Jefferson Starship: The Next Generation @ Konocti Harbor CA 1/24/92

analog (unknown gen ?) > WaveLab > CD WAVE > FLAC

halbroome@yahoo.com

After a test run of shows as "Paul Kantner and Wooden Ships" Kantner,
"like waking up from a bad dream," revived the Jefferson Starship name
with a promising crew: Jack Casady, for one, and earlier playmates such
as Papa John Creach and, later, Marty Balin and even, for a surprise appearance
on their maiden album, DEEP SPACE / VIRGIN SKY, Grace Slick. Here is
their debut: Marty is not there but Jack and Papa John are. Filling out
the roster is vocalist Darby Gould from World Entertainment War, Tim Gorman on
keyboards, and Prairie Prince on drums. The lineup would hold solid
for a few years and then, gradually, Tim, Prairie, Darby, and then Jack
went go off on other tangents. Surprisingly, Marty was the long-term
survivor, although his appearances would remain sporadic. Darby would
be replaced by the admirable (and really nice) Diana Mangano, although
for some appearances (the '94 Haight Street Faire and Fisherman's Wharf)
both Darby and Diana would be onstage together for a real powerhouse
show, just as they joined up in the crew on the under-rated second album,
WINDOWS OF HEAVEN.

This is the encore from the early show and all of the second show at
their debut performance at Konocti Harbor. I was there, and contributed
a review at the bottom (and still fondly remember having breakfast
the next day with Darby, Paul and Jack at the next table; with Darby
was her ex-hubby Rob Brezny, a local astrologer and co-founder of
World Entertainment War). Life differs from the rocks. . . .

1. Other Side of this Life (encore of early show)
2. Saturday Afternoon / Won't You Try (start of late show)
3. Wooden Ships
4. We Should Be Together
5. All Fly Away
6. In a Crisis
7. I'm on Fire
8. Crown of Creation
9. Papa's Other
10. I'm Moving
11. When the Earth Moves Again
12. Kansas City
13. Have You Seen the Saucers
14. America
15. Volunteers
16. Born on a Farm (encore)

The Jefferson Starship Konocti Harbor, CA 1/24/92
The shining. . . .

After the nightmare of Friday commute traffic the valley beyond Hopland
was eerily deserted; our trek across the gorges of Hwy 175 went by as slow
and steady as the Stanley Kubrik camera pan that opens THE SHINING--that is,
were Kubrik lost and recovering from a particularly nasty case of the DT's.

Lip, Rebecca, and I were not alone, however; as we puzzled over a map while
stopped on the side of the road, a flashlight suddenly appeared from without
the vehicle: it was attached to a policeman who, while helpful, was not
necessarily invited, and we strained to hear his directions over the din
of bottles and cans being hastily kicked under the seat. For a hell-out-of-the-way
place the area was crawling with security of some badge or another, and given
that the arrow on the small map provided by the resort pointed squarely to the
center of the lake, some of these public servants even proved their usefulness,
or so Rebecca and I thought: Lip had other ideas, and was as pale as if a ghost
had appeared and asked the way. In a way this was most prophetic.

Clear Lake is a three-winged body of water raised up like Lake Tahoe, with
Konocti Harbor on the other side of a particularly tall hill crowned with a
rotating lighted beacon. Careening around this obstacle, we entered a cross
between the village of THE PRISONER and the aforementioned THE SHINING: small
rustic buildings were scattered around the harbor and a crude adobe fountain
with garish colors carried intimations of the plastic inside. A drunken Scot
was threatening to either throw his date into the fountain or throw up,
whichever came first, and a security guard clucked his tongue and rolled
his head back and forth over the fact that none of the wierdos coming in the
door would speak to him or even look him in the eye.

In full Hunter S. Thompson mode ("wouldn't recommend it to everyone but it
has always worked for us") we gingerly bypassed security with our eyes safely
on the ground and went into the lobby.

Again there was that feel from THE SHINING of evil forces unleashed on an
unsuspecting public; perhaps it emanated from the two wooden Indians carved
into the wall, a small sneer on their faces and peacock feathered head-dresses
arranged in psychedelic patterns that snaked into the paneling; "remember the
Indian" Lip motioned ominously, and at the time the words even seemed to make
sense.

Or at least it did compared to the makeup of the people meandering lost
inside: punkettes in nouveau-vampire garb stood next to polyester matrons,
and elderly hippies of various descriptions pushed past good ole boys with
pants halfway down their butts. "There's a little bit of everything here"
Rebecca commented with a nervous awe.

MAY WE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE: FOR YOUR SAFETY PLEASE STAND AWAY FROM
THE DOORS!

The voice, delivered with a faint Japanese accent, came out of tinny speakers
embedded in the low, plastic-tiled ceiling; it was disembodied, yet without
the life-of-its-own spooky elevator to house it as one would expect from the
Stephen King setting. More confusion followed as we attempted to check into
our room and color-code our tickets; Rebecca came back with little circles
of green on them--"but that's not green, that's neon" she warned, and at the
time her words made sense as well.

