most wtf lyric in Jefferson Airplane's "Planes"

full lyrics for those cut off in the options:

He was just a little boy and he sat there in his school
And the little girl in the very next chair, she thought he was so cool
And she watched him draw and draw planes and wings and flying things
Even during tests, he'd keep on drawing
And his mother didn't want him and his father was always working, so he
Just set his head to the centre of the sky and dreamed of
Flying, at first like a leaf floating in the air
Now like an eagle soaring there
Flying, great roaring engines now will lift my wings
Rockets now and spacecraft to the centre of the sky
I'm getting ready for a great leap forward, ready for a leap in the pool
Ready to touch the stars again, ready to go back to school
Puttin' the pieces together, put on your wings and come with me and
Fly, fly, fly to the centre of the sky, let's go flying
I love planes, experimental aircraft
I love planes, jet, jet, jet aircraft
Breaking through the sound barrier
Into, into the light
And the little boy is still like a little boy, and he met another
Little girl, and they made another little boy
And the new little guy still loves planes and flying things
And both his mother and father love him and
Hold him and hug him whenever he needs it and
Soon will send him lovingly to the centre of the sky,
And teach him
Flying, and dreaming, and visions true flying
I love planes, jet aircraft
I love planes, sensual aircraft

song for miyazaki

http://www.dreamsleep.net/phallus-dream-meaning.html

I love this song. Loved it when it came out and I still listen to it occasionally. It was genuinely weird, especially as a follow-up to Starship.

The line that always stuck with me was "whenever he needs it" which doesn't seem to be on the ballot, so I'll go with what comes directly before:

And the new little guy still loves planes and flying things/And both his mother and father love him and hold him and hu

I love planes, sensual aircraf

Hahah this thing.

omg what is this

i have always tried to stear clear of this album..

jesus this video

ok i'm done

i woke up in the middle of the night last night, saw this thread, watched the video, and i'm still convinced i dreamed it

I posted it on FB last night and my friend messaged me at work this morning howling at the video.

I actually checked to make sure someone hadn't St Sanders'ed the song underneath the real video (not that the video was any less kooky)

I didn't even know this song existed. funny that most of guys were sick of the slick professionalism and commercialism of Starship, and this was the alternative? may as well sell out, if you ask me

I remember seeing this thing the (probably one and only) time it was on MTV. Christ what garbage.

funny that most of guys were sick of the slick professionalism and commercialism of Starship

I don't know which members this is referring to.

KBC Band record was Kantner, Balin, and Casady - 1986.

Kaukonen didn't like it: "Their approach to recording was not the way we used to do it in the old days. It was very much the modular, sequenced LA way of recording. It works for some people but not me. It just wasn't even fun. It was well done but not very passionate."

I was thinking of Kantner, when he left Jefferson Starship, and Grace Slick when she left Starship, but "most of the guys" may have been overstating it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxnsmRl8x14

whaaaaat the fuck is this song! can't believe this has never crossed my desk before. strange combination of really embarrassing "He's hip! He's cool! He's 40" moves, and a kind of offbeat quality that reminds me of idk, They Might Be Giants? or some late Pixies stuff, like "Alec Eiffel" or something. the chorus kinda reminds me of mountain goats "foreign object," in a good way.

tbh i kinda want to vote for everything grace slick is doing in the video but i guess i have to go with "And the little boy is still like a little boy, and he met another little girl" - i get what it's going for but if you have any filter at all on "should we let this lyric out" that'd be the one you'd think it'd catch.

KLOS promoed the heck out of JA's tour stop for this "this is the band your parents warned you about because they are your parents!" I think I only heard this song on MTV.

My god.

I will never hear another bad word against "We Built This City."

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

All those longhair bands with those jackass names should have been required to do songs like this. They liked planes. Now it makes sense.

the distance between the verse and the chorus of this song is at least twelve universes

Now imagine what some of the rest of the album is like. I give you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUQ7oycoAQQ

Plus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbKB8GEp-L8

christ, "Panda"......

ridiculous as it is, Grace's voice makes it listenable

"Common Market Madrigal" might as well be a John Rutter piece.

(I like it!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VIIi-4eoUw

this actually has guitars w/ bite in it at times!

i may actually be more floored by "panda" than i was by "planes"

panda planes btw might have made kind of a decent band name a few years back. plane panda, too.

It's all about Grace Slick's facial expressions in the video. Looks like she had too much coffee on set.

Yes, "coffee."

Heh heh heh!

there's only slight evidence in that video that grace slick knows how to blink

fuck now i've got this stuck in my head

Oh my days... I work in aviation (incredibly pretentious way of saying I'm cabin crew tbph) and it's going to take all my mental fortitude to stop this from being a permanent fixture in my head.

Also, Grace Slick's come-with-me gesture at 1.55 has got to be the most one of the most uninviting things I've ever seen my life. She looks like she really wants to show you a dead body.

wait so i just realized this is billed as Jefferson Airplane? what was the deal w/going back to that?

oh duh the lineup nevermind

Okay this is good -- part of why I remembered this thing so 'fondly' is that 1989 had a plague of reunions going around from bands that I mostly didn't care about. A quick search in Google turned up what (at least in its archives) was the one contemporaneous newspaper profile on the JA reunion, in the New York Times itself:

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/29/arts/on-again-off-again-jefferson-airplane-is-on-again.html

And it starts:

Just because every rock band anyone remembers from the 1960's and 1970's has chosen this summer to regroup and tour doesn't mean the reunited Jefferson Airplane planned to jump on some bandwagon.

