Thoughts on JA videos on You Tube

[EmbryonicRabbit68]

Yeah i really started getting into collecting all footage i can of my favourite bands, most during their heyday being 1960s-1980s(btw, if you want to download youtube videos and burn them to DVD, get realplayer, works with all videos on the net usually, although to get them on DVD you gotta spend $40, but well worth it), and most of it comes from youtube.I didnt really get to the reunion era footage, i got the whole documentary from 89 with Grace though, but my video collections usually die down during the mid-late 1980s when everything started going digital and you find a whole lot of audience stuff and it gets hard to manage it all, and you start to run out of room on the computer.My JA archives consists of really any piece of filmed material of anything JA, JS and Hot Tuna from 66-80.If anything new shows up i get really excited because theres waay to little footage of them from the 60s and 70s.I know of alot that exists, but for some reason no one puts it in circulation or tries to hunt it down.

PS: why did the video from 69 where Grace is dressed as hitler get removed!?I remmember seeing it way back on youtube before i started collecting footage, and once i started my collections, it was gone!And if anyone has the Last Days of Fillmore DVD, PLEASE upload Hot Tuna doing Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning and any other Hot Tuna film on there.And if you got the Go Ride The Music or Dick Cavett DVDs, upload the JA stuff from there thats not on youtube.Im kinda poor, and alot of those DVDs include bands i dont really like so i dont feel like spending $30 on a DVD set for one or two videos by a band i do like.Ive done it before and it gets annoying not being able to just put the one performance on a DVD with the others.

[Susan Butcher]

Grace's seventies voice is like hot curry; delicious in the right amount, but too much is hard to take. For me the really outstanding thing about her singing is her ability to improvise harmonies.

[okeedoe]

That's our Sue.The essence in a single sentence.

[JoeD80]

But why did they need four (FOUR!) guitarists and that is excluding Jack! Jorma, Paul, Jorma's brother Peter and Randy Jackson. It just muddles the sound, Crown of Creation just didn't sound right.

Well Paul played rhythm and Jorma played lead so you need at least two guitarists. So with four you probably have two rhythm and two lead. Looking at this Crown footage I only see Paul and Jorma though. Perhaps that's Randy playing rhythm and standing behind Jack but I'm not sure.

And Tim Gorman was not the right man for the job, in my opinion. He played so lush , so glitzy , so 80's. In the videos he is very prominent in the mix, but I assume that is due to the limitations of the recordings.

Well he had already played keyboards with KBC in 1985 - 1987, so that's why he was here too.

Marty was excellent singing Volunteers, but he just couldn't hit those high notes anymore.

That's hard to believe he couldn't in 1989 because when I saw him in 2001 he was still hitting those notes pretty easily. Perhaps he had a cold.

To be able to focus on the other singers is a first requisite for singing harmony

Eh, I don't agree here. One of the great things about listening to the Airplane's harmonies IMO is you never know where they are going to go. Marty, Grace, and Paul can all be singing in completely different ranges and the timing of one might be off a couple of notes from the others and that creates new and interesting sounds.

Intoxicated, her raps would go on and on too, completely ignoring what the other musicians were doing on stage.

Not really. It's kind of the purpose of a rap to go on and on. There were always set places for her raps, e.g. in Somebody to Love it was always right before "Your eyes may look like his" and Jack would know the exact moment to crank up the bass at the end of it. I don't think she'd do something like suddenly stop in the middle of Wooden Ships.

[jimmie ray]

Wow - an honest discussion about Jefferson Airplane members? Our dear departed "King Arthur" must be brewing a stew in his pantaloons over this!!!

[JoeD80]

Well, well, well, I do seem to have hit a nerve with my sacrilegious remarks.

No nerves hit, just making my own comments. It's not up to me whether you enjoy the same things I do for the same reasons I do. I just like to talk about stuff.

His voice was already damaged. And if you dare to watch more recent video's on You Tube of JS or Marty solo, tell me I'm wrong when I say that by now his voice is completely gone.

