POLL: Your favorite Jefferson Airplane album

What is your favorite Jefferson airplane studio album. You get 3 votes. I voted Volunteers, Surrealistic Pillow, and Crown of Creation in that order.

 

Volunteers.

 

While the band's turn toward absurdly, near unprofessional, murk in mix and recording after CROWN makes it hard to pick BARK, the sheer madcap and utterly unique personality and variety of it makes it both a pure joy and feel more "pure Airplane" than maybe any other. BAXTER and CROWN are just so imaginative, deep, dark, joyous, complex, and with such glittery lysergic clarity tho....I wouldn't want to be without any of them tho. Except maybe the reunion, I could likely live without that. Maybe the debut as well if I have WORST OF for the hits on it.

 

None of the albums are perfect, but my favorite is Baxter's. It shows that, while RCA may have been expecting a hit-packed, commercial follow-up to Pillow, the pilots of the Airplane didn't give a frunk about what the label wanted. "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil" is probably my favorite Airplane track. I picked Crown next because a lot of my favorites are there too. After that I couldn't really pick a favorite. The eponymous 1989 album is lost in the throng of wasted opportunity/botched reunion albums. The tour might have been fun to see, but I will never understand why someone would go to the trouble of reuniting a legendary band and then having session musicians carry most of the weight. It's as though the band was hosting a tribute album.

 

Baxter's, Bark, Crown in that order. Volunteers is quite good also. But an odd incarnation of prescient Starship - Blows Against the Empire would beat all of those hands down. An almost perfect album.

 

Baxter's for me.

 

Long John Silver
Volunteers
Crown Of Creation

 

Pillow, easy

 

On a related note, the only release the whole band liked was pointed head. Not that it was a choice here because it's live.

 

There is a mystique about Baxter's I love.
Also it's a bit of a concept album.

Also like there is two mixes of the album. mono and stereo.

Oh and its my favourite cover art from them, a gatefold.

 

Either Baxters or Volunteers. Today, it's Volunteers.

 

Baxter's, Crown, Volunteers. I would have chosen Bless Its Pointed Little Head if it were offered. I know it seems weird to overlook the "the big one", but the production never really worked for me (though I've heard some raves about a recent reissue of the mono version) and the performances feel a little anemic to me compared to the more robust live versions. Volunteers is their creative apex, IMO.

 

Surrealistic Pillow because it's the first I heard as a kid but Volunteers is very close and less over exposed.

 

Crown of Creation
Surrealistic Pillow
Volunteers

I underappreciated "Crown" for decades.

(Just picked up the "Volunteers" SACD.)

 

Pillow, Baxter's and Bark.

Pillow was the only album of theirs I had for a long time, it sunk in deeply (when I was still in blissful ignorance about the SQ issues.) I got that for White Rabbit when I was 12 or 13 and was completely unprepared for what the whole thing was like.

I went back and forth between Baxter's and Crown of Creation, but today its Baxters.

I had to go with Bark, the personality of it someone mentioned above speaks to me.

As seems to be the case with several others here, Bless its Pointed Little Head is the album I play most often.

(Honorable mention for Blows against the Empire and Baron von Tollbooth, Airplanish releases both.)

 

Volunteers.

 

Bless It's Pointed Little Head would have been in my top three. They played at the first concert I went to in 1967.

 

1. Pillow
2. Crown

My dilemna about #3:

 

Surrealistic Pillow

 

Baxter's (by a wide margin) followed by Pillow and Bless its Pointed Little Head.

 

Obviously left off because of its live status. I was thinking that I could have easily named third Seconds Over Winterland if only because I've probably played that one more than any other (cue up Feel So Good...). It was just in my musical wheelhouse to a greater degree at the time it came out than were any of the others. Regardless, despite the fact, I picked SP in the poll.

Love 'em all. One of the greatest bands of all time.

 

48 years ago today

Jefferson Airplane and Santana
Free concert at The Bandshell in Central Park, New York, 8/10/1969

Jefferson Airplane
The other side of this life, Won't you try -> Saturday afternoon , The ballad of you and me and Pooneil, Come back baby, Fat angel, Plastic fantastic lover, Somebody to love , Wooden ships, 3/5 of a mile in 10 seconds, White rabbit, We can be together -> Volunteers -> Jam


Santana
Savor -> Drum solo -> Jingo, Evil ways -> Soul sacrifice, Waiting, Fried neckbones and some home fries, Jam #1, Uncle Sam blues, Jam #2 (with Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady)

 

It wasn't. For me, that reunion tour was a total misfire.

 

Only cos I stuck it on earlier, forgot how great is was, getting the nod just ahead of Surrealistic Pillow, After Bathing At Baxter's.