Customer Reviews

Spitfire

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I consider myself lucky to have a copy of this cd, even if mine is a Japanese remaster, which I bought only for the price. If you are a serious Jefferson Starship fan, you will consider this shrinkwrapped original Grunt recording a gemstone in your collection, especially because it's out of circulation. If you're not a fan, then this may be meaningless to you, unless you also happen to be an investor.

Anyway, let's get to the music: Track 1, "Cruisin'" [5:27] A real 70's thing from Marty Balin, with an ocassional "beep, beep" from Grace, and don't forget the "Whoohoo!" in "Cruisin' in my automobile."

Track 2, "Dance With The Dragon" [4:59] This is a song about victory over the most overwhelming adversaries and love being the most powerful of forces in the universe, a real love child anthem.

Track 3, "Hot Water" [3:17] The love connection continues with Grace Slick in true form.

Track 4, "St. Charles" [6:38] This may not be a new song to a first listener to this album as it also appeared in the widely circulated Jefferson Starship "Gold" cd. You really need to look at the album art to appreciate what's going on here. There's this ultra-cool looking chick with a cigarette holder in her hand. From the wisp of smoke from her holder develops a dragon with a crystal ball in one taloned hand. What you're really hearing is what's deep inside you, not just sound waves coming from a stereo speaker.

Track 5, "Song to the Sun Ozymandias" [1:39] Unfortunately the Japanese remaster didn't include lyrics to this track. I'll take a guess. I think this is the point at which the order of the tracks on the Japanese remaster separate from the order of the tracks on the Grunt recording, which is what is used by the CDDB for programs such as Windows Media Player and Music Match Juke Box automatically get their track information.

Track 6, "Don't Let It Rain" [5:34] This song is a celebration of children and how it is they and they alone who keep us from being alone. Kind of heavy.

Track, 7, "With Your Love" [3:34] This is a classic Marty Balin crooning love balad that was circulated on "Gold," so you may already be familiar with it. If you're not familiar with it, it was songs like this that kept the bread on the Jefferson Starship table.

Track 8, "Switchblade" [3:58] Grace is back with some more goddamned love, this time to solace the lonely heart, quite in the same way as "Love Too Good" from the "Earth" cd.

Track 9, "Big City" [3:20] This is all about big city girls and how they know how to do a man's heart like nobody else. "Lord I like to try um again."

Track 10, "Love Lovely Love" [3:29] This finale asks you to give all that you have for love, even if it hurts, even if it feels like love is going to destroy you.

Happy Listening!

Wildcat Bill

For those people who tend to view Airplane/Starship history as one long ongoing rivalry between Grace Slick and Marty Balin, the mid-70s might be considered a turning point. Marty was not only back in the fold (a fold that he had been instrumental in founding) but HE was the one now turning into a hit factory. If interloper Slick had captured the public imagination and supplied the Airplane's earliest chart toppers ("Somebody To Love" and "White Rabbit," as if they needed any mentionign), Marty's romantic balladeering and more AOR sensibility seemed now poised to steer the group into the not-so-psychedelic soft rock of the Seventies.

And for Balin fans, that was a kind of poetic justice.

But even though it had long been a critical trope of sorts to blame any or all Airplane shortcomings on Balin's reduced, post-PILLOW role, his ascendency in the revived Starship brought about its own set of criticisms--namely that Balin was turning into a neo-lounge singer of the sappiest variety. "Miracles" was fine, they said, if overlong. But it led to a string of copycat singles beginning with this successor album's "With Your Love" (and would continue with "Count On Me" and his solo "Hearts"). There were jokes about how Marty always really wanted to be a soul balladeer but he was really turning into a Schlockmeister plain and simple.

You can't win for losing in life, or especially, in the music biz. As a fan of the ENTIRE group, I have always been willing to concede that, yes, the singles were getting a bit formulaic, but then again, they were just singles after all. If you wanted to know what the group was up to as a whole, or even what Marty Balin was up to within the context of the entire oeuvre, you still had to listen to the albums.

Interestingly enough, Marty has both this album's opening AND closing tracks, and neither is "Miracles II." "Cruisin'" is a bit funkier than your average JA/JS fare, but it would be unfair to say that Balin is coming off as a soulman wannabe. He and the band are just having fun. The track is a bit of a goof, a soul-inflected "car song" with a bit of bounce and a bit of wit (it offhandedly quotes the Beatles' "Drive My Car"). "Love Lovely Love," the album's closer, is a lushly romantic number, but more uptempo and urban than the hit ballads he was accused of starting to churn out even then.

For her part, Grace was continuing a trend begun on RED OCTOPUS. She was writing her own brand of oblique, quirky love songs that were tight, taut and brimming with irony. Songs with titles like "Switchblade" and "Hot Water" may address, in their own quirky way, matters of the heart, but no one is going confuse them with "You Light Up My Life" (even though Grace actually claimed to be a FAN of that last tune--and by gum, I can't think of anyone else's take on it that I'd rather hear). Grace is as steely and as cryptic as ever, but it's pretty clear that "Switchblade" is addressing the topic of romantic rivalry while the snakey, sensuous "Hot Water" seems to tie in romantic love, caritas and agape in a striking, sweeping way. As per usual with Grace, you can't exactly write a precis on what she's saying. And of course, you'd scarcely want to.

