The Spirit Fills the Room

The Spirit Fills the Room-
Spirit of '67 at Whitaker

by Stonefeather Grubbs

Three classic San Francisco psychedelic era bands will coming to Whitaker Center on Saturday, July 7: Iron Butterfly, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Jefferson Starship, along with the Summer Of Love Liquid Light Show. The act took the stage at the Keswick Theatre near Philly on June 22, where Big Brother and the Holding Company were also on the bill.

The show opened with Iron Butterfly, a band best known for their 1968 album In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (first ever to be designated platinum), featuring the 17 minute jam-style composition it was named for. Original lead singer/songwriter/organist Doug Ingle left the band in 1970; keyboards are now in the able hands of the fun and energetic Larry Rust, but rendered in a more rocking style than the classically-oriented Ingle. Rather than rehashing the Ingle compositions, newer songs predominate, with the sole exception of their one huge hit. Ron Bushy’s drum solo is a little less vigorous and a bit more subtly sophisticated than the studio version you’ll remember (and which, if you’re old enough, you memorized beat by beat), The young powerhouse has grown into an elder shaman of the sticks.

Big Brother and the Holding Company is mostly thought of as Janis Joplin’s first (and best) backup band, particularly for their 1968 album Cheap Thrills. Due to the overshadowing effect of the amazing Joplin vocals, the importance of the band’s arrangements and compositions tends to be forgotten. Taking the part of lead singer these days is Lisa Mills of Mississippi, whose strong voice does as well as one can imagine anyone could to fill those unfillable shoes. Her performance on Sam Andrews’ arrangement of the Gershwins’ “Summertime” was particularly good: though broadly following the path laid out by Joplin, she makes the song her own. More than half the numbers were newer songs, like their 1998 release “Do What You Love,” advice the band seems to be following. Though not slated for Whitaker show, they’d be worth seeing if they get around this way again.

The Quicksilver lineup has been pretty fluid, as their name suggests: in the ’60s and early ’70s due to various marijuana imprisonments, now due to the deaths of a number of the original members. Lead guitarist John Cipollina died in 1989, lead vocalist Dino Valenti and keyboardist Nicky Hopkins in 1994. The present lineup includes original guitarist Gary Duncan, Michael Lewis on keyboards, and drummer Greg Errico. Original bassist (and keyboardist) David Freiberg was unable to make this show, so the low tones came from Jim Guyett, who played bass for 12 years with John Lee Hooker, the news of whose death had been announced the night before.

In addition to a boogie jam in Hooker’s honor, and aside from one only of their many heyday underground hits (the protest anthem “What About Me”), Quicksilver’s set consisted entirely of newer material, generally incorporating long jams mixing the classic psychedelic sound with jazz. Said Duncan, “People are always saying, ‘You didn’t play this, you didn’t play that,’ but that was 30 years ago, this is now.” If you want to see how some of the masters of psychedelic music have grown and evolved into the present, you’ll find this the best part of the show.

During the height of Jefferson Airplane’s career in 1970, rhythm guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Paul Kantner, assisted by many of the top San Francisco rock musicians, released his political-and-science-fiction themed Blows Against The Empire, as being by an expanded “Jefferson Starship.” After Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Cassidy left Airplane to form Hot Tuna, Kantner, Grace Slick and Marty Balin resurrected the name for their new band, which enjoyed spectacular success in the mid-to-late ’70s and well into the ’80s. Balin dropped out to pursue a solo career in 1979, and in 1984 Kantner, too, left the band, which continued a few years longer under the abbreviated name of Starship.

In the early ’90s, Kantner formed a new Jefferson Starship with Marty Balin and others, including a young singer named Diana Mangano of Erie, PA. While they’ve continued to perform and record excellent new music in the Jeffersonian style, they have mostly stuck to the Airplane and Empire material for this tour. Songs included the hits “Somebody To Love” and “White Rabbit,” as well as more obscure favorites of Airplane/Starship connoisseurs, such as “The Ballad Of You & Me & Pooneil” and the sci-fi love song “Have You seen The Stars Tonight?” while Balin’s revolutionary anthem “Volunteers” ended the show. A full-band arrangement of Jorma Kaukonen’s solo accoustic masterpiece “Embryonic Journey” from Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow was an unexpected treat. Mangano’s voice is now every bit as strong as Grace Slick’s ever was, and it’s high time the female vocal part was fully restored on “Miracles.” (The lyric seems to have been largely shifted over to Balin’s part, understandably, back before they had a regular female lead singer that was up to the dynamic vocal interplay that made this song the Starship’s biggest hit. It would also help conserve Balin’s voice, which was showing a little strain during his ’80s solo hit “Hearts” that followed.)
So what’s the point, you might ask? Isn’t this all just a bunch of futile nostalgia from the middle-aged remnant of a failed youth revolt of middle class boomers? Or of academic interest merely to a handful of musicologists devoted to the study of the more arcane elements of rock history? The Keswick staff seemed to think so, as they endeavored to keep people from dancing in the aisles, or even at their seats. The audience did not agree.