Oil Slick

I finally started checking out the Airplane's off shoot/solo/side projects about 2 years ago, starting with Hot Tuna and graciously leaving it there. Jorma is one of the best guitarists to come out of California, and I stubbornly stuck to his recordings, until a few months ago when I held my breath and bought Grace Slick's 'Manhole' and Jefferson Starship's 'Red Octopus'. Chalk it up to my affinity for Mizz Slick's pipes. I couldn't ignore all that stuff in between 'Eat Starch Mom' & 'We Built This City'. that's a decent sized gap. maybe i'll go through all of these releases some day, maybe not, probably not.
i'm gonna stick to 'Manhole' for this post.
the LP kicks things off with 'Jay', a wordless mumble-chant invocation laid over a nimble-fingered flight of fancy courtesy of Jorma's baby brother Peter. it's not unlike an unwritten improvised version of 'Battle of Evermore'.
'Theme From Manhole' is a great slow burner to get things sizzling. Slick's classic warbling is right up front, her exclamations in Spanish might turn some listeners off, but she kills that jive once the brass and strings come in(don't worry it returns later on). stuffed full of tempo/mood/color changes, this 15 minute sprawler works best on headphones. the real winners here are the majesty of Steven Schuster's arrangement for the LSO!, and Ron Carter's double bass; thankfully he doesn't get lost in the mix.
no pop singer in today's headfuck music biz would make an album this inaccessible. the Airplane's time had clearly come and gone by 1974, but Slick was still a benchmark pinko hippie groove momma for many a rock and roll fan...if not THE P.H.G.M. at that time(her successor, Stevie Nicks was yet to appear in white frilly garb, twirling ad nauseum to "gold dust woman" for the millions to move to). the song climaxes with David Crosby's harmonies/symphony/Craig Chaquico's molten stock leads, with Slick chanting 'She wants to run, give her the sun' ...a big wallop of a crescendo.
the 2nd side is of little or no consequence until the last song 'Epic no. 38'. warning! beware the sound of bagpipes. i know they're out there, bagpipe haters skip this altogether. i on the other hand can't imagine a world without bagpipes. this cut has a lot going on in it; the LSO is back but beefed up with 8 or so bagpipes players, Quicksilver's David Freiberg and P. Kantner step up with Slick in unison on lead vocals...Slick cums her demon liquid out all over the studio floor and Chaquico's licks are slobbering all over the substance, he's almost honking and snorting, hornking and snotting, snorking and hotting.
i can see this record as an experiment by the band to see what would happen if they gave Grace the cover and album credit for what was probably a group effort, they could've done it with any of the LPs they were putting out at the time, the one noticeable difference about this record is the suppression of the rock idiom's primary vehicle for aural enticement-the electric guitar. there are very few moments of phallic fretboard finesse and maybe that's how they tried to give it a more feminine spin: cutting down all of those cocks. or maybe Slick was the one in charge...she's tops on my list.