Outlaw blues (The Great Society) (LP 4319)

The Great Society with Grace Slick  Conspicuous Only In Its Absence (Vinyl, CBS Records, 1993) ****  

Genre: Psychedelic rock, Acid rock

Places I remember: Marbecks Records

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: White Rabbit

Gear costume: Outlaw Blues 

They loom large in his legend (The Album Collection playlists): Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; Part 6; Part 7

Active compensatory factors: Before Grace was drafted into Jefferson Airplane, she was a member of The Great Society. The band was made up of Grace, her then-husband Jerry Slick on drums, his brother Darby Slick on guitar, David Miner on vocals and guitar, Bard DuPont on bass, and Peter van Gelder on flute, bass, and saxophone.

Conspicuous... is a live album - recorded at renowned San Franciscan rock venue, The Matrix, in 1966. It was released in 1968, but then relaunched with additional tracks in 1971 as a double album. My copy is the original single album version.

Grace is already a great presence within the group - her singing is powerful and nuanced (already). The band are good, but not in the same league as the Airplane. That must have been obvious to Grace as The Great Society supported JA at gigs.

Certainly the two best songs on the album are Grace's Somebody To Love and White Rabbit which she'd rerecord with JA, but the rest of the material is strong too - notably their version of Dylan's Outlaw Blues and Sally Go 'Round The Roses.

Where do they all belong? An excellent document of the band in the mid sixties who wanted to combine The Beatles' influence with new rock moves in San Francisco.