Disco de Jefferson Airplane: “Volunteers”

I haven't done a side-by-side comparison with the Mobile Fidelity CD, but I think RCA have done VOLUNTEERS proud. The band's first 16 track recording, the album's dense production always suffered on vinyl (especially on Dynaflex) but it has been substantially sorted-out here thanks to the state of digital recording technologies.

I was relieved to hear, from the get-go, a palpable bass presence, and as with the new remaster of BLESS ITS POINTED LITTLE HEAD, the multiple strands of instrumentalists are so clearly delineated that you can listen to the whole canvas or decide which musician you'd care to focus on, and follow. I never quite realized what a percussive performance "We Can Be Together" is given: Spencer Dryden's drums are competing with Paul's Kantner's acoustic and Nicky Hopkins' piano, and probably Marty Balin's tambourine, but as I say, all are audible now, giving the track an impressive sonic complexity. The acoustic guitars on "Good Shepherd" and "Turn My Life Down" sound as clear as river water chuckling over rocks in the flow, and all of the drums in Spencer's kit have clearer definition, so that we not only hear a backbeat but lots of jazz-flavored fills and percussive coloring. The most impressive tracks, sonically, are the ones that are most sparsely instrumentalized, such as "Eskimo Blue Day," and the extra space introduced in the sound of the recording gives Jack Casady's bass that much extra room in which to sound fuller, more rounded. (If this album has any seminal fault, it's that the band went overboard filling those 16 tracks, not realizing that less can be more, as is demonstrated here.) Even weaker tracks like "The Farm" and "A Song for All Seasons" become more interesting given the more pronounced and appreciable interplay of the musicians, especially Hopkins and Casady. Still, I have to accord MVP rating on this album to Jorma Kaukonen, never more impassioned in the studio than during his searing solo on "Wooden Ships" and never more mind-boggling than in his duet with himself on Grace Slick's "Hey Fredrick." The outstanding quality of his performance has shone through the murkiest mixes and masterings RCA could hurl at this album, and it's just breathtaking here.

Unlike the live bonus tracks on BLESS ITS POINTED LITTLE HEAD, the live bonus tracks on VOLUNTEERS -- same venue, one year later -- are superb and a boon to the overall package. The band is well-mixed and they play as if they know they are being recorded, and it matters to them to be at their best. Some audience members have clearly heard the new album and respond warmly when "Wooden Ships" is introduced, and this, "Good Shepherd" and the title track are all given near-definitive live recitals.

Warmly recommended.

Pet warning: The rumbling iceberg sounds that close "Eskimo Blue Day" sent my cats running out of the room.

As a drummer,singer,songwriter, who was a teen in the late sixties, I can remember the day I bought this album,(and After Bathing At Baxters!). If you like The Airplane, there are several cuts on this album that are their absolute best. The way ' Hey Frederick ' shifts gears,literally;Grace Slicks vocals, the tightness of the band make this song a classic. It grabs me everytime I listen to it. And we actually play,(though we don't do it proper justice), the Airplanes' version of Wooden Ships,which is on my top 10 list of all time favourite songs. Songs like Wild Tyme,Saturday Afternoon and Young Girl Sunday Blues etc. demonstrated that NOBODY did acid rock like Jorma Kaukonen! And Jack Cassidy is still one of my favourite bass players! The live cuts ,from the Filmore East,ARE a real bonus! - Ron ' Rock ' Larocque,Orleans,Ontario,Canada.

Yeah, so maybe the JA's politics are dated; So are the Clash's, so are Ted Nugent's and in 20 years, Ani DiFranco's will be, too. It happens! What isn't dated is the music, especially the two songs by Grace Slick. "Eskimo Blue Day" and "Hey Frederick" are the Airplane at their most majestic and Slick at her most primal, with bassist Jack Casady especially standing out like a stone leviathan. Elsewhere, Jorma Kaukaunen's take on the traditional "Good Shepard" foreshadows his later Hot Tuna and solo work, Marty Balin briefly surfaces from his dissaffection with the band to help propel "Turn My Life Down" along and drummer Spencer Dryden probably has the best summation of how the wind was blowing for Sixties rock in his "Song For All Seasons." If you let the political rants of a bygone era prevent you from listening to this vibrant, strong album, hey, your loss!

It is too bad that full text of the defiant lyrics which was included in the original album was replaced in the CD with a "we were only kidding" commentary. The album represents a powerful artistic statement for the need to share all in common and end the greed that could destroy our world through war and environmental disaster (still!). "We Should be Together" calls for solidarity and tells capitalist oligarches: "All your private property is target for your enemy and your enemy is we." Slick's songs (as in many other albums) provide a tour de force of sharp, surrealistic imagery of alienation worthy of Lorca (especially "Hey Fredrick"). American escapism (always running off to the next frontier, the next market, or the outer reaches of suburban sprawl) is treated as myth ("Good Shepard") and its hippy utopian variant of the time is satirized ("the Farm"). The impossibility of escape from a nuclear holocaust ("Wooden Ships") leaves no alternative to revolution, which is both joyous ("Volunteers") and deadly serious ("Meadowlands", the theme of the Soviet Army). The only seriously false note is in "Wooden Ships", in which the response to the possible victims of a nuclear catastrophe is to say "All we can do is echo your anguished cry. We are leaving, you don't need us." Nonetheless, an impressive statement, all in all. The music is magnificent, inextricably tied to the lyrics and fully conveying the extraordinary energy and vocal and instrumental and creativity the group brought to their live performances at the time. Listening again to the entire album for the first time in decades, I'm struck how distinctive their music really was and how well it's held up. Finally, did the "revolution" "fail"? Not entirely, but in any case, keep your eyes open and be ready to lend a hand, it will all come around again, if in somewhat different form. Or, as someone said about Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, it seems like sometimes the "losers" write the best songs. There is plenty of good music which isn't about heroism, rebellion or the trials and struggles of the downtrodden, but I, for one, don't want to lose the good music that is about those things.

Even in '69 there were critics who were skeptical about this album and where the Airplane was headed. Rich rock stars, it was argued, couldn't possibly revolutionaries (although they could still be "outlaws in the eyes of America," I suppose). That kind of criticism reflected the growing paranoia among those elements of society we used to call the "counterculture." If you think 90s style "political correctness" is a drag, you should have lived through the "more revolutionary than thou" late 60s.

Sensitive to the criticism, the Airplane answered that they were just r'n'r journalists--reporting the news and reflecting the culture around them. And to make sure everyone knew not to take them all that seriously, they put a life size peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the inside cover gatefold.

Well, after 30 years the debate seems a bit nitpicky. Musically, Volunteers holds up very well indeed, and that's really all that matters. The politically themed anthems (the opener "We Can Be Together," "Wooden Ships" and the closer title track) catch fire vocally and instrumentally. Grace and Marty engage in their patented vocal dueling (as opposed to simple "duetting") for what was to be the last time until Marty rejoined the Starship in the mid-70s. Kantner had yet to succumb to extreme heavy-handedness. And Kaukonen and Casady rocked mightily. By this record, their producers had finally figured out how to record the band, so that Casady's bass wasn't buried.

What may have been considered lesser tracks (Jorma's version of the traditional "Good Shepherd" and Marty's "Turn My Life Down") are now among my favorites. These songs and Grace's two exercises in obscurantism ("Hey Frederick" and "Eskimo Blue Day") are anything but overtly political. The Airplane was never a one-note act; they were always all over the map musically and lyrically. Once you realize that it becomes easy to just "go ride the music."