cjh@csin.UUCP (Chip Hitchcock) (08/26/83)
In response to your message of Wed Aug 24 13:59:04 1983: Normally I'd stay out of this, since my interests have been elsewhere for over a decade (when they let you sing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, being a hack bass player is even less attractive) but I think you do some of the San Francisco groups an injustice. My recollection is that "Surrealistic Pillow" is roughly contemporary with Sgt. Pepper, but the Airplane had already established a sound that was a long way from a cheap Beatles imitation. The first cut on "Blues from an Airplane" was very clearly a different kind of sound from the slick British and B-imitation (e.g., Loving Spoonful) sound that was most popular then. To use a classical analogy, the Beatles were moving towards Cage (how far can instruments be distorted/how uninstrumental an object can you get and still make "music") while the Airplane was following Schoenberg in altering the order and perception of the twelve tones in the scale. I think it's also valid to say that the Airplane's best music came when all of them were (in effect) \creating/ simultaneously---one or more of the Beatles have said that the white album's biggest defect is the songs were all John-and-the-band, Paul-and-the-band, etc., rather than 4 people working together. Once the Airplane became "Kantner's band" it started dying.