The Great Speckled Bird August 31, 1970 Vol. 3 #35 pg. 12
Airplane
No doubt about it, as somebody on stage at the Municipal Auditorium put it, the Jefferson Airplane concert Monday night was “the Atlanta rock event of the year.” How long have the freaks in Atlanta waited to hear the Airplane-forever it seems. This was one of the few times the city auditorium has been really packed since Dylan played Atlanta years ago. All that energy of Rock & Roll experience on stage, met by the energy of a new, growing nid expanding village in the new freak nation. Haight-Ashbury thru Chicago thru Woodstock thru Altamont through Kent State.
Great Jones played a short, snappy set at 7:30, and Radar gave us some good stuff before the hour of 9 o’clock came around (especially “Jailhouse Rock” which is where a lot of Atlanta kids are at right now). But I don’t think many folks could get into any other band that night. We were in Airplane/Grace Slick/Jorma/Marty Balin/Paul Kantner/”White Rabbit Volunteers of Amerika” audience all the way. When the band from early Haight-Ashbury stepped out on stage, you could feel the rush hard and heavy, like we had to move on up higher, or explode. The Airplane took us where we wanted to go and left us there for over two hours.
“Somebody to Love,” “Plastic Fantastic Lover,””Saucer'”Marijuana,” “Volunteers””We Can Be Together”, “White Rabbit,””Good Shepherd,” and a lot, more old and new sounds we’ve come to associate with this group over the years. But this time live, up front, done firs thand by one of the few rock bands that reinterprets and re-designs their material for stage performance rather than just recreating their “hits.” Plus a long, hard, bluesy jam, and Marty Balin doing some really fine vocals.
Drummer Joey Covington was the only “new” element we weren’t used to; even though nobody knew quite what to make of his long, white- soulish high volume vocals, somehow it seemed like the things to do at the time, and we all got off on it. And he’s a damn good drummer.
What can anybody say about Grace Slick except that, finally it’s great to have a woman in charge of taking care of some roll& roll business!
A lot can be said about the rotten sound system the Airplane had to struggle with: the same sound people—Festival Group-who loused up the Santana/Allman Brothers concert some months back. Things weren’t nearly so bad as they were that night, but Jorma’s lead guitar was missed more often than not sometimes (leaving a hole in the total Airplane sound), and the mix left a lot to be desired. Thank God the volume was there-this is loud, loud music, and it . felt just right from where we were.
Glenn MacKay’s Head Lights is one of the oldest, and best; lightshows of all, but somehow, the more lightshows I see, the more I appreciate the Electric Collage.
Only a handful of cops were in the auditorium, but toward the first part of the concert we thought they were going to make trouble. The tension was almost unbearable—a heavy adrenalin rush as “Tear down the walls” and “Up against the wall, motherfuckers” come out of the speakers while uniformed cops hassled kids who were trying to occupy the area just beyond the stage. Finally resolving the tension, Marty Balin stood up to the uniforms: “They’re not doing a damn thing,” he said over the mike, “not a damn thing!” It looked like the cop might be into busting Marty himself (the Airplane has been busted a couple of times when they played the South), but Power to the People took the evening, and the stage area was encircled by Airplane lovers for the next two hours: cops looked embarrassed and out of place as they tried to step-over and through the crowd that wasn’t about 10 move because of some city ordinance.. After this early tense scene Marty and Grace moved directly into “We Can Be Together” and “Volunteers,” just to let us know they know. When an unbelievable response was given the Airplane at the end of the concert, (the cheering, stomping, and shouting went on for what seemed like hours), they came back to do one more, and it was “Volunteers” again. I don’t think they had planned on a second encore, but they came back once more and did a new song with some heavy jamming. Fantastic! Something to remember for a long, long time, and an experience of rock music that, hopefully, will keep us inspired until rock concerts in Atlanta can make it without that $6 price tag. Let’s bring the Airplane back to play free in the park!
Back when Santana played at the auditorium, the garbage strike had just begun, and the shit was beginning to hit the fan. A continuation of that strike by city employees was called for Tuesday, the day after the Jefferson Airplane concert. At the same time freaks are being hassled into the jails, and Black people are being shot down in their own front yards by pigs in Summerhill. Gay folk are being attacked and sent to Grady Hospital by homophobes in Piedmont Park, and women are not safe on the streets at night in our community. If “private property” is the target, as the Airplane puts it, and “We” are its enemy, we’d better start getting together some mass, collective actions to Stop the Pig/Serve the People. In loyalty to their kind, they cannot tolerate our minds in loyalty to our kind, we cannot tolerate their obstruction:
Got a revolution to make!
-miller francis.jr.