Last week I finally got around to posting about Jean-Luc Godard’s 87th birthday, and today Open Culture reminded me how rich the master’s collection of odds-and-ends shorts and clips can be. In 1968, Godard shot Jefferson Airplane performing live on a rooftop in Manhattan. Godard’s film features a performance of “The House at Pooneil Corners,” and footage of the band’s inevitable arrest. Here’s a bit from Open Culture and my favorite living film critic, Richard Brody…

“He took over from the specialists and operated the camera from the window of Leacock-Pennebaker’s office on West Forty-fifth street, shooting the band on the roof of the Schuyler Hotel across the street. (Pennebaker recalled him to be an amateurish cameraman who could not avoid the beginner’s pitfall of frequent zooming in and out.) The performance took place without a permit, at standard rock volume: as singer Grace Slick later wrote, “We did it, deciding that the cost of getting out of jail would be less than hiring a publicist…”

Amateurish or not, a piece of the footage has surfaced on YouTube. Listen to the Airplane perform “The House at Pooneil Corners,” watch Godard’s dramatic swings of focus and zoom as he attempts to convey the spectacle of the band and the spectacle of countless surprised Manhattanites at once, and think for yourself about this peculiar intersection of two bold lines in the era’s alternative zeitgeist. As Jefferson Airplane co-founder Paul Kantner said in a 1986 interview, “Just for a while there, maybe for about 25 minutes in 1967, everything was perfect.” But these seven minutes in November 1968, from opening shouts to inevitable arrest, don’t seem so dull themselves.

Check out the short here…

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After a long week slogging through a bunch of late night art installations I slept in on Monday before getting a bath and a shave and a big cup of coffee and wading back into a more normal week. I didn’t post a bunch in the last few days due to my topsy-turvy schedule, but I was psyched to find this recording of Grace Slick’s isolated “White Rabbit” vocals to share with you. Here’s a bit about the singer and the song from Society of Rock…

One of the first female rockstars to come out of the San Francisco counterculture that was the 1960s, Jefferson Airplane singer Grace Slick is also known for that powerhouse voice – responsible for classics like ‘Somebody To Love,’ and ‘White Rabbit’. At a time when studio production was limited and live concerts were almost always dominated by an incredibly loud band in direct competition with an even louder audience, it made it difficult to fully appreciate voices like Slick’s; but it’s in this isolated vocal track from ‘White Rabbit’ that we’re able to finally concentrate on the star of the song – Grace!

Listen to this. Thankfully there are a few ladies singing today who aren’t afraid to belt it out, but most could still take a lesson from Grace as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Jefferson Airplane’s psychedelic classic Surrealistic Pillow. Here’s Grace and that rabbit…

Stay Awake!

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This weekend I wrote a review of the new DVD release for Janis: Little Girl Blue. It’ll be out in The Contributor next week, and I’ll try to remember to drop it here later with some more info about the actual DVD &emdash; I had to watch an online screener as I didn’t get my review copy in time for my deadline. I watched some of it with my assistant, but she seemed to burnout quickly on what looked like yet another documentary about the 1960′s counterculture. It’s easy to feel like you’ve digested the radical left of mid-century America, and I feel that way too, sometimes. Other times I’m back in touch with the feelings, ideas, and inspirations that were sparked by the Beats and combusted by the Hippies, and Janis made me feel like that. I also discovered a great little Jefferson Airplane doc. The Airplane plays a big role in the Janis film. Janis was actually considered as a possible vocalist for the Airplane before they asked Grace Slick to join. What a different world it might have been, but not necessarily a better one.

In a year of huge losses of our musical heroes, Airplane guitarist and co-founder Paul Kantner’s passing away on January 28 is one that won’t be overlooked on this shimmering page. Here’s the 2004 documentary Jefferson Airplane: Fly Jefferson Airplane…

Stay Awake!

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