I haven't seen clips of him solo, but I did see him in 2001 as I said with JS (at Cerritos a couple of days before 9/11) and he was the highlight of the show (mostly because Paul would skip 3 or 4 songs at a time to smoke outside) and didn't have any problems with his voice at the time. As for now, I couldn't tell you because that's the last time I saw him.

If you think that the singers had no idea what the others were going to do, then I have to say that you don't seem to understand the essence of their vocal style. On the contrary, they had to have a good idea of each other's capabilities and creativity.

Yes, I am aware that they should know what the other does (and I do have musical training so I'm not clueless about these things), but I still disagree with the comment about not being together leading to disaster. I have heard some great JA concerts where the timing of Paul, Grace, and Marty is all slightly different. Paul talked about this in an interview once where he discussed how after the first album the music for the JA harmonies were not written down and each member was given more or less a range that they should stay in, so that they could stay within the structure of a song but also each had some freedom to go a different way as well.

Don't misunderstand me, JA still is my all time favorite band, but I see their shortcomings more clearly now.To me, they never fully realized their huge potential.

To argue over whether artists realized their potential to me is a weird argument, because what they did do made them famous and successful. Jefferson Airplane had a particular style and I like it. To me, enjoyment of the artist is the point, regardless of what shortcomings they may or may not have.

[Ensign]

I once read an interview with Frank Zappa, in which the interviewer asked Zappa if he felt he was underrated as a guitarist. Zappa's response was, Who, then, is qualified to rate me?

I think this anecdote can be applied to the idea that most of us cannot be the judge of whether or not Airplane acheived it's potential. How the heck would WE know? Even among the members of the group it would be an educated guess at best and mere speculation otherwise.

[EmbryonicRabbit68]

For instance Jorma on firing Spencer Dryden: "...we might have grown in other musical directions had we stayed with Spencer."

Wait, i thought Spencer left.He was sick of the "Acid Merry-Go-Round", and decided to retire for a bit.Why did they fire him??AND, if he did stay, what direction would Jorma be talking about.Country-Space Rock?Early Hot Tuna was blues with country, and Spencer went on to New Riders On The Purple Sage, a country band, and he wrote the sorta country songs in the band(A song for all Seasons), and we all know about Paul and his Space fetish .We might have had a Country Space Rock band if Spencer stayed...

[Susan Butcher]

Country and Space music. That could have been good! Early Mike Nesmith, later Moby Grape and Byrds type of thing. (I'm not keen on straight Country, too ancient and American for me.)

I read that Spencer was fired because of the band's internal "politics". That is, when he and Grace were an item, he was able to get his own way and throw his weight around because he'd have Grace on side. When that was over and Grace gravitated to Paul, they took the opportunity to ditch him. Perhaps that was bad decision musically.

[Ensign]

I realize this thread has taken a turn away from it's original direction...

For country space music I always think of the New Riders. They are still doin' it, although their sounds seems to have taken on a harder rock feel these days.

[JoeD80]

[Spencer] wrote the sorta country songs in the band(A song for all Seasons),

Well Paul and Gary Blackman wrote "The Farm."

For instance Jorma on firing Spencer Dryden: "...we might have grown in other musical directions had we stayed with Spencer."

Wait, i thought Spencer left.He was sick of the "Acid Merry-Go-Round", and decided to retire for a bit.Why did they fire him??

According to the interviews in the Got a Revolution book he both quit and was fired many times. They hired Joey to replace him in early 1969 and Spencer stuck around until 1970 so who knows how it finally happened. Spencer did say Altamont was one of the main reasons that he decided to get out finally. So maybe it was a simultaneous quitting/firing.

[EmbryonicRabbit68]

Ah yes, the simultaneous quit/fire, something that has plagued bands many times.And im not big on country either, matter a fact, problebly wouldnt be caught dead buying a country album, except maybe Johnny Cash.Anyway, as Ensign said this thread is taking a differant direction.Hows about the Volunteers video from '69 with Grace as Hitler, when was that pulled, and if you have it please put it up.Im begging anyone who has Airplane videos not on youtube or the net to post!Post goddamn you!