Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow (1967)

I saw you

I saw you

Comin’ back to me

The Jefferson Airplane were the first of the San Francisco-area psychedelic bands to have a real impact on the musical world.  

Their second album, Surrealistic Pillow, was “a groundbreaking piece of folk-rock-based psychedelia, and it hit – literally – like a shot heard round the world,” according to reviewer Bruce Eder of Allmusic.com.  

The only better American album from that era is the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, and both records share many of the same virtues.   The production of Surrealistic Pillow is sophisticated without being slick.  There’s none of the self-indulgent excess that mars many albums of this era.  

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I didn’t buy Surrealistic Pillow at a store – I got it from a record club.  

More record clubs of that era offered a heapin’ helpin’ of free albums, but required you to buy a certain number of additional records – e.g., “Get 12 records free when you agree to buy six more in the next year,” etc.

The ad I responded to offered two records for 99 cents, and there were no strings attached.

What was the other record I got?  I’m glad you asked!  It was Hugo Montenegro’s Music From The Man From U.N.C.L.E. album.  (I don't think this was the actual music played during the television show, which was only the coolest show ever – it consisted of a cover version of the main “Man From U.N.C.L.E.” theme plus other instrumentals in the spirit of the show.)

I remember playing that album one Saturday night when my parents were out to dinner with friends.  I was pretending to be Napoleon Solo, jumping from one hiding place to another – peeking around the corner, and then diving behind the sofa, firing my imaginary Walther P-38 pistol at my pursuers as the music played.  (I was at least 15 years old at the time – maybe even 16 – so this is a little embarrassing to admit.) 

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Surrealistic Pillow didn’t inspire me to run around my house in fantasy secret-agent mode.  In fact, it often put me to sleep.

I remember sitting in the big, overstuffed La-Z-Boy in our living room and drifting off to sleep (despite it being the middle of the day) while Surrealistic Pillow played on our Magnavox console stereo.

It was such a relaxing record to listen to – not boring, just relaxing.  Classical music often had the same effect on me.  I rarely made it through a Mozart or Beethoven symphony without nodding off.  (I wish I could just let myself fall asleep at an orchestra concert.  It's such a nice feeling to go to sleep while listening to music.)

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The Jefferson Airplane was put together by 23-year-old singer Marty Balin to be the house band at The Matrix, a rock-folk-blues club he opened in San Francisco in 1965.  (When I lived in San Francisco in the early 1980s, my apartment was four blocks west and eight blocks south of where The Matrix was located, but it had closed long before.)  Steppenwolf, Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Doors, and the Velvet Underground were among the groups that recorded live albums there.

So was the Great Society, an early acid-rock band that featured a lead singer named Grace Slick.  Signe Anderson was an original female singer of the Jefferson Airplane, but left the group after giving birth to a daughter.  Slick left the Great Society – whose members included her husband and his brother – because she felt that the Jefferson Airplane was run in a much more professional manner.  

Grace Slick

Slick contributed two songs to Surrealistic Pillow:  “Somebody to Love” (which was written by her brother-in-law and had been recorded previously by the Great Society) and “White Rabbit.”  Both were top-ten hit singles.

But Surrealistic Pillow really belongs to Marty Balin.  He wrote or co-wrote five of its songs, including what I think are the four best songs on the record.  We think of Grace Slick as the Jefferson Airplane's lead vocalist because she sang on the two hit singles from Surrealistic Pillow, but Balin was the singer on the lion's share of the songs on that album.

By the way, the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia played guitar on several songs on Surrealistic Pillow, including “Comin’ Back to Me,” which Balin said he wrote in a single setting after smoking some topnotch marijuana given to him by famed blues singer Paul Butterfield.  (That’s Grace Slick playing recorder on the song.)

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Influenced by the success of “heavier” musicians like Jimi Hendrix and Cream, the group changed musical direction after Surrealistic Pillow.  

Paul Kantner, who had a child with Grace Slick, became the band's primary songwriter.  (The couple eventually formed Jefferson Starship.) 

Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady, who had gotten their starts as blues musicians, launched Hot Tuna. 

Marty Balin eventually became the Airplane's odd man out.  He had been a close friend of Janis Joplin, and abstained from drugs and alcohol after her death, which further isolated him from his bandmates.  He left Jefferson Airplane in 1971.

The records that the Airplane released after Surrealistic Pillow contain some very good songs, but the group sort of jumped the shark after its release.  Nothing Jefferson Airplane did later compares to that glorious album. 

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Click here to listen to Surrealistic Pillow.

Click here to buy the 2003 reissue of that album, which contains several bonus tracks that were not on the original LP.  

Beach Boys – Pet Sounds (1966)

They say I got brains

But they ain’t doin’ me no good

I wish they could

No regular reader of 2 or 3 lines will be surprised to find Pet Sounds on my list of the greatest albums released during the first half of rock’s “Golden Decade.”

If you spend an evening sampling the vast body of writing about Pet Sounds, you’ll learn a lot of interesting things.  

For example, you’ll learn that Paul McCartney and John Lennon were great admirers of Pet Sounds, but Pete Townshend and Mick Jagger were not.  (That makes sense when you compare Beach Boys records to the music put out by the Beatles, Who, and Stones.)

You’ll also learn that the Beach Boys’ record company was not enthusiastic about the album, which sold only moderately well in the U.S. and failed to garner even a single Grammy nomination.  (The Beach Boys were not big stars in the UK prior to the release of Pet Sounds, but it did very well in the UK.  The album reached #2 on the English album charts – the Sound of Music soundtrack kept Pet Sounds out of the top spot – and stayed in the top ten for six months.)

But you won’t learn why Pet Sounds is the greatest album in history by reading.  

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All the words in the world aren’t adequate to explain why Pet Sounds is so great.  The only way to get its greatness is to listen to it.  And not just once or twice.

But as great as Pet Sounds is, it could have been even greater.

The original plan was to include Brian Wilson’s magnum opus, “Good Vibrations,” on Pet Sounds.  But when it was time to finalize the album’s tracks, Wilson wasn’t satisfied with “Good Vibrations.”  

Wilson removed it from the album and replaced it with “Sloop John B.”  Al Jardine thought that decision was “a big mistake,” and Bruce Johnston believed that Pet Sounds would have sold much better if it had included “Good Vibrations,” which became the first Beach Boys to top both the U.S. and UK singles charts when it was finally released in October 1966 – seven months after the first of the roughly 20 recording sessions that were required to produce a recording that Wilson was happy with.

The “Good Vibrations” sessions utilized the talents of about 30 musicians, and consumed some 90 hours of tape – all that to produce a record that was just over three and a half minutes long.  (By contrast, the seven-minute-long “MacArthur Park” was recorded the following year in only two takes.)

But was it ever worth it.  “Good Vibrations” is like no other record ever made.  One might call it the Pet Sounds of hit singles.

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I first listened to Pet Sounds in 1966, when I was a shy and angsty fourteen-year-old.  

The last time I listened to it was more than fifty years later, when Brian Wilson performed the album in its entirety at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.  (I have not listened to Pet Sounds since I attended that performance because I didn’t see how that experience could be topped.) 

Pet Sounds is first and foremost an album – not a collection of individual songs, which is what most albums are.  

It’s often referred to as a concept album, but it’s not like Tommy, or The Wall, or other concept albums – it doesn’t tell a story, or have a specific theme.

Here’s what Brian Wilson had to say about Pet Sounds as a concept album:

If you take the Pet Sounds album as a collection of art pieces, each designed to stand alone, yet which belong together, you'll see what I was aiming at. . . . It wasn't really a song concept album, or lyrically a concept album; it was really a production concept album.

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Wilson has put his finger on something essential here.  A few years ago, I stopped writing about songs and started writing about records.  

A great song doesn’t always make a great record.  To make a great record, you need a great song – but you also need great production.

Pet Sounds has a number of exceptional songs.  Wilson was a genius, but he was also an innocent – his compositions for Pet Sounds were complex and subtle, but appealed to the heart as much as to the head.  (John Cale of the Velvet Underground said that Pet Sounds was “adult and childlike at the same time,” and he was right.)

But what sets Pet Sounds apart from all other albums is Wilson’s exceptional production.  He threw in everything but the kitchen sink to give that record its unique sound – not only strings and horns, but also a theremin, a bicycle bell, a five-gallon water-dispensing jug, and barking dogs.  

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So . . . after telling you that words weren’t adequate to explain the greatness of Pet Sounds, what did I do?  I wrote a lot of words attempting to explain the greatness of Pet Sounds.  

Sorry about that, boys and girls – sometimes I just can’t help myself.

Click here to listen to Pet Sounds.

Click here to buy Pet Sounds from Amazon.

