REVIEWS:
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(reviewed by Casey Brennan)
Jefferson Starship's second release was a huge success when it came out in 1975, mostly because of the hit single "Miracles". Another reason is that this is a pretty commercial album which has an ordinary comfortable pop/rock sound to it. There are plenty of fine tunes on here, the best one probably being the before-mentioned "Miracles", which is the centerpiece of the album. This timeless song is far removed from any hippie anthem that Jefferson Airplane did in the 60's, and is the defining song of Starship. It appears somewhat sappy upon first listening, but it is a truly great and soaring romantic song with hopeful lyrics and soothing instrumentation.
While this song was written by Marty Balin, the rest of the album is a mostly collaborative affair with the exception of Grace Slick's "Al Garimasu (There Is Love)". The group were such a tight unit on here, that songs like "I Want To See Another World" and "There Will Be Love" sound like they were played by a close family of brothers and sisters, which makes these tunes stand out a little more. The second best song award after "Miracles" could be handed to "Play On Love", since it has a great melody with superior singing by Grace Slcik. One of the better love songs, I would have to say.
The sound of the fiddle from Papa John Creach gives the album a little more spark on certain songs. The instrumental, "Git Fiddler" has a prominent fiddle solo and a few guitar parts, and is defintely a solid and enjoyable song, if not that exciting. Also the opener "Fast Buck Freddie", is highlighted with a little fiddle playing, and is a memorable tune with the typical good interplay between the members of Jefferson Starship. The ballad "Tumblin'" and the somewhat 'progressive' instrumental "Sandalphon" are pretty good too. This is probably the band's most consistent set of songs they ever released. Not a great album by any means, but it's a very good set of songs by a fine mid-70's rock band.
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(reviewed by Casey Brennan)
This album contains the same band members as the previous album (except the old guy, Papa John Creach ain't there anymore), which keeps things pretty much the same as before. There aren't any songs that really stand out on here as "Miracles" did on Red Octopus (although the similar-in-style "With Your Love" comes kinda close) but this is still a consistent set with plenty of worthwhile tunes. The whole band still seems to be a strong one, as they frequently collaborate on tracks, and often sing-a-long as a close family on certain songs. "Dance With The Dragon" with the memorable line 'Yankee Doodle get It up! Stick A feather in your hat" is a good example of this, and is a lively fun song that is defintely a highlight on here.
"Don't Let It Rain" has a similar beat and tune, and is also fun until it goes on for too long. It starts out promising, but gets boring during the last half of it because of the overall bland sound of the guitar soloing and instrumentation. This is Spitfire's main flaw mostly, as the sound is mostly bland and unexciting on most of the songs; even the worthy opener "Cruisin'" which opens up with some good funky bass starts to lose my interest during the last minute or so of it. Not bad though, and a few other tunes are pretty enjoyable:
"Hot Water" and "St. Charles", which both end with the same lightweight guitar wanking as many of the other tunes, are also fine. That leaves us with "Switchblade", "Big City", and "Love Lovely Love" (this one is another love song which is disco-ish), which are all pretty forgettable. This makes side two of Spitfire pretty weak and boring. Anyway, their are enough good moments on this record to make it a solid Starship album.
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(reviewed by Samuel Fassbinder)
Listening to this album has caused me to examine the way I've been learning to write music reviews. In many of my previous reviews, I've tried to "show what I know" about the history of the artist under review. The results have doubtless biased my reviews -- for instance, showing what I know about the history of the Jefferson Airplane has caused me to disregard most of what the members of that band have done after 1971, when Paul Kantner and Grace Slick came out with the uneven, sloppy masterpiece Sunfighter. (Incidentally, "Q" magazine came out with its list of great album covers, and I was disappointed that Sunfighter did not rate a mention.) At any rate, history rears its ugly head on this album too, and I'll try to write its genealogy before putting forth a final opinion. (It's really difficult for me to ignore history when writing Airplane reviews; the first Airplane album I ever owned was Flight Log, an old collection of representative Airplane tunes complete with a written history of the Airplane in tabloid form inside the album, and I read the history before listening to the album.)
