Grace Slick & the Great Society - Collector's Item

I listen often as I may

As mentioned in my review of the Great Society's "Born To Be Burned" CD, I had the pleasure of interviewing 3 of the members of the band for my Jefferson Airplane book "Take Me To A Circus Tent." I have been a fan for numerous years and always wish this group had better promotion.

If you want the music because you enjoy the Airplane and Grace, that is fine. What will happen is a quick discovery the sounds of the Great Society will stand on their own. The release gives you the 2 posthumously issued live albums.

To borrow a phase from Jim Morrison the band could change the mood from glad to sadness. The haunting sounds of Darkly Smiling and Grimly Forming are captivating. Their version of Sally Go `Round The Roses is considered by many to be the definitive.

Climb aboard the plane and head back to the city by the bay 1966. The sights are magnificent and the rock and roll is terrific.

Be well always,
Craig Fenton
Author of the Jefferson Airplane book "Take Me To A Circus Tent"
May 27, 2007

Grace Slick - 'Collector's Item' (Sony)

A well assembled seventeen track compilation of Grace Slick's work. Some Jefferson Airplane tunes here as well as songs from her pre-Airplane one-lp band, Great Society. See my review of their 'Born To Be Burned' CD. Most enjoyable cuts are the rocking "Sally Go 'Round The Roses", "Outlaw Blues", "Daydream Nightmare" and the 'original' edits for "Somebody To Love" and "White Rabbit", which sound a bit more folk-ish but still great. A nice little rarity for long time Airplane fans, fanatics and die-hard collectors. A definite should-have. March 1, 2007

Ecellent if you love acid rock

This is one of my favorite albums with a fabulous recording of white rabit, not to mention someone to love and saly go round the roses...if you love grace slick's voice you will love this January 19, 2007

Just my thoughts....

Grace Slick & the Great Society, a band that deserves a lot more credit than people, Grace included, give it. I found this band completly on accident and... I must say, it was the best mistake I ever made.

I am a fan of Jefferson Airplane, and though, I agree that this band is not as sophicticated as Jefferson Airplane, it is, indeed an important one. After listening, it was clear to see that Jefferson Airplane might not have been what they were without this band. It was deffenatly an experiment, but one that pushed boundaries, something that not too many are brave enough to do. The songs are edgy for it's time and obvioiusly a building block for Grace Slick's later greatness.

This group litterly became one of my favourites over night. It puts me in an indescribable mood that I have yet to feel from any other musical group. Yes, to most they sound mildly amiturish, but, it's their unknowingness and ability to experiment and improvise that truely makes them great. It's basically a must have for anyone who is a serious fan of the '60's San Fransciso musical scene. August 24, 2006

"Don't quit your day jobs...uh, all except you, Miss Slick."

When I was a kid back in the tumultuous Sixties only audiophiles could afford decent sound equipment. The rest of us were reduced to putting the microphones of our cassette recorders up against the speakers of our AM radios if we wanted to record our favorite songs. The resulting tapes always sounded like they'd been recorded in a storm drain, but there was an authenticity to those crummy recordings that no amount of high-tech can ever match. We LOVED those songs, we WANTED those songs, and by God we were gonna HAVE those songs.

Listening to these early Great Society recordings gives me the same feeling. The Great Society has acheived a near-mythic status as the proto-Jefferson Airplane in the collective memory of the San Francisco-Flowers-In-Your-Hair veterans brigade. It is hard to admit that The Great Society was "such a half-assed band," as Grace Slick described it. It's a certainty that there are scores of dusty reel-to-reels of better and more deserving unknown bands of that era hidden in broom closets throughout America.

But The Great Society had two things going for it that no other Frisco bar band of the era could match, those being a repetiore of good songs (and not just "Somebody To Love" and "White Rabbit" either), and Grace Slick. The raw musicianship of The Great Society puts you in mind of your college roommate who played Bob Dylan tunes all day on his $75 beach guitar. Like him, at least they tried really hard to sound like something. Still, they are utter tyros. Their sincerity is wonderful, and their ability to sample varied phrases from others' songs is effective, but it doesn't make them at all "innovative" or "the first psychedelic band of the era" as other reviewers would have it. If they had been they would have had their own fifteen minutes of fame and not been a mere footnote to the Airplane. Darby Slick, the band's second most talented musician/composer, vanished from the commercial music scene to reemerge years later after studying music in India. Tentative though sloppy elements of Indian ragas do pepper The Great Society's songs, predating even George Harrison's experiments with The Beatles, but they are the attempts of a dedicated amateur. In the intervening decades Darby developed his talent, and did invent "the Slick," a unique type of fretless guitar. As a matter of fact, Jerry, Darby and Grace Slick were inspired to form the band only after seeing the Jefferson Airplane perform live at the Matrix where the tapes that make up this disc were recorded. The Airplane essentially created and then discovered them. Shortly thereafter, the Airplane shanghaied Grace. Yes, imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but that doesn't mean your favorite band won't steal your lead singer.

Grace both overwhelms and uplifts her woefully untalented bandmates. Her singing is like a blast of raw power that completely swamps the reedy background notes of The Great Society. Amazingly, that voice alone manages to move The Great Society from their garage to your cousin's wedding. It is also, before years of alcohol, cigarettes, drug abuse, and overuse, clear as a bell, smoother than milk, and mesmerizingly erotic. Hearing Grace on this disc left no question as to why the Airplane had to have her.

The songs themselves are certainly deserving of some serious attention, whether covers or originals, both in choice or composition. "Sally Go Round The Roses" has a disturbing and hypnotic undertone. "Father Bruce" is a topical pop-rocker celebrating the immortal Lenny. Grace's cover of "Nature Boy" shows she can easily handle a true standard even with truly substandard backing. And of course, "Somebody To Love" (written by Darby) and "White Rabbit" (written by Grace) became the best-known Summer of Love classics. "Somebody To Love" sounds less dynamic in the hands of The Great Society, but the original "White Rabbit" has a less structured, more improvisational, and trippier feel to it than the Airplane's version. However, just because they are the original versions doesn't mean that they are necessarily "better" versions; but they are different. Given what the Airplane did with them, it would be interesting to see what another band might do with the rest of The Great Society's playlist.

THE GREAT SOCIETY is a curio recording, but one that's indispensable if you want to feel the experience of the earliest days of Acid Rock; and well worth it if you want to experience Grace Slick at her purest. June 6, 2006

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