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Jefferson Starship - Blows Against the Empire (1970) (15-track Remaster 2005)
Paul Kantner's debut solo album actually was credited to "Paul Kantner/Jefferson Starship," the first use of the "Starship" billing, predating the formation of the group with that name by four years. Kantner used it, extrapolating on the name of his current band, Jefferson Airplane, to refer to Blows's science fiction concept: A bunch of left-wing hippies closely resembling his San Francisco Bay Area compatriots hijack a government-built starship and head off to re-start the human race on another planet. Kantner had presaged this post-apocalyptic colonization idea on "Wooden Ships" on the last Airplane album, Volunteers, and here he expanded it out to album length with the help of members of The Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Crosby, Stills and Nash, plus assorted others, a shifting supergroup informally known as PERRO, The Planet Earth Rock And Roll Orchestra. (Kantner later would borrow that name for a subsequent solo album.) Blows actually was a little loose as concept albums go, seeming as concerned with the arrival of Kantner and Grace Slick's baby as with the departure of the starship. Kantner employed often dense instrumentation and complex arrangements, but there were enough hooks and harmonies to keep things interesting. Blows eventually went gold, and it was even nominated for a science fiction award usually reserved for novels. William Ruhlman
As concept albums go from the classic rock era, Blows Against the Empire by Paul Kantner and his new construction Jefferson Starship -- an amalgam more than a band at the time -- put together a true curiosity piece, loosely centered around the theme of young people leaving a dead planet. With the birth of Grace Slick's and Kantner's child on the way to add the flavor of "newness" into the mix, Blows is certainly an oddity. Kantner and Slick formed the core of the band with help from Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzman and Mickey Hart (from the Grateful Dead), David Crosby and Graham Nash from CS&N, and alternating bassists Jack Casady (Jefferson Airplane) and Harvey Brooks. Kantner and Slick wrote the majority of the songs here, but folkie Rosalie Sorrels contributed "The Baby Tree." Crosby and the rest also wrote some of the tunes, making the entire thing seem like a raw, impromptu communal effort -- which, in a sense, it was. Entirely at odd angles with itself, some of the Airplane's more modal melodies haunt songs like "Mau Mau (Amerikon)," and "Hijack," while Slick, Crosby, and Kantner's "A Child Is Coming" is simply a beautiful, slightly surreal ballad, while odd, textured sounds come from the ether -- mainly courtesy of Garcia's otherworldly pedal steel. A record like this could only have come from San Francisco. It was actually nominated for a Hugo award, a prize normally reserved for literary science-fiction novels. The Legacy Edition contains four bonus tracks including an alternate of "Let's Go Together," with different lyrics, Slick's acoustic demo of "Sunrise," an acoustic demo of "Hijack" by Kantner, an elongated live version of "Starship," from the Fillmore in 1970, and a throwaway piece entitled "SFX" by Garcia and Hart. The sound has been remastered and the CD packaging contains a replica of the original booklet that accompanied the original set. While Blows eventually went gold, it's hard to surmise at this juncture whether this reissue will find an audience, because of its dated sounds, songs, and concepts Still, it is a singular if shambolic work of ambition and vision...T. Jurek
Codec: mp3
Bitrate: 320 kB/s
Size: 160 MB
Genre : Rock
2000mustangs
Tracklist:
01 Mau Mau (Amerikon) 6:37
02 The Baby Tree 1:44
03 Let's Go Together 4:23
04 A Child Is Coming 6:19
05 Sunrise 1:53
06 Hijack 8:17
07 Home 0:36
08 Have You Seen the Stars Tonight? 3:43
09 X-M 1:24
10 Starship 7:07
11 Let's Go Together prev.unreleased / Bonus / Alternate Lyrics 4:22
12 Sunrise prev. unreleased / Bonus / Grace's Acoustic Demo TK. 8 1:21
13 Hijack prev. unreleased / Bonus / Paul's Acoustic Demo Tk. 5 7:02
14 SFX prev. unreleased / Bonus 2:04
15 Starship Live / prev. unreleased / Bonus 13:04
Post je objavljen 15.06.2009. u 20:08 sati.