A Newfound Appreciation of Jefferson Airplane

As a kid, I became very fond of several records in my dad's collection, but neither Volunteers nor The Worst of Jefferson Airplane were two of them. In fact there was one experimental, atonal song on Worst of that I grew to loathe because my brother used to lock me in the basement with the lights out and play the song on our toy phonograph. I would cry and cry.

But even their songs with discernable melodies did nothing for me. Didn't like 'em, didn't dislike 'em. They were just there, and I had no opinion whatsoever about them. I react to the music of U2 in almost the same way.

But last night I watched a documentary called 'Fly Jefferson Airplane,' and for whatever reason, the music started to almost reach me on an emotional level. Then the bandmembers started to reminisce about how at one gig, one of the members suddenly started to take one song completely in his own direction -- to fly, the bandmembers kept terming it -- and before long, each member was flying on each song in many individual directions. "Six musicians in search of an arrangement," is what they said the band sounded like at that stage in their career. They might have been quoting a critic from the 60s, I'm not sure.

So that phrase really clanged a bell in my skull as it occurred to me that that is the kind of thing that garageband reviewers are saying, in their own many ways, when they review 'all the mother.' They talk about 'controlled chaos,' about how 'busy' or 'complex' it all sounds, and how the beat keeps changing. All these issues are expressed as complaints, praise and indifferent remarks. Sometimes Sonic Youth is mentioned.

So the thought inevitably crossed my mind last night that the BBH of ten years ago was 5 members in search of an arrangement. Except for that song was meticulously arranged one afternoon in Joe's bedroom, one of our 2 usual practice spaces.

So what were we in search of? I remember I had a plan to try and compare all the local ice cream parlors' chocolate milkshakes, joe really wanted to taste lion meat, and paul... I'm not sure but I could ask him if we get to talk this evening, as we plan to.

Funny, when Paul was in BBH he played a 12 string guitar, similar to the one Paul Kantner played in Jefferson Airplane. As I listened to that music last night, it souded like something was a hair out of tune. I assumed it coulda been the 12 string, because though BBH has always had gear issues, keeping that 12 string in tune was often a particularly problematic one.