I first saw the Jefferson Airplane live in 1969 at the Civic Auditorium in Honolulu, Hawaii. I was all of 13 years old at the time and it was the first time my parents allowed me to go to a rock concert all by myself (my Grandmother had actually accompanied me to the few shows I'd attended prior to that). If only they knew...
The Civic was a mass of stoned humanity that night. The air was thick with the smell of pot. Hippie chicks danced their way through the crowd, many of them topless (a definite bonus for this particularly horny thirteen year old). But all of this was secondary to the music.
The Airplane's vocalist/guitarist Paul Kantner had been busted for pot earlier that day near Diamond Head and the band had a particular fire in their bellies that night. Parked right next to the stage (Marty Balin even bummed a few cigarettes from me between songs), I was hypnotized by the psychedelic lights and the beauty of Grace Slick decked out all in buckskin and fringe.
But more than that, I was absolutely mesmerized by the wild improvising between guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and especially bassist Jack Casady. On record, the Airplane had always been more about the interplay of its three vocalists — Kantner, Balin, and Slick. Live however, the vocals, at least on that particular night, took a backseat to the extended jamming of its two best musicians.
Kaukonen's psychedelic staccato leads cut through the air like glass shards. And Casady? In the nearly 40 years and hundreds of bands I've seen since, I've rarely seen a bassist play like that. Casady's thick, juicy runs didn't so much support Kaukonen's guitar — as bass players normally do — as much as it did run great big rumbling circles around it.
All told there was about six hours of music that night. Two from Jorma and Jack's newly formed side project, Hot Tuna, and four more from the classic Airplane lineup of Grace, Marty, Paul, Jorma, Jack, and drummer Spencer Dryden.
That lineup, and the six albums they recorded from 1966-1969 is the focus of The Worst of Jefferson Airplane, originally released in 1970 and just out in a newly remastered version with three bonus tracks from RCA Legacy.
Before splintering off into the numerous messy Starship combinations — Jeffersonian and otherwise — of the '70s and '80s, the classic Airplane lineup was the standard bearer of the psychedelic music revolution borne out of San Francisco in the '60s. What this collection reveals anew is how far that lineup progressed musically in just four short years. Each album represented on this collection spotlights a different side of Jefferson Airplane.
Article comments
1 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Nice review and overview. I remember--if my folks were home--having to turn down the volume on "We Can Be Together" during the rallying cry. And of course I had to hide the topless hippie chicks whenever mom came in with clean socks or whatever (you gotta remember that the pills that Mother takes, do nothing at all).
---Feed Your Head, GH
2 - Glen Boyd
Thanx for the kind words Gordon. I wish I could've had some topless hippie chicks to hide whenever Mom came in my room. that would've fed far more than just my head if ya know what I mean...
-Glen
3 - Maurice
Casady and that damned oversized ygdrasil bass of his...best damned rock bassist ever if you ask me. It's too bad that most people have forgotten how great J-Plane really was. Of course the fact that they were later responsible for crap like "We Built This City" and the rest of the Starshit stuff didn't do a lot to help their legacy did it? Ive already got Worst on vinyl but I'll definitely get the reissue based on your review. Thnks!
4 - Mudbaby
get me to the hippy chix please.
5 - Maurice
Mudbaby you are one sick pup
6 - Glen Boyd
Thanx for the comments Maurice and, umm, Mudbaby...LOL
-Glen
7 - Vern Halen
Love the JA stuff, Baxter's in particular & Pointed Head, too. Only have one Tuna album, the live two record set - the electric stuff really does it for me.
Yeah, two great bands that seem to have gone unheralded. Maybe some future hippie chill'un will get into them again.
8 - Glen Boyd
Vern,
Pointed Head is indeed a realy unheralded live album these days. People seem to have forgotten just how potent JA could be as a live band because the only two songs ever played by classic rock radio are Somebody To Love and White Rabbit. Casady's bass is just all over the freaking place on that album though. Baxter's is more of an aquired taste, but "Spare Chaynge" has some of the most magnificent use of feedback I've ever heard.
I never really got into Hot Tuna either but this new collection is really a great place to start if you are a late bloomer.
Thanks for the comment.
