Did Starship ACTUALLY build this city on Rock & Roll?

[Amerigo Vespucci]

[Elidor]

1. Wow

That's worse than a rickroll, you evil bastard.

I approve. :evilgrin:

Next up, you'll come up with a new twist on the Brazillion joke.

[flvegan]

2. No. Starship outsourced building this city to India.

It's safe to say that it was NOT built on rock 'n roll.

[Deja Q]

4. No, they outsourced it to China... it's built on lead and antifreeze.

:hide:

[Deja Q]

3. GAAAAAAAAH! 1984 hair! GAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Wow, Grace Slick was hot -- but 1984 hair and that bloody awful song!! GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Twillig]

5. Bilked this city

Bilked!

read that in a caption in good ol' Creem mag.

[Rabrrrrrr]

6. To think they went from Jefferson Airplane to looking (and sounding) like Jesus Crispies

Worst, most sad downfall of any rock band in history.

I mean, seriously, Grace Slick could be the Dugger wife:

[Amerigo Vespucci]

7. Grace got into it with Jorma during the J.A. "reunion" tour...

...that came after their wretched 1989 reunion album:



She basically told him that because she'd been doing the Starship thing while he'd been slumming with Hot Tuna, it had been a while since he had worked in a major league touring rock band and he was out of touch. Something to that effect.

The best two songs on the album are Jorma's ("Ice Age" and "Too Many Years") and neither were written specifically for this project. They both come from his 1985 solo album "Too Hot To Handle."

[AlCzervik]

8. that song sucks so much it could it could move a golf ball through a garden hose.

[kwassa]

9. I saw the Airplane in it's prime. Twice.

They are still the loudest fucking band I've ever heard.

Cleveland, some old former movie palace. The volume was correct three floors up in the back in the men's room. I basically couldn't hear for two days from the buzzing in my head.

Akron Rubber Bowl. The idiot police released tear-gas at the top of the stadium over some fracas, it floated down, and 3000 people sitting in their seats enjoying the concert were gassed out of their seats, including me. so what did they police do? Arrest the Airplane for inciting a riot. The band had no idea what was going on.

Welcome to Ohio, a few years after Kent State.

[Bennyboy]

17. I saw them many times.....

As The Jefferson Airplane, jefferson Starship, Hot Tuna, Jorma solo,SVT (Jack's punk band from the 70's) and many of Paul and Marty (who still play together)'s different incarnations.

The second Mickey Thomas joined the band it was OVER. BTW the guy on the left bottom is Craig Chaquico and I used to buy pot from him in High School. he was from Sac and was in a band called Steelwind and joined the Jefferson Starhip in 74 (Blows Against The Empire). He went to La Sierra and He was friend of my friend Don Reith. Now he is HUGE in the mellow jazz circles.

I have an interesting collectible...Jimi Hendrix at Cal expo may 1970. My friend Larry took a photo of Jimi and it has a US flag backdrop. the backdrop is only at that show and was painted by Craig Chaquico and Mark Henson. Mark is well known artist now too. I have both Mark and Craigs signature on that Photo.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

24. "Freedom At Point Zero" wasn't freedom at all...it was a state of bondage.

I would recommend the "way beyond excellent" DVD "Fly Jefferson Airplane" to anyone who even has a passing interest in the band.

You walk away with a few insights.

First, Paul Kantner was the "John Lennon" of the band.

Marty Balin was the "Paul McCartney."

And then...holy SHIT...you ALSO got Grace, Jack, Spencer and Jorma. An UNPRECEDENTED level of talent in ONE band (although the Dead, and possibly the ORIGINAL Quicksilver meets the same criteria)...

Adding Mickey Thomas to the band was an attempt to fill the chasm left by the departures of Marty and Grace. Truth be told...DESPITE the good fortune of Mickey having a hit with Elvin Bishop's "Fooled Around And Fell In Love"...Mickey will always be a "B-list" performer...maybe even "C-list"...and Grace and Marty were LEGENDS.

Jefferson Starship...or the post-Kantner "Starship"...was NEVER Jefferson Airplane. I always felt that "Dragon Fly" and "Red Octopus" were classics. "Spitfire" and "Earth" were the downward spiral. ALL of the "Starship" output was SHIT.

As a guitar player, I acknowledge Chaquico's talent. He wasn't Jorma, and he never tried to BE Jorma. For that he deserves accolades. But the "Starship" albums still SUCK ALMIGHTY to me.

One of the reasons I don;t care for Madonna...other than the fact that I don't care for her as a human being (too vain and arrogant), is the fact that Grace did it first, and did it best.

Grace didn't give a flying fuck if you approved or not.

Grace probably enjoyed pissing you off, A LOT.

But Grace sold out in "Starship," and she knew it. She was paying the bills. She admitted that, and she offered no apologies.

That's Grace.

Jefferson Airplane was 150% "Rock & Roll Hall of Fame" material.

To a much lesser degree, Grace and Paul and Marty had some magic moments in "JEFFERSON Starship."

But "STARSHIP?"

80s big-hair FM-slash-AM radio whores.

That's all she wrote.

:toast:

[skygazer]

10. There's enough hair in that picture to make at least 100 wigs

:wow:

[newmajority]

11. Starship should have had it's engines removed when Marty Balin left.

Mickey Thomas ruined the band. Even Paul Kantner got sick of them, and it was his band!


