Talk:Jefferson Airplane
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How unusual was their inclusion of a female lead singer at the time they began their recording career? Discuss.
I would say that being a female lead singer in a acid rock band with no other female musicians in the late 1960's was somewhat unusual. (Big Brother and the Holding Company is the only other band that I can think of with a similar line-up.) Keep in mind also, that the Jefferson Airplane had more than one lead singer, and some would say that this was one of the major features of the so-called San Francisco sound.
- I'd tend to agree, especially about acid rock, but it depends on how wide you cast your net for "rock groups". You can find any number of female led soul groups (Martha and the Vandellas spring to mind, but there are plenty of others, especially if you count singer + bunch of Stax/Motown session guys as a real band). But most accounts of the San Francisco hippy scene paint it as a pretty misogynist time, the guys dropped acid and played rock music while the women dropped acid, sewed, cooked and did the cleaning. -- User:GWO
Corrected the relationship between Grace and Darby Slick (in-laws via Darby's brother Jerry who was Grace's husband).
Is it really necesary to have a reference to gigs in Summer 2005? We're already in September 2005, and isn't this supposed to be an encyclopedia not a news/blog.
why are the external links at the top of the page??????
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[edit] Correcton
Per Avalon Rick's World of Music (a music forum) and the album cover displayed there, the last official album of the original Jefferson Airplane was "Last Flight," not "Early Flight."
[edit] Biased
Doesn't it seem that this article is really biased towards Jefferson Airplane, especially in the "musical influence" secsion. I mean, JA got a section (or 2 secsions), but the Beatles got none.
[edit] Needs editing
I think this article could improved by relocating some of the detail relating to specific albums to their own page. Also there is some duplication (i.e. references to "White Rabbit") which could be tidied up. Design 01:00, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
- Yep, the article still needs a lot of work; I'd love to see/contribute to articles about the albums. ProhibitOnions 23:52, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] RCA's many remasters
This discussion was on my talk page but as the anonymous user did not reply I think I'll move it here instead, in case anyone has anything to add, or the new user looks here instead. It refers to my removal of a paragraph with the edit summary "Rm highly POV statement about RCA CDs that is untrue; in fact, they neglected the Airplane catalog until the 1990s, poor quality rereleases, some (Modern Times) still not available": ProhibitOnions 14:25, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
I disagree with your accessment of the RCA/BMG CDs. When you mention that Modern Times has not been released on CD, you are talking about a Jefferson Starship album, not a Jefferson Airplane album. My point was about BMG continually reissuing Jefferson Airplane material. (Besides, it is my understanding that Modern Times was issed on CD in Europe.)
If RCA did not constantly re-issue this material, why do I own three different copies of the JA albums from the 1960s on CD? I have the original CDs (issued in the 1980s), the "remastered" CDs of Jefferson Airplane Takes Off and Surrealistic Pillow (issued in the 1990s) which include stereo and mono versions of every track, and the newly remastered copies (released a year or so ago) with extra "bonus tracks." That is at least two copies of each album with a third copy of the group's first two efforts. --MCB 3/6/2006
- Hello, MCB, and thanks for writing. Please consider getting yourself a username.
- I don't know if you were following this in the 1980s, but RCA did a thoroughly shoddy job of re-releasing the Airplane catalog. By 1986-88, the entire back catalog of most other major artists had been properly remastered and released by other labels, often with bonus tracks. RCA, on the other hand, had only released Surrealistic Pillow (with horrible sound) and a long series of compilations that simply repackaged The Worst Of Jefferson Airplane. 2400 Fulton St in 1987 was the first sign that they might be planning to do something with the back catalog, but it was not followed by re-releases, despite selling reasonably well.
- Anyone who wanted Crown Of Creation on CD before 1990 had to buy the Mobile Fidelity version, which sounded much better than RCA's releases but cost a lot of money. And when RCA finally did release some of the JA albums, they were made from LP masters, not the original tapes, and the mastering job was so poor that they recalled Jefferson Airplane Takes Off and After Bathing At Baxter's, something that no other major label has ever had to do. For the record, I bought these CDs and took part in the recall; for example, the tape speed at the beginning of "Two Heads" speeded up and slowed down, and the album cover on Takes Off cropped the words "Takes Off." (Allmusic refers to this obliquely here.)
- Despite this, Bark and Long John Silver were not among the albums released, and it took till the mid-1990s (I think 1994) until they were; only then were all the main Airplane albums available. By then, RCA had taken interest in JA, and begun to release the CDs again, this time paying more attention to the mastering. So those of us who already bought them had to spend the money again to get CDs that actually sounded all right. And a decade later, they did the same thing with the bonus tracks, to generate further revenue from the series. Meanwhile, other albums from the Jefferson catalog remain unreleased.
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- (Besides, it is my understanding that Modern Times was issed on CD in Europe.)
- No, it wasn't, and that still wouldn't let RCA off the hook. Modern Times is still part of the Grunt back catalog, and has never been released in the U.S. or Europe. It was only released on CD in Japan, an expensive and hard-to-find import if you are not Japanese. There are several other albums related to the Airplane that have never been released, such as Slick's Software, Wrecking Ball, and Dreams; and Kantner's Planet Earth Rock'n'Roll Orchestra. The Slick solo albums (apart from Software) were released on minor labels in Japan and are near-impossible to find. PERRO has never been released on CD. (I have a pirate CD of it; there must be some demand.) The Jefferson Starship albums that were the first to be released on CD, namely Winds Of Change and Nuclear Furniture, have never been released since, and are now worth lots of money.
- At least they finally released Manhole and Baron Von Tollbooth And The Chrome Nun in the past five years in reasonably good editions (no bonus tracks, though, and there are signs the master tapes had degraded). But the Best Of Grace Slick package from 1998 suggests that RCA/BMG had long been sitting on the master tapes, but decided to go with another compilation instead, as they had done in the 1980s with the Airplane catalog. ProhibitOnions 10:42, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Nothing's Gonna Stop Us has to get my vote for the most execrable pop shite ever made. They play it in my local supermarket - I have to run out, ears bleeding. Second on the list is "We Built This City" - 80s corporate sentiment at its worst, and a million miles from the 60s hippy ideal they started with. What were they thinking? Graham 08:57, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Change the Starship section!
The fact that there is a section on here for Starship and that Starship is mentioned in the "years active" section of the summary on the top right of page suggests that this was somehow the same band. There should perhaps be a seperate page for Starship and the Jefferson Airplane page can have a link for it. I think it confuses people and makes casual readers think that Starship has something to do with Jefferson Airplane. The only member of Starship that was ever in Jefferson Airplane was Grace, and she wasn't a founding member. The legacy of Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship has been tarnished by Starship and the format of this page only contributes to it. --Diamondthieves 22:46, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
- While the opinion of an unregistered user isnt going to carry much weight around here, I've got to agree that it should be made clear that Starship and Jefferson Starship are two entirely different bands with insanely different musical styles. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.122.93.108 (talk) 19:51, 5 February 2007 (UTC).
- I've added the various line-ups of the incarnations of Jefferson Airplane-Jefferson Starship and the successor bands to this article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 76.6.38.147 (talk) 07:01, 19 February 2007 (UTC).
[edit] Personnel section
There has to be a way to clean up the personnel section. It takes up WAY too much space.--Reaper X 04:13, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Grace Slick's competition
Yes, Grace Slick did have some sort of competition during this time. Janis Joplin was her main female competition, according to a textbook called Popular American Music: from Minstrelsy to mp3. - (cgarcia 20:33, 31 March 2007 (UTC))
