Jefferson Airplane/Jefferson Starship/Starship/Hot Tuna/Solo & More: Album-By-Album

Interesting. I'd heard The Great Society's version at some point, so long ago that I'd forgotten. Grace'd vocals are so distinctive but the song isn't the tour de force it becomes with the Airplane.

 

Wow, I wonder what the odds are of that happening? very interesting.

 

It's No Secret is a fantastic song. But I have to say the rest of Takes Off is rather uneven. I do also love their version of Get Together, imo superior to anyone else's (well maybe that cover by Joni Mitchell with CSN is pretty close).

 

I think Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on the same day, and that it was also the 4th of July.

(edit - yes July 4th, 1826. Also 'Jefferson.' Cosmic, man.)

 

having come in starting with BAXTERS i never really "got" TAKES OFF----the band's purposes and intent and mindset were so different. But once I got into the "creamy first-wave folk rock" mindset I found it a very satisfying lp as well. But easy to see how those into the more psychedelic and rocking and crazy JA might not love it.

 

Weird picture to choose for the back cover with Jorma behind the drums...

 

Just think of all the people who bought CCR Cosmos Factory and thought John Fogerty was the drummer.

 

This thread makes me wish I still had the paperback copy of Ralph J Gleason's "Jefferson Airplane and the San Francisco Sound" which I bought off the rack at a drug store/ pharmacy about the time Surrealistic Pillow or Baxters was released. Gleason's book contained an interview with each member of the Airplane. I hung on every word. About this time the Airplane started to break through into the mainstream. I was a 16 year old kid. About this time, I happened to catch the "Joshua Light Show" on the Today show demonstrate how they were able to project such mind bending backgrounds behind the Airplane. Wow, I wanted to do that!

Then, while babysitting the neighbor's kids, I read their copy of Life magazine with the photo of the Airplane in the plexiglass boxes on the cover. Finally, my family and I took a vacation to Toronto during the summer of Canada's centennial year, 1967. Walking along Yonge Street, I saw a poster advertising the Airplane's forthcoming concert at the O'Keefe Center.

All these things made me realize that something big was happening on the West Coast. To that point, I was all about the Beatles. All that changed in 1967.

 

That book actually came out in 1969. Great read though.

 

I don't really have much to say about Takes Off. "It's No Secret" is about 100x more powerful on it's Pointed Little Head incarnation, and the rest of it sounds like a band still trying to find their voice.

Signe's vocals are just fine, and I think she would've been more than capable of holding her own on future Airplane releases.

But Grace brought with her the two singles that are largely the reason anyone still talks about them today. Without those two songs, Surrealistic Pillow becomes little more than a well-liked cult album by psych-rock fetishists and this entire thread doesn't exist. Instrumentally, of course, the band wouldn't have changed (much), but having two massive hit singles is the only thing that allowed Baxters to happen, let alone the band to continue for 5 more years afterwards.

I haven't heard all the albums you named, but I would imagine Takes Off is middle of the pack. It was still a very singles-oriented market in 1966, and the album had neither a killer single nor was strong enough as a coheisve album to make inroads there. If they hadn't made the lineup change and blown up with the second record, I doubt anyone would really remember this debut, honestly.

 

Here's a question for JA heads: is there any other band, known or obscure, that you think you could fairly say "this band is emulating JA, and doing it reasonably well?" Or to take questions of intent out, "this band sounds very similar to JA, and is doing it reasonably well"? I have found them among the least imitated, emulated, or matched major rock bands in this sense, though I found an interesting reissue from MC Squared that felt JA-ish in many respects, and while I haven't checked this impression in years I remember thinking HP Lovecraft had a JA vibe?

 

Come Up the Years was the hit song from Takes Off in the SF Bay Area. Got a lot of radio play here.

 

W

When I first heard Fairport Convention's Leif and Leige, many many years after its release, I thought it sounded very Surrealistic Pillow influenced.

 

The 14 y.o. me did exactly the same, purchased very late May or early June 1969 off the rack in S.F. It’s quite fragile now and handled with great care these days.

Gleason’s list of bands was/is my bible of local bands and guided me in purchases whenever I saw one of the obscure items for sale. A few years ago I got to speak with Peter Kaukonen, but forgot to ask him directly about “Petrus” whom Gleason cited as having an album coming on A&M records, I guess that never happened.

 

Yes, it is - the first side is pretty good but then it drops off after "Come Up the Years". The next 4 are better at least. Glad you're onboard.

Hey Zeki, I think most here and elsewhere think the Airplane have the better version but I guess Darby Slick got the money. Well they all did eventually.

 

I can't think of any bands that really sound like JA as a whole, but the band Quix*o*tic definitely reminds me of that Grace Slick/"White Rabbit" sound at times, especially on their album Mortal Mirror. Here's a live version of one song from that CD:



I've thought sometimes that the Allman Brothers owed more to JA than is generally acknowledged -- Dickey Betts has said as much. The sound of their rhythm section is very reminiscent of the Dryden-era JA at times.

