Paul Kantner, Jefferson Airplane Co-Founder & Guitarist, Dies at 74

[marylander1940]

 

https://www.yahoo.com/music/paul-kantner-jefferson-airplane-co-founder-guitarist-dies-003827400.html

[bigvalboy]

Thanks for posting ML...So very sad, but it brought back sweet memories of a time long past, and in the end, that is probably the greatest gift of music for me.

[+ WilliamM]

Very sad news. I only saw Jefferson Airplane once, but it was one of the very best rock concerts of my life.

[BabyBoomer]

From The Summer Of Love.

 

~ Boomer ~

[+ bashful]

Excellent song to showcase. Thanks

[body2body]

This is sad. I first saw Jefferson Airplane at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 ( we hitchhiked from L. A. ). I saw them at a Pinnacle Dance Concert at the Shrine auditorium a few months later. My favorite song by Paul Kantner and Marty Balin is Today which for my money is one of the most beautiful loves songs to come out this era of pop music.

Thank you Marylander for bringing this to our attention

[nynakedtop]

The Jefferson Airplane guided me through my adolescence - I have no words for this - at all!

[+ quoththeraven]

Goddamn it. Jefferson Airplane is up there with the Doors as my favorite American rock groups from the 60s. I had the privilege of seeing the Airplane during their 1989 reunion tour. An LJ friend of mine spent an evening chatting with Kantner after a concert in the early 70s. (No, no funny business.)

 

While Kantner was not my favorite member of the group - that would of course be the incomparable Grace Slick, to whom I aspired to be sans alcoholism - as co-founder and arguably the most political member of the group, he certainly was influential. He also wrote or co-wrote many of their best songs, like the title song from the album Crown of Creation, the lead song "We Can Be Together" from my favorite album, Volunteers, and the chilling post-apocalyptic "Wooden Ships," co-written with David Crosby and Stephen Stills, also from Volunteers.

The way the album segues from "We Can Be Together" to "Good Shepherd" sends chills up my spine every time I hear it.

 

This version of "Wooden Ships" isn't as aurally "clean" as the studio version, but it's worth it for the improvisation (Jefferson Airplane was one of the most jazz-like of the psychedelic bands of the 60s) and view of the band during a live performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZiMHO8zO5U

I told you, I was political, and a radical, at a young age. Jefferson Airplane was part of that.

 

[nynakedtop]

I told you, I was political, and a radical, at a young age. Jefferson Airplane was part of that.

 

As was I... and Volunteers was our battle anthem:

 

Look what's happening out in the streets

Got a revolution (got to revolution)

Hey, I'm dancing down the streets

Got a revolution (got to revolution)

Oh, ain't it amazing all the people I meet?

Got a revolution (got to revolution)

One generation got old

One generation got soul

This generation got no destination to hold

Pick up the cry

[+ quoththeraven]

Because it takes very little to motivate me to post music videos and I happen to have this one saved on my YouTube account, here is Grace Slick singing David Crosby's "Triad" from the 1968 album Crown of Creation. She takes a song about a menage a trois with underage groupies that contributed to Crosby getting kicked out of the Byrds and turns it on its head. For a woman to sing "I don't really see/Why can't we go on as three" was revolutionary. Maybe it still is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4HlOnA9NgQ

[bigvalboy]

Does anyone else miss the album covers? Was thinking about Jefferson Airplane this morning and all the wonderful bands of that era. In many respects, they were a reflection of our lives.

 

 

http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/j/jefferson-airplane/album-sweeping-up-the-spotlight-jefferson-airplane-live-at-the-fillmore-east-1969.jpg

 

I've collected over the years, posters from various bands of that period. Some from the Fillmore East, and some venues in San Francisco. One of these days, I'll get around to framing them all.

[+ quoththeraven]

The jokey photo used on the front cover of Volunteers was actually taken several years earlier. The back cover contains a hilarious dispatch from a fictional Middle American community that rivals anything found in The Onion. The cover of Crown of Creation uses distorted photos of band members superimposed on a photo of an atomic test acquired, IIRC, from the government. Such irony.

 

But such means of communication were diminished, or at least harder to read, once most people started listening to CDs. Now that music is acquired and listened to in completely digital non-physical form, cover art and copy has even less influence.