Grateful Dead – "China Cat Sunflower" (1969)

Crying Leonardo words

From out a silk trombone

I rang a silent bell

It’s a very special time of the year at 2 or 3 lines.

January is gone, and February is here . . . which means that it’s time for 28 Posts in 28 Days™.  Happy happy joy joy!

This year, 28 Posts in 28 Days™ will feature the best albums released during the first half of rock music’s “Golden Decade” – which began the year I entered 7th grade and ended the year I graduate from college.

Next year, 28 Posts in 28 Days™ will focus on the best albums from my college years – 1970 through 1974.

As for the next 28 Posts in 28 Days™ – we’re talking February 2028 – I might feature albums from my law school years.  Assuming I’m still alive in February 2028, of course.  (I have a condition called “I’m old,” and they tell me there’s no cure for it.)

[Note: for those of you who are new to the 2 or 3 lines party, I should explain what 28 Posts in 28 Days™ is.  I used to do 28 themed posts in February – one each day.  That got to be too hard, so I cut back to doing 12 themed posts in February.  However, I liked the 28 Posts in 28 Days™ name so I kept it.  If you took the name too literally, that’s on you!]  

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You younger 2 or 3 lines readers may wonder what the hell I’m talking about when I talk about a record album – also known as an LP.

An LP is a big round black thing that plays music.  Here’s a picture of one:

Many years ago, it wasn’t unusual for people to put an album on a turntable and listen to it straight through.  

Actually, they’d listen to the first side straight through, then turn the album over and listen to the second side.

Today, people construct playlists that usually contain songs by many different recording artists.  In essence, you create your own personalized albums rather than listening to the particular group of songs an artist has chosen to put on an album.  

If you want to repeat or skip a song on your playlist, it’s easy to do so.  But when all we had were LPs, repeating or skipping songs required some effort – you had to walk over to your record player, pick up the tone arm, and attempt to drop it on the blank groove that preceded the track you wanted to hear.  It was much easier just to listen to an album in its entirety.

Unfortunately, most albums were a mixture of good and bad tracks.  If you were lucky, the good tracks outnumbered the bad ones – but all too often, the reverse was true.  I hate to think how many albums I bought because they had two or three great songs that I had heard on the radio – only to discover that the rest of the album was filler.

While the albums I’m featuring in this year’s 28 Posts in 28 Days aren’t perfect, they’re pretty darn close to it.  Sure, you might find a stinker here or there, but the bulk of the albums consists of grade A stuff.   

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 SPOILER ALERT: there will no Beatles album in this year’s 28 Posts in 28 Days.

That will shock some of you.  But I make no apology for that.

The Beatles recorded a lot of great music.  But their albums contain a lot of clunkers.  None of them are as perfect as the ten albums I’ve chosen to feature this month.

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One other group that didn’t make the cut is the Grateful Dead.

Not every Grateful Dead song sucks.  But a lot of them do – including “China Cat Sunflower,” which I stumbled across recently on a Sirius/XM channel.

Robert Hunter said he wrote the song’s lyrics while “I had a cat sitting on my belly, and was in a rather hypersensitive state, and I followed this cat out to – I believe it was Neptune – and there were rainbows across Neptune, and cats marching across the rainbow.  This cat took me in all these cat places; there’s some essence of that in the song.”

Author Eric Wybenga said “China Cat Sunflower” has “one of the very few rock-and-roll lyrics (including Dylan’s) that has as much impact on the page as it does sung, if not more. . . . ‘It’s about acid’ does it less justice than the observation that it's about seeing, sensing, and making connections in a sensuous world.  Anyone out there remember what it was like to be three years old?”

I don’t remember what it was like to be three years old, but I hope it was nothing like the lyrics to “China Cat Sunflower”:

Look for a while at the china cat sunflower

Proud walking jingle in the midnight sun

Copperdome bodhi drip a silver kimono

Like a crazy quilt star gown through a dream night wind

Krazy Kat peeking through a lace bandanna

Like a one-eyed cheshire, like a diamond-eye jack

A leaf of all colors plays a golden-string fiddle

To a double-e waterfall over my back

Comic book colors on a violin river crying Leonardo

Words from out a silk trombone

I rang a silent bell, beneath a shower of pearls

In the eagle-winged palace of the Queen Chinee

Click here to listen to “China Cat Sunflower.”

Click here to buy the version of “China Cat Sunflower” that was released on the Grateful Dead’s 1969 studio album, Aoxomoxoa.