DOIN’ THE TIME WARP with JEFFERSON STARSHIP

A couple of posts ago, when we were looking into names for bands – in particular, possible names to do with the wonders of space – I had one of those light bulb moments, remembering a image, a fragment of lyrics, from a song by Grace Slick and Co. that has really stuck with me over the decades since the early 1970s. It goes “…with her head hooked in(to) Andromeda.” Such a vivid space image! I always pictured an elegant Alphonse Mucha-type hippie lady with beautiful flowing hair and robes, only she’s huge, kind of like that giant galactic baby at the end of 2001- A Space Odyssey. And her head is wreathed with stars. Now that we have the Internet, I easily found the song, “Starship,” and tracked it to the album Blows Against The Empire, credited to Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship. Well, gotta have that! When the new CD arrived and I gave the whole thing a listen, I realized that I used to have that very LP. In fact, I knew it well. Every song from the first note to the last was like an old friend you'd forgotten you used to know and til you bumped into them on the street. How could I have forgotten this terrific album? Well, they say you can’t remember everything. No, wait a minute…they say you can’t have everything. No excuses; I don’t really know why this one had slipped my mind over the years, but I’m very glad to have it back on my shelf.

For the younger readers, I’ll quickly mention that Jefferson Starship is part of a long tradition is rock music. They began the careers as the sub-orbital group Jefferson Airplane, which flew from about 1965 to’73. From 1974 to’84 they were known as Jefferson Starship, then from ’84-90 as just Starship, and finally Jefferson Starship – The Next Generation. You can see the upward and outward trend. With a changing and evolving membership over the years, they have given up some incredible and memorable music. The roster includes such rock luminaries as Marty Balin, Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, Jack Casady, Jorma Kaukonen, Mickey Thomas…and many others. But sandwiched back in the middle of the Airplane years, Paul Kantner did this little gem of a concept album. Here’s what the liners notes on my CD have to say:

With most of the members of Jefferson Airplane missing in action, Paul Kantner and Grace Slick holed up in a San Francisco studio in 1970 alongside a cast of West Coast rock ‘n’ roll legends like Jerry Garcia and David Crosby to cut what became Kantner’s finest solo work. Fueled by his lifelong obsession with science fiction, Blows Against The Empire is Kantner’s rock space-opera: Young people hijack a starship and establish a brave new world in some distant galaxy, light-years away from the earthbound reality of Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War.

So, if you want to do a little space exploration of your own, I highly recommend this rich, melodic time capsule of the late 60s early 70s. And if anyone has any info on a (possible? alleged?) connection between this album title and the 1980 Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, I’d love to hear about it!

Starship http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpUPEYp-t58

“At first I was iridescent, then I became transparent, finally I was absent.”

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KIDS TODAY?

The title of this post (borrowed from the musical Bye Bye Birdie) is as relevant today as it was back in 1960. I’m sure by now you’ve all heard the news about that bunch of third graders in Georgia who hatched a plan to attack and/or kill their teacher. They collected all the implements they figured they’d require, and even delegated a post-crime clean up. These kids are obviously watching Grissom and his CSI team when they should be playing regular video games (Grand Theft Auto?) like most kids do before bed. Anyway, it got me thinking about my own grade school days. How simple and safe life was back then! We would never in a million years have thought of assaulting a teach…wait a minute…. My friends, I must confess I recall that when I was in single digits, not very much older than those Georgia students, some kids in my school did have a plot involving "knocking off" a teacher.

In my school we had a weekly class period called “Auditorium” (because that’s where it was held) which was a kind of catchall. We would see black and white “instructional” films, and every December we’d watch Shirley Temple in “Heidi.” We might also have an assembly. And for a short while the teacher taught us Spanish, until for some reason the school made her stop. To this day I still remember chanting “los dias de la semana son…” And I also remember how we plotted against this teacher.

Mrs. M. was a very dignified lady, always impeccably dressed, with bleach-blond hair, which she wore swept severely back in a popular style of the day, called a bun. That term alone was pretty funny to all us kids. But rumor had it that Mrs. M’s bun was fake. To a youngster in the 50s, the only thing funnier than a teacher with a bun was a teacher with a fake bun. A bun hairstyle is basically a ponytail that is not allowed to “sway with a wiggle.” Instead, it’s teased and smoothed into a kind of rounded poofy shape at the back of the head. Then the ends are tucked up under and secured with hairpins. It really can look a lot like a dinner roll. Mrs. M’s bun (even now, I want to giggle) was smoothed and anchored into Tipi Hedren-perfection. But…was it real? There was a lot of speculation about this bun, and there was only one way to find out. Some of the guys (egged on by the girls) came up with a plan, whereby as the rush of students jostled their way into the auditorium, someone would “accidentally” elbow Mrs. M. in the back of the head, the theory being that if her bun was indeed a fake, it would fly off, and thus expose the ruse. Every week for a while we were all on high bun alert. The whole school was electrified, thinking this might be the day! Oh the anticipation, the whispers, the craning necks!

It never happened. The guys always chickened out at the last minute. Even if Mrs. M. had fake hair, she was still a teacher, and a person to treat with some deference. I’m sure our plot just seemed like too “violent” an act. Just as well – none of the boys at that age were tall enough yet to have an elbow in accidental bun range anyway.

Today’s musical feature is an appropriate little number by The Playmates, on the charts in 1959. Let’s dedicate it to Mrs. M. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acuu6f7cm_s

Photo - this is a later model of the bun (no where near as smooth as teacher's!) It's more of a twist and tuck, similar to Carrie Fisher's double Danish style as Princess Leia in Star Wars.