Now this is more like it.......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER9b0yWGcfs

[Amerigo Vespucci]

15. I'm trying to picture Mickey in 2008, playing some state fair...

...pictured below, from his "official Web Site"...just Mickey and a bunch of people who never played in the original band...yelling out "I'M SURE YOU ALL REMEMBER THIS ONE! PUT YOUR HANDS TOGETHER!"

:spray:

[Deja Q]

19. No no no no no, THIS is more like it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxGGckAc1rs

[WritingIsMyReligion]

12. Wow, that hair is horrendous.

:scared:

[Deja Q]

22. It's also 1984. New wave's style was starting to turn generic...

Everything up to 1983 from new wave sounded new and cool. By 1985, it's utter "blah". Blah with big hair.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gET21LwMcBQ

I suppose there's a message in there, but the "music" only makes me feel stress, shock, and panic. The $30 keyboard at Target has stored waveforms that play the same noises. It's *too* synthetic to be taken seriously. And then there's that hair... if desperate times made people look THAT much like mannequins...

[TZ]

13. Ugh I don't know what worse the bad eighties hair or the song

A lot of times I don't agree with the pop culture surveys on music but the one that named "We Built This City.." worst rock song ever..that I agreed with.

[HughBeaumont]

14. I remember that song was the calling card to put the Rock Hall in San Francisco.

Which was kind of silly because according to Grace Slick (who HATED the song), it was written about Los Angeles. As punishment for that song's eternal suckitude, they put it in Cleveland instead!

Hard to tell who got punished, though . . . as painfully underwhelming and poorly set-up as the Rock Hall is. There's more interesting memorabilia in your average Hard Rock Cafe.

Imagine . . . it took four people to write a song as putrid as this.

[Arugula Latte]

20. Random bit of related trivia ... Speaking of bad Bay Area bands ...

Journey's "When the Lights Go Down in the City" was written about L.A. as well ... originally it was "when the sun shiiiiines on ElllLaaaaay"

Why do I know this crap?

[Amerigo Vespucci]

21. I am reminded of Mike Myers' "Wayne's World" line about "Frampton Comes Alive"...

...that it was "shipped to you with packets of Tide" if you lived in the suburbs.

Starship, Journey, Steve Miller, Gary Wright, Fleetwood Mac (the Buckingham-Nicks version)...there was no escape.

"When the lights...go down...in my cit-ay....."

Even if I wanted to escape that song, I couldn't. I was there. It was unavoidable.

:toast:

[JVS]

16. We built this city on the mustache and mullet of the guy in the bottom left corner!

Wicked!

[Amerigo Vespucci]

18. Mullet guy re-arranged Mickey Thomas' FACE...

...the story's in Jeff Tamarkin's excellent book "Got A Revolution."

Mullet Guy...a.k.a. the Starship's drummer, Donny Baldwin...beat the everloving shit out of Tomas after a drinking binge.

Quoting Mickey, from the book:

Donny was a great drummer, and a funny, good-looking guy. He just had that little dark side. He went to a place that I really wish he had not gone to, because I lost a friend in the process, as well as a piece of my face.

and the outcome:

At the hospital in Scranton, a CAT scan was taken and Mickey was told that he had massive facial fractures and needed reconstructive surgery. Doctors back in San Francisco performed a cranial facial entry, which, as Mickey described it, "basically means that they took my face off and then reattached it, with 60 staples in the top of my head."

Mickey never saw Baldwin again.

[JVS]

23. Awesome!

[newmajority]

26. Who would have thought a lightweight drummer like that could do such damage?

Now if he had only hit the drums as hard as he hit Mickey Thomas.......

[Amerigo Vespucci]

27. He hit him so hard he needed three titanium plates in his face...

Another excerpt from "Got A Revolution"...

Whoever hit him, hit him hard. Mickey's injuries were so severe that he required three titanium plates inserted into his face. He also suffered broken ribs and cracked bones around the eyes."

Thomas, the band, their managers, and RCA records lied about the incident initially. At one point Thomas said he didn't remember who hit him. Stories were floated about Thomas getting into a fight while "defending the honor of a female backup singer." Another version was that he got nailed by the jealous boyfriend of a female fan.

Another "Got A Revolution" excerpt:

Rumors began spreading only days after the beating that the assailant was not a stranger at all, but Donny Baldwin. Although he refused to comment on any possible involvement at the time, Thompson (Bill Thompson, the band's manager) admitted that the drummer and singer had been in a shoving match in Colorado during the same tour. Even when Baldwin's departure from the group was announced just weeks after the beating, attributed to the usual "creative differences," the group and RCA still refused to reveal what had really happened.

Then, finally, it was confirmed: Mickey and others involved with the group admitted that Baldwin had been responsible for Mickey's beating. No charges were ever filed, but Baldwin's days with the organization were over.

[nomorenomore08]

25. Definitely deserved its top spot on VH1's "50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs."

As one commentator put it, "This could be a great anti-drug commercial. 'Kids, this is what happens when you do too much acid...'"

[nytemare]

28. Billy Ray Cyrus called..

He wants his mullet back.

[nomorenomore08]

29. And "Achy Breaky Heart" was #2 on the "Awesomely Bad Songs" list, wasn't it? LOL

nt

[newmajority]

30. Yes he does

So bad that he wrote a song about it.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnMj1FI9Jpo