WHITE RABBIT - THE ULTIMATE COLLECTION

Recently I realized I've never had a closer look at Jefferson Airplane, the legendary American psych rock band whose biggest hits ('White Rabbit' and 'Somebody to Love') were pretty much all I knew. This situation was best repaired by borrowing a multi-disc compilation from library. This 3-disc set is among the latest ones released, and it turned out to be a more suitable choice for my purpose than I thought in advance.

Why so? Because of the way this set represents the majority of the band's studio album material from 1966 to 1972. On the outside this set is rather cheapish and minimalistic which would have been so easily avoided. The package itself misses the album source information (and the track lengths as usual), but I did some research and found out that it proceeds chronologically in an album by album manner, even so symmetrically that discs 1 and 2 draw from two albums each, while disc 3 is almost of the same approach except for ending with three tracks from the seventh studio album. Each disc has 15 tracks, no live cuts or rarities are included. So, for the actual contents it's almost ideal for a newcomer -- a pity for the missing information though. Under the transparent disc holders you can try and read the recording years and composers for tracks, and there are no supplementary leaflets or anything like that.

Of course being unfamiliar with the original albums I cannot very deeply evaluate the track choices, but as the number of songs per album is around seven, one can assume that the compilation gives a fairly good picture of those albums. The debut Takes Off (1966) is musically dominated by guitarist Marty Balin who both wrote and sang the majority of the material. Surrealistic Pillow (1967) is by far the most celebrated and most interesting of JA's albums as the new member Grace Slick proved to be not only a phenomenal performer but also a gifted songwriter. The two big hits mentioned above were hers.

The following albums After Bathing at Baxter's (1967) and Crown of Creation (1968) represented on disc 2 seem to be more uneven to me. The group's sound turned a bit heavier, influenced by Jimi Hendrix and Cream. Slick's songs such as 'Lather' tend to be the best ones. As a side note, let it be mentioned that the blues oriented guitarist Jorma Kaukonen -- whose name is purely Finnish -- has Finnish grandparents. He and the Jefferson bassist Jack Casady formed Hot Tuna in '69/70. By the third disc here I began to feel some disappointment of this band being less about Grace Slick's vocals and songwriting than I had wished. Volunteers (1969) has two highlights, Slick's lengthy 'Hey Frederick', and 'Wooden Ships' that Paul Kantner co-wrote with David Crosby and Stephen Stills. The final albums Bark (1971) and Long John Silver (1972) are considerably less interesting, mostly devoid of any psychedelic flavour.

Despite the cheap outlooks this compilation functions very well as a representation of Jefferson Airplane's original existence (they reunited in the late 80's but that's another story). 3½ stars rounded down for the missing information.