675 Jefferson Airplane - After Bathing at Baxter's (1967)

 675 Jefferson Airplane - After Bathing at Baxter's (1967)

Studio Album - Psychedelic Rock



About the Act:

In 1985 the band Starship released the single "We Built This City". 31 years later, GQ magazine declared it to be "the most detested song in human history". This was, of course, before Baby Shark appeared.

Starship, had quite a high turnover of members, but they formed in 1984, kind of from the ashes of the band Jefferson Starship. They have had four studio albums, and significantly retained the main singer from Jefferson Starship, Grace Slick, for the first two of those albums. It was she who sang "We Built This City".  She was also the main singer for the previous band, Jefferson Starship.

Winding backwards, Jefferson Starship were formed in 1974, and existed for 11 year, releasing 7 studio albums in that time. Confusingly, they reformed in 1992, and so there are currently two bands, one called "Starship" and one called "Jefferson Starship". Well actually, the former are now called "Starship featuring Mickey Thomas". Since their re-convention, Jefferson Starship have released three more studio albums.  Once again, there has been quite a bit of movement of members.

As if this were not confusing enough, we can wind back even further, because Jefferson Starship were born out of the ashes of a band called Jefferson Airplane. This band was formed in 1965 in San Francisco, and were a pivotal band in the burgeoning Hippie/Psychedelic movement. It is fair to say that they were hugely influential, their breakthrough single being "White Rabbit". This band name also had quite a number of members, and as if to deliberately muddy the waters, have had reunions in 1989 and 1996. By my reckoning, this means that in 1996 all three incarnations were active, Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, and Starship Featuring Mickey Thomas.   Oh, Jefferson Airplane had eight studio albums in their main stint and another in 1989 (helpfully called "Jefferson Airplane" in case there was any confusion.

One abiding person through some of the incarnations was/is the iconic voice of Grace Slick. Another, was one of the driving forces, Paul Kantner, guitarist.

About the Album:

This was their third album, and not as commercially successful as their second, blamed on the fact that none of the tracks made good, marketable singles. According to Wikipedia, the the title is code for "After Tripping on Acid"

My History with this Album:

None.

Review:

The Wikipedia page for this album is quite scanty, which is a shame, I would have liked more context. Oh well, never mind.

In this album, Jefferson are committedly psychedelic, no half-measures here. Musically it's quite loose in the Space Rock kind of way, and at times it bumbles along in that sort of way too. There are influences from rock, folk, even Jazz at times, eastern music, and I'm not sure what else. Song structures are loose and there are some nice extended improvisation sections, including one where bass is featured. The tones range from gentle folk-like psychedelic with flutes, recorders, acoustic guitars and words like "waterfall colours", to harder, darker, rock sounds and disturbing lyrics. 

The lyrics - well they are mostly in the painting-a-picture stream-of-consciousness vein, and they are mostly on the darker side of imagination, definitely psychedelic, and possibly inspired by acid trips. It would not be surprising, especially with the dream-like image and occasional synesthetic phrases.

One aspect I like of doing these reviews, in fact the main motivation for starting, was to increase my exposure to, and understanding of, music. I am coming to realise that Jefferson Airplane were a pivotal band in the development of Psychedelia, which in turn kind of gave birth to both Prog and Heavy Metal. A lot of Psychedelia was quite light and airy, with an affected naivety. This is not like that, it is darker (not always, and even then not despondently so), and more knowing. 

The tracks are suites, with sub-tracks, giving an unusual structure (but the sort of thing often used later in Prog Rock). My favourite section is A Small Package of Value With Come To You, Shortly, which is a kind of mixture of Jazz improvisation and tape-splicing with café background sounds and spoken voice bits. My favourite bit in this is where somebody is shouting "No Man Is An Island" several times followed by somebody saying quietly "he's a peninsula".

I quite like Grace Slick's singing, I'm less bothered by Paul Katner's voice and the other male voices - they are not bad, just not as distinctive. Overall, I reasonably enjoyed it.

7/10


Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/4YYeywv0sLkLAGbJuKJIdi

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7681F261E42795BD

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/After_Bathing_at_Baxter%27s



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