-Glen
9 - Mark Saleski
nice review glen. for live things, i also like "30 Seconds Over Winterland". yea, i know it was a drastically reconfigured band at that point but there was still some great music on it.
love Hot Tuna as well. it's great to see those two guys live.
10 - Glen Boyd
Thanks Mark.
I never really "got" the latter stages of the Airplane with Papa John Creach and that particular lineup. For me it was always about Jorma and Jack, although I confess to Grace being one of my earliest boyhood crushes. Maybe I'll go back and check out "30 Seconds"...are Jorma or Jack still playing with them on that record? I honestly can't remember.
Thanks for the comment Mark.
-Glen
11 - Mark Saleski
Jorma is definitely on that record. i think Marty and Spenser were gone at that point.
i just remember digging Papa John. truly though, it's a completely different band.
12 - Glen Boyd
I'll have to check it out again then Mark. It's been something like 30 years since I've last heard "30 Seconds".
-Glen
13 - Vern Halen
"Long John Silver" was my own personal introduction to the Airplane soon-to-be Starship. The title track, as well as Milk Train and Eat Starch Mom are metallic & spooky, drenched in reverb while a fiddle saws away in the background. My friends were into... the Doobie Brothers, who didn't sound anything like this.
14 - Glen Boyd
Vern,
Long John Silver was a decent album...better than Bark for sure. And certainly better than most of The Doobie Brothers stuff(though I always liked that "Cheat The Hangman" of theirs).
But after Volunteers the magic, at least in my opinion, was pretty much gone. Jefferson Starship had a few moments (and I do mean the "Jeffersonian" edition rather than that goddawful Starship band they became in the eighties) too.
But it just never really felt the same. Of course by that time, the magic of that entire era (not just the Airplane), was fading as well.
I don't regret that a lot of the stupidity of those times has passed. In fact, I thank God for it. But damn if there wasn't amazing music back then.
Thanks for the comments Vern.
-Glen
15 - Bob Harvey
Bob Harvey former Jefferson Airplane bassist appears w/ Harvey Bainbridge Hawkwind legend on the new Spaceseed and Harvey Bainbridge album. Catch Bob on tour w/ Jerry Miller (Moby Grape).
16 - Georgia Blue
Sometimes the big lights in popular music rise in glory and then burn out too soon. But some of those who played with them, no less talented but less well-known, keep a steady, warming glow -- they keep making music for all of their lives.
Bob Harvey is one of those. Past the time when others retire or want to be forgotten, Bob Harvey loves performing so much he can't quit. He keeps adding young talent to the sound of his current band, Georgia Blue, and truckin' on.
California was the setting for the legendary Bluegrass group, the Slippery Rock String Band, where Bob got his start in 1963. Then he was a founding member of Jefferson Airplane but went back to the re-formed Slippery Rock group and then into folk-rock with Catfish Wakely
Both the U.S. Navy and getting a journalism degree kept Bob working in other areas for some time, including writing and being managing editor for American Trucker Magazine. On assignment for the Navy in 1990, he went to Saudi Arabia and met Brian Fowler, whose "mandolin playing pulled me back into Bluegrass music," Bob says.
The two formed San Francisco Blue and recorded the CDs "Idiot's Vision" ; "Live on the Cartersville Express"; "Hurting for People," a tribute to Skip Spence, an Airplane member who co-wrote the song with Bob "back then"; and "Live at ARTS in hARTwell." Brian and Bob performed together at Brasstown Bald's Musicfest, Race Fest in Morrow, Ga., and again at the Cartersville Arts Festival, and then Brian decided to step back from music for a while.
Since all the current performers are from Calhoun, Ga., Bob has changed the name to Georgia Blue. Alesia Chester is a skillful and experienced harmony singer who joins Bob on vocals. Bob says violinist Danny Taylor's "soulful and intuitive progressions will absolutely pull your heartstrings." Taylor will co-produce the group's next show and CD, "Alternative Country." The icing on the cake, says Bob, is Zack Lanier, a guitar-banjo man whose playing Bob likens to that of Chuck McCabe on "Live at the House of the Rising Sun" recorded by Jefferson Airplane in 1966
Firmly bound by his musical roots, but ever willing to leap out in faith on a new project, Bob Harvey continues to play festivals and venues wherever people want music that feels good, music that tells a story, and lyrics that have a message.
17 - Glen Boyd
Wow thats heavy...man.
-Glen