Review: 'Jefferson Airplane Takes Off' RSD 2-LP Edition

Jefferson Airplane was unquestionably the best and most chart-successful band to break out of San Francisco's psychedelic scene. That means their debut is an important record even though a lot of what made the Airplane so great is not quite in place yet. Grace Slick was not on board at this point, though original vocalist Signe Anderson certainly comports herself well throughout the record. The free-flying duel-soloist team of Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady hadn't fully dropped their chocks yet. The songs were more standard-issue folk-rock than the kind of wild psych the band made when they reached their highest altitude. And probably something else that I can twist into a corny flight-metaphor.

Not that Jefferson Airplane Takes Off is solely about its first-album status. Marty Balin's fusion of Byrds jangle and Otis Redding soul, "It's No Secret", is one of the band's best tracks. "Tobacco Road" is a choice cover. "Chauffeur Blues" is a powerhouse showcase for Signe. "Blues from an Airplane" provides a show-stopping early taste of the brooding psychedelia the band was heading for. In just a year they would develop that sound to score the two smash hits that put San Francisco on the sixties rock map.

The importance of Jefferson Airplane Takes Off is finally getting its due acknowledgement for its sixtieth anniversary. This Record Store Day, the first non-bare-bones vinyl release will be landing (sorry!). Sony Legacy's reissue adds an extra LP of tracks that were censored on the original release for sexual/drugual references, as well as outtakes, alternate versions, and a B-side. None of this stuff is exactly mind-blowing, at least not if if you already have a copy of Early Flight, the 1974 outtakes comp that first collected "High Flying Bird", "It's Alright", "Go to Her", and "Runnin' Round This World". However it's nice to have all the group's 1966 stuff bunched together on a single disc. What might be most exciting about this release is the possibility it portends the rest of Jefferson Airplane's RCA output getting similar treatment on future RSD's, because a lot of those album's supplementary material is not so easily available on vinyl.

This release also serves another purpose, because although used vinyl copies of the Airplane's RCA records are easily available for a minimum of bread, many of those pressings are nigh on unlistenable. I don't know what RCA was doing in the sixties and seventies, but a lot of their pressings sound like sand was liberally mixed with the PVC pellets. There's none of that on Sony Legacy's new edition, just a touch of surface whoosh on the main LP, like a muted version of the noise you might hear between tracks on a picture disc. There's also a bit of groove distortion, particularly at the ends of sides. The bonus disc sound much cleaner overall.

Otherwise, the mastering sounds surprisingly similar to an original pressing. I would have gone with mono instead of hard-panned stereo for a special edition of this particular album, but the bonus tracks on the second LP are mono where they need to be. 

As someone who is rarely charmed by colored vinyl, I must admit that the marbled blue vinyl looks beautiful. The packaging overall is very well done, with printed inners featuring color photos and copious liner notes, as well as bonus plain paper sleeves.

This RSD release is limited to 2,200 copies.