Showing posts with label Jefferson Airplane. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jefferson Airplane. Show all posts

Friday 19 March 2021

Good Morning

The other day was one of those hideous morning when I got woken up my my alarm clock. I know that is the point of the alarm clock , but I have never figured out how to snooze it , so when the alarm goes off I know I have to get up. Although I have also observed that the alarm actually stops after a while then restarts after five minutes. I like waking up and knowing i hamaybe forty minutes before the alarm allowing me a gradual waking , but the other morning it wasn't to be.

The good thing about being woken by my alarm is that I must have had a good night's sleep, undisturbed by anything and though I had to drag myself up , I knew that I had benefitted from the rest. I would hate to be awake throughout the night and when the alarm went off having to drag a tired ad reluctant body towards the shower despite the physical protests and desire to just stay in bed.

Todays' music has been mostly Jefferson Airplane's first five albums, Edward II's "Dancing Tunes" and some Continental Quilts . Follow the links to the artist's Bandcamp areas. All worthy listens , and was particularly impressed with "Surrealistic Pillow" which contains "White Rabbit" , "You're My Best Friend" . "Somebody To Love" and I will share the wonderful acoustic "Embryonic Journey" , which I loved when I first heard it many moons ago.

Saturday 7 September 2019

Reading


Nearly finished the appendices of "The Illuminatus! Trilogy" and if anything they are madder than the main part of the book itself. Conspiracies and mysticism fantasy with maybe the odd sprinkling of truth with recognisable names and images. I has been a wild and wacky ride and hopefully this will be the last time I mention it, but probably won't be because of the links and influences it has over so much music and writing that are in my admittedly large and eclectic sphere  of stuff that attracts my attention.

I'm not sure what will be next and have a number of disparate tomes lined up including Richard Dawkins, Matt Haig and Brian Eno but they are just three of many, I could easily go for something else and at some point want to reread "Imajica"and "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" or even "Bored of the Rings" although like Spike Milligan's "Puckoon" that starts out brilliantly funny but does eventually fizzle out

So after that brief literary interlude I'll leave you on this Saturday morning with the vaguely literary connection of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" which recalls Lewis Carroll through a drug fuelled tango time haze.

Thursday 24 May 2018

The Case of The Mutilated Chessboard


Still not thirty pages into Simon Singh's "Fermat's Last Theorem" and he throws in another conceptual gem of a problem apparently first propsed by a guy called Max Black in his book "Critical Thinking" in 1946. It sounds like the title of an Agatha Christie or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novel (who incidentally met up in Sky Arts' "Urban Myths" series here). The Wikipedia entry for the Mutilated Chessboard problem is here but basically it's this

"Suppose a standard 8×8 chessboard has two diagonally opposite corners removed, leaving 62 squares. Is it possible to place 31 dominoes of size 2×1 so as to cover all of these squares?" 

Here's The Problem


... and basically it is actually impossible because each domino must cover a black and a white square and the board is left with thirty of one colour and and thirty two of the other. There are conceptual solutions but you cannot solve it in reality. Itn the book this was introduced when talking about the concept of mathematical theory against scientific theory. Science always has doubt because it is based on observation whereas mathematics demands absolute proof and until that happens it's always just a theory.

So suitable music for this, Elvis Costello's "Watching The Detectives" , something from "Chess" but I'm going for Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" as it mentions a chessnoard and it is sucjh a perfect piece of music. Enjoy your Thursday everybody.

Wednesday 13 September 2017

Crown of Creation


On the walk in I listened to "The Use Of Ashes"  by Pearls Before Swine and it was as good as I remember , slightly off kilter and dark, and the only vague complaint for me is the sixties production.
 The title comes from a line in the opening track "The Jeweller", and I was struck by the dark lyrics of the song "Rocket Man" which made me think of the illogical tenets of controlling religion.

That was half an hour of strange sixties Americana, and I followed it up with Jefferson Airplane's "Crown of Creation". The music is similar to the songs off "The Use Of Ashes" , and I almost expected Tom Rapp's voice to drift in, but I got Grace Slick and (possibly) Paul Kantner.

"Lather" is lyrically pretty awful but still listenable, and "Triad" is still excellent. The title track is excellent and the album is still enjoyable, and it came to me as one of the albums in the Rhino five disc pack, which are five albums in replica card sleeves, which when first released were around a tenner.

I found this abrasive live take from 1968 on The Smothers Brothers Show, still love this, like you would ever see this on mainstream TV these days.

Enjoy your Wednesday night everybody.

Monday 11 September 2017

Going American


I'm just loading up my phone with a lots of sixties and seventies American music. Although to me they are major players , the only ones you may have heard of are The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. Of couse that atter leads off to Paul Kantner and Grace Slick and the wonderful Hot Tuna featuring the amazing guitar of Jorma Kaukonen , who I saw at Knebworth in about '76 when The Rolling Stones headlined , 10CC had a three hour soundcheck, Todd Rundgren's Utopia went over the top with their pyramid and Lynyrd Skynyrd played one of their last gigs before we lost most of them.

I'm also loading up Tom Rapp , Pearls Before Swine and Dave Ackles , all class acts though seriously forgotten these days, but I will be pushing them over the coming weeks as I visit them on my walk to work. I don't think I've name checked so many bands and musicians in a post before, although I probably have.

I leave you with Hot Tuna's excellent cover of Buddy Holly's "It's So Easy" . Enjoy. It's time for bed for me.


Thursday 27 June 2013

Time Signatures and The Classical Popular Crossover

Well there's a mouthful , and it's sort of as a result of a chat today that for some reason wandered on to time signatures in music , originating from the fact that all formalised dance is done in 8 bars. I said that nearly every pop song is in 4/4 time , notable exceptions being Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit in Waltz time which is 3/4 , Peter Gabriel's Solsbury Hill which is in 9/8 time , Dave Brubeck's Take 5 which is in 5/4 time and Unsquare Dance which in god knows what time.

Anyway that got me on to Malcolm McLaren who had some mad ideas such as his Opera / Hip Hop album Fans and the mad collaboration with Bootsy Collins and Jeff Beck taking on Strauss Waltzes resulting in the impossibly awesome House of The Blue Danube , which should not possibly work but it does:



Oh and here's the whole of the Fans album - pure brilliance: