AND NOW PAUL KANTNER IS GONE

[def_fr0g_42]

Really.

Man, it’s been a rough month for famous pop-culture icons and rock musicians. But I guess this kind of thing is inevitable, of course, and sooner or later the casualties are going to start piling up.

Anyway, I have a few things to say about Kantner, and specifically Jefferson Airplane/Starship:

1. Thanks to AOR hits like “Jane” and “Stranger

Comments

[bedsitter23]

The Jefferson Airplane I grew up with was Starship. So I understandably had a hard time reconciling "White Rabbit" with Mickey Thomas when I first heard it.

I feel that I like JS way more than I should. They just seem like a band that is not "hip" to like. Still, there are so many of their songs that I think are if not great, then very good.

I suspect Starship is the reason that they have the image they do, and although they have reunited off and on, they failed to ever capture back their coolness like Heart did.

Kantner was a pretty interesting guy whenever he showed up on interview shows, and was a talented guy. I also have a soft spot for Balin and Slick's vocals. So if JS comes on, I will listen, but they seem to be classified in such a way that they are pretty 'unhip' these days, which hardly seems fair.

[def_fr0g_42]

Well yeah, if you didn't know the chronology or the band members it'd never occur to you that JA and JS were more or less the same band. I guess it's like how there's no resemblance between Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac and Rumours-era Mac, except there it's the same name.

I agree that 80s Starship was the end of whatever hip cred JS may have had. Then again, "Jane" was such a staple of classic rock that a lot of people tended to lump them in the same category as Boston or "Hold The Line"-era Toto. JS was sort of the stadium rock version of JA, and there's some negative connotations there. But 80s Starship was far worse.