But as far as we could tell, everyone was neon people on the shoreline,
leaving us be. . . .

From behind closed doors a low and hyper rumble intimated that Jack Casady
was at least playing, and a wispy voice that could have been Marty's was
delivering a KBC tune, although it later turned out to be a very hoarse Kantner.

MAY WE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE: FOR YOUR SAFETY PLEASE STAND AWAY FROM
THE DOORS!

Groups of confused-looking people--and that was just their wardrobe-- stood
around staring at the strangeness of the others; meanwhile, regular patrons
(whatever that means in this place) went about their business of figuring out
what the heck was going on.

MAY WE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE: FOR YOUR SAFETY PLEASE STAND AWAY FROM
THE DOORS!

The first concert was running late so we wandered until we found our room,
which held an excellent view of the lake; and then, freshened up with rotgut
Glenfiddich and Olympia, our trio blundered back to the car which Lip had
parked in front of the doorman/security guard. The guy had his hands full;
not only drunks were stumbling around, but an unusual octogenarian couple:
the man, with a long thin, wispy beard and a cane, was asking "is this where
that there concert is going to be?"

MAY WE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE: FOR YOUR SAFETY PLEASE STAND AWAY FROM
THE DOORS!

About this time the first-set crowd was set free to wander among the other
patrons, without any recognizable similarity in potluck styles except for
a faintly confused expression; among them were John Reed and Thom Miller
from Sun (who had joined sixteen others from Sun, including Lip and me, at
lunch earlier in the day); "be sure to stand back at the rear" was Thom's
advice, which was well-taken, if only because that was where the bar happened
to be.

MAY WE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE: WILL THOSE BEARING _BLUE_ STICKERS PLEASE
ENTER THE BALLROOM!

This elicited groans from the majority of the crowd, which seemed all neon.
A sense of excitement increased, or perhaps that should be "incitement", as
a group of strangers near us were querying how the others had heard about
this remote and very odd event: "_HAL_" was the derisive answer they gave,
and I lowered my 6'1 1/2" profile down a bit, even with Rebecca's 4'10" level.

At that point a tap on the back startled me, and I turned to face a navel;
it belonged to Jeff, whom I introduced to my pair of friends as a geo-planetary
scientist whose primary subject was the Arcadian Plains of Mars. Lip knew me
well enough to nod distractedly, but Rebecca, poor soul, found all of this
rather hard to believe, as she knew me well enough too.

Jeff, a fellow Airplane fanatic, had chosen to come here and then drive back
for next day's Hot Tuna Seva benefit. Unfortunately, his trip had him in a
similar state of shock as ourselves, and for a few minutes he could only
mumble "this is like what would happen if my parents were throwing the
Starship reunion on their own" before he then went on a tangent about
Marty's platinum hair that had Rebecca clutching her sides in painful
laughter. And due to the crowd, for once we didn't attract any undue
attention. . . .

MAY WE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE: WILL THOSE BEARING _ORANGE_ STICKERS
PLEASE ENTER THE BALLROOM!

More groans. Jeff, now recovered, attempted to explain that cosmic mystery,
the existence of Jefferson Airplane fans, while said people grouped in schools
of very odd fish and belied any structured explanation of their being.
"You see," he started sagely, "we have to spend the rest of our natural
lives going to off-the-wall places where small remnants provide the only
release we ever get." Not a bad description. At a Dead concert you know
what to expect, but Airplane fans are as wildly differing as the strong egos that made up the group.

MAY WE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE: WILL THOSE BEARING _YELLOW_ STICKERS
PLEASE ENTER THE BALLROOM!

Even more groans, but the crowd was clearing. We left our space near the
doors and spent the next few hours looking for a bar, an endeavor that was
entirely fruitless.

MAY WE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE: WILL THOSE BEARING _GREEN_ STICKERS
PLEASE ENTER THE BALLROOM!

Aha! we yelled and attempted to break through the security surrounding the
entranceway into the Ballroom, but we were just neon people, not green. I
told Rebecca, an aspiring lawyer, that here was the discrimination case
that she was seeking, but my words must have been overheard, as the automaton
voice from hell finally said the "neon" word.

Strangely enough, our group of four were the only ones not inside by that
point. Yet we found a table in the back and were comfortably situated with
generously-portioned Jameson & Sons by the time the warmup group began;
it was, as John Reed had explained earlier--only to be severely frowned
upon by his female companion--a "five-piece band" which happened to be all
female. They were called Lash, and seemed to be a regular opening act at
Konocti Harbor. A cover band, they made a somewhat weak start but by the
time they hit "Proud Mary" they were steaming, the saxaphonist trading lines
with the guitarist and the bass player thumping like a jackrabbit on "Jumping
Jack Flash". Rebecca was as much impressed by their music as Lip by their
appearance, and went out of her way to talk with the drummer and saxaphonist
at the bar.

