― QuantumNoise (Justin Farrar), Friday, 21 April 2006 17:34 (eighteen years ago) link
― TS: Mick Ralphs vs. Ariel Bender (Dada), Friday, 21 April 2006 17:35 (eighteen years ago) link
I keep harping on it but After Bathing at Baxter's is a total mindfuck of a guitar-oriented psych album. If someone is into psychedelia but disses the Airplane then he/she ain't really into psychedelia.
― QuantumNoise (Justin Farrar), Friday, 21 April 2006 17:42 (eighteen years ago) link
Was is Slick writing the lyrics for "We Should Be Together" and similar Yippie stuff, or Kantner? I have always had in mind that it was mainly Kantner, but I have no idea why, and I haven't bothered to do any actual research.
"she's conscious of this" -- that's the nub, isn't it? I do like those WSBT lyrics, and a bunch of the other revolutionary stuff on Volunteers and Blows Against The Empire, but it's always been a sort of guilty pleasure: reminders of my simpler, dumber youth and all that. I never had the sense that they were in any way self-conscious about their ironies; in fact, some of what I love about those lyrics is that they just go all in with no evidence of adult hesitation.
QuantumNoise may be confusing self-consciousness about their own confusion with the attitude I think was far more characteristic (at least during the 18-24 months when all these songs were written): absolute moral certainty that whatever replaced The System after The System was smashed would be beautiful, and better. It was for the ineffectual Old Left types to debate the details of the future socialist regime; like Rummy invading Iraq, the young'uns assumed that that shit would work itself out later.
― Vornado, Friday, 21 April 2006 18:06 (eighteen years ago) link
I can say with certainty that's not what I'm getting at. I once included a bunch of these lyrcis in an article. When I get home tonight I will post what it is I'm talking about. But the lyrics do deal specifically with observing that there was a young generation of people who wanted something new but didn't know WHAT they wanted. The Airplane were both caught up in the times and outside the times.
And I can even hear these sentiments in the Airplane's music. They didn't write too many upbeat lets-get-together type protest songs between '65 and '70. Even Balin's own tunes were somewhat melancholy: "Today" and "Comin' Back to Me". The Youngbloods, the Airplane most definitely ain't. "Wild Tyme" off of Baxter's is a good example. There is a certain amount of ecstacy and joy in the lyrics but those dissonant voices and guitars also emit a ton of chaos and confusion. It's quite complex as someone said before.
BTW- Slick, Kantner and Balin all wrote lyrics.
― QuantumNoise (Justin Farrar), Friday, 21 April 2006 18:33 (eighteen years ago) link
I feel like those particular lyrics are mainly Kantner's.
You mention "Blows Against the Empire" -- an album-length fantasy about hijacking a starship and creating a hippie-commune paradise among the stars -- you don't think that's totally a self-aware exercise in exploring the limits of certain ideals? I suppose it could be a metaphor for Kantner's deadly serious conviction that everyone should drop out and join up right away, here on Earth -- but it seems more like a complicated feeling out of the attractiveness of that idea.
I don't know much about these folks apart from their lyrics and the liner notes in the CD reissues, but those notes have recent interviews that also support the idea that the JA crew were hardly gung-ho, uncritical revolutionary types. (There could be a degree of revisionism here -- Slick seems particularly big on complicating any straightforward reading of her songs -- "I was this city girl, making fun of Marin vegetarian hippies, I liked to wear makeup," etc. -- but nonetheless.)
― morris pavilion (samjeff), Friday, 21 April 2006 18:34 (eighteen years ago) link
― QuantumNoise (Justin Farrar), Friday, 21 April 2006 18:46 (eighteen years ago) link
― morris pavilion (samjeff), Friday, 21 April 2006 20:34 (eighteen years ago) link
― QuantumNoise (Justin Farrar), Friday, 21 April 2006 21:55 (eighteen years ago) link
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 (eighteen years ago) link
― morris pavilion (samjeff), Friday, 21 April 2006 22:45 (eighteen years ago) link
― QuantumNoise (Justin Farrar), Friday, 21 April 2006 23:00 (eighteen years ago) link
― morris pavilion (samjeff), Friday, 21 April 2006 23:07 (eighteen years ago) link
― AaronHz (AaronHz), Friday, 21 April 2006 23:15 (eighteen years ago) link
― Bark, Saturday, 22 April 2006 09:56 (eighteen years ago) link
65-72=hawt n' slue-tay!
― eedd, Saturday, 22 April 2006 14:37 (eighteen years ago) link
― QuantumNoise (Justin Farrar), Saturday, 22 April 2006 14:52 (eighteen years ago) link
― veronica moser (veronica moser), Saturday, 22 April 2006 16:39 (eighteen years ago) link
― nervous.gif (eman), Saturday, 22 April 2006 16:49 (eighteen years ago) link
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 22 April 2006 19:57 (eighteen years ago) link
― morris pavilion (samjeff), Saturday, 22 April 2006 21:00 (eighteen years ago) link
― Surmounter, Thursday, 5 April 2007 20:40 (seventeen years ago) link
― Mark Rich@rdson, Thursday, 5 April 2007 21:18 (seventeen years ago) link
― negotiable, Thursday, 5 April 2007 22:01 (seventeen years ago) link
― QuantumNoise, Thursday, 5 April 2007 22:57 (seventeen years ago) link
― negotiable, Friday, 6 April 2007 00:00 (seventeen years ago) link
― Surmounter, Friday, 6 April 2007 12:35 (seventeen years ago) link
― QuantumNoise, Friday, 6 April 2007 13:20 (seventeen years ago) link
― negotiable, Friday, 6 April 2007 14:41 (seventeen years ago) link
― QuantumNoise, Friday, 6 April 2007 14:54 (seventeen years ago) link
― negotiable, Friday, 6 April 2007 15:00 (seventeen years ago) link
― Sundar, Friday, 6 April 2007 21:04 (seventeen years ago) link
― Surmounter, Friday, 6 April 2007 22:07 (seventeen years ago) link
― theoreticalgirl, Friday, 6 April 2007 23:38 (seventeen years ago) link
― Myonga Vön Bontee, Saturday, 7 April 2007 17:07 (seventeen years ago) link
― Surmounter, Saturday, 7 April 2007 19:36 (seventeen years ago) link
― sexyDancer, Saturday, 7 April 2007 20:03 (seventeen years ago) link
― gnarly sceptre, Monday, 23 April 2007 16:10 (seventeen years ago) link
― Rock Hardy, Monday, 23 April 2007 16:56 (seventeen years ago) link
― gnarly sceptre, Monday, 23 April 2007 18:08 (seventeen years ago) link
― poortheatre, Thursday, 3 May 2007 19:56 (sixteen years ago) link
― QuantumNoise, Thursday, 3 May 2007 20:05 (sixteen years ago) link
― Surmounter, Thursday, 3 May 2007 21:08 (sixteen years ago) link
― Surmounter, Thursday, 3 May 2007 21:09 (sixteen years ago) link
― negotiable, Thursday, 3 May 2007 21:26 (sixteen years ago) link
― QuantumNoise, Thursday, 3 May 2007 21:35 (sixteen years ago) link
― QuantumNoise, Thursday, 3 May 2007 21:36 (sixteen years ago) link
― Stormy Davis, Thursday, 3 May 2007 22:05 (sixteen years ago) link
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 (sixteen years ago) link
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 (sixteen years ago) link