Cheap Volunteers (Music) (Jefferson Airplane) Price

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Customer Reviews of Volunteers

Why Apologize for Revolutionary Aspirations?
It is too bad that full text of the defiant lyrics which was included in the original album was replaced in the CD with a "we were only kidding" commentary. The album represents a powerful artistic statement for the need to share all in common and end the greed that could destroy our world through war and environmental disaster (still!). "We Should be Together" calls for solidarity and tells capitalist oligarches: "All your private property is target for your enemy and your enemy is we." Slick's songs (as in many other albums) provide a tour de force of sharp, surrealistic imagery of alienation worthy of Lorca (especially "Hey Fredrick"). American escapism (always running off to the next frontier, the next market, or the outer reaches of suburban sprawl) is treated as myth ("Good Shepard") and its hippy utopian variant of the time is satirized ("the Farm"). The impossibility of escape from a nuclear holocaust ("Wooden Ships") leaves no alternative to revolution, which is both joyous ("Volunteers") and deadly serious ("Meadowlands", the theme of the Soviet Army). The only seriously false note is in "Wooden Ships", in which the response to the possible victims of a nuclear catastrophe is to say "All we can do is echo your anguished cry. We are leaving, you don't need us." Nonetheless, an impressive statement, all in all. The music is magnificent, inextricably tied to the lyrics and fully conveying the extraordinary energy and vocal and instrumental and creativity the group brought to their live performances at the time. Listening again to the entire album for the first time in decades, I'm struck how distinctive their music really was and how well it's held up. Finally, did the "revolution" "fail"? Not entirely, but in any case, keep your eyes open and be ready to lend a hand, it will all come around again, if in somewhat different form. Or, as someone said about Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, it seems like sometimes the "losers" write the best songs. There is plenty of good music which isn't about heroism, rebellion or the trials and struggles of the downtrodden, but I, for one, don't want to lose the good music that is about those things.

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My favorite album by the Airplane.
The Airplane's best? Maybe not...the music on their other albums is generally more inspired, but this album brings it all back together again brilliantly as the Airplane looked back over their short, meteoric career before the classic line-up fell apart. Songs such as "Good Shepherd" and "Turn my life down" recall the joy of Surrealistic Pillow. "Hey Frederik" and "Eskimo Blue Day" bring back the crazed, psychedellic feelings of "Baxter's." "We Can Be Together," "Wooden Ships," and "Volunteers," take the political themes of "Crown" and make the next step--making them some of the most powerful and politically conscious songs of the day. Pick this one up.

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The Dangers of Politically Topical Music Revealed
I must admit, even as a Jefferson Airplane fan, that Volunteers is probably the weakest of their albums. It sounds pedantic and moralizing, kind of Rage Against the Machine-esque, in a sense. It is also very difficult to separate the music from its context, which makes the album seem dated and irrelevant.

In a way, I think that Jefferson Airplane's Volunteers illustrates, very well the dangers of writing politically topical music. After time runs its course, matters which were of extreme political and social importance, are often no longer so. As a document, indicative of the political and social climate of the late 60's Volunteers functions quite well, but as a work of art, it suffers.