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Friday Music - Grace Slick & Jefferson Airplane

I was a college student in 1969 and an avid music fan. This band evolved out the the folk scene in San Fransisco that included David Crosby, Paul Kantner, Jerry Garcia, and Janis Joplin. As the Viet Nam war escalated, the resistance increased on college campuses. None of us wanted to be drafted, but at the beginning of 1969, more than 500,000 combat troops were in SE Asia. As the resistance increased, the music of the anti-war culture became more and more popular. Here is a band from the that era that captured the emotions of the counter-culture like no one else. Clearly, it was easy for a horny guy to be a Grace Slick fan, as this video shows.



I was reminded of this singer recently watching a video of my current favorite rock band, Arcade Fire. Rock music has to be about something more than the volume. Grace slick was a heroine of the psychedelic culture of the 60s and the first female rock star. But the music of Jefferson Airplane was about pushing the boundaries of our parents' world. In that sense, nothing about really good rock has changed in all these years. What teenager wants to be like his parents?