Jefferson Airplane's first live album demonstrated the group's development as concert performers, taking a number of songs that had been performed in concise,
pop-oriented versions on their early albums --
"3/5's of a Mile in 10 Seconds," "Somebody to Love," "It's No Secret," "Plastic Fantastic Lover" -- and rendering them in arrangements that were longer, harder rocking, and more densely textured, especially in terms of the guitar and basslines constructed by
Jorma Kaukonen and
Jack Casady. The group's three-part vocal harmonizing and dueling was on display during such songs as a nearly seven-minute version of
Fred Neil's
folk-blues standard
"The Other Side of This Life," here transformed into a swirling rocker. The album emphasized the talents of
Kaukonen and singer
Marty Balin over the team of
Paul Kantner and
Grace Slick, who had tended to dominate recent records: the
blues song
"Rock Me Baby" was a dry run for
Hot Tuna, the band
Kaukonen and
Casady would form in two years, and
Balin turned in powerful vocal performances on several of his own compositions, notably
"It's No Secret." Jefferson Airplane was still at its best in concise, driving numbers, rather than in the jams on
Donovan's
"Fat Angel" (running seven-and-a-half minutes) or the group improv
"Bear Melt" (over eleven minutes); they were just too intense to stretch out comfortably. But
Bless Its Pointed Little Head served an important function in the group's discography, demonstrating that their live work had a distinctly different focus and flavor from their studio recordings. [The 2004 reissue of the record includes three previously unreleased bonus tracks recorded November 5, 1969 at the
Fillmore West:
"Today," "Watch Her Ride" and
"Won't You Try Saturday Afternoon" (here titled only
"Won't You Try").]~ William Ruhlmann
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