Bless Its Pointed Little Head by The
By the time I acquired this album I was a fan of
Jefferson Airplane, but not a member of the band’s generation. Jefferson Airplane
is one of a few bands that have acquired justifiably fine reputations for their
recordings (and for the Airplane I recommend Surrealistic Pillow, After Bathing
at Baxter’s, and Volunteers), but
have a reputation for their live performances that those in the know recognize as
beyond explanation. Those too young or too clueless to get it aren’t welcome to
the party and never were.
So this album has a lot to live up to. But I find
it a very mixed bag. The renditions of familiar songs (such as “3/5 of a Mile in
10 Seconds” and “Somebody to Love”) seem desultory. Whose fault is that? If the
band was actually kicking ass that night (or those nights—the album was compiled
from concerts in October and November of 1968), the production crew is responsible
for failing to capture the sound with more fidelity. (I have the same complaint
about Fleetwood Mac’s live album Shrine ’69).
But there is a lot captured in these tracks that
makes me think that the fault is more in the available technology than in the crew
or the band. By the fall of 1968 Jefferson Airplane was a first-rate band, and surely
if they wanted to record a live show they could call on the finest engineers RCA
(their label) had to offer. If RCA didn’t come through, it’s the label’s fault,
not the Airplane’s. What does survive nicely is the spirit of an Airplane concert,
such as the intro (“Clergy,” featuring dialog from King Kong).
Apart from such surrealistic pillows, a listener
in 2006 gets a treat when the Airplane perform “Rock Me
Baby,” a blues standard that by 1968 (let alone 2006) one would not expect in the
Jefferson Airplane repertoire. Here too this album reminds me of Shrine ’69: They both remind listeners today
that these bands had more on the ball than their radio hits would suggest. By now,
even “White Rabbit” (not performed on Bless
Its Pointed Little Head) is more familiar than “Rock Me Baby.” It could be that
this means that drugs are more acceptable than sex in
But this album is drenched in a deadening haze that
might be nobody’s fault but the album’s. If you listen
to this beside other live classics, such as Frampton
Comes Alive, you’ll immediately recognize the difference in production quality.
Frampton’s album was recorded in a sports stadium in