Blows Against the Empire
| Blows Against the Empire | ||||
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| Studio album by Paul Kantner | ||||
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Publication |
November 1970 |
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admission |
1970 |
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| Label (s) | RCA Records | |||
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Format (s) |
LP |
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Title (number) |
10 |
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running time |
41:41 |
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| occupation |
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Paul Kantner |
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Studio (s) |
Wally Heider Studios, Pacific High Recordings, San Francisco |
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Blows Against the Empire is the first album by Paul Kantner , the singer, guitarist and co-founder of the American psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane . The concept album was released in November 1970. The name Jefferson Starship was used here for the first time on the front and inside the folding cover for the musicians. From 1974 onwards, Jefferson Airplane officially operated under this name.
Emergence
1970 was a time of personnel change for Jefferson Airplane. Drummer Spencer Dryden left the band and Marty Balin was soon to follow. Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady devoted themselves to blues rock with Hot Tuna , Jefferson Airplane released no album this year, apart from the best-of album The Worst of Jefferson Airplane . Together with his then partner Grace Slick and musicians Jefferson Airplanes as well as other groups from the San Francisco Bay Area such as Grateful Dead , Crosby, Stills and Nash and Quicksilver Messenger Service , Paul Kantner recorded the album in the Pacific High Recordings and in Wally Heider's studio.
concept
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Chart positions Explanation of the data |
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The album tells of a group of anti-establishment ( Hey Dick, Whatever you think of us is totally irrelevant (Dick, nicknamed Richard Nixons , 1970 President of the USA)) members of the counterculture. They kidnap a spaceship, convert it for their own purposes, and fly into space with 7000 people on board around 1990 in search of a planet for a new beginning for humanity. The private situation of Grace Slick and Paul Kantner is also interwoven: During the recording, Grace Slick was pregnant with China and she said: I won't carry the government's children
1983 appeared with the album Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra a sequel.
Style and reception
Musically, the spectrum ranges from the lullaby The Baby Tree, accompanied only by a banjo , through sound collages ( Home and XM ) to the mix of country and psychedelic rock with polyphonic vocals known from the Jefferson Airplane album Volunteers . William Ruhlmann from allmusic emphasizes the dense instrumentation and the complex arrangements with enough hooklines and harmonies to keep the whole thing interesting and gave the album four out of five possible stars.
Robert Christgau only gave the album a medium rating, criticized Kantner's vocals and melodies and said: it [the Starship] doesn't even take off.
The album was nominated for the Hugo Science Fiction Prize in 1971 and remained clipping until the hip-hop trio was nominated by Splendor & Misery . in 2017 the last music album to receive this honor.
Track list
page 1
- Mau Mau (Amerikon) ( Paul Kantner , Grace Slick , Joey Covington ) - 6:33
- The Baby Tree ( Rosalie Sorrels ) - 1:42
- Let's Go Together (Kantner) - 4:11
- A Child Is Coming (Kantner, Slick David Crosby ) - 6:15
Page 2
- Sunrise (Slick) - 1:54
- Hijack (Kantner, Slick, Marty Balin , Gary Blackman ) - 8:18
- Home (Kantner, Phil Sawyer, Graham Nash ) - 0:37
- Have You Seen the Stars Tonite (Kantner, Crosby) - 3:42
- XM (Kantner, Sawyer, Jerry García , Mickey Hart ) - 1:22
- Starship (Kantner, Slick, Balin, Blackman) - 7:07
The 2005 CD release includes acoustic demos of Sunrise and Hijack , Let's Go Together with alternate lyrics, and a live recording of Starship from Fillmore West on September 14, 1970.
occupation
- Harvey Brooks : Bass at Starship
- Jack Casady : Bass for A Child Is Coming and Sunrise
- Joey Covington : drums and vocals with Mau Mau , congas with Hijack
- David Crosby ; Vocals and guitar with A Child Is Coming and Have You Seen the Stars Tonite , background vocals with Starship
- David Freiberg : Backing vocals on Starship
- Jerry García : Banjo with Let's Go Together pedal steel guitar , with Have You Seen the Stars Tonite lead guitar with Starship sound effects and vocals with XM
- Mickey Hart : Percussion at Have You Seen the Stars Tonite , sound effects and vocals at XM
- Bill Kreutzmann : Drums at Let's Go Together
- Peter Kaukonen : lead guitar at Mau Mau
- Graham Nash : Congas on Hijack , backing vocals on Starship
- Phil Sawyer : Sound effects on Home and XM
Individual evidence
- ↑ Blows Against the Empire in the US charts on Allmusic (English)
- ↑ a b text quotation from the supplement to the LP
- ↑ Review by allmusic by Allmusic (English)
- ^ Robert Christgau on Blows Against the Empire
- ↑ Award winners and nominees 1971 ( Memento of the original from May 14, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Jason Heller: Why clipping.'s Hugo Nomination Matters for Music in Science Fiction. Pitchfork , April 7, 2017, accessed September 16, 2018 .
- ↑ CD at Discogs
Web links
- Blows Against the Empire on Allmusic (English)
- Overview of the publications