Jefferson Airplane - After Bathing at Baxter's (1967)

Steve:

The Jefferson Airplane, at the time of the release of After Bathing at Baxter's in December 1967, had already made it big both in the underground and on the pop charts. Their newest recruit, vocalist/songwriter Grace Slick, was a force of nature whose commanding voice, beauty and charisma brought them two huge hits that year that still cast a large shadow today ("Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit"). The remainder of their breakthrough second album Surrealistic Pillow (released February 1967) easily matched those two hits in quality, making it one of the definitive rock albums of its era.  

Thus emboldened, the band began to expand its ambitions, both as individuals and as a group, creating an abundance of new ideas contributed by each player. Most notably, guitarist Paul Kantner became the dominant songwriter on this album, effectively becoming the band leader from this point forward. Lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen also came into his own as a singer/songwriter at this time, bringing the band's singer/songwriter total to four. The charismatic Slick continued to write songs of a serious nature, and Marty Balin, whose sweet tenor voice and strong pop songwriting had dominated the first two albums (notwithstanding Slick's seismic influence on the second), became just one of many contributors on After Bathing at Baxter's. How would all this surplus of talent find space on the album?

This being the end of 1967, the band took the strategy to let the ideas flow freely and see what happens; musical freedom and pushing boundaries were at the forefront of many rock bands' minds in these post-Sgt Pepper days. Hit singles were probably the furthest thing from their minds. I get the sense that they felt they were in a good position to influence the future of music, and restraint was for the timid. All the band members were given free rein to experiment as they pleased.  

Highlights include Kantner's anthemic opener, "The Ballad of You Me and Pooneil" and folksy ballad "Martha", Slick's "Two Heads", Balin's "Young Girl Sunday Blues", and drummer Spencer Dryden's funny sound-collage interlude, "A Small Package of Value Will Come to You, Shortly." A whole nine minutes on side two is devoted to a free form acid jam called "Spare Chaynge" by the rhythm section (Kaukonen, Dryden, and bassist Jack Casady) that mainly serves to show that Jack Casady is an absolute monster on the bass.  

Tempting as it is to individually praise every song, this really is an album that works best as a unit - a band portfolio that features each band member fairly equally without highlighting any particular member or song (no obvious singles here). To add to the democratic vibe, most of the vocals are sung in two- or three-part harmony, with Balin and Slick both soaring above the mix with their formidable pipes. In some live recordings I've heard from this period and after, they almost sound like they're trying to out-sing each other, which makes for an intense if somewhat unnerving listening experience. The instrumentalists also crank up the intensity here, playing their hearts out, sounding more like a live band than they did on the concise, restrained Surrealistic Pillow. The band benefited immensely from this kind of collective/competitive spirit, for a couple of years anyway.

My personal experience with After Bathing at Baxter's does not go back very far. Beginning in my college years, the first Jefferson Airplane I heard was the CD anthology 2400 Fulton Street, which featured several tracks from Baxter's, and it was years before I heard the songs in the context of the album proper. Now that I have the album, I much prefer hearing these songs in this sequence.

Dan:

I loved the singles-oriented version of the Airplane back when they were recorded. I wasn't too sure what to make of After Bathing at Baxter's when I bought it sometime in the early 70s. But I stayed with it, and it became a favorite. It felt improvised in places, which appealed to my jazz inclinations. 

It also contains one of the most shocking songs to come out of the 1960s: Grace Slick's "Rejoyce." It's not easy to hear all the lyrics, much less digest them, and the sleeve notes did not include the text of songs played. "Rejoyce" is a bitter condemnation of an older generation of Americans and appears as the second song of the suite: "Hymn to an Older Generation." Keep in mind that the U.S. was embroiled in war in Vietnam and soldiers were drafted, against their wills, to fight and die. Thus, the lyric: "War's good business so give your son, but I'd rather have my country die for me" was an understandably radical response. 

Although the Airplane returned to more conventional albums with Crown of Creation (1968) and Volunteers (1969), much of their outrage continued. These were artists reflecting the evil realities they saw - voices in a cultural revolution that would not be silenced or contained.