A suitably cheesy host then introduced the headline band with a few words
that demonstrated that he, like the rest of the patrons, staff, and audience,
hadn't a clue as to what this was all about.

"Welcome to all the unruly and fucked-up people who came here tonight" was
Kantner's opening comment: no fair, he had been monitoring us.

With him was Tim Gorman on the left of the stage, then Paul, Darby Gould
(again with that flashback '67 Grace Slick pageboy), Slick Aguilar, and
then Jack on the other end, all eyebrow and finger action as usual. Prairie
Prince maintained an unusually low profile in the rear, at least for a member
of the Tubes.

Herb Caen had mentioned the Starship that morning in the Chronicle with
merely a "I didn't know they were still around", and Kantner acknowledged
this by opening with "Saturday Afternoon", a song with lyrics stolen from a
Herb Caen column ("The best lines are always theft"). With Jack's runamuck
bass underpinnings and Darby's clear Grace-clone voice, the tune really worked
to rouse the crowd. Sure, it was actually Friday night, but Sunday seemed a
long way off, and that Friday was as full of partying as some Saturdays. . . .

The songs came fast and furious: "Wooden Ships" ended with a brief "Go Ride
the Music" in tribute to Skip Spence, and the setlist reflected the major periods
of the Airplane but without that many Starship songs, giving rise to my belief
that Paul is working his way back toward an Airplane reunion more than a Starship
one: at any rate he doggedly refused to play anything from BLOWS [I found
out later that the BLOWS suite had been played during the early set].

"We Can Be Together" appeared without the "Volunteers" coda (although that song
was of course done later), and a quarter of the way through the concert Papa
John Creach was called onstage: and between him, Jack, and Darby the musical
evening was saved. He slid effortlessly and melodically on his violin on such
tunes as "When the Earth Moves Again", "Have You Seen the Saucers", and "Crown
of Creation", and was allowed a moment to play a few blues tunes, including one
that sounded like the Airplane's early "Kansas City". The disparate crowd of bikers, molls, beautiful people, matrons, punks, hippies, and totally normal folks like us--cut the comments, okay? but it is true that Paul mocked back my comment of "strange?!"--danced around the edges and on their seats, all the while cocktail waitresses prowled the aisles where they snapped back "I don't take orders!" when approached. Darby was allowed a solo moment, one of the songs from the first World Entertainment War album; and, as frail as he looks in his mid-seventies, Papa John was enjoying the show as much as anyone.

Paul was rapidly losing what was left of his voice, taking time out to spray his
throat between tunes, but the old standard "Other Side of This Life" took on a
life of its own; this was a crowd ready for nostalgia, and the number of Airplane
tunes saw to it that they got that for which they came, although the band did
pause occasionally with a song like "All Fly Away" to recall their acquired
namesake. For what it tried to do, namely, resurrect the Airplane, it achieved the energy at times, although at others it gave Lip the feeling that "if you un- plugged Jack the music would stop".

After a two-song encore Jeff departed on his way to Berkeley and the Seva
benefit and we made our way past party animals that giggled from behind closed
doors with a clink of ice; more than once Lip and I regretted not having the
foresight of Thom Miller and thus stopping in Hopland for Redtail Ale on our way
in. We had also left the bottle of Lagavulin, still surprisingly undrunk, at Lip
and Rebecca's house. . . .

--a course of action that was, naturally, corrected the next day. Daylight
allowed us a full view of Rattlesnake Island in front of the harbor, and the
early morning mists were slowly burned-off by the sun as we straggled into
breakfast one by one by one and wound up sitting by Darby Gould's party on
one side and the two Lash members that Rebecca had met on the other. Since
David S. Lerner and I had an email discussion about whether Darby was touring,
I took the liberty of asking her, and she confirmed her place on the East Coast
tour (so you are lucky, David!). A nice lady, and quite pretty.

The two Lash members were somewhat surprised at my interest, and answered my
question of how long they had been playing by "with what? ourselves or the band?"
8'/ Three years as it turned out, but the band had been around before they joined.
We met them again at the check-out counter, right by the little old ladies in green
who were there for the Irish Daughters' convention.

And so the fog lifted from the lake if not our heads and we made our way (stopping
liberally at wineries such as Kendall-Jackson, natch) back to Hopland along Hwy 175,
where grafted nut and fruit trees sported large Redtail hawks on top as
supernatural sentries. At the brewery, which bears the bird as its logo,
Lip and I maintained our high standards of debauchery with pitcher after
pitcher of Redtail Ale as we played chess before the bemused patrons who
noted my occasional moans as I wiped Lip off the board (--NOT!) with an
irritated "you yuppie scum 8')"."

Fellow Airplane fans were also there; and at one point I entered the store
where Redtail shirts were on sale and was confronted by a lady in her fifties
who severely denounced Kantner and Gorman's performance at Berkeley's Freight
& Salvage the week before--"and he should be ashamed of himself, hmmph, it was
just an expensive dress rehearsal: I called the coffee house and complained!"

Any other weekend and I confess that I would have found _that_ incident strange.

hal