Jefferson Airplane - Volunteers


If you have taken this one for spin lately....do so immediately.  Hey Fredrick...Wow!
pops
This thread will get me on a roll...
After Volunteers it will morph to Hot Tuna’s Burgers, Live at Sweetwater and eventually Jorma’s Quah. This music gets better with age. Cheers,
Spencer

When I hear the beginning of "After Bathing at Baxters", I am immediately transported back to Lincoln's birthday in the Spring of '68. That album had just began as I was reaching lift-off on my last "flight" ;-). Unlike I, Skip Spence, drummer on "Jefferson Airplane Takes Off" (and later in Moby Grape on rhythm guitar and vocals), and Mark Loomis, lead guitarist in Cupertino cult garage band The Chocolate Watchband, didn't know when to stop, and could be seen wandering around my home town of San Jose/Cupertino, lost forever in the clouds. As is, tragically, Brian Wilson.

After '68 (when he was fed enormous amounts of LSD by a White Witch in NYC), Skip lived alternately in a State-funded halfway house in downtown San Jose and a trailer over the mountains in the beach town of Santa Cruz, bumming cigarettes from passers-by. He died of lung cancer in '99, two days shy of his 53rd birthday. Who knows what he could have done if not for the drugs? It's the same story with Syd Barrett of early Pink Floyd (whose solo album "Mapcap Laughs" is rather similar to Skip's "Oar" album, both incoherent ramblings) and Peter Green of early Fleetwood Mac, both acid casualties. It is the part of the Hippie story that is under-reported and acknowledged, imo.

Yep, those 1st, 3or4 albums are must-haves!

Keep me posted & Happy Listening!
Did listen to "after bathing at baxters" the other night.  Took me way back...
JEFFERSON AIRPLANE albums were recorded with care. From Surrealistic Pillow and beyond it sounds good. I have a Speakers Corner pressing of this and it does it justice. 
Man does that take me back, rja.  Wooden Ships was always one of my favorites.  I listened to theLP so many times on my "record player" as a freshman in college, I wore the sucker out!  I'll have to dredge up a CD or download it.  'course if I dig the LP out, one sniff of the cover would probably knock me on my keister for the rest of the evening! 
"Say, can I have some of your purple berries?
Yes, I've been eating them for six or seven weeks now,
haven't been sick once.
Probably keep us both alive"

I like J.Starship "Sunfighter" album:

"What if you were starving to death

And the only food you had was me

What would you say to the cannibal question

Would your answer be perfectly free?"

Love the track.  Of all those political protest songs of that era, Volunteers was my personal favorite.  

One generation got old
One generation got soul
This generation got no destination to hold

Pick up the cry!

Great stuff.