Jefferson Airplane - Volunteers

Jefferson Airplane Volunteers on numbered, limited-edition Hybrid SACD

Seminal 1969 album steeped in revolution, vitality and protest!

Awash in controversy and loaded with revolutionary protest, Jefferson Airplane's Volunteers stands as the last album made by the group's classic lineup and brings insurgent closure to the peace-and-love era. The potent 1969 record confronts war, politics, greed, and environmental ruin in head-on fashion matched by few peers. It features charged playing by guest luminaries such as Jerry Garcia, Stephen Stills, David Crosby, and Nicky Hopkins. Volunteers also benefits from being one of the first 16-track recordings. And now, the historic set can be heard in the fidelity the artists and producers intended.

You'll immediately hear finer pacing, enhanced information retrieval, and superior transparency. Soundstages stretch far and extend back, with instrumental separation giving all of the musicians their own place in the mix. As a result, subtle albeit important details — Hopkins' rollicking piano, guitarist Norma Kaukonen's biting tones, Garcia's deft pedal-steel work — emerge in three-dimensional fashion amidst a musical canvas that manages to be both edgy and produced, raw and revealing. Jefferson Airplane has never sounded more vital.

Much had changed in America — and within Jefferson Airplane — in just the two short years since the release of the San Francisco collective's breakthrough smash Surrealistic Pillow. The countercultural movement had darkened, government involvement in Vietnam escalated, and regard for human rights fallen. Retreating from the excessive experimentalism that graced its prior two LPs, the Airplane responded to the social circumstances with defiant, assured, and cohesive songs shot through with driving psychedelia, crunchy acid-rock, and rustic country. From start to finish, it's the aural equivalent of a demonstration march.

Having drawn attention for the inclusion of profanities in multiple tunes, the Top 20 LP also ran up against the nonprofit Volunteers of America after the sextet wanted to title the record Volunteers of Amerika in order to express further dissatisfaction with the country. While Grace Slick and Co. gave into the charity's desires to switch the name, there's nothing compromising about Volunteers. Kaukonen's leads cut searing swaths through urgent fare like "Eskimo Blue Day" and anthemic "We Can Be Together," which boldly speaks out against convention and in favor of chaos and anarchy.

Indeed, in organizing a pseudo summit of many of the counterculture's leading musical figures to participate on Volunteers, the Airplane treats the album as an orchestrated stance against the establishment. Stills and Crosby assist in rocking the boat on a turbulent cover of "Wooden Ships" lined with Slick and Marty Balin's overlapping lead vocals. Hopkins gooses the call-to-arms title track with frisky boogie-woogie lines. Garcia lends "The Farm" a suitable rustic vibe, and on his final appearance with the Airplane, drummer Spencer Dryden helms the pastoral sing-a-long "A Song for All Seasons."

 

1. We Can Be Together

2. Good Shepherd

3. The Farm

4. Hey Frederick

5. Turn My Life Down

6. Wooden Ships

7. Eskimo Blue Day

8. A Song for All Seasons

9. Meadowlands

10. Volunteers

Customer Reviews (5.00 Stars) 1 person(s) rated this product.

If you don't do vinyl, this is the version to get! posted on 10/15/2016 5 Stars Reviewer: Hal Broome I no longer have a turntable, but still have my original album, and in the following years have added the CD MoFI Gold, and even the Japanese SACD, which had a bit of harshness to it, but was still my "go to" version. I'm currently playing this new release for the first time, duly fast-forwarding to the highlights -- "Good Shepherd," of course, then "Hey Frederic," where Grace's voice cuts like a knife, and my fave, "Wooden Ships," that puts CSN&Y's version in second place. With old RCA 16-track tech, the sound will always be a "should have," but I'm satisfied! Odd that bits are more clear, while others fade (like a tambourine fade-out on "Good Shepherd" that seems muted). However, this is now my "go to" version. If I buy another version, it will be the SACD multi-channel: please, MoFI, allow this to happen! There is a quad mix of this, so why not?

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