Search - Jefferson Airplane :: After Bathing at Baxter's

Greatest Acid-Rock Album Ever

Compton Roberts | Hamilton, Ontario, CANADA | 07/30/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"On purely musical terms, "After Bathing At Baxter's" by Jefferson Airplane is a one-of-a-kind, acid-stoked masterpiece. Its political sensibility and humour is locked firmly in the late 1960s, and has dated badly in places for it, but as a musical conception there is really nothing like it to compare. Considering that it was the Airplane's follow-up recording to their smash-hit album "Surrealistic Pillow", you've got to admire the chutzpah it took to unleash this on a fickle youth market so soon in their career. It sounds nothing like "Surrealistic Pillow" and thus sold less well,--so much that they never tried anything like this again. Their next record, "Crown of Creation", found an artistic compromise between "Surrealistic Pillow" and "After Bathing At Baxter's". Only their LA rivals The Byrds would ever display such a blatant commercial disregard for its audience. "After Bathing At Baxter's" has moments of instrumental virtuosity (particularly bassist Jack Casady on "Watch Her Ride" and "rejoyce"), inspired harmony vocal arrangements (by Paul Kantner on "Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil", "Martha", "Won't You Try/Saturday Afternoon"), alternatingly lyrical and ferocious guitar phrasing (by Jorma Kaukonen on "Wild Thyme", "Last Wall of the Castle" and "Martha" where he sounds nothing like his much-copied contemporaries Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix or Mike Bloomfield), and stellar lead vocals (Grace Slick on "Two Heads" and "rejoyce" and Marty Balin on "Young Girl Sunday Blues"). This is an album for musicians, singers and those with musically adventurous tastes. It is as aggressively sonic as any Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, Smashing Pumpkins or Nine Inch Nails recording, especially considering that it was recorded in late 1967! The moods, tempos, rhythms and outrageous inventiveness of the arrangements puts it in a league of its own. For all serious music lovers."

Bold as Love

Gregor von Kallahann | 01/20/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Eric Clapton once opined (in the late 60s: no idea how he would feel today) that groups were either instrumentally oriented (like Cream) or vocally (like the Beach Boys). Jefferson Airplane were the exception that may or may not have proved the rule. No one could deny the vocal chops of Grace Slick and Marty Balin, both wonderful and unique singers, but the instrumental prowess of Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen was an equally distinctive and powerful element of the group's sound. To say they offered the best of both worlds is not quite accurate, though: rather they shaped a whole new one."Baxter's" was the Airplane at their boldest and most experimental. Released the same year as their commercially successful "Surrealistic Pillow" is was a radical departure from that album. "Pillow" was a tight, conventionally well produced affair, with little bits of psychedelic freak-out thrown in almost as coloration (e.g. the guitar "outro" on "Somebody to Love"). "Baxter's" was unabashed psychedelia, as others have noted below, and was all the more representative of the group's power and their true sensibility. It's hard to believe that a rock epic like "The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil" was actually released as a single--let alone the equally adventurous "Watch her Ride," the vocals of which constantly threaten to derail, but never do. Grace Slick's brooding compositions "rejoyce" and "Two Heads" were real stream-of-consciousness dazzlers --"literary", in an unself-conscious way (much less so than the obvious conceit behind "White Rabbit," say) and penetrating. Her subsequent work only occasionally displayed such flashes of true brilliance. (I say this as a fan, but as an honest one.)The only down side for me (both in '67 and today) was the diminishment in Marty Balin's contribution. Marty's folky romanticism was already losing ground after "Pillow," and he proved to be one of those artists, for whom increased public acclaim and the exhausting demands of touring, actually proved at least temporarily detrimental to his creative output. "Young Girl Sunday Blues" is a real rouser and he contributes lively vocals throughout, but his role in the group was already on the wane. On the group's subsequent releases, he would average two actual lead vocals and share others with Grace and Paul Kantner. Their vocal sparring remained a highlight of the group's later releases (especially the live album "Bless Its Pointed Little Head"). But Kantner was becoming the dominant songwriter by this point, if not the group's actual "leader."Speaking of Kantner, his writing was still very strong and not nearly as portentous as it would later become. His compositions here, including "Martha" and "Saturday Afternoon/Won't You Try" achieve a splendor here that he would have trouble matching in later years (when everything became an epic). "After Bathing at Baxter's" is experimental rock at its most successful. If it were played for today's audiences, it could be a salvo against the domniant strains.corporate rock--just as it was in '67."

Before "Rock as Art" became a cliche....

qoz | somewhere in Corn Belt Country | 01/11/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Many groups in the 60's tried to recreate the experience of an LSD-induced "trip" on record (The Stones "Her Satanic Majesties Request" and The Dead's "Anthem Of The Sun" are two examples). Only "After Bathing At Baxter's" by The Jefferson Airplane came close to suceeding. The 11 songs are grouped into 5 suites representing the different phases of an acid buzz..initial acid rush: (The Ballad Of You And Me And Pooniel), Goofy Halucinating: (Martha), Paranoia: (Rejoice), Moody Contemplation: (Spare Changyz), and Final Bringdown: (Won't You Try/ Saturday Afternoon). The concept works when the CD is played as a whole piece. (Only "Watch Her Ride" sounds like a future Starship project). All in all, besides being the last great album from the storied year-of-the-hippie (1967), it's also one of the most original rock albums made. Recomended!"