Customer Reviews

Volunteers

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Yeah, so maybe the JA's politics are dated; So are the Clash's, so are Ted Nugent's and in 20 years, Ani DiFranco's will be, too. It happens! What isn't dated is the music, especially the two songs by Grace Slick. "Eskimo Blue Day" and "Hey Frederick" are the Airplane at their most majestic and Slick at her most primal, with bassist Jack Casady especially standing out like a stone leviathan. Elsewhere, Jorma Kaukaunen's take on the traditional "Good Shepard" foreshadows his later Hot Tuna and solo work, Marty Balin briefly surfaces from his dissaffection with the band to help propel "Turn My Life Down" along and drummer Spencer Dryden probably has the best summation of how the wind was blowing for Sixties rock in his "Song For All Seasons." If you let the political rants of a bygone era prevent you from listening to this vibrant, strong album, hey, your loss!

It is too bad that full text of the defiant lyrics which was included in the original album was replaced in the CD with a "we were only kidding" commentary. The album represents a powerful artistic statement for the need to share all in common and end the greed that could destroy our world through war and environmental disaster (still!). "We Should be Together" calls for solidarity and tells capitalist oligarches: "All your private property is target for your enemy and your enemy is we." Slick's songs (as in many other albums) provide a tour de force of sharp, surrealistic imagery of alienation worthy of Lorca (especially "Hey Fredrick"). American escapism (always running off to the next frontier, the next market, or the outer reaches of suburban sprawl) is treated as myth ("Good Shepard") and its hippy utopian variant of the time is satirized ("the Farm"). The impossibility of escape from a nuclear holocaust ("Wooden Ships") leaves no alternative to revolution, which is both joyous ("Volunteers") and deadly serious ("Meadowlands", the theme of the Soviet Army). The only seriously false note is in "Wooden Ships", in which the response to the possible victims of a nuclear catastrophe is to say "All we can do is echo your anguished cry. We are leaving, you don't need us." Nonetheless, an impressive statement, all in all. The music is magnificent, inextricably tied to the lyrics and fully conveying the extraordinary energy and vocal and instrumental and creativity the group brought to their live performances at the time. Listening again to the entire album for the first time in decades, I'm struck how distinctive their music really was and how well it's held up. Finally, did the "revolution" "fail"? Not entirely, but in any case, keep your eyes open and be ready to lend a hand, it will all come around again, if in somewhat different form. Or, as someone said about Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, it seems like sometimes the "losers" write the best songs. There is plenty of good music which isn't about heroism, rebellion or the trials and struggles of the downtrodden, but I, for one, don't want to lose the good music that is about those things.

Even in '69 there were critics who were skeptical about this album and where the Airplane was headed. Rich rock stars, it was argued, couldn't possibly revolutionaries (although they could still be "outlaws in the eyes of America," I suppose). That kind of criticism reflected the growing paranoia among those elements of society we used to call the "counterculture." If you think 90s style "political correctness" is a drag, you should have lived through the "more revolutionary than thou" late 60s.

Sensitive to the criticism, the Airplane answered that they were just r'n'r journalists--reporting the news and reflecting the culture around them. And to make sure everyone knew not to take them all that seriously, they put a life size peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the inside cover gatefold.

Well, after 30 years the debate seems a bit nitpicky. Musically, Volunteers holds up very well indeed, and that's really all that matters. The politically themed anthems (the opener "We Can Be Together," "Wooden Ships" and the closer title track) catch fire vocally and instrumentally. Grace and Marty engage in their patented vocal dueling (as opposed to simple "duetting") for what was to be the last time until Marty rejoined the Starship in the mid-70s. Kantner had yet to succumb to extreme heavy-handedness. And Kaukonen and Casady rocked mightily. By this record, their producers had finally figured out how to record the band, so that Casady's bass wasn't buried.

What may have been considered lesser tracks (Jorma's version of the traditional "Good Shepherd" and Marty's "Turn My Life Down") are now among my favorites. These songs and Grace's two exercises in obscurantism ("Hey Frederick" and "Eskimo Blue Day") are anything but overtly political. The Airplane was never a one-note act; they were always all over the map musically and lyrically. Once you realize that it becomes easy to just "go ride the music."

The first indication that the dark-hued bubble that the Airplane had themselves and us in for the past two releases had finally broken, though there was still a healthy, many-hued core of righteous alienation to us all to draw from. It was very good to see some daybreak after a long, dark, night. The passion's still just as prevalent, from it the new plant has finally sprouted. What will it grow into? This CD is a stunning, enraptured look at what might have been, had everyone of us had been able to live as passionately, as expressively as this music called out for.

"We Can Be Together" Probably the closest thing to a genuine counterculture 'hymn' that hippie evangelism ever produced, the genuineness of this paean cannot be overlooked then or now.

