# The Strange Magic of: Jefferson Airplane



## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

We climb into the Time Machine and set the dial to 49 years in the past. It is 1967 and we are at Monterey 1967. Everybody is there: Jimi, Laura Nyro, The Who, Janis--the list goes on and on; you can look it up. Jefferson Airplane are there, fresh from the triumph of their first album with new female vocalist and sometime keyboarder Grace Wing Slick. The sextet boasts 3 singers--Slick, founder Marty Balin, guitarist Paul Kantner; bassist Jack Casady, drummer Spencer Dryden, and the evocative and unique-sounding lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen complete the group. I begin the first of my many torrid love affairs with female rock/pop singers with an infatuation with the raven-tressed, steely-eyed Slick, and also with this seminal American rock band. They achieved their zenith later with the albums Crown of Creation and Volunteers, but the magic is already there, at Monterey. Herewith _High Flying Bird/Today_.


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

This group epitomised late 1960s San Francisco for me even more than the Dead and Big Brother did, but for some reason they never really nailed it for me over the course of an album despite many great tracks dotted around most of them. Always a pleasure to see footage of them during their counter-cultural heyday, so thanks for that.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

EG, I totally agree that the Airplane never made a completely satisfying album. If one combined the best of Crown with Volunteers, you would have a stunningly great effort. I find most groups/artists are like that for me, as one who focuses on songs rather than albums; many of my favorite groups are best known to me by 1, 2, 3 songs gleaned from album after album--think Rush, R.E.M.; Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship fall into that same category. Surrealistic Pillow does have the highest density of good songs, however, IMHO.


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## cwarchc (Apr 28, 2012)

They made some really great music and some not so great.
However I like them, Grace had a superb voice


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## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

It took me 20 years to enjoy the 'After bathing at Baxter's' album. Now it is my favourite.

Perhaps the only band to enclose a bin liner with an LP (Bark IIRC).


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## Iean (Nov 17, 2015)

What I like about Jefferson Airplane is that their music is timeless and can be appreciated by people like me who are not yet born during their commercial peak. Favorite song is TODAY:angel:


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Iean said:


> What I like about Jefferson Airplane is that their music is timeless and can be appreciated by people like me who are not yet born during their commercial peak. Favorite song is TODAY:angel:


I also love "Today"; it was my first Airplane chiller. Two other Airplane chillers are "The House at Pooneil Corners" from Crown of Creation, which gained fresh relevance for me just yesterday with the announcement by North Korea of the test of a hydrogen bomb--it is one scary song--and the Airplane's version of "Wooden Ships" from Volunteers. One of my Greatest Songs Ever, with wonderful, plangent guitar by Jorma Kaukonen, and evocative singing by Marty, Grace, and Paul.


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## Don Fatale (Aug 31, 2009)

Whenever I get the urge to mainline tabs of LSD, I just put on After Bathing At Baxters instead. It fizzes with energy and inspiration. It's kind of miraculous, and I'd like to think it's despite as much as because of the drugs.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Jefferson Airplane was a stick that fierce critics of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's selection process used to beat the Hall with. I read an article years ago about how artists were chosen to get in, and the heart of it was that a few key writers and a few key labels controlled all. And so the years rolled by, with the Airplane never selected, and later groups--not their equal, in my view--were waved in long before them. I think, though, that with more recent decisions like those allowing Heart and Journey in, more of the People's Will is being added into the process. One thing I have never lost sight of is that Rock is, was, and was originally conceived to be--Popular Music. I have my own share of critical darlings and favorites which had relatively tiny sales, but, somewhere, somehow, sometime, actual popularity, as expressed in unit sales and concert statistics, needs to fit into the equation. Getting back to the Airplane for a minute, the live albums--_Bless Its Pointed Little Head_ and _Thirty Seconds Over Winterland_--have some fine material.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

A great song from _Volunteers_:


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Wood said:


> It took me 20 years to enjoy the 'After bathing at Baxter's' album. Now it is my favourite.


Bought a copy two weeks ago. Fantastic album!


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

starthrower said:


> Bought a copy two weeks ago. Fantastic album!


Definitely my favourite album of theirs although "Surrealistic Pillow" comes a close second.


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## Casebearer (Jan 19, 2016)

Wood said:


> It took me 20 years to enjoy the 'After bathing at Baxter's' album. Now it is my favourite.
> 
> Perhaps the only band to enclose a bin liner with an LP (Bark IIRC).


Great song. Didn't know it but got me more interested in Jefferson Airplane.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Yeah, Surrealistic Pillow one if my favourite albums. Bathing at Baxters was good, but marked Balin's demotion in the band.


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Here is some later Airplane: _Have You Seen the Saucers?_. We are beginning to presage the Blows Against the Empire album that marked the coming transition to the Jefferson Starship era. Elton John's _I've Seen the Saucers_ comes from about this time--a direct response? Anyway, I too have seen the saucers-they were Royal Doulton.


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## Jacck (Dec 24, 2017)

I like Jefferson Airplane and also Jefferson Starship


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## Strange Magic (Sep 14, 2015)

Jacck, Jefferson Starship will also make an appearance here in due time. I too am a big fan. Stay tuned.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

This was a band that I only heard on the radio. Never bought albums. I liked the Airplane, but they lost me when they went Starship.


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## Room2201974 (Jan 23, 2018)

I'm a fan of JA and have been for many, many years. They were the second band that I ever saw live, back in 1970. A few factoids:

The nice little up tempo number by Buffalo Springfield, _Rock and Roll Woman_, was written by Stephen Stills about Grace Slick.

The original inspiration for the song _Crown of Creation_ comes from the novella called _Rebirth_ or _The Chrysalids_ by science fiction author John Wyndham, with lyrics lifted directly from that work. It's a story about those living in the aftermath of a nuclear war. This same story might also have been an inspiration for _Wooden Ships_, which was written with Paul Kanter, but not originally credited due to managerial problems.


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