Dec 012008
No offense, but does anyone know if a member of Jefferson Airplane was a lapsed fundamentalist of some faith or another? The composition and performance of this song seem to be an attempt at filling some tremendous spiritual void. Please discuss.
Am I correct in remembering a hair salon named Crown of Creation in Philadelphia in the 1970’s?
I can’t help you, Mod, on any possible spiritual void the band members might have been trying to fill, but I’m in need of some old-time religion after seeing that clip.
That rings a bell, meanstom. Can it be, the place is still in business?
http://www.southstreet.com/index.php?option=com_mtree&task=viewlink&link_id=168&Itemid=12
Thanks for confronting the HARD TRUTHS. Who’s next?
I’ve always loved this song.
“Life is change
How it differs from the rocks”
Dig it!
Thanks, BigSteve. You strike me as a peaceful guy. When you play this song do you ever want to get together with friends and raid the homes of wealthy strangers living high in the hills?
The spiritual void in this song is, I think, the good ole U.S. of A.
One of the funniest things about this video is that it came from a Ed Sullivan Show appearance. The differences between good old Ed & the JA are freaky in the extreme. I can imagine a young Mr. Mod impatiently waiting for the song to end & the plate balancing act from Belgium to appear.
Et tu, Diskojoe?
Mr. Mod asks:
To quote the lyrics of Crown of Creation again:
In loyalty to their kind
they cannot tolerate our minds.
In loyalty to our kind
we cannot tolerate their obstruction.
Of course there was never an operable plan. Remember these were the people who were stoned enough to think that they could solve their problems by hijacking a starship and live free of society’s restrictions floating through space. Who would operate the starship and how they would feed themselves were never addressed.
Every protest song ever written has a politically feasible, logically consistent social construct outlining each measure necessary for implementing it’s changes spelled out in the lyrics. I mean, how could this band have gone on without one?
No doubt they all just assumed Kantner would be able to figure it out. We’re all in agreement that the Doobie Brothers were the band best equipped to survive on a starship, right?
alexmagic sez:
We’re all in agreement that the Doobie Brothers were the band best equipped to survive on a starship, right?
How about P-Funk or Kraftwerk?
Getting back to the Jefferson Airplane, another thing that I would like to point out is that Grace Slick came from a well to do background & attended the same school as Tricia Nixon & was actually invited to the White House to attend a alumni event. She was planning to do something outrageous like spike the punch w/LSD or something, but that didn’t pan out.
We’re taking the “band best equipped to survive on a starship” question to The People. See new poll posted!
Interesting tidbit about Slick, Diskojoe. This could contribute to the spiritual void represented by the band’s music.
Forget about food, how are we going to get weed on the starship?
I expect ELO and P-Funk to be popular choices because they have both the manpower to run a fully staffed starship and they are known spaceship enthusiasts, but I think all those years of fake UFOs would leave them woefully unprepared for the real thing.
Plus, Parliament would totally crash their ship into a moon or accidentally drift into the sun while everyone was high, like, five minutes after taking off.
The Doobies, though, they have the manpower for a decent crew, and there is no figure in rock more capable of defending a starship from attack than US Department of Defense Missile Consultant Skunk Baxter.
Excellent point Alex. When I saw the Doobies in 77-78, the Skunk was sitting on a stool next to a couple of big racks of gear which he tweaked throughout the show. I imagine that this would be similar to sitting in the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon. Also, the rest of the Doobies always seemed to me to be techy A.V. nerds dressed up in hippie rocker costumes.
However, I would caution you against writing off Steely Dan. If “Classic Albums: the Making of Aja” is any indication, they have the myopic obsessiveness needed to operate high tech equipment like a 48 track automated mixing board or a rocket ship. My only concern is that they would end up getting into a metaphysical debate with each other and lose control of the ship and crash into Uranus.
To guard against that, they could enlist the services of Bernard “Pretty” Purdie, who is certainly capable enough to handle the mission himself, but humble enough to give the credit to Becker and Fagan (and possibly Ringo).