Paul Kantner & Jefferson Starship "Blows Against The Empire" 1970****

Paul Kantner's passing last January went relatively unnoticed as music fans were still striving to come to terms with another loss, that of David Bowie a few days earlier. I guess that was to be expected as Kantner's heyday lasted mere years instead of decades - but for a time in the late 60's no U.S. band was more important or influential than Jefferson Airplane, the group he formed with Marty Balin and co-fronted with then-girlfriend Grace Slick. Together they became countercultural icons and came to personify the whole flower power movement. Kantner, the most political group member, was instrumental in turning their 1969 masterpiece "Volunteers" into a revolutionary hippie manifesto, something that alienated some of the other band members. "Blows Against The Empire", credited to Jefferson Starship before the group of that name even formed, is him taking his revolutionary ideas even further in the form of  a science fiction concept album, the first musical work to be nominated for SF's Hugo Award. It's basically an escapist fantasy based on the work of SF writer Robert A. Heinlein with Kantner projecting the fight between hippies and the Establishment in the future. The story culminates with the new generation hijacking a starship and leaving to start their own utopia in the stars. Opener "Mau Mau (Amerikon)" is a driving hard rocker with dual vocals by Kantner and Slick, followed by "The Baby Tree", a folky fantasy with Woody Guthrie-ish banjo. "Let's Go Together" is similar to Volunteers' "Wooden Ships", with great backing vocals by Slick and banjo by The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia. "A Child Is Coming" is a country-ish tune with great vocal harmonies by Kantner, Slick, and David Crosby. "Sunrise", composed and sung by Grace Slick, is a short but impressive showcase of her vocal prowess. "Hijack" tells of the hippies' plan to steal the Starship "...And our babes'll wander naked thru the cities of the universe/Free minds, free bodies, free dope, free music". It sounds a bit cluttered with a lot of words, acoustic guitars, pianos and intricate harmonies, but somehow it all works out. "Home" is an effects-ridden prelude to the centrepiece of the album "Have You Seen The Stars Tonite" a folk-rock ballad reminiscent of CSN & Y, guesting David Crosby from that group, as well as The Dead's Mickey Hart and Jerry Garcia. It's followed by another effects piece ("X-M") and closer "Starship", another psychedelic rocker with great vocal harmonies. Once more, members of the San Francisco hippie community  (Crosby, Nash and Quicksilver's David Freiderg) join in the chorus. Purely on musical terms, "Blows..." sounds like a softer companion to "Volunteers" and it's probably stronger than the Jefferson Airplane albums that followed it. At times it strains to accommodate enough words to propel the story, but its ambition is more than commendable. As a distillation of the hippie ideal into a musico-literary work of art, it is priceless. Remarkably, its SF storyline speaks more about the past than about the future: If anyone goes off to explore the stars it will be a conglomeration of big corporations and military, dragging the new generation with them as debt-ridden salaried slaves. Somewhere along the line Kantner's generation fucked up, though he remained the free-thinking idealist until the end.

***** for A Child Is Coming, Have You Seen The Stars Tonite

**** for Let's Go Together, Sunrise, Hijack, Starship

*** for Mau Mau (Amerikon), The Baby Tree

** for Home, XM