Grace Slick & Great Society-Collectors Edition

Collectors Edition

This is certainly more of a SanFranciso Late sixties music, that certainly sounds really cool when your in outer space.

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.