What you gonna do when you feel your lady rollin'?

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts.

21/02/71 : Blows Against The Empire - Paul Kantner And Jefferson Starship

We met Jefferson Airplace once before (nearly six years ago now!) and I was surprised how much I liked (at least some of) it, so let's see whether this (which I assume is somehow related) can repeat that trick.

Hmmm. No. This is just a big ol' mess, I'm afraid. It's some kind of weird folk/rock/prog hybrid which somehow manages to take the worst bits of each of them. No, no, no - NO!

We're at #12 in the charts this week on their third week of a six week run, with this being as high as it ever got. The top five this week were George Harrison, Elton John, Simon & Garfunkel (and the top three would stay the same for three consecutive weeks), Andy Williams and Led Zeppelin, with the highest new entry being Yes (#16).

Wikipedia tells us this is the first album to use "Starship" after five "Airplane" albums, but it (obviously) shouldn't be confused with the "Starship" albums that came later because that band didn't come into existence until '74 - this is more a "Paul Kantner and Friends" album. And if you've been paying any attention at all this year, you'll recognise the names of a few of the friends - Jerry Garcia, David Crosby and Graham Nash all put in an appearance at some point (along with a million other names I don't recognise). Apparently it's a concept album, but I read the section explaining the concept and am no closer to understanding it than I was previously - so let's just stay happy in our ignorance. Critical reviews were mixed, both at the time and retrospectively and commercially it got to #28 in Canada and #20 in the US - all of which seems very generous of people.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent copy for £4 or you can throw £35 at it if you want a better version. But I use the word "better" very loosely here - no matter how good the replay medium is, the sounds that it makes are never going to improve for me because this was just a very bad album.

28/02/71 - One ELP album too many, I fear

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