JEFFERSON AIRPLANE AFTER BATH @BAXTERS ULTRA-RARE ORIG'68 RCA MONO LP w/DIFF MIX

$

70

WE CURRENTLY HAVE  NEARLY 500  LISTED ITEMS

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·         JEFFERSON AIRPLANE - AFTER BATHING AT BAXTERS - ORIGINAL RCA VICTOR MONO LP LOP-1511

·         ORIGINAL U.S. PRESSING

·         ORIGINAL BLACK RCA VICTOR LABEL WITH "WHITE TOP" [RCA VICTOR’S NAME IS IN WHITE LETTERS], AND DOGGIE LOGO ON TOP CENTER OF THE LABEL

·         DEEP GROOVE PRESSING

·         MONSTROUSLY RARE MONO PRESSING, MANY TIMES RARER THAN STEREO

·       THIS IS THE ORIGINAL, AUTHENTIC, FIRST U.S. PRESSING; THIS IS NOT A REISSUE, AN IMPORT, OR A COUNTERFEIT PRESSING.

·       ORIGINAL GATEFOLD COVER, MADE OF THICK CARDBOARD (AMERICAN STYLE) 

·       CLEAN, WEAR-FREE LABELS

·       THICK, HEAVY VINYL PRESSING

·       INCLUDES ORIGINAL, CUSTOM INNER SLEEVE, UNIQUE TO THIS ALBUM

·       MACHINE-STAMPED MATRIX NUMBER IN TRAIL-OFF VINYL (DEAD WAX) OF THE RECORD

·       MONO version of this album has NEVER been available on legitimate Compact Disc or in any other digital format.

(►PLEASE SEE THE IMAGE OF THE COVER, LABEL OR BOTH, SHOWN BELOW)

(Note: this is a REAL image of the ACTUAL item you are bidding on. This is NOT a "recycled" image from our previous auction. What you see is what you’ll get.  GUARANTEED!)

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The Jefferson Airplane opened 1967 with Surrealistic Pillow and closed it with After Bathing at Baxter's, and what a difference ten months made. Bookending the year that psychedelia emerged in full bloom as a freestanding musical form, After Bathing at Baxter's was among the purest of rock's psychedelic albums, offering few concessions to popular taste and none to the needs of AM radio, which made it nowhere remotely as successful as its predecessor, but it was also a lot more daring. The album also showed a band in a state of ferment, as singer/guitarist Marty Balin largely surrendered much of his creative input in the band he'd founded, and let Paul Kantner and Grace Slick dominate the songwriting and singing on all but one cut ("Young Girl Sunday Blues"). The group had found the preceding album a little too perfect, and not fully representative of the musicians or what they were about, and they were determined to do the music their way on Baxter's; additionally, they'd begun to see how far they could take music (and music could take them) in concert, in terms of capturing variant states of consciousness.

Essentially, After Bathing at Baxter's was the group's attempt to create music that captured what the psychedelic experience sounded and felt like to them from the inside; on a psychic level, it was an introverted exercise in music-making and a complete reversal of the extroverted experience in putting together Surrealistic Pillow. Toward that end, they were working "without a net," for although Al Schmitt was the nominal producer, he gave the group the freedom to indulge in any experimentation they chose to attempt, effectively letting them produce themselves. They'd earned the privilege, after two huge hit singles and the Top Five success of the prior album, all of which had constituted RCA's first serious new rock success (and the label's first venture to the music's cutting edge) since Elvis Presley left the Army. The resulting record was startlingly different from their two prior LPs; there were still folk and blues elements present in the music, but these were mostly transmuted into something very far from what any folksinger or bluesman might recognize. Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen, and Jack Casady cranked up their instruments; Spencer Dryden hauled out an array of percussive devices that was at least twice as broad as anything used on the previous album; and everybody ignored the length of what they were writing and recording, or how well they sang, or how cleanly their voices meshed. The group emerged four months later with one of the rawest, most in-your-face records to come out of the psychedelic era, and also a maddeningly uneven record, exciting and challenging in long stretches, yet elsewhere very close to stultifyingly boring, delightful in its most fulfilling moments (which were many), but almost deliberately frustrating in its digressions, and amid all of that, very often beautiful.

