JA/Baxters fans: rehearsal tape

[Minnesota Flats]

I'm guessing that at least a few of you will find this interesting. I did:

 

[Happy Face]

Twenty+ years ago I found a 2 CD promo set called "Jefferson Airplane - Chase the Dragon" on the well-known Dynamite Studio label. It features this recording paired with "Live in Winterland, Sept 5 1967"

Many years ago, I sent Mgod an MP-3 of the rehearsal CD. He wondered if the tape had been speeded up (I think) at some points. After learning that, I never could bear to listen to it every again. Not.

Thanks for the link, Flats. It inspired me to fire it up on the big stereo tonight.

 

[Minnesota Flats]

Glad to be of service, HF, even if the material isn't new to you. I hadn't heard it previously, so it was almost like a window in time, for me.

I spent 1967-1970 living various places around the SF Bay area during my late teens. I see "Baxter's" as the pinnacle of JA's achievement as a band and the album that sums up the mood of that point in time. To this day, it represents a nostalgic marker and the anthem of a state of mind now rendered alien by time and subsequent experience. There was a sea change in the wind then: what had been characterized as "free" and "beautiful" was taking on a somewhat more sinister cast as an often hopeful, if naive and deluded time was drawing to a close The signs were already there on the streets (not to mention on the other side of the world). The "groovie" Haight was filling up with meth users and junkies. The Altamont concert and its pervasive aura of evil pretty much put an unavoidable, undeniable exclamation point on it for many (myself included). The party was over...

Hunter Thompson expressed it better than I can in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:

“It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant...​

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning...​

And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...​

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark — that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back.” ​

 

[Happy Face]

Yes, it is a remarkable glimpse behind the scenes.

Some years back it was playing in my house when some Deadheads arrived for a visit. After listening a bit, one commented "Who is this? This is great! It sounds like the Dead!"

 

[Westerly Wood]

"...what had been characterized as "free" and "beautiful" was taking on a somewhat more sinister cast as an often hopeful, if naive and deluded time was drawing to a close..."

I really like what you write here. I was thinking about this last week, cause of the Graham Nash thread. I often see Nash and many artists like him as pissed off that their ideal utopia was such a flash in the pan. They built careers off it and yet, now, must look back like nothing they dreamed could be and might have been for a short short time ever really materialized. If anything, it's gotten worse. It's only getting worse.

 

[Minnesota Flats]

If anything, it's gotten worse. It's only getting worse.

I don't see it as human nature getting worse: I think human nature has been flawed, perhaps fatally, since day one. Don’t really see any cure for that, unfortunately, but feel that maybe the next best thing is at least feeling that you have some understanding of how/why it came to be that way.

I've spent time in the presence of some pretty sociopathic individuals and have also read lots of history (largely a laundry list of cruelty and sorrow). Have also attempted to educate myself a bit about primates, proto-humans and what is known about human brain function/physiology and have based my conclusions on all that, for the most part.

Don’t want to ruffle any feathers or stray too far into metaphysics as that almost inevitably gets into hot button territory and for that reason, wouldn’t be appropriate here.

 

[Bernie]

Nice music and interesting to listen to for a while, reading comments...I liked the drummer specially, on the 1st part of the recording ; never realised he was that good before. Some parts remind me of The Doors (the lead guitar and the electric piano)... Laid back music, no big egos, and a group attitude concern... There's space dedicated to improvisation, which is what I miss the most in to-day's music I hear on radios... Natural music.

 

[Minnesota Flats]

Spencer Dryden - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Minnesota Flats]

Bernie,

In case you missed the link at the bottom of the Wiki page linked previously, here are some memorial comments about Dryden made by a few of his former JA bandmates and others:

Jefferson Airplane: A Tribute to Spencer Dryden

Plus an interview:

An Interview with Spencer Dryden: The Beat Behind Jefferson Airplane and New Riders of the Purple Sage

A 1974 interview with the late Spencer Dryden, who played drums on all the key Jefferson Airplane albums and later signed on with New Riders of the Purple Sage.

byjeffburger.com

 

[Bernie]

Thanks Minnesota Flats, that's cool too, and as you thought you are right I didn't see the link...I've read Jefferson Airplane's members tributes now, but not the rest yet...I will surely read the interview when I have some time. So thanks again...