 

I think they had a really unique thing for a few years, but because they broke up so early, they didn't really get to evolve their sound past, say, where it was on Volunteers. And by the time the 70's were in full swing, that sound wasn't really something anyone wanted to emulate. (I think Jefferson Starship's direction right from the beginning in '74 backs this up)

I mean, there are tons of bands who, to varying degrees, emulated the Grateful Dead, but they generally took most influence from 1970-onwards Dead, and particularly their live sound from Europe '72 and beyond, much less the late 60's Dead that was a contemporary/parallel of the Airplane. If the Dead had broken up in the 70's, or kept making the same kind of psychedelic jam-rock they'd done on Live Dead interminably, no one would've emulated them years later either.

Also, for anyone who wasn't already a fan, I think the Airplane was largely whittled down to Grace's two big singles in the eyes of the general public by the late 70's and definitely by the 80's, so the kind of stuff that would've been a big influence on other bands: their style of live improvisation, the vocal harmonies, etc, was better felt elsewhere by bands being influenced by the Dead, CSN, etc.

Of course many, many female rock artists have been influenced and/or tried to emulate Grace Slick on some level, or been compared to her in some way, but that's more related to her individual vocals and persona than the rest of the band.

 

The first Fairport Convention album sounds very much like the English Airplane. They found their own style after that.

 

Is that a Young Austin Powers-2nd Person from the Left Side?

 

No it’s a very young Jack Casady before he started looking cool.

 

THE GREAT SOCIETY - BORN TO BE BURNED (1995 compilation of 1965 studio recordings)

Born to Be Burned is a compilation album by the San Francisco garage rock and psychedelic rock band The Great Society.[1] The album is made up of material recorded during the band's short-lived association with Autumn Records in 1965, with the majority of it being previously unreleased.[1] The exceptions to this are the songs "Someone to Love" and "Free Advice" (tracks 1 and 2 on the album), which had both been issued as a single on Northbeach Records, a subsidiary of Autumn Records, in February 1966.[2]

The album contains many of The Great Society's signature songs, including "Free Advice", a drone-laden piece of raga rock, greatly influenced by Indian classical music, and "Father Bruce", a song inspired by comedian and counterculture hero, Lenny Bruce.[3][4] The oriental-sounding "Daydream-Nightmare-Love" and the darkly psychedelic "Born to Be Burned" are also included.[5][6] "Someone to Love" is arguably The Great Society's most famous song, due to the later hit single version by Jefferson Airplane (retitled "Somebody to Love").[1] The Great Society's vocalist, Grace Slick, joined Jefferson Airplane in late 1966 and consequently she sings lead vocal on the Airplane's recording of the song, which became a Top 5 hit in the U.S. in May 1967.[7]
Released by Sundazed Records in 1995, Born to Be Burned garnered reasonable reviews, with most critics noting the power and confidence of Grace Slick's voice but also commenting on the relative lack of professionalism exhibited by the rest of the band.[1][10] Most reviewers noted that the album would predominantly be of interest to fans of Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane or connoisseurs of the San Francisco Bay Area acid rock scene.[1][10] Many of the tracks found on Born to Be Burned were later included on the Big Beat Records' compilation album, Someone to Love: The Birth of the San Francisco Sound.

Track listing[edit]
No. Title Writer(s) Length
1. "Free Advice" -Darby Slick -2:29
2. "Someone to Love" -Darby Slick- 3:03
3. "You Can't Cry"- David Miner -2:32
4. "That's How It Is" -David Miner- 2:27
5. "Girl" -David Miner -2:09
6. "Where" -David Miner- 2:10
7. "Heads Up" -Grace Slick -1:17
8. "Free Advice"- (Alternate version #2)- Darby Slick 2:06
9. "Father Bruce"- Grace Slick, Darby Slick, Jerry Slick, David Miner- 3:07
10. "Born to Be Burned" -Darby Slick, Jerry Slick- 2:05
11. "Double Triptamine Superautomatic Everlovin' Man"- David Miner- 1:55
12. "Love You Girl" -David Miner- 3:06
13. "That's How It Is" (Alternate version) -David Miner -2:22
14. "Right to Me"- David Miner -3:04
15. "Where" (Alternate version) -David Miner -2:13
16. "Free Advice" (Alternate version #1) -Darby Slick- 2:09
17. "Daydream-Nightmare-Love" -David Miner -3:17

• Darby Slick - guitar, backing vocals
• Grace Slick - vocals, guitar, recorder
• David Miner - vocals, guitar
• Jerry Slick - drums
• Bard Dupont - bass

Additional personnel

• Produced by Sylvester Stewart and Leo de Gar Kulka
• Mixed and mastered by Bob Irwin and Chris Athens
• Original sessions engineered by John Haeny

The Great Society's 1965 studio works collected in 1995. I'll be posting a review later. This was recorded before Jefferson Airplane's debut but I wanted the first album to be them - now we'll go back and fully cover The Great Society.

 

I always liked the Takes Off frontcover. Here the future demi-gods of the flower children are still looking like a bunch of campus folkies (which actually isn't too far from the truth, because the music on the album is mostly folkrock). Jack Casady in particular looks like a nerdy kid, still a long shot from his later ultra-cool psychedelic image.
The music on JF Takes Off is okay, but I consider it a tentative first step. Without Grace (and Spencer Dryden) the classic formation is not yet in place. That said, It's No Secret is on this album, is the Airplane's first stonecold classic.

 

I personally enjoy the drumming (and occasional song-writing) of Skip Spence on "Takes Off". Powerful and imaginative. And pretty much greatly recorded because it was an issue with the early JA records.