After Bathing At Baxter's [Original recording remastered, Extra tracks]

it's difficult to explain, isn't it? how the best music never seems exactly of its time, even if it defines that time utterly. in fact, how the best music makes everything around it seem limited and dated, somehow a cheap copy of it. perhaps that's why i could never stand the copyists in my own musical time, way back in madchester, why to this day the stone roses stand head and shoulders above nearly every baggy wannabe, almost taunting them with their greatness.

well, what you have here is an album so good that it leaves you yearning for more, and yet leaves nothing near as good to compare to it. an album so searingly beautiful, so strikingly sharp, and so timeless that it makes you almost long for the time it came from. and just one problem with that paradox is that the late 60's in san francisco almost certainly were nowhere near as good as this record makes them sound - perhaps a thought familiar to anyone who went to spike island and remembers the disappointment behind... the trousers.

it's the ultimate in the 60's San Francisco sound, never bettered in intensity by this band, or any others. it's not the components, but sure, we should list them - complex harmonies, jangly guitars, nonsense lyrics and a gleeful weirdness. but the songs - well, you'll have to pick your own favourite: i've been listening to this album for... more years than i care to, or am strictly able to remember, and you may just find the favourites change as you do. It is almost enough to make me drop the irony, man, and talk about a musical journey. it's certainly enough to make an old cynic close his eyes and sing along like an enraptured teenager.

so. how good is this album? absurdly so: to an almost irrational degree. i sometimes wonder if the absurdity of it isn't the point. take a dip.

This along with 'Crown of Creation' is the crown of creation, the highest soaring of the human race (Yeah! I know Beethoven had a few good bits but he always gets boring after about 30 secs). This is the album that really delivered on the promise of the astonishing breakthrough singles sung by Grace Slick 'Somebody to love' and 'White Rabbit'. Their first (first with Grace Slick) album 'Surrealistic Pillow' contained these singles but was not what I'd hoped for, though well worth a listen. But this is it! From the opening feedback screech of 'Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil' you know this is something different. Another reviewer called this THE album of 'the Summer of Love'; I'm in accord with that, although I think it was a year late - '68. This is everything you could hope for from that time. Sure, Sergeant Pepper's was revolutionary in production techniques, multi-tracking, orchestration etc. but apart from 2 or 3 tracks the underlying music was pretty tame - almost music hall. Baxter's is more like it; the music is rooted in pop song but assumes an audience that doesn't expect non-stop cheery love songs; there are acoustic folk-influenced depths, and some wild electric guitar from the blues influence that was coming into pop music at the time and was the base for all the rock guitar that's come since. Guitarist Jorma Kaukonen is well on top of electric guitar by this album and is up with anyone. It's the variety of the tracks that marginally makes this my favourite JA album (only just pipping Crown of Creation even if Baxter's sounds more dated in places) ; this variety comes from JA being a democracy and having everyone contribute songs that wanted to. This democracy also extended to a band with 2 of the best singers ever (Grace and Marty) , and another good one (Paul Kantner), allowing the guitarist and merely passable singer Jorma to sing one song, and to contribute one of the many highlights - the utterly uncommercial long guitar and bass improvisation 'Spare Chaynge'(reminiscent of - probably due to some cross-fertilisation - the track 'Calvary ' from contemporary fellow San Franciso band Quicksilver Messenger Service's classic 'Happy Trails' album). Grace Slick's 2 contributions, '2 Heads' and 'Rejoyce', are on a par with the 2 hit singles 'Somebody to Love' and 'White Rabbit' - off-the-wall and stunning!
The very successful 'Surrealistic Pillow' album saw them to an extent giving the record company what they wanted; on Baxter's they do their own thing and reflect what was happening around them, like afore mentioned QMS, the Grateful Dead, Country Joe and the Fish and all the rest. Don't expect to find much in the way of instantly catchy hit singles, though. The opening track was actually their 3rd single but was not a hit - it's hard to imagine this being released as a single, but 'the Ballad of you and me and Pooneil' is one of my favourites and I would probably choose as the one track that showcases everything they can do. But Grace's 2 tracks need special mention. No jazz singer ever came close to '2 Heads' - a sort of Spanish theme reminiscent of 'White Rabbit' but even weirder - and the multi-tracked vocal freak-out that closes it is indescribable. And 'Rejoyce' - named after and occasionally quoting from James Joyce, this is in some ways the strangest track on any JA album, mainly because it doesn't sound like JA - I think only Grace, bassplayer Jack and drummer Spencer Dryden are on it plus piano (it could be Grace playing ) plus a horn arrangement - this is a strange and utterly beautiful track that sounds like Grace playing with the Jacques Loussier trio plus a horn section, but a lot better than that sounds.
And then there's Jorma's guitar solo that fades out 'Wild Thyme' - visceral! Some of it is firmly date-stamped, though - there's a corny bridge section to 'wild thyme' that detracts from it, and ' Watch her ride' and 'Won't you try/Saturday afternoon' could sound a bit twee ( an occasional feature of Paul Kantner's songwriting) depending on your mood. But what they do with the songs lifts them above that - listen to the interplay of the bass and harmonies on 'Watch her ride'; there's nothing else remotely like this. And then there's the 2 beautiful ballads that follow the opener - Marty's " Young Girl Sunday Blues", and Paul's more folky " Martha". And guitarist Jorma's song 'Last Wall of the Castle' - his singing is, frankly, an optional extra, but it's the rhythm he cooks up with drummer Spencer and bassman Jack...and then it stops...and then there's a drum roll followed by the most visceral feedback screech ever recorded and a crescendo of drums...then it restarts with Jack giving the coolest bass figure ever! So many diamonds on this!
I notice occasional references to Jefferson Airplane that say they were of their time and would have no appeal to today's generation - what rubbish, they're way ahead of anything today; but I think this might come from people who only know them from the Woodstock film where they do a very decent version of the last track on Baxter's 'Won't you try/Saturday Afternoon' - it has to be said that the words are a bit twee but apart from that it's unique. I don't listen to this as much as some tracks but when I do I'm always pleasantly surprised. If this doesn't appeal to hip-hop fans , who cares? Enough said!

After the massive commercial success of Surrealistic Pillow the Airplane were allowed immense freedom and studio time to record this follow up. The result is a wonderful record of a band at the height of it's creative power. Every time I play this album it gives the same sense of excitement as when I first bought it. I find it hard to explain just where the genius of the record lies - it is certainly there in the stunning harmonies and interplay of the vocal attack of Balin, Slick Kantner and Kaukonen. It is there in the inventive and driving rhythm section of Casady, Kantner, Dryden and Kaukonen. It is there in the distinctive razor sharp guitar of Jorma Kaukonen. Above all else it lies in the material itself which moves from the fey to the powerful to the experimental by turns. There are no better recordings from 1967 than Martha and Young Girl Sunday Blues, nothing more expressive of the love and peace movement than Saturday Afternoon/Wont you try? Moving, exhilirating, confusing and uplifting I consider it the standout work of 1967 - and what guts or blind arrogance or both to turn away from the fey folk charms of Surrealistic Pillow and its massive success to this.