Let's start by backtracking to some previous highlights of the Kantner catalogue. "Mau Mau (Amerikon)" is the first song on Kantner's 1970 Blows Against The Empire, and though Blows is an awesome achievement (rating a 10 from me), "Mau Mau (Amerikon) was a difficult song to listen to, at first. It's just a rant, mostly the politics of hippiedom against the Nixon Administration, its tune is aimless and meandering (in conformity to the narrative turns of the lyric, and not repetitive like a pop song), and the mix sounds like something they haven't put together in the studio yet. Definitely an acquired taste.
"Holding Together" is a Kantner song on the abovementioned 1971 Sunfighter album, and on this song, Kantner is also ranting, yet his rant has a decidedly science-fiction thematic, Kantner sings "You are the ocean that we travel through/ On the way to Andromeda." There is a chorus, a great Grace Slick piano and Jerry Garcia piano accompaniment, and the Kantner vocal is sung is this funny mock-solemn monotone. The tune repeats itself like a pop song typically does, yet the interludes have room for a Grateful Dead-like group jam.
Well, at any rate, it seems that "Mau Mau (Amerikon)" and "Holding Together" are the templates for the lyrical design of the Paul Kantner songs on the most recent Jefferson Starship album. The Jefferson Starship seems to have changed a bit since I last declaimed it as a producer of "standard rock product." This is not the Starship of Red Octopus. Kantner quit the group back in the '80s, and so "Starship" eventually dwindled away and died; Kantner then reassembled the Starship around himself, Marty Balin, and Jack Casady, replacing everyone else with handpicked musicians. It was first called the "KBC Band," then Kantner spent a year with the reassembled "Jefferson Airplane," which put out a reunion album (which I didn't like), then finally the current thing, which Kantner jokingly calls "Jefferson Starship/ The Next Generation," the performers of Windows Of Heaven.
At any rate, this album is basically seven parts Kantner, five parts Balin, which prevents this album from having any seriously creative qualities beyond those two guys. The old Airplane albums, by contrast, had at least four composers and brought in cool outside stuff as well, like Crosby's "Triad" and Donovan's "Fat Angel." Balin imported Jesse Barish to write two standard rock product tunes for him to sing. Kantner, as I described above, has chosen good models for his compositions, definitely a step above what he did with the old "Jefferson Starship," yet half an album of rants set to music becomes a tough listen over the course of a whole album. Slick Aguilar accompanies the album with a typical yet competent electric guitar. Diana Mangano (Grace Slick's "replacement") sings the phonemes "oh" or "ah," in full-throated full-volume forceful splendor in whatever note she's singing, not varying throughout the album. Sometimes all the vocalists are yelling out the lyrics all at once, as is typical for a certain type of Kantner composition. Jack (God) Casady's bass is not often audible in the mix.
Kantner's lyrical message has become diffused; sometimes he rants stuff like "Just like George Washington and Daniel Ortega/ Dillinger and Oscar De La Vega/ Belle Starr and Mother Jones/ Galileo and Black Bart 'N' Bart Simpson 'N' Saint Paul" (on the song "Let Me Fly") because he likes the sound of historical names and politicized speech -- so do I, come to think of it, but then again I like logical coherence too. It seems to me that for the most part his message has become for his audience to educate itself; "So go out and stuff the universe into your eyes/ Your face, your brains, your heart," he sings.
When he sings to his audience, "Where do you go for common sense?/ Thomas Paine or Carlos, or Henry Miller/ Stephen King, Ram Dass or John Dillinger?" I guess he means for his listeners to go out and find out who those people are. There is also, amusingly enough, a certain amount of outlaw chic in Kantner's lyrics: "All our institutions are falling apart/ And it's a good year for civil disobedience," he sings, in one of his tamer moments. Lots of "dreaming of the future" stuff, too, and attempts to invoke the spirit of the '60s back into existence. Kantner's voice has gotten deeper with age, I guess I like it better that way.
