My Life Was Meant to Fall Apart Some Day: the Jefferson Airplane Albums Poll

hey clemenza,
you're a very well-tempered and balanced person. your talents are wasted here. have a good day.

will have to go vote Volunteers slightly above Surrealistic Pillow

didn't feel like throwing in the 80's reunion album? No reason to as it won't garner a single vote

this is surrealistic pillow, obv; but I also like crown of creation. and nothing else, tbh

Bless Its Pointed Little Head may be my overall favorite and definitely represents the band as I wish I could have seen them. But Surrealistic Pillow amongst the studio albums.

didn't feel like throwing in the 80's reunion album? No reason to as it won't garner a single vote

PLANES...SENSUAL AIRCRAFT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0gnnVcOLNc

Related:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0Qz3sAO0ps

I've got a lot to say, but first let me ask you: other than some earlier "dirty blues" or sex comedy record, is "Lather" the first recorded lyric to use "came" sans double entendre to explicitly mean ejaculated?

Volunteers (which has my favorite Grace, Marty and Jorma songs) over Surrealistic Pillow (which has my favorite Kantner song).

I've got a lot to say, but first let me ask you: other than some earlier "dirty blues" or sex comedy record, is "Lather" the first recorded lyric to use "came" sans double entendre to explicitly mean ejaculated?

― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, April 1, 2026 3:03 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

So the lyric is "And Lather came foam from his tongue" and you're saying that this is explicitly about a penis emitting ejaculate?

sorry i guess i had to just dive right in

up against the wall, motherfuckers

^^

xxxp the verb "came" being used to mean "ejaculated" there.

also shout out to the Airplane esp Marty Balin for being the only real ones at Altamont wrt the Angels

I doubt anyone will vote for it but I think some of the pre-Grace stuff gets slept on a bit, e.g. I love the version of High Flyin' Bird on Early Flight

I've posted a lot over various threads about how big a fan I am and for how long, so will probably repeat myself...I loved "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love" off the radio as a kid, and a few years later, The Worst of Jefferson Airplane was one of the first half-dozen albums I bought when I re-launched my record collection in high school. Jefferson Starship was pretty big at the time, but their first incarnation seemed a big forgotten, and for as long as I've been a listener, friends just never seemed as interested in them as they were in many other famous '60s bands. They've been one of my four or five favourite bands for 50 years now.

I own everything above except for Winterland. (xpost) I love the first pre-Grace LP, and may vote for that; if not, probably Baxter's. I think all the studio albums through Volunteers are good-to-great--Crown of Creation is probably my least favourite. Early Flight has "Mexico" and "Runnin' Round This World," both up there with their greatest songs.

My Starship opinion is very conventional: really like "Miracles" and "With Your Love," think their famously horrible '80s stuff is horrible. Hot Tuna's "Sea Child," Jorma's "Genesis," Grace and Paul's "When I Was a Boy I Watched the Wolves," they're all great.

(Austin: I can quickly round up many dissenters, but appreciate that--hope all is well.)

That Get Smart clip is great! (My first thought was "They were on the show?")

agreed that Early Flight and Takes Off are great, esp if you only know the canonical five albums

Signe Anderson and Paul Kantner dying on the same day (Jan. 28, 2016) has to be this century's most incredible musical coincidence.

I really liked that theoretical 1970 Airplane album that some blogger put together, that has "Mexico" and "Have You Seen the Saucers?" and other period-appropriate songs - which is linked to in the regular JA thread. It's as strong as most actual JA albums.

yes! "Another Missile Is Flying" - great stuff

w/r/t clemenza's OP, yeah "The Worst Of" was one of the first records I really really dug in early high school, pretty sure I checked it out from the library originally

just threw on Volunteers, that stinging lead guitar, so fucking amazing, proto-television

esp on Good Shepherd, rules so much

Not in this poll, but the version of "Good Shepherd" on Sweeping Up the Spotlight rules.

Barbara otm re: "We Can Be Together"

https://i.postimg.cc/8zd1MC7n/Screenshot-20260401-142204.png

(xp)Should have said "rules as well," especially since you already used that verb.

xp pretty sure the 8-track mix is the very different quad mix? I could be wrong tho

you can find those mixes on the old JA 90's box set

Volunteers just over Pillow.

I despise "Wooden Ships," always skip that track, so Barbara not entirely OTM imo.

so the little berries made you sick? (sorry)

sick as a dog

Re Worst Of: Flight Log gets "Come Up the Years" (fantastic, indefensible), "Won't You Try/Saturday Afternoon," and "Genesis," but it misses "Embryonic Journey," "Martha," "We Can Be Together" (huge), and other key songs, still misses "Mexico," and overall I'd take the first compilation.

The thread title is probably my favourite JA lyric, from the first song on their first album. Also in the running: "Owsley and Charlie, twins of the trade/Come to the poet's room/Talking about the problems of belief/And yes, it'll be back soon." (Which is actually "Talking about the problems of the leaf..."--that's a special subset of mondegreens, a clemenza, named by me after me, when you like your misheard lyric better than the real one.)

