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Jefferson Airplane
Volunteers
(RCA/BMG Heritage)
First Appeared in The Music Box, October 2004, Volume 11, #10
Written by John Metzger
A mere two years after the Summer of Love, the foundation of the hippie
movement had started to show signs of wear, the Woodstock Festival
notwithstanding, and the ties that bound its media-chosen spokesband together
had begun to fray. At the same time, America was at a cultural crossroads: the
war in Vietnam, the policies of the Nixon Administration, and the deaths of both
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were not only weighing heavily upon
the nation but also were taking their toll, particularly on a generation of
teenagers and young adults who felt frustratingly ignored by those in power. It
was within this boiling cauldron that Jefferson Airplane’s fifth studio album Volunteers — the last to feature the ensemble’s classic line-up of Marty
Balin, Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady, and Spencer
Dryden — emerged. Coalescing around a bitter commentary that reflected the
fractured state of America, the members of Jefferson Airplane unleashed their
final masterpiece, which called for a simplified life of spiritual enlightenment
and railed at the corporate greed, bitter politics, and environmental
degradation that was ravaging the country.
Fueled by a raging intensity that was peppered with lysergic beauty and
gentle bucolic bliss, Volunteers remains as potent a distillation of ’60s
values as any album from the era. Indeed, unlike many of its counterparts, the
collection has lost none of its bite over the course of the past 30 years simply
because its lyrics were so finely crafted, its music so sublime. Kaukonen’s
snarling guitar spun circles around the traditional hymn Good Shepherd
turning it into a prayer of hope for communal society, which Jerry Garcia echoed
in kind with sprightly swirls of pedal steel on the egalitarian dream of The
Farm. On the march-turned-barn-burning rocker Hey Frederick, Slick
merged sexual innuendo with socio-political intimations as the band matched her
ominous tone, note for note, while on Eskimo Blue Day, she reveled in her
sharp critique of human arrogance. The best-known track from the collection,
however, was the post-apocalyptic anthem Wooden Ships, which just a few
months earlier had been featured on the debut by Crosby, Stills, and Nash.
Jefferson Airplane’s rendition was slightly different in that it offered a ray
of hope to those who heeded the band’s call to "ride the music," yet it also was
equally magnificent in the way it painted a sorrowfully haunting future for
mankind.
Recently remastered, Volunteers now boasts a sterling, crystalline
sound that highlights the multi-dimensional depths of the songs’ acid-tinged
arrangements. Augmenting the original material is a quintet of bonus tracks (Good
Shepherd, Somebody to Love, Plastic Fantastic Lover, Wooden
Ships, and Volunteers) — all of which were plucked from a pair of
November 1969 concerts at the Fillmore East — that offer definitive proof that
Jefferson Airplane had become a formidable live act, capable of soaring as high
as the Grateful Dead. A week later, the dream turned into a nightmare when the
Altamont disaster brought the turbulent decade to a violently depressing
conclusion, and in 1970, drummer Spencer Dryden departed from the group. As a
result, Volunteers became Jefferson Airplane’s final stand, an incendiary
masterwork that overflowed with the urgency of the ensemble’s heartfelt
convictions. 
Volunteers is available
from Amazon.com. To order, Click Here!
For Canadian orders, please
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For UK orders, please
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Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2004
The Music Box
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