Paul Kantner/Jefferson Starship-Blows Against The Empire (1970)

 

Artist: Paul Kantner/Jefferson Starship

Title:  Blows Against The Empire

Label: RCA Victor

Format: LP

Cat #: LSP-4448

Year of Release: 1970

Country and Year of Edition Issue: US 1970 Gatefold Rockaway Pressing with original inner sleeve

Listed Condition: VG/VG

Sell Date: 12/18/25

Sell Price: $8.92

Discogs Last Sold: 12/10/25 G+/VG $1.40

Low: $0.99

Median: $4.50

Average: $6.57

High: $35.29

Current low price: $1.00

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 156

Have/Want: 5378/380

Where Sold: Miami, FL

Time it took to sell: 4 years

Where and When Bought: facebook marketplace $3 lot

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: B+

Sad To See It Go: No

The first time I really thought of this album, my current bandmate Jubal got a used copy of this outside.  I don't remember if he knew it from his San Francisco time or what, but he thought it was a cool find at the time.  Ever since then I had a mental note to check it out.   I got this copy a few years ago from an internet lot of $3 records.  It was it a pile of records from that era three or four years ago untouched in my bedroom and too me forever to find when it sold.  I can't remember whether I played it right when I bought it, but listening to it 3 or 4 times over the last few days made it seem like I was familiarizing myself from scratch.

It's a pretty cool record overall.  For all intents and purposes this was a Paul Kantner solo record.  The "Jefferson" brand was attached probably at the bequest of RCA Victor.   I remember "The Baby Song" from 70's Folk radio when the composer Rosalie Sorrels issued it as "Baby Rocking Medley."  Even though she wrote it, Kantner was the first to record and release the song in 1970.  She didn't get around to it until 1975 on the Always A Lady album.   Close to 50 years that song has remained in my brain from that version until this one made me solve the mystery.

Jefferson Starship as it pertains to this record was more a communal offshoot of the Airplane and not the commercial juggernaut it turned into later in the 70's.  Although this left field psychedelic sci-fi record had the Airplane and the Dead all over it, it didn't produce any hits.  That didn't matter, it peaked at #20 on Billboard anyway.  The popularity of the Airpane in the late 60's confirmed many a copy of their catalog in used bins beat to shit for all eternity.  This one took 11 years to be certified Gold despite it's high chart position.

The opening cut "Mau Mau (Amerikon)" sounds like a tangential version of "Mr. Soul" by Buffalo Springfield.  It has the lyric couplet of the record: "sign me up as a diplomat/my only office is the park."  Continuing with the polyamory theme they started in "Triad" on Crown of Creation in 1968, this years model is "Let's Go Together."  Anyway you thing that's what they are talking about until the Spaceship noise effects of "X-M" at the end of the record melt into the piano denouemont "Starship."  They might have been fucking around on the planet before with free love, mixed with "acid, cocaine and grass", but now they want to leave Amerika and Earth itself.  Could they have solved capitalism to get there, wherever there is?  They can get there.  Together. The lady strolls on the deck of the starship trippin' and Jerry provides the notes.

A man can dream.

FOR FURTHER REVIEW:

Jefferson Airplane-Surrealistic Pillow (1967)

Grateful Dead-History of the Dead, Vol. 1 (Bear's Choice) (1973)

Grateful Dead-Wake of the Flood (1973)

Grateful Dead-The Best Of: Skeletons From The Closet (1974)

Grateful Dead-Blues For Allah (1975)

Grateful Dead-Steal Your Face (1976)

Grateful Dead-Shakedown Street (1978)