https://rchallen.wixsite.com/spandexandsynths/post/jefferson-starship-jane Jane is one of the great trashy rock songs of all time, IMHO....
I remember hearing a track from this album in 1989 and couldn't believe what I was hearing. Was this supposed to be Spinal Tap by way of San Francisco? Starship's hit of that year, "It's Not Enough," blew it away.
Don't really like either era much – I'm more of a Jefferson Airplane fan. But I might as well give my opinions on the albums: Freedom At Point Zero (1979) The best of the bunch. For mainstream AOR/pomp-rock, side one is good all through and I like the title track on side two. Modern Times (1981) Much weaker than its predecessor. Three really good songs: "Find Your Way Back", "Stranger" and "Mary". But when it's bad (the tuneless, meandering pseudo-prog of "Alien", Kantner's spoiled-teenager ranting on "Stairway To Cleveland") it's truly awful. Winds Of Change (1982) Catchy and inoffensive enough, though the best songs are good rather than great and it sags badly in the middle of side one with three consecutive Thomas-sung tracks. Nuclear Furniture (1984) A much more diverse and creative album, with two truly great songs ("Showdown" and to a lesser extent "Connection"). However, it's also extremely uneven, with different songwriters pulling in different directions. In retrospect, it's obvious that the band was about to splinter. Knee Deep In The Hoopla (1985) Dull identikit AOR with no identity of its own since virtually nothing was band-written. "We Built This City" is nowhere near as bad as its detractors claim, but the only good song is the Slick-sung cover of "Rock Myself To Sleep". No Protection (1987) Their worst, fusing eighties pop production with AOR. I like "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" less than "We Built This City", but "Babylon" is Starship's one-and-only truly great song. Love Among The Cannibals (1989) Think I only ever played this once. At least they were writing more of their own material, but without any Airplane members on board, who really cares?
There's some decent tracks here like Freedom, Madeline Street, and Ice Age. The music of Planes is good but the chorus is rather ridiculous. They could've dropped some songs here like True Love (sounding more like Mickey Thomas's Starship and not Jefferson Airplane).
Yeah, it's at least got a certain quirkiness which makes it interesting. Whereas Starship's other songs are pretty generic, drippy 80s ballads.
It's the first album by any incarnation of the band and I bought it because of True Love's Toto connection, Still love the song and the album.
Some may accuse Jefferson Starship of being 70s AOR soft rock, compared to the more experimental Airplane. Maybe that's true, but in terms of 70s AOR JS is absolutely top-shelf.
My preference was for the the mid-late 70s JS, Ride The Tiger/Miracles/Count On Me/With Your Love/Runaway. But when Balin/Slick left in '78, and Thomas came on, JS was very much still a quality rockin' affair with Jane and Find Your Way Back. Jane from the tv show Fridays in 1981, newly reunited with Slick that year, introduced by Father Guido Sarducci (US based gossip columnist/rock critic for "The Vatican Enquirer") and Dawn. A bit of the setup here was that Sarducci (played by comic actor Don Novello ) had always been "a big a fan of a Grace a Slick". Got to hand it to Mickey Thomas here, guy had a voice and what you heard on the record was what it sounded like live. Always loved his vocal on the Elvin Bishop Group's Fooled Around And Fell In Love. Brilliant stuff.
there’s a decent record in there if someone else had produced it and it’d actually been just JA members playing on it.
Always enjoy Ron Nevison's productions. I think that's one of the reasons I like the self-titled album more than most.
my least favorite producer behind maybe Jim O’Rourke. Everything just sounds flat and neutered, especially the drums. Like, the Heart albums he did and Europe’s Out of this World just sound absolutely weak, despite being two of the best hard rock bands of their eras. Awful choice for JA.
To me the original demo sounds like a Thomas Dolby song. I like both but especially Starship hit. It’s fun, infectious and brings back great memories the way any other hit record of a certain period does. No need to buy into the ‘worst song ever’ clickbait nonsense. Sorry about the hate it evoked in your family or why after all these years a song still has you pondering why Marconi (a play on words/a radio) was playing a mamba (an old dance song) in 85’. It may be a testament as to how good a song it actually is. Did we we really ‘put on the ritz’ in 82’? No. And that, my Taco is far worse! We Built This City (Original Demo by Martin Page) In case you want to reevaluate: 88 million views on YouTube alone, never mind radio play, streaming and multimillions of records/CD’s sold. Thank Grace and Mickey!
No, a mamba is not an old dance song, thanks for playing. And I'm not buying into clickbait nonsense, I'm referencing examples of others that agree with me. If you like the song that's great, that's your opinion. I don't share it. But if you enjoy these kinds of subjective arguments, we can keep going.
It could be the same drummer on Heart, Out Of This World, Crazy Nights, and The Ultimate Sin and no one would ever know. Compare it to the stuff Bruce Fairbairn or Bob Rock were producing at the time...those records came blasting out of your stereo. Nevison's sounded like demos made with anonymous studio musicians, despite having some of the best players on earth in the bands he was recording at the time. I'd kill for proper remixes of all the albums he neutered in the late 80's. Out Of This World especially should've been a bigger, harder rocking record than The Final Countdown instead of sounding like Bon Jovi-lite. It's IMO the best set of songs Joey Tempest ever wrote, and they deserved better and to rock harder.
Well, as I said, different ears. They all rock hard enough for me. I'm entirely happy with them exactly as they are. Not got to argue about the quality of the work of Messrs Fairburn & Rock. I like their work too.
