Jefferson Airplane – Crown Of Creation
An evening pause: Performed live 1968 on the Smothers Brothers television show. Nicely performed but it is still the typical self-righteous tripe from the baby boom generation.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
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Hi – did you ever go to see the Airplane? In the period 65 to 69 they were simply a great band to go see.
Thanks for all you work.
Bob
“Self-righteous tripe from the baby boom generation”? Really?
I’m thinking that you probably had to have been there — or at least on the periphery — of what was happening back in the 1960s to appreciate the music of that era and the deep impression on people that it made. Yep, Dylan, Hendrix, and the Stones, and greats like Richie Havens and Joan Baez, too. Or, as they say, “wasn’t that a time?”
If you don’t believe it, check out this review from Rolling Stone* https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/surrealistic-pillow-251704/ and listen to the album version of “Today,” featuring Jerry Garcia on lead guitar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NdvMT32skw Read the comments on this performance as well. “Tripe”? No, not hardly, Mr. Z.
*Sure, Rolling Stone has gone insanely woke, just like Bruce Springsteen who now regards his erstwhile working class white fan base as racists and spends most of his time sucking up to “important” people like Joe Biden and Barack Obama. (Cue “Pretty Boy Floyd” and “Pastures of Plenty” by Woody Guthrie, who to my knowledge never sold out to power and privilege like The Boss.)
For those of us who have made the “long strange trip” from Folk to Rock (with “Sweetheart of the Rodeo” and “full Moon Fever” somewhere in-between) and later on to Blues and Jazz**, all of this has been the soundtrack of our lives, and we self-righteous Boomers wouldn’t be the people — for better or ill — that we are without it.
**With interpreters like Joni Mitchell and Ricki Lee Jones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quIlkYL7BT8
Rock n’ roll’s a loser’s game
It mesmerizes and I can’t explain
The reasons for the sights and for the sounds
We went off somewhere on the way
And now I see we have to pay
The rock n’ roll circus is in town
So rock n’ roll’s a loser’s game
It mesmerizes and I can’t explain
The reasons for the sights and for the sounds
The greasepaint still sticks to my face
So what the hell, I can’t erase
The rock n ‘roll feeling from my mind
Mott the Hoople (Ian Hunter, et al.)
self-righteous tripe…..
Jefferson Airplane
“We Can Be Together”
https://youtu.be/cxA3Q96a8XE
5:50
All your private property is,
Target for your enemy.
And your enemy is
We.
We are forces of chaos and anarchy.
Everything they say we are we are.
And we are very
Proud of ourselves.
Up against the wall…..
Self-Righteous Tripe
The next ironically-named Goth band
ZimmerBob and Milt,
As a Boomer myself, I have no argument about the Rock Era, from the mid-50s through – arguably – the mid-90s, being a musical Golden Age. And there was certainly a fair amount of lyrical arrogance, pretension and self-congratulation starting in the latter half of the 60s. But, while the great mass of the consumers of the music of that era were Boomers, the people who wrote, played and sang most of it were from the previous generation – the one often, and hilariously inaccurately, dubbed “The Silent Generation.” These were people who were children during WW2 and include most successful rockers of the 50s and 60s. That includes the “troops” of the British Invasion, including the Beatles and Stones, as well as their American contemporaries. Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane, for example, was born in 1939 and is older than any of the Beatles or Stones.
One did not see a lot of actual Boomers charting hits until at least the 70s.
Y’all would like the Boomer Bible by R.F. Laiard. https://theboomerbible.com/ . His is the best overview of modern times I have ever read. It is meant to show what people really believe rather than what they say they believe. In more academic terms, it is a critique of postmodernism. But that is a gross oversimplification. The piece is more of a work of fine art than literature, and can be read on many levels. That is not to say I agree with everything he says. He does tend to lionize the “greatest generation” and gets a bit to nasty with the people he disagrees with. Yet on the whole I believe he has a good grasp of the human condition in our times. He has legendary eloquence. Check out ‘The Rationalizations of David the Dad, chapter 21:3-13″
Lets me take the long cold Lincoln fingers of a murdered son of God,
And then he grips my hand, so that I can feel my bones crack in his clasp
And he says, “It is simpler than you think,
And bigger too,
And life is not a frail thing that disappears in a puff of fear,
But far stronger than you know,
And though it knows its time,
It is never imprisoned by it,
Never done in by it against its will,
Because the weakest something is stronger than the strongest nothing,
And nothing never wins.”