Volunteers [Original recording remastered, Extra tracks]

Surrealistic Pillow is probably the album for which Jefferson Airplane will be best remembered, it's also probably one of the most perfect encapsulations of the West Coast sound/Summer of Love experience. Taken on its own it's a great album, of its time and ageing slightly disgracefully undoubtedly, but a perfect period piece nonetheless. However in conjunction with Volunteers, released just two years and three albums later, you can chart the descent from flower power, peace, love and the hope of the long hot summer of 67 to violence, Vietnam protests and the death knell of the 60s dream that was Altamont (just a month after Volunteers' release); The inner eye that gave us 'White Rabbit' and 'Somebody To Love' had turned outwards and was demanding we get 'Up against the wall M*@+$f*@#~r'.

The Airplane of 'Volunteers' were fired up, offering political commentary (the title track), voicing ecological concerns (Eskimo Blue Day) and demanding revolution (We Can Be Together). This hardening is reflected in the music, 'We Can Be Together' and 'Volunteers' are based on the same taut muscular riff with the whole band firing off hard and fast lyrics, leads and fills at various points. Jorma Kaukonen's guitar is positively acidic throughout, the lead licks on the relatively understated 'Good Shepherd' are the aural equivalent of a man struggling to reign in a hound who's just caught sight of a (White) rabbit and decided it's reeeally hungry.

Elsewhere, the whole band let fly in the instrumental coda to 'Hey Frederick' highlighting an ability to jam equal to any of their contemporaries. It's also on this latter song that Grace Slick gives a frankly spine tingling vocal performance that beautifully demonstrates her range and power to devastating effect as the song reaches its climax. 'Wooden Ships' (a cover of the Crosby, Stills & Nash song) is a haunting psychedelic epic that rises and falls like a... well... wooden ship... on stormy waters.

It's not all Sturm, Drang and sloganeering though, 'The Farm' & 'A Song For All Seasons' deliver swinging Country Blues to lighten the mood and 'Turn My Life Down' is punctuated by some funky organ stabs.

Volunteers won't be remembered as widely as Surrealistic Pillow but in many ways it's the Yang to its predecessor's Yin, as effective a summation of its time and certainly one that has aged better. The 'classic' line up fragmented after Volunteers having arguably released their masterpiece.

The Jefferson Airplane were one of the greatest rock bands of all time. They not only embodied the spirit and the sound of the hippy era more than anyone else, but also counted on a formidable group of talents, that redefined singing, harmonizing, bass playing and drumming in rock music.

They more then any other band of their era probably reflected and articulated the feelings and aspirations of their generation. It was as if their career moved in a kind of parallel trajectory to the ebbs and flows of a politically turbulent time as if they were part of documentary for their followers. In this sense, their music was largely a self-referential manifesto for a hippy generation that they themselves were very much part of.

'Volunteers' (1969), broke loose with the conventions of the song format and the pop arrangement. It is an album of both moral and musical roots which fuses together a future of hard-line politics. Although the band produced a handful of other classics, 'Volunteers' remains their supreme masterpiece.

Why does it fall to me to review this? It's the times we're living in. Bad is good. Peace is war. Occupation is democracy. Well, here's the antidote to that. A dispatch from the American anti-vietnam-war movement of the late 60s - San Francisco's Jefferson Airplane ( hits: white rabbit, somebody to love) in their revolutionary political activist mode. Except that they by-and-large aren't, and when they are it can be very tongue in cheek like on 'Volunteers' itself. 'We should be together' however is an anthem for all time for all who want to see the people run the world - hard to imagine anyone these days singing " up against the wall Brother Tucker(*)..." especially in such sweet harmonies. Often derided(especially by punks and people who have never heard them) as middle-class posers - well at least they were on the right side when it came to it, and at least they were talented(unlike the Clash for instance).
The last album to feature Marty Balin (one of their 2 outstanding singers, the other being Grace Slick, of course. " Few bands had one singer as good as Grace or Marty. NO other band had 2") and the last great album from the greatest of all rock bands; they had their share of hit singles over the years, though not as many instantly catchy songs as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who or the Doors, but when it all came together they flew higher than anyone - all the wild rock guitar energy, rarely combined with uncliched, original songs, and the best singers ever. Ok, Cream and Jimi Hendrix had good songs, and Hendrix and Jack Bruce were good singers, but Grace and Marty are GREAT singers, and there's 2 of them; and from 'Baxter's' onwards JA guitarist Jorma Kaukonen compares very favourably with Hendrix or Clapton - rock guitar has got slicker since, but it's oh so tame now. About half of this is up with their very best - standouts: We should be together, Wooden ships, Turn my Life down, Good Shepherd (guitarist Jorma sings) and Volunteers. The rest is better than almost anyone else's best, and none of it sounds at all dated - timeless rock music. This is also the first album with the new drummer Joey Covington replacing Spencer Dryden which gives it a different feel to the earlier albums - different, certainly not better or worse (no,longterm they WERE better with Spencer's subtler, hipper jazz-edged drumming, but it doesn't really show here).
A standout contribution is from legendary English session piano man Nicky Hopkins who'd come from working with the Kinks and the Small Faces and the Jeff Beck group and practically being a member of the Rolling Stones for a while to be practically a member of Jefferson Airplane for a while, playing with them at Woodstock, and then went on to be a member of Quicksilver Messenger Service, and played on the Steve Miller Band's sublime "Your Saving Grace" album - in fact, he played on about half of my top 20 fave albums - must mean something! Listen to him rock behind Jorma's storming riffs on the track 'Volunteers' (one of the great play it loud moments - it may be tongue in cheek but few tracks express the joy of life like this - have a revolution, got to revolution...yeah!), and providing a rolling sea of arpeggios to buoy up Jorma's soaring solo on 'Wooden Ships'!
Buy it. Love it. And buy '.. Baxter's' and 'Crown of Creation' too.
Oh.. . the bonus material is alright, too.