"Good Shepherd" An old folksong, dredged from the bottom a couple of years before by the Lyman Family (an outgrowth of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band of the Cambridge and Greenwich Village folk scene) on their landmark cult album 'American Avatar - Love Comes Rolling Down'. Superimposed upon all that had come before in the Airplane's oeuvre, the music and lyrics speak volumes.

"The Farm" It's no secret why this song and "A Song For All Seasons" both sound a whole lot like the style of the Grateful Dead of the same time period - Jerry Garcia played all the steel guitar licks on both songs. I was bemused reading that one reviewer actually wrote that he thought this was a satire on the back-to-nature communes of the era. Hardly . . . the Airplane were trying to bring all sorts of folks together with their music, not heap abuse on people.

"Hey Frederick" - a reprise of the styles of the previous two albums, but Grace Slick's singing shows a softer side, for the first time intoning a mellower sound even though the lyrics are anything but. About halfway through, the Airplane stretch out as the song escalates into a lengthy jam band motif. Here the jagged motorcycle imagery here works to near perfection.

"Turn My Life Down" is a mellow but impassioned Balin-sung song replete with David Crosby's singing organ licks, which make this sound more like a Crosby, Stills and Nash tune than one would ever expect before hearing it. But at heart it recapitulates some songs from back in '66 (on pre-Slick 'Jefferson Airplane Takes Off') and prefigures others from 6-8 years later in the band's later incarnation of Jefferson Starship. It also provides a needed rest/punctuation from the general intensity of this section of the CD.

"Wooden Ships" JA offered their terrific version of Crosby's song. This is one amazing bit of musical and poetic storytelling, with almost biblical pretenses (e.g. Noah's Ark 1000 times over), more than adequately backed up by a solid and flawless performance by all parties. No bad blips on the screen here.

"Eskimo Blue Day" is one of their best songs ever. The melodic palette is particularly exquisite, and, along with the little changes of meter (an Airplane 'thing' on numerous of their songs albums 3-5) is altogether gripping. The lyrics rely heavily on surrealist images and quick choppy changes of level/focus, and fit in wonderfully with the music. The funny thing is the music somewhat hides them - it's sometimes hard to hear where the text is going or where it's gone. But this seems to add to the song's power/affect.

"A Song for All Seasons" One of the other reviewers really trashed this one. But once again . . . we were in the early glory days of country rock. Creedence Clearwater Revival, Buffalo Springfield, Crosby Stills and Nash, the Grateful Dead, the Youngbloods, Taj Mahal, the Band, and Bob Dylan were just some of the big guns devoting all or most of their energies to this genre, at this time in history. And numerous other bands were giving occasional nods in this direction. Once again, the flavoring(s) from Garcia's pedal steel guitar is a complete glory.

"Meadowlands" The Airplane's requisite psychedelic lollipop, a quick little bookmark to punctuate the proceedings: 'Baxters' had "A Small Package of Value", 'Crown' had "Chushingura". Each fits its way into the psychic climate of the given musical moment in a incisively expressive fashion.

"Volunteers" Probably their only bad-sounding song since before Grace had joined the band (just before "Surrealistic Pillow"). Of course in '69-'70 most of us didn't feel that way about it. Here they were sounding tough and hard, siding with revolution overtly; before they'd been busy probing their psyches and changing/elevating their consciousness, dragging us along with them as willing participants. On the album as a whole, they sought to pull and keep the troops together - the back-to-the-earth and the revolution folks, plus everyone else who wanted to "go ride the music" - there were LEGIONS of hippies and counter-culturalists aboard the metaphorical 'wooden ships'.

It takes all kinds - you can be sure there was a healthy assortment of fraternity/sorority brothers and sisters who were heavily and passionately involved - don't ever doubt that '69 was a divine, pan-cultural time. "We're the Volunteers of America!" Paul Revere and the Raiders gone a couple of steps beyond? The Salvation Army? Jokey, yes, but also metaphorically telling.

All in all, this album/CD made quite a statement; if you weren't alive then, try feeling it for what it is, and imagine what it had to do with getting us where we are today. And you just "go ride the music!"