The album's 11 songs formed five loosely constructed "suites," and it didn't ease listeners into those structures. Opening "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil" (a Kantner-authored tribute to Fred Neil) amid a cascading wash of feedback leading to a slashing guitar figure, the band's three singers struggle to meld their voices and keep up. A softer, almost folk-like interlude, highlighted by Slick's upper-register keening, breaks up the beat until the guitar, bass, and drums crash back in, with a bit of piano embellishment. Then listeners get to the real break, an almost subdued interlude on the guitars, and a return to the song at a more frenzied pitch, the guitar part dividing and evolving into ever more brittle components until a crescendo and more feedback leads to "A Small Package of Value Will Come to You, Shortly." This brilliantly comical and clever percussion showcase co-authored by Spencer Dryden and the band's manager, Bill Thompson, is a million miles beyond any drummer's featured number in any popular band of that era, and it leads into Marty Balin's "Young Girl Sunday Blues," the most rhythmically consistent song here and one of a tiny handful of moments that seem to slightly resemble the band's past work. The aforementioned tracks comprise just the first suite, designated "Steetmasse."

"The War Is Over" suite opens with "Martha," the album's folk-style interlude, almost a throwback to the group's original sound, except that the listener suddenly finds himself in the midst of a psychedelic delirium, heralded by the dissonant accompaniment and a high-energy fuzztone guitar solo (spinning out sitar-like notes) coming out of nowhere and a speed change that slows the tempo to zero, as though the tape (or time, or the listener's perception of it) were stretching out, and the pounding, exuberant "Wild Tyme," a celebration of seemingly uninhibited joy. "Hymn to the Older Generation" is made up of Kaukonen's "The Last Wall of the Castle," an alternately slashing and chiming guitar pyrotechnic showcase that rivaled anything heard from Jimi Hendrix or the Who that year, and Grace Slick's gorgeous "Rejoyce," a hauntingly beautiful excursion into literary psychedelia, whose James Joyce allusions carry the Lewis Carroll literary allusions of the previous album's "White Rabbit" into startlingly new and wonderful (if discursive) directions and depths. "How Suite It Is" opens with the album's single, the lean, rhythmic "Watch Her Ride," whose pretty harmonies and gently psychedelic lyrics persuaded RCA that this was their best shot at AM airplay and, true to form on an album filled with contradictions, it leads into "Spare Chaynge," the crunching, searing, sometimes dirge-like nine-minute jam by Kaukonen, Dryden, and Casady that wasn't ever going to get on AM radio -- ever -- and, indeed, might well initially repel any Airplane fan who only knew their hit singles. "Shizoforest Love Suite" closes the album with Slick's "Two Heads," with its vocal acrobatics and stop-and-go beat, and "Won't You Try"/"Saturday Afternoon," the latter Kantner's musical tribute to the first San Francisco "Be-In" (memorialized more conventionally by the Byrds on "Renaissance Fair"); it features many of the more subdued, relaxed, languid moments on the record, divided by a killer fuzz-laden guitar solo.

Needless to say, this is not the album by which one should start listening to this band -- "Spare Chaynge" remains an acquired taste, a lot more aimless than, say, the extended jams left behind by the Quicksilver Messenger Service, though it did point the way toward what Kaukonen and Casady would aim for more successfully when they formed Hot Tuna. But most of the rest is indisputably among the more alluring musical experimentation of the period, and Kantner's "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil" and "Watch Her Ride," as well as Balin's "Young Girl Sunday Blues," proved that the group could still rock out with a beat, even if not so prettily or cleanly as before. [After Bathing at Baxter's was represented poorly on CD until 1996, when it was finally reissued in an upgraded edition, which was later deleted and was only available as part of the bizarre 2001-vintage Ignition box. It has since been remastered again, with very important, downright essential bonus tracks, as of 2003. Additionally, After Bathing at Baxter's was the last Jefferson Airplane album to appear in a mono version, which sounds very different than the more common stereo mix, and has yet to show up on CD.]

