Despite being cut from a genetically different cloth, sports fanatics and music fanatics have a thing or two in common. While most sports fans usually pine over self-preservation and athletic skill, music fans (I’m a card-carrying member of the latter, for the record) tend to lean more towards slacking off and inventing new methods of self-destruction. One of the two camps' common traits lies in their undying, obsessive love for their chosen heroes. Sports fanatics tend to spend their time documenting performance statistics while music fanatics document musical performances and the comments made about them. Overall it’s the same kind of thing and is really just another facet of the human race's infatuation with fame and celebrity.
For author Craig Fenton, his fan-boy obsession centers around the comings and goings of Jefferson Airplane, the highly psychedelic band that formed in the womb of the legendary ‘60s San Francisco music scene. Jefferson Airplane is perhaps most famous for introducing the world, and Hunter S. Thompson’s drugged-up lawyer, to the song "White Rabbit". But the story of Jefferson Airplane, who have also been known in leaner times as Jefferson Starship, is far more involved than many people know, as Fenton details lovingly in his new book: Take Me To A Circus Tent (The Jefferson Airplane Flight Manual).
Circus Tent is a treat for both hardcore fans of Jefferson Airplane and casual listeners alike. While I consider myself a fairly well-read music fan, my exposure to Jefferson Airplane has been mostly limited to owning a copy of Surrealistic Pillow, buying the soundtrack to the 1987 movie Mannequin for the song “We Built This City,” and seeing guitarist and the band's founder Paul Kantner perform the album Blows Against the Empire for a small crowd at a bar I worked in several years ago.
Fenton, on the other hand, knows his stuff - and the book is a mind-boggling, phonebook-size documentation of the band's history. The book shares a lot in style with the Deadbase, the meticulously compiled history of the live performances of the Grateful Dead that any Deadhead worth his weight in patchouli oil owns. The main difference being that while The Grateful Dead and their fans carefully documented the band's career from day one, Jefferson Airplane's history relies more on recollection than historical record.
In any event, Take Me to a Circus Tent is a mesmerizing book that will provide anyone who picks it up with hours upon hours of enjoyment. This is truly a unique book and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the roots of psychedelic music or the band who once asked the world, “Don’t You Want Somebody to Love?”
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