The Balin contributions are reminiscent of the love songs that characterize Marty's solo albums. They can be pretty, but they can be pretty corny, too, and they're pretty much cut out in the same mold from album to album. I guess we're never going to see the style of "Comin' Back To Me" (from the Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow) ever again. The only tunes that I found even a bit memorable are Paul's "Shadowlands," la la la la la/ la la la, and Marty's "Let It Live," his song about his love for, not a beautiful woman (as is typical) but rather his love for nature. Even so, the whole project is hamstrung by the persistent musical _conformity_ of the composers. My rating will be quite generous. I was expecting total crap, but found to my surprise that there's something to it. It does, however, go on too long for all the thin creative spark contained within its boundaries. Subtract a point for not using the Jack Casady resource in an adequate way. Give this album a six if you don't mind.
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(reviewed by Samuel Fassbinder)
The present-day Jefferson Starship is like the eastern Roman (“Byzantine”) Empire of rock music. As it crumbles, and as its constituent parts go its separate ways, it remains as a glorious reminder of what was, its greatness preserved in appearance by its longevity and by comparisons with what exists today. Most eras of pop music are dominated by the large-scale corporate peddling of “hits” without any serious qualities of innovation. There are, however, exceptional phases of the history of pop music, when the industry is obligated to put out innovative music -- the two such phases that strike me as being important are the late 1960s (approx. ‘66-’71), and the cusp of the ‘80s (from mid-1978 to the end of ‘81). Perhaps an earlier period in the 1950s can also be celebrated -- I’m not old enough to know for sure.
But most pop music history is uneventful, and the 1990s are especially so, given the nearly totalitarian standardization of rap and grunge as they are currently marketed. Amidst the current Dark Ages of pop music, one can be excused for liking old, set-in-their-ways bands such as Jefferson Starship, for they are reminders of the enormous creativity of old Airplane albums such as Surrealistic Pillow and Volunteers. At any rate, this live album replays that heritage from beginning to end.
The primary fount of leadership / creativity in the Starship today is Paul Kantner, he of the 1970 science-fiction classic Blows Against The Empire. Grace Slick and Spencer Dryden are semi-retired, Jack and Jorma are off with Hot Tuna (which never seems to change), Marty hangs on to the Starship as a vehicle for his syrupy love songs, made flavorful by Marty’s increasing age and touchingly husky voice. It gets even better when Marty does “Today,” off of Surrealistic Pillow. Marty does classics of old Starship-era fame such as “Caroline,” “Miracles,” “There Will Be Love,” and “Hearts,” as well as old ‘60s favorites such as “You’re Bringing Me Down.” The best Marty performance by far on this album, though, is in the spirited performance of “Volunteers,” the better two-thirds of a medley with “Somebody to Love.”
Kantner, for his part, entertains us with stellar performances of “She Has Funny Cars,” “DCBA-25,” “How Do You Feel,” “When I Was A Boy I Watched The Wolves,” “The Ballad Of You & Me & Pooneil,” and “Wooden Ships.” All of them classics. And, as far as I know, this is the one chance you’ll get to drop into your local record store and access the medley version of “Have You Seen The Stars Tonite -- Embryonic Journey -- Starship,” live. Otherwise you’ll have to have your brain hooked directly into http://www.jeffersonstarshipsf.com/ . The newbies that stand out on this particular album IMHO are Slick Aguilar with a-touch-of-Garcia rockin’ electric guitar, and Diana Mangano, with a-touch-of-Grace rockin’ vocals on the Grace songs that matter. I grant this album a 9 with the provisos that there’s a ton of stuff on here (you probably won’t like it all equally), that it can be overdone (though it’s fun throughout). The glory that was Rome, and still the coolest scene around. Liner notes by Grace Slick.
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