Love how strange the juxtaposition is here: not Vietnam protestors, or hippies on the street, or Nixon or LBJ, but a couple of guys making ice cream sundaes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x70dYtTJXt4

I wanted to listen to Thirty Seconds Over Winterland before voting (it's fine, solves the issue with the latter-day studio albums being too diverse or scattered by basically being a jam record). I wonder what Deadheads make of it.

I first heard them when the 2400 Fulton Street compilation came out in 1987, read the review in Rolling Stone and found the cassette at the library. I remember the first version of the Surrealistic Pillow CD was one of the worst mastering jobs I've ever heard and really put me off that record (and I don't love the reverb of the original stereo mix even in a good version).

This is pretty easily After Bathing at Baxter's for me, despite "Spare Chaynge" being middling. It has an almost military grandiosity that I can't think of any other rock act achieving before (maybe "Shapes of Things"? "Strange Days"?) The production mishaps from the first two records had been straightened out, the bass and guitar were upfront and distorted when need be, and the three-part harmonies are perfectly startling. Kantner has taken charge and Balin has stepped back as a songwriter, possibly the only weakness, though it's hard to see where one of his ballads would slip into the running order. Right after this the gestalt would start to fall apart, though there are great songs on all the subsequent albums, but nobody's in charge. I mean Bark is a mess even by the standards of post-psychedelic messes. I said on the other thread that the slickening transition to the Starship was probably inevitable because they couldn't get any sloppier sonically than they did in the early 70s.

favorite Grace, Marty and Jorma songs...favorite Kantner song

Grace - rejoyce (or Never Argue with a German If You're Tired/European Song if I'm being perverse) - never loved White Rabbit
Marty - Today or Coming Back to Me
Jorma - Good Shepherd if it counts as his
Paul - anything of his on Baxter's except maybe "Watch Her Ride"
Skippy - My Best Friend
Spencer - A Small Package...
Joey - Pretty As You Feel

Meanwhile, I'd choose "Crown of Creation" as Jack's best bass performance. Best Papa John Creach violin performance...?

really like "Miracles" and "With Your Love,"...Hot Tuna's "Sea Child,"

Agree

Signe Anderson and Paul Kantner dying on the same day (Jan. 28, 2016) has to be this century's most incredible musical coincidence.

Actually, The Man had to eliminate them to prevent the Revolution a possible reunion could have fomented.

my favourite JA lyric

"Will the moon still hang in the sky when I die, when I die, when I'm high, when I die" or "Fügen mein glass mit mein auspucken"

voted for Crown Of Creation, specifically for side two

I still have to give Takes Off and Baxter's a relisten before voting. My 10 favourite songs, more or less:

1. "Mexico"
2. "We Should Be Together"
3. "It's No Secret" (Bless Its Pointed Little Head version)
4. "Saturday Afternoon/Won't You Try"
5. "Thunk"
6. "Come Up the Years"
7. "Runnin' Round This World"
8. "Today"
9. "Blues from an Airplane"
10. "Embryonic Journey"

If any of you hardcore Airplane freaks requires a pdf copy of Paul Kantner's truly batshit '70s/80s 530-page self-illustrated science fiction novel "PERRO," I know a guy.

Voted for the debut. There's lots I love about Baxter's, but "Spare Chaynge" goes on forever.

this is cool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUxMxwaLqg0

Better not take time for that whole Woodstock set just now, but thanks so much! It's an album too, right? Hmmm...

Voted Bless over my gateway to revelation, After, because revelations aren't everything, and after listening to a bunch of uneven live sets (first usually good, second usually tired, on several nights across several years, from Signe to Grace) released by Collector's Choice in 2010, I came back to Bless, and it sounded even better than ever, so refreshing, long after midnight. And that long-after-midnight intimate vibe get you there on time, just past After's Saturday afternoon frisbee rides, spinning though those be, and despite thee fact that it was the first album I heard from that era to match the posters and concert pix of light shows:
Takes Off was appropriately noisy hangar clamor, and with Skip Spence, yay (I was big on Moby Grape, though they weren't what I wanted Acid Rock to be), but SP, despite "White Rabbit" and "Somebody To Love," was mostly misty Bay Area folk-rock pillow, good of its kind, but not what I was looking for---nothing was, that I heard, until After, with its fully loaded (layers trying to push through the vinyl), nonstop rush of tracks, as nonstop as you could get on LP. The CD edition I first heard, released in late 90s, I think, freed the layers a bit too much, to get in the way of the great bass, at least on my headphones. Still awes overall, but not quite getting my vote.

PS: Collector's Choice, no longer releasing but still retailing, has this import listed:

Bless Its Pointed Little HeadThe album that showed the uninitiated just how astonishing this band was live is hereby reissued with performances of Today; Won’t You Try/Saturday Afternoon, and Watch Her Ride that were intended for the original release but were left off due to the time constraints of vinyl!

Yeah Bless Its Pointed Little Head is a great live album and the bonus tracks are excellent too. Surrealistic Pillow and Volunteers are still my two favorite studio albums. (Title track to the latter was actually my introduction to the band.)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Volunteers is definitely the one

I'd completely forgotten "Count on Me," a Starship hit from '78. It's not "Mexico," but I used to like it, just stumbled over it, and still do.

Yeah I like that one too. Interestingly not written by a band member but by Jesse Barish, a pal/protege of Balin’s.