Baron von Tollbooth and The Chrome Well

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Baron von Tollbooth and The Chrome Well
Studio album by Paul Kantner , Grace Slick , David Freiberg

Publication
(s)

1973

admission

1973

Label (s) Grunt

Format (s)

LP

Genre (s)

Psychedelic rock

Title (number)

10

running time

40:22

occupation
  • Craig Chaquico: electric guitar

production

Paul Kantner, Grace Slick, David Freiberg

Studio (s)

Wally Heider Studios, San Francisco

chronology
Sunfighter
1971 		Baron von Tollbooth and The Chrome Well -

Baron von Tollbooth and The Chrome Now is a psychedelic rock album by musicians Paul Kantner , Grace Slick and David Freiberg, who were all members of Jefferson Airplane . It was released on Grunt Records in May 1973.

Emergence

The last years of Jefferson Airplane after the exit of the singer Marty Balin in 1971 were chaotic: Several drummers took turns, Jack Casady and Jorma Kaukonen became increasingly interested in their blues-rock project Hot Tuna , and Paul Kantner explained that the band actually existed only because she was legally forced to do so by her record deal . During this time Kantner released three LPs on which, in addition to Grace Slick, with whom he had a daughter since 1971, prominent musicians from the San Francisco Bay Area took part: Blows Against the Empire (1970), Sunfighter (1971) and Baron von Tollbooth and The Chrome Well (1973). On the latter record, in addition to all the remaining members of Jefferson Airplane, David Freiberg, who had previously played for Quicksilver Messenger Service , played and sang along with Jerry Garcia and Mickey Hart from the Grateful Dead , David Crosby from Crosby, Stills and Nash , Chris Ethridge from the Flying Burrito Brothers and The Pointer Sisters . Lead guitarist Craig Chaquico was not yet known, but was to become a permanent member of the follow-up project Jefferson Starship in the year.

Although Kantner is mentioned first on the cover, Slick dominates the record musically: Of the ten songs, three came from her alone, and she wrote three more together with Kantner or Freiberg. Kantner contributed two of his own pieces, Freiberg one (with lyrics by the Grateful Dead writer Robert Hunter ), another came from the friend of the band Jack Traylor.

"Baron von Tollbooth" ("Freiherr von Zollhäuschen ") and "The Chrome Nun" ("The Chrome Nun") were nicknames that David Crosby had come up with for Kantner and Slick: He was, in a sense, typically German, very straight forward and always well organized, shiny and modern, but with a strong sense of self-protection.

Track list

page 1

  1. Ballad Of The Chrome Nun (Freiberg, Slick) - 3:59
  2. Fat (Slick) - 3:13
  3. Flowers of the Night (Traylor) - 4:13
  4. Walkin ' (Kantner, Slick) - 2:31
  5. Your Mind Has Left Your Body (Kantner) - 5:45

Page 2

  1. Across the Board (Slick) - 4:34
  2. Harp Tree Lament (Freiberg, Hunter) - 3:34
  3. White Boy (Kantner) - 4:13
  4. Fishman (Slick) - 2:40
  5. Sketches of China (Kantner, Slick) - 5:13

reception

Baron von Tollbooth and The Chrome Now has been partially panned by criticism. Ingeborg Schober ranked Baron von Tollbooth and The Chrome Now among the “mammoth works” on science fiction topics, which Kantner celebrates in series with all West Coast celebrities. The reviewer for Rolling Stone sneered that Slick was actually intelligent enough to recognize Kantner's inflated rhetoric as such, but unfortunately it conforms to it: that is “the price of partnership”. The intensity with which they both display their feelings and beliefs makes them all the more "thunderingly irrelevant". The reviewer from Allmusic found the songwriting "second class", the LP did not reach the top 100 of the American music charts. Jürgen Legath in the German Sounds , on the other hand, was enthusiastic: The record is a real consolation for everyone who was not there in San Francisco in the mid-1960s : Baron von Tollbooth and The Chrome Now is “a kind of basic West Coast pop Rock Sound Disc ”.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ingeborg Schober : Jefferson Airplane . In: Rock Giants. The best special stories from MUSIK EXPRESS . Taurus Press, Hamburg 1978, p. 210 ff .; Jürgen Legath: Baron von Tollbooth & The Chrome Well . In: Sounds. Plates 66-77 . Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 1979, p. 596.
  2. ^ William Ruhlmann: Review on allmusic.com , accessed on August 25, 2018.
  3. ↑ Jeff Tamarkin: Got a Revolution! The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane . Atria Books, New York 2003, p. 262.
  4. ↑ The LP does not contain any information about the length of the songs. The information follows here at discogs.com , accessed on August 25, 2018.
  5. ^ Ingeborg Schober : Jefferson Airplane . In: Rock Giants. The best special stories from MUSIK EXPRESS . Taurus Press, Hamburg 1978, p. 212.
  6. ↑ "The intensity with which Kantner and Slick put forward their feelings and beliefs makes them that much more thunderingly irrelevant." Ben Gerson: Review in Rolling Stone , August 30, 1973, accessed August 23, 2018.
  7. ↑ Jürgen Legath: Baron von Tollbooth and the Chrome Now . In: Sounds. Plates 66-77 . Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 1979, p. 596.

Web links