This was the magical swan song for the classic (as opposed to original) lineup of the Jefferson Airplane---Marty Balin would soon leave to go solo, and the others would soldier on with new members. In one sense, the timing of his departure was perfect. Volunteers is the most political of the Airplane's albums--political enough to include the anthem of the Soviet army (Meadowlands) as one of the songs. (In an enclosure to the new edition, they "retract" many of the sentiments of this album.) Also, this album features one of the all-time great Airplane performances, "Wooden Ships," an "anguished cry" of a song that sums up the stance of both a year and a generation perfectly. CSN's "original" version (in many ways they are two different songs) sounds overly sunny and almost simplistic by comparison. Guitarist Jorma Kaukonen plays one of his very best solos here. He also cowrites the gentle "Turn My Life Down" with Marty and sings the biblical "Good Shepard" to great effect. Grace, as always, strikes a wonderfully personal note for relationships with "Hey Frederick" and waxes profound with "Eskimo Blue Day". Lyrically, "A Song for All Seasons" is not bad, but the band ruins it's effectiveness by giving it to road manager Bill Laudner to sing. Still, he's a longtime Airplane employee and, I'm sure, a first-rate road manager. "Volunteers" is Marty's rabble-rousing closer, with excellent piano work by Nicky Hopkins. (The revolution would, literally, strike too close to home for Marty at the Altamont concert later that year, when he was knocked unconscious by rogue Hell's Angels.) In many ways, Volunteers is a great album, ranked just a shade below all-time classics Surrealistic Pillow, After Bathing at Baxters, and Crown of Creation. Play this album, and see how its philosophy (inspired more by the sci-fi classic Stranger in a Strange Land than by true politics) holds up today for you.

This is definitely my favourite Airplane album by far. It's the final in a line of great albums, from Surrealistic Pillow and After Bathing at Baxter's to Crown of Creation. After this, things just weren't the same. 'We can be together' gets a lot of attention, but it's the lesser-known songs that I like most here; Marty Balin's vocal on 'Turn my life down' is just great, it's a perfect perky sixties morning tune to contrast with the darker material elsewhere. This was his last truly great vocal, the horrors of 'Miracles' were just around the corner!

Of course Grace Slick shines as usual, her 'Hey Frederik' conjures up images of Vietnam without being cliched - '...one more pair of loving eyes look down on you...' I also love 'Eskimo Blue Day' which also tackles environmentalism without resorting to treacly lyrics. By the way the live version on the Woodstock soundtrack is even better (even if she was so off her head from the night before's excesses)

Jorma Kaukonen shines here too, his version of 'Good Shepherd' is something he was born for, and of course Jack Casady's bass pumps and grinds throughout the album.

The centrepiece is 'Wooden Ships' which showcases the whole band's talents in one. The whole buildup and the way Marty, Grace and Paul's vocals twist around each other over Jorma's awesome guitar and Jack's bass with Spencer Dryden's great drumming underneath -is just brilliant, I think CSN & Y could never match this version.

I even like Spencer Dryden's 'A song for all seasons' - it's meant to be tongue-in-cheek but it kind of chronicles the band's breakup (the following year Dryden and Balin were gone).

The whole war theme is completed with the spacy 'Meadowlands' fading into the title track.

I don't know why people hate this album, the venom should be saved for the patchy 'Bark' which followed.

People for some reason always want to talk this album to death - the politics...the failed revolution...the end of the Sixties...where the Airplane had been and where it wouldn't be going...I was 5 years old when this came out (1969) and don't remember the 60's at all (heck, a lot of the 80's I don't remember, but that's another story), so forget the treatises and lectures ...just GO RIDE THE MUSIC... Grace Slick has rarely sounded better and "Eskimo Blue Day", "Hey Fredrick" and "Wooden Ships" are classics...

When I was a kid I used to spend all my allowance on records, candy and comic books. I bought this one when i was about 10 years old. It's the only record that "scared" my dad who came in to make sure I wasn't letting the Revolution go to my little pointed head. Most impressive. Still good music. Good memories. Best cuts: Volunteers, The Farm, Hey Fredrik, Eskimo Blue Day, Good Shepard.

The Jefferson Airplane's social conscience took flight on VOLUNTEERS. The opening song, "We Can Be Together", and the closing title track bookend one another, and another highlight of this album is the anti-nuclear-war "Wooden Ships." This album is essential listening for anyone who cares about the future of our country, or the world in general.

I'm so glad to have re-discovered this gem. It showcases Jefferson Airplane as the powerhouse band they were. With four fine songwriters, and as many vocalists, they could pull off a variety of material all driven by the hot guitar/bass duo of Kaukonen and Casady (later, and now, Hot Tuna).

The song, "Volunteers," is as stirring today as ever--the rhythm guitar, and Marty Balin's vocal both crackling with energy.

"We Can Be Together" has that unique meld of Slick and Kantner voices; and, with the underlying guitars is an archetype of the Airplane sound. It's also a precursor to the one outstanding (and one only) "Starship" album, "Blows Against the Empire" that followed this one. "Good Shepherd" is my favorite Jorma Kaukonen song/arrangement--such a nice melody, contrasted with his jagged-edge guitar. "Turn My Life Down" is another fine Kaukonen song with Balin vocal highlighted by a jam with Kaukonen on lead and Stephen Stills on Hammond organ.

"Wooden Ships" is good performance here although it pales by comparison with the Crosby, Stills and Nash version. "A Song for all Seasons" is the one bad song and shouldn't have been included; but it doesn't mar the rest of a very strong album. "Meadowlands" is a brief gothic-sounding organ piece which leads perfectly into the crunching guitar chords of "Volunteers."