For the longest time, perhaps into the early 1980s, I thought Surrealistic Pillow was the first JA album. Not so; Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, with Signe Anderson as the female vocalist, got all the way to #128 in the Billboard charts in late 1966. But it was the second album, with Grace Slick, formerly of the group The Great Society, that created the required alchemy. Here's a bunch of YouTube clips - some are performance videos, others pastiches.
1. She Has Funny Cars
2. Somebody To Love (a #5 single in 1967)
3. My Best Friend
4. Today
5. Comin' Back To Me
6. 3/5 Of A Mile In 10 Seconds
7. D.C.B.A.
8. How Do You Feel
9. Embryonic Journey (used on the last episode of Friends, I understand)
10. White Rabbit - went to #8 on the charts
11. Plastic Fantastic Lover
The album went to #3 and spent 56 weeks on the charts. I always thought the strength of this album, and of the group generally, was the strength of the various vocalists/songwriters: Slick, Marty Balin, Paul Kantner and Jorma Kaukonen.
Grace Slick turns 58 today.
ROG
2 comments:
Did Mark d'Atillo ever play with the early Jefferson Airplane...
He passed away in 1967 but stories about him say he did
thanks
Michael Balarama
Michael- Don't know. Does anyone out there?
BTW, the usually reliable Joel Whitburn Billboard books (http://recordresearch.com/) have left Signe Anderson off the list of JA members. She sang on the original album, The Jefferson Airplane Takes Off. They'll correct this in future editions.
Also, a weird thing: I was listening to We Can Be Together, the first track on the compilation CD 2400 Fulton, playing it on iTunes. It goes: "Up against the wall, mf. Tear down..." then just stopped. It played OK on Windows media. It was as though the iTunes player was censoring what I was listening to. Bizarre.
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