Jefferson Airplane

In this Joni Mitchell biography I'm reading she has crossed paths several times with Joan Baez and Judy Collins and been compared to other rock music icons like Janis Joplin and Grace Slick.

I realized I have never in my life owned any Jefferson Airplane.

I thought, hey they're old enough and well-known enough that I bet I can find a bunch of JA tunes posted online for free, and sure enough I found a website with free downloads of everything.  I don't feel bad about "stealing" their music because I wouldn't be interested enough to buy any of it, and they've made just about all the money they're ever going to make from their 1966-1971 catalog anyway.  

So I downloaded the first seven albums, "Takes Off" (1966) through "Bark" (1971), 98 tracks, six hours 24 minutes of material in order to make myself a "best of CD."  I started listening to the tracks, many of which I'd never heard before, and tossing out the ones I didn't think I'd ever want to hear again.

I ended up with just over one CD of material, 32 songs, 114:26.  So I downloaded the next three albums (through their breakup in 1973) and, via a VERY GENEROUS selection process filled out the second CD with some nice live versions of songs I'd already chosen in studio versions.  In all I have 40 songs, 2:29:25 all of which I'm going to file away for a very long time until I decide I'm ready to hear Jefferson Airplane again.  

Amazing.  Such a well-known band, such a reputation, so iconic in the history of rock... and I had to STRUGGLE to put together a "best of."

It's like the time I bought Pink Floyd's double CD "The Wall" to make a highlights disc and ended up with, I think, twelve minutes?  

Or the fact that the ONLY Grateful Dead CD I can stomach is a remix done by a friend of mine John Oswald, where he took 66 versions of "Dark Star" from various releases and bootlegs and mixed them all together into one long sixty minute jamming drone.

Yesterday I also ran across this video where this guy brags about buying a collection of 3,000 LPs.  But the music in the collection is all mainstream pop, ultra-common stuff that used to fetch a max of 50 cents on the used market.  To him it's a "collection," to me it's like a Goodwill bin.

I guess eventually everything becomes collectible.  The "American Pickers" show has them buying junk (and I do mean junk) that most of us would throw away without a second thought.

Grace Slick had a great voice, and Somebody To Love and White Rabbit are great songs. But beyond those two, I can't think of any Airplane songs. Maybe they sound better when you're stoned.

Triad, it's No Secret, My Best Friend, Today,  Embryonic Journey, a couple others.  After that it gets mighty threadbare.

A testament to the power of drugs to alter your powers of judgment.