Grace's two self-penned originals are as strong as her typical two or three song contribution to any previous Airplane album, and that's saying something. In fact, she is being as true to HERSELF here as Marty is to HIMSELF. It was around this time that Balin gave his (somewhat notorious) interview to CRAWDADDY, in which one of the least offensive things he said was that the Starship was basically a "variety show." Well, yeah, but what variety!

Now,of course, in any discussion of the group, there is always the Paul Kantner question to consider. Speaking of magazine interviews, there had been one a few years before in which Grace admitted to Lester Bangs that, yes, on the one hand, she understood how people could find Kanter to be bombastic and overbearing--but she also understood what he was trying to do. I could relate to that comment, even though objectively, there probably IS no excuse for overbearing bombast. Still there was always something, I dunno, almost touching about Kantner's attempts to say something more than the typical rock song, to inspire and evoke a sense of community that was scarcely existent by 1976 (or, for that matter, by 1969).

And what I liked best about SPITFIRE was that the Paul Kantner songs really AREN'T all that heavyhanded. For one thing, he co-wrote most of them with either Grace or Marty or both (with a little contribution from the then five-year old China Wing Kantner to boot). I was a fan, but I would often hold my breath a bit upon hearing a new Kantner song. Would it cross the line into pomposity and grandiosity. Well, the delightful thing about his efforts on this album was that they really did not. "Dance With the Dragon" continues the bounce that Marty's "Cruisin'" set up, and if it seems to be addressing more exotic concerns (with that Oriental thing going on), it doesn't portentously declaim the difference between, say, Chinese and Western tears (a la earlier tracks like "Ride the Tiger").

And "St. Charles" and "Song To the Sun: Oxymandias/Don't Let It Rain" (which while true group efforts have all the hallmarks of Kanter epics) actually do achieve something of the grandeur Paul Kantner was always trying for. I'll always remember a time I started to doze slightly while listening to "St. Charles" and finding it a near-perfect dream song.

So, yeah, in the grand old Airplane tradition, everybody gets to do a bit of their thing on SPITFIRE, and while some complain that that even includes drummer John Barbata's toss-off "Big City," I don't even mind that one. It's a bit of an echo to (the original Side One's) "Cruisin'" and reminds us that all was not solemn and arty in the Airplane/Starship camp. And while some find SPITFIRE a lesser work than OCTOPUS, I can't help but wonder if they were already looking back nostalgically at "Miracles." This is a more song-oriented album (remember that OCTOPUS had not one, but two just OK instrumentals), and the singers are all in good form. For those of us, who see the best Airplane/Starship work as a synergy (and NOT as a rivalry), SPITFIRE was maybe their last great collaboration.

Take some catchy guitar riffs, add some upbeat tempos, throw in a couple of pleasing ballads, a mystical song or two,a stunning album cover, put it all together and you have Jefferson Starship's Spitfire.

A slight change of pace from the Jefferson Airplane days, but just as worthy, this record has nine tracks and really not a clunker in the lot. Some people rag on John Barbata's Big City but I think it boogies along quite nicely if not quite up to the standard of some of the better songs on here.

St. Charles though is the track that captivates my listening ear with the mystical guitar and synthesizer tones not to mention the vocal harmonies. It perfectly concludes a nearly flawless first side of this record. Yes, I have the vinyl. With You Love is a beautiful ballad with nice keyboard touches on the second side. Truthfully I prefer this tune to the slightly overlong Miracles from the Red Octopus release.

In conclusion, I'll tell you that this dream of record is a good one.

After the enormous success both critically and commercially of Jefferson Starship's Red Octopus (1975), Grace Slick and Paul Kantner's extended family recorded Spitfire, a record that deepens and extends many of the musical and literary themes inaugurated on Red Octopus. Over the course of the first four Jefferson Starship albums, distinctive subplots emerge of collaboration, along with the development of peronal voices. Most characteristic of the band (and taken to new heights of expressivity on 1969's Volunteers) is the band's signature song-type: the longish, communally written and performed, densely-layered, and often politically-inflected anthem ("Wooden Ships," "When the Earth Moves Again," "Twighlight Double Leader") and Spitfire contains the last, great examples of the type--"Dance with the Dragon," the band's take on the 1976 Bicentennial, a barrage of bland patriotism hyped-up to try to drive off the twin spectres of Vietnam and Watergate; "St. Charles;" and "Don't Let It Rain." The latter also shows the technical mastery and inborn musicality of the band functioning at its peak. Slick and Pete Sears continued their string of stunning collaborations ("Hyperdrive," "Play On Love") with the brilliantly-worded and tautly-delivered "Hot Water," and Slick continued her own series of flawless love-songs (Red Octopus' "Ai Garimsasu" being the finest) with the darkly candid "Switchblade," and Marty Balin, who seems more and more like Neil Sedaka, contributed lightweight and impersonal balladeering ("With Your Love") entirely lacking the erotic earnestness of "Miracles." The laughable songs by his protegé Jesse Barash and the truly wretched let-the-drummer-sing-one "Big City" show that the inclusive model, another counter-culture hallmark of the Jefferson family, has its drawbacks. Jefferson Starship's next album, Earth (1978), like the last Jefferson Airplane album Long John Silver (1972), shows great tension and exhaustion, but this time anesthesized by late '70s lush production. The vibrant and confident Spitfire, in some ways superior to its multi-platinum predecessor, takes its place therefore as the final installment in an extraordinary and surprisingly short (1968-1976) episode in Aerican musical history.

