that they play too fast which I think must go against interplay and what's worse by the end of the year they replace one of my all time favourite drummers with someone I just find thudding. I think Joey Covington's replacement John Barbata is better but by then it's no longer the same band.

Spencer Dryden was Charlie Chaplin's nephew oddly enough. I'm not sure if the rest of teh band knew that at the time.
I think he wound up with a drink problem which may be one reason he got replaced. Shame cos I do love his tone. He's one of a few drummers that really stick out for me.

Looks like I was a couple of months out on Dryden's departure it's actually early 70 not late 69.
He's an awesome drummer anyway. I have still never connected with Joey Covington who was supposed to be a harder hitter I think. He'd been in the early stages of the band version of Hot Tuna if I'm remembering right which must mean Cassady and Kaukonen liked him presumably,
I do enjoy hearing Dryden rather than him just being a decent time keeper. oh well.

Does anyone have a copy (digital or otherwise!) of Kantner's self-published science fiction novel...? This is proving really hard to track down.

As far as I can tell it was released as an extra feature on a self-released CDR reissue of his PERRO album, which no one seems to own...

https://www.discogs.com/release/13045080-Paul-Kantner-PERRO

and it seems to have been available at one point as a print-on-demand thing...

https://web.archive.org/web/20081218050357/http://www.planetearthrockandroll.com/

There's a preview, with scans of the entire first "chapter" available here. Looks utterly demented.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080607064028fw_/http://www.jeffersonstarshipsf.com/perro/chpt01.htm

Might be of interest to folks in this thread:

Here is an album reconstruction from the quintessential American psychedelic band, Jefferson Airplane. This is a reconstruction of Jefferson Airplane’s relatively un-made album, intended to be released in 1970. ... The resulting album–which I call Another Missile is Flying–is an excellent upgrade from the oft-dismal Bark, continues the trajectory of Volunteers, and incorporates the best parts of Blows Against The Empire.

Side A:
1. Have You Seen The Saucers?
2. Up or Down
3. Sunrise
4. Starship

Side B:
5. Bludgeon of a Bluecoat
6. Emergency
7. Mexico
8. Pretty As You Feel
9. Mau Mau (Amerikon)

^^ loving that, thanks! that guy is doing the lord's work

where's the link to download that?

buried in an inscrutable Google Doc link in the comments

got it, thanks

Giving a spin to Crown of Creation this past week, I only noticed that Al Schmidt produced that one. That seems a bit of a culture shock type pairing considering the long list of artists he worked with. Hippies meeting the straights I suppose…

Schmitt did several with them (including Volunteers). Here’s what the Jeff Tamarkin book says about how he got started with the group:

https://i.imgur.com/APAN4FF_d.webp?maxwidth=1520&fidelity=grand

Pretty hip. Did not know he was a big part of getting them signed.

Al Schmitt was just the coolest.

That's a good book. I wasn't aware of Bless Its Pointed Little Head until I read Tamarkin's praises of it. It's one of three JA albums that I've always owned, along with Surrealistic Pillow (mono edition) and Volunteers.

Incredible version of "It's No Secret" on there.