(REVIEW REPRINTED COURTESY OF BRUCE EDER, ALL MUSIC GUIDE  /ALLMUSIC.COM/)

If you spent countless years trying to find a near mint copy of Jefferson Airplane's "Surrealistic Pillow" album in mono (which has a different mix and sounds much better than its stereo counterpart) and you thought it was a daunting task, just wait!!! Wait until you try to find their THIRD album ("AFTER BATHING AT BAXTERS") in mono!!! Than you will discover what daunting task REALLY means. Issued in late 1968, when the MONO format was all but clinically dead, this is one of the most difficult to find items in the entire RCA VICTOR catalogue . The mix is clearly different, particularly on some songs: I could not recognize one of the most memorable songs from the album ("Martha"). The stereo version I am familiar with, the one from the "Worst of..." compilation, is definitely different from the one you will find on this album. This version has Jack Cassady’s bass line pushed all the way to the front, as if it were the solo instrument, while the other instruments are pretty much relegated to the background. In addition, the original stereo version of the album contains the song "Young Girl’s Sunday Blues" in fake, rechannelled stereo, so this is your only chance to hear this great song it all its original (mono) glory. For many Jefferson Airplane aficionados, this is the band’s ultimate achievement and a true tour-de-force. By the time the album was issued, long gone were the hippie references, and the mirth-pills-and-grass aesthetics; the band adopted a much more aggressive and vigorous - but no less subtle - musical approach starting with this album. If you are unfamiliar with this great psych/west coast album, this is your chance to acquire a piece of history.

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THIS IS A NO-RESERVE AUCTION!

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·                               CONDITION:

·                               RECORD

(IMPORTANT NOTE: unless otherwise noted, ALL records are graded visually, and NOT play-graded!; we  grade records under the strong, diffuse room light or discrete sunlight)

(a)          WE GRADE THE VINYL AS STRONG VG++. A few light abrasions (probably just sleeve scuffs inflicted in storage over the years) ARE VISIBLE, but they appear fairly  insignificant relative to the overall condition of the vinyl, and are only moderately visually distracting. For most part, the vinyl looks impeccable, without any MAJOR visual flaws or imperfections. Much of the original luster is intact, and the vinyl shines and sparkles almost like new.

(b)          The record comes in its original, custom, inner sleeve, which is UNIQUE to this album. (a small section of the inner sleeve is missing)

(c)           The record has a "deep groove" (an indent in the label about 1/2-inch from the edge of the label, which on SOME labels is associated with very early or first pressings).

(d)          Mono pressing of this title is much rarer, and by far more  preferable to its stereo counterpart. We think that the mix is more natural, humane, "organic" and that the mixes are somewhat different than on the stereo version. We estimate that stereo copies of this album outnumber mono pressings by a ratio of at least 30:1.

(e)           Of course, this is a full-bodied ANALOG recording, and not an inferior, digital recording!!!

·       COVER

THE COVER IS NICE --- ABOUT EXCELLENT OR VERY GOOD+++.

The following flaws or imperfections are noted on the cover:

-        Cover has a small cutout hole in one of the corners

-         Cover has JUST A HINT of ring wear (nothing significant); On the scale from 1 to 10 (1 being the least, and  10 being the most severe), we assess the severity of ring wear as 2.

-         Cover shows some light yellowing on both sides, apparently from aging   (nothing significant).

-         Cover has a few tiny wrinkles along the spine

-         Minor shelf wear noted on the seams (nothing significant)

-         Cover has a few wrinkles along the spine

-         Cover has two corners slightly worn / dinged  (nothing significant)

NO OTHER IMPERFECTIONS ON THE COVER:

-        No split seams

-        No cut-out corners

-        No saw-marks or indents

-        No dirt/dust rubbing stains (friction marks caused by rubbing against other covers)

-        No writing

-        No stamps

-        No peel-off marks

-        No stains

-        No mold or mildew spots

-        No stickers or labels

-        No water damage

-        No razor marks, scratches, pressure marks, lines, streaks, or  cuts.

-        No warping

-        No wax, glue, paint or liquid drops on the cover

-        No glue traces or wax residue.

-        No bar codes

-        No RIAA stamps or stickers. 

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POSTAGE & SHIPPING:

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