1976's Spitfire was Jefferson Starship's follow-up to the number one album, Red Octopus. While it is not as tight as that release, it is still filled with great tracks. "With Your Love" has a breezy feel that features beautiful vocals by Marty Balin & Grace Slick and a warm instrumentation. It peaked at number 12, but deserved top ten status. "St. Charles" is a song in the vein of "Miracles" and was the only other single from the album. It only managed to get to number 64. The album contains a couple of Paul Kanter songs, "Dance With The Dragon" and "Song To The Sun" that have a political bent similar to their Airplane days, but most of the album is made up of love songs like "Cruisin'", "Switchblade" and "Love Lovely Love". Drummer John Barbata has a rare lead vocal on the workman like rocker "Big City". Spitfire peaked at number three in the summer of '76.

"Spitfire" was unfairly overlooked in its time, coming on the heels the mega-selling "Red Octopus". In retrospect, it is a stronger, more unified effort and as close to a group sound as Jefferson Starship ever came. There are a few clunkers ("Big City" is awful) and some unfocussed moments, but the strongest cuts are better than anything recorded by the latter-day Airplane. "St. Charles", a true group effort, is gorgeously sung and played and is as close as the Starship ever came to sounding like the Airplane. This has all of the trademarks of the original band and only makes the rest of the album pale in comparison. "Don't Let It Rain", by Paul Kantner, is also in this mold. Grace Slick's "Hot Water" and "Switchblade" are solid enough, but typically inscrutable lyrics make them less radio-friendly than her "Red Octopus" cuts. Balin's singing here is superb, although the songs are generally pedestrian. "Cruisin'" is a fun, very 1970s rocker, and "With Your Love" and "Love Lovely Love" are made-to-order power ballads sung with his usual soul and conviction. A very enjoyable effort that has many pleasures for Airplane fans and a much cleaner CD sound than the original, muddy vinyl mix. Give it a listen, but don't look for anything new or original.

You know, people try telling me Jefferson Starship's music is badly dated just because they were making a somewhat commercial sound that's stuck in the 70's. But who cares about that when there's excellent songwriting, beautiful vocals, and GREAT guitar playing (underrated guitar playing on ALL early Jefferson Starship albums).

The guitarist jams whenever he wants, usually behind the vocal melodies, and I happen to think that's a GREAT thing because his guitar playing builds emotion simultaneously with the emotions of the lead singer- one of Jeffership Starship's trademarks and the reason I LOVE this band as much as I do. As far as I know, no other band has THIS exact sound and style, even during the 70's.

Jefferson Starship were really good at combining vocals and guitar playing and making them BOTH extremely emotional at the same time. It's an interesting way of writing music really. The band feels like they are trying hard to connect the listener to the music they're making, and you can't help but tear up a little bit.

Anyway, the songs are great on Spitfire. The underrated "Cruisin" and emotional attachment of "Love Lovely Love", and the hit songs such as "St. Charles" and the BRILLIANT "With Your Love". You can't go wrong with this album. It's just as good as Red Octopus and Dragon Fly.

After the mega-hit status of "Red Octopus" this 1976 release may have seemed like a disappointment to some. Marty Balin has a sweet ballad, "With Your Love," which did chart as a single but was no "Miracles." And it smelled of formula. Suddenly Marty was the voice behind the hit singles, and those singles were AOR all the way. But to tell the truth, it didn't bother this listener all that much. Balin was and remains one of the most underrated and overlooked singers in rock. He could put the ballads over with aplomb and then turn around and have a ball with a uptempo fun track like "Cruisin'." And his vocal on the album's closer "Love Lovely Love" is among his best ever.

Grace Slick was in fine form on this album too. In some ways, letting Marty be the focal point seemed to take some of the pressure off her. Her vocals on "Hot Water" and "Switchblade" are strong and confidant, with lots of patented swoops and hollers. Her lyrics remain as obscure as ever, but that's what you gotta love about Grace. Hers is a unique voice (both as singer and as writer) in popular music.

And Kantner actually achieves some of the epic scope he always tried for in the 70s. "St Charles," "Don't Let It Rain," "Dance with the Dragon"--alternately dreamy and anthemic. The great thing about the Airplane/Starship at their peak was the synergy. It's here on this album (CD) in spades.

there are some great tunes on this release, St. Charles, Song to the Sun, With Your Love, Love, Lovely Love. Overall a very stong release that seems to have missed a lot of the attention it deserves.

if you think that a good album has:

nice lyrics
good playing
excellent cover art
wonderful players
something to say


then Spitfire is MUST to buy!

It may sound a little bit out of date but the attitude of players is so great that it wont matter