Crown of Creation [Bonus Tracks]

Performer: Jefferson Airplane
Artist: David Crosby
Engineer: Richie Schmitt
Producer: Al Schmitt; Bob Irwin (Reissue)
Distributor: BMG (distributor)

Notes: Jefferson Airplane: Marty Balin, Paul Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen (vocals, guitar); Grace Slick (vocals); Jack Casady (bass) Spencer Dryden (drums). Additional personnel: Gary Blackman, Charles Cockey (vocals, guitar); David Crosby (guitar); Tim Davis (congas); Bill Goodwin (talking drums); Dan Woody (bongos). Originally released on RCA Victor (4058). Includes liner notes by Jeff Tamarkin. Jefferson Airplane: Marty Balin, Paul Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen (vocals, guitar); Grace Slick (vocals); Jack Casady (bass) Spencer Dryden (drums). Additional personnel: Charles Cockey (guitar, vocals); Tim Davis (congas); Bill Goodwin (talking drums); Dan Woody (bongos); Gary Blackman (nose solo); Gene Twombly (sound effects). Originally released on RCA Victor (4058). This newly remastered 2003 deluxe edition contains bonus tracks. Jefferson Airplane: Marty Balin, Paul Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen (vocals, guitar); Grace Slick (vocals); Jack Casady (bass) Spencer Dryden (drums). Additional personnel: Gary Blackman, Charles Cockey (vocals, guitar); David Crosby (guitar); Tim Davis (congas); Bill Goodwin (talking drums); Dan Woody (bongos). Originally released on RCA Victor (4058). Includes liner notes by Jeff Tamarkin and Bill Thompson. Personnel: Timothius Davis, Dan Woody, Bill Goodwin (drums). Liner Note Authors: Jeff Tamarkin; Bill Thompson. Photographers: Hiro ; Chuck Boyd. CROWN OF CREATION is a rich and varied collection showing off the different talents of the main songwriters. Among the many memorable moments are Grace Slick's beautiful vocal on "Lather," the band's sensitive cover version of David Crosby's "Triad," and Jorma Kaukonen's stunning wah-wah solo on "If You Feel." Add to this the intense lyrics (such as the drug-themed "Greasy Heart"), Marty Balin and Paul Kantner's consistently strong vocals throughout, and Jack Casady's remarkable dexterity on bass. This is most certainly the Airplane's REVOLVER. The group's fourth album, appearing ten months following After Bathing at Baxter's, isn't the same kind of leap forward that Baxter's represented from Surrealistic Pillow. Indeed, in many ways Crown of Creation is a more stylistically conservative album. It opens with "Lather," a Grace Slick original that was one of the group's very last forays (and certainly their last prominent one) into a folk idiom. Much of what follows is a lot more based in electric rock, as well as steeped in elements of science fiction (specifically author John Wyndham's book The Chrysalids) in several places, but Crown of Creation was still deliberately more musically accessible than its predecessor, even as the playing became more bold and daring within more traditional song structures. Jack Casady by this time had developed one of the most prominent and distinctive bass sounds in American rock, as identifiable (if not quite as bracing) as John Entwistle's was with the Who, as demonstrated on "In Time," "Star Track," "Share a Little Joke," "If You Feel," (where he's practically a second lead instrument), and the title song. Jorma Kaukonen's slashing, angular guitar attack was continually surprising as his snaking lead guitar parts wended their way through "Star Track" and "Share a Little Joke." The album also reflected the shifting landscape of West Coast music with its inclusion of "Triad," a David Crosby song that Crosby's own group, the Byrds, had refused to release. Its presence (the only extant version of the song for a number of years) was a forerunner of the sound that would later be heard on Crosby's own debut solo album If I Could Only Remember My Name (on which Slick, Paul Kantner, and Casady would appear). The overall album captured the group's rapidly evolving, very heavy live sound within the confines of some fairly traditional song structures, and left ample room for Slick and Marty Balin to express themselves vocally, with Balin turning in one of his most heartfelt and moving performances on "If You Feel." "Ice Cream Phoenix" pulses with energy and "Greasy Heart" became a concert standard for the group -- the studio original of the latter is notable for Slick's most powerful vocal performance since "Somebody to Love." And the album's big finish, "The House at Pooneil Corners," seemed to fire on all cylinders, their amps cranked up to ten (maybe 11 for Casady), and Balin, Slick, and Kantner stretching out on the disjointed yet oddly compelling tune and lyrics. It didn't work 100 percent, but it made for a shattering finish to the album. Crown of Creation has been reissued on CD several times, including a Mobile Fidelity audiophile edition at the start of the '90s, but in 2003, RCA released a remastered edition with four bonus tracks from the same sessions including the mono single mix of "Share a Little Joke," the previously unreleased eight-minute "The Saga of Sydney Spacepig," Spencer Dryden's co-authored "Ribump Ba Bap Dum Dum" (a spaced-out assembly of noises, effects, and pop culture catchphrases), and the more accessible "Would You Like a Snack?," an atonal piece of musical scatology co-authored by Slick and Frank Zappa. ~ Bruce Eder & Al Campbell

Rolling Stone (9/18/03, p.77) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...Further melds the band's song-oriented and experimental sides..." Stereo Review - "...Abounding in good humor and wit - flawless..."

One of the quintessential San Francisco psychedelic bands, the Jefferson Airplane brought together interests in acoustic blues, folk, and rock music. Add political topicality and modal improvisations, and you have an inspired, mind-bending sound that could have only sprung forth from the late '60s. In their initial, most beloved phase, they were powered by the powerful dual lead vocals of Grace Slick and Marty Balin and the serpentine guitar of Jorma Kaukonen. They went through a traumatic series of personnel and name changes over the decades (they ventured into commercial AOR in the late '70s and early '80s) but their early work retains its seminal power.

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