Volunteers
Many years ago, I had a Jefferson Airplane compilation album. It didn’t do a lot for me; I didn’t play it much, and eventually sold it. So when I spotted that Airplane’s Volunteers, released in the US in late 1969 and made it to the UK in late February 1970, I wasn’t sure about including it here. In the end, I thought I probably ought to, if only as a nod to their status at the time.
If you expect this to be the bit where I suddenly announce that I’ve seen the error of my ways and am a convert to their music, you’re wrong. Having said that, Volunteers isn’t too bad for much of its running time, and occasionally had me listening more closely than I expected, especially to what was originally side 1.
NME 21 March 1970
The reception at the time was much more positive. Rolling Stone pronounced it to be ‘excellent’ and the UK press was of a similar mind. To my ears, it sounds its 50 years, even though I liked it more than I expected. I like the vocal harmonies on the opener Up Against The Wall and I like Grace Slick’s two songs, Hey Frederick and Eskimo Blue Day, though the lyric of the latter doesn’t bear too much close attention.
Listening to ‘side 1’ I was tempted to slip across to Amazon to see if they had any cheap second-hand copies available, but I abandoned that as ‘side 2’ played through. It has it’s moments, but didn’t grab me so much.
The thing that did grab my attention throughout was Jack Casady’s bass playing; he’s the glue that holds the whole thing together, sometimes holding down the root, sometimes following little chromatic runs, sometimes heading up the dusty end of the neck to play counter-lead.
The extended and remastered cd version is on Spotify The whole album is on YouTube as a series of videos.
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