''It just sort of slopped together, in the usual fashion we do everything,'' said Grace Slick, who joined the Jefferson Airplane in 1966 for its second album, ''Surrealistic Pillow,'' and who sang such psychedelic anthems as ''White Rabbit'' and ''Somebody to Love.''

The drummer for the tour is Kenny Aronoff, a member of John Cougar Mellencamp's band, and the touring band also includes auxiliary keyboardists and guitarists.

Hmm.

And this bit!

''It started out as a joke on Paul,'' Ms. Slick said. ''We hadn't even talked for a year, and we were battling legally - in fact, there are still some standing lawsuits between me and Paul, something to do with the Airplane. But then, there are at least 15 or 20 active lawsuits now between managers, record companies, agencies, a morass of stuff that comes from all different angles."

Haha, holy shit!

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when this track was recorded/the video was made...

if there was a fly on the wall, Grace probably ate it

In the video, the behavior of the band members makes sense if you assume that they think you dropped thirty minutes ago, and they're trying to test if you're tripping. They're all "yeah, we're the jeffersonmotherfukinairplane and we're back blowin' minds and do you feel smaller yet Alice" rather than "yup, we're on the plague of reunions bandwagon". They're feeling it.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-tcLVzpnP4

Anyway, how much you want to bet this song was just them being all "Gee this Pink Floyd reunion single was a hit"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCB_INs2E24

The song doesn't work but I can't help thinking that the creative impulses driving it are similar impulses regarding expression and pushing the structural envelope behind something like "The Ballad of You, Me, and Pooneil." Not anywhere near as inspired, I totally grant that. But those are impulses for which I admire them a lot.

I was just watching a video of them playing "Eskimo Blue Day" from 1970 yesterday. Their songs were so experimental.

That spring break video is a weird as hell mix of things. Easy to see why Grace Slick might had to down quite a varied cocktail of chemicals to get through an abstract day like that one.

I can't decide who is less comfortable looking at the camera, Grace or Jorma. Compensating in different ways obv

I love plaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanes - JET AIRCRAFT

i still believe i hallucinated this song and video

Wasn't Paul Kantner always terrible though? That's what I surmised from my investigations into JA.

No.

I love planes, jet aircraft
I love planes, sensual aircraft
Here come the planes.
They're American planes. Made in America.
Smoking or non-smoking?

I LOVE PLANES

Sensual aircraft

jet, jet, jet aircraft

And the little boy is still like a little boy, and he met another
Little girl, and they made another little boy
And the new little guy still loves planes and flying things
And both his mother and father love him and
Hold him and hug him whenever he needs it and
Soon will send him lovingly to the centre of the sky,

I like to pretend Jefferson Airplane broke up after Surrealistic Pillow and all of the members of the band retired into a hippie commune

jet, jet, jet aircraft

This is one of the most horrific videos ever. The way they are just hamming it up and mugging at the camera is so cringeworthy. The part when Clarke Gable creeps into the little boy's room while he is sleeping . . . .

and I don't know wtf Grace Slick is doing with her eyes

sensual aircraft

https://j.gifs.com/XLVqRg.gif

The part when Clarke Gable creeps into the little boy's room while he is sleeping . . . .

Leo as Howard Hughes protests.

I LOVE PLAINSES

Hideous Lump at 11:39 18 Sep 17
I love planes, jet aircraft
I love planes, sensual aircraft
Here come the planes.
They're American planes. Made in America.
Smoking or non-smoking?

And his mother didn't want him and his father was always working, so he/Just set his head to the center of the sky and

some of the superimposed backgrounds are done as awkwardly as a driving scene in a 40s Dick Tracy movie.

also omg, the opening riff kinda sounds like it's gonna be badass, then "I love planes" comes in and ruins the momentum.

lol @ Grace pointing at the plane as if we don't know what it is.

also why is the song clearly about flying airplanes and we keep seeing rockets flying

planes and wings and flying things, tbf

also, could be the song takes place in a world where the goal of the Apollo program was to reach not the Moon, but "the center of the sky"

^love this theory

i don't get it do they want to fuck the plane

MONEY PLANE

The Song of Elon

Hello edgelords my old friends

What is that shot at 3:44 (right after “sensual aircraft”), where Jack is palling around w/some kind of Moses figure(?)

Btw – the KBC Band “America” video (which timellison posted on March 7, 2017) is a masterpiece, and that song should be the f’n national anthem.

I managed to make it to the ripe old age of 52 without actually hearing this song; I actively avoided everything about it at the time. And . . . why did you do this to me? WHY?

and his mother didn't want him and his father was always workin

This song, to me, has a genetic link with "Future Pilots," by The Red Crayola w/Art & Language (lyrics here):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEF5vuoxpAE

It’s genuinely sad that the “little girl” from the beginning of the song doesn’t get the boy… he meets “another little girl”

I feel like we need another song about the original girl

Happy 35th Birthday, "Planes"!

ok this is kinda wonderful. when he says "I do love planes!" that's the best

sensual aircraft

I love "Planes"