You know you are getting old when:

[MisterCairo]

You know you're getting old when you're following a debate on the merits of Fleetwood Mac.

'cough' Tusk 'cough'...

Now:

Jefferson Airship vs. Jefferson Starship: Discuss.

 

[Trenchfriend]

I guess, that you are getting old, when you comprehend, that you are talking at the FL, with a german boy, born seven years after "Rumours".

 

[vitanola]

"You know that you're getting old when" you read a discussion about song writers and wonder why Joe Howard and DeSylva, Brown and Henderson are not included.

 

[Fading Fast]

You know you're getting old when you're following a debate on the merits of Fleetwood Mac.

'cough' Tusk 'cough'...

Now:

Jefferson Airship vs. Jefferson Starship: Discuss.

Man, that name switch confused the hell out of me back then, but once I heard "We Built This City" or whatever that horrible, hateful song was called, I couldn't have cared less if they called themselves Thomas Jefferson - I was done.

And, yes, I'm not proud of three-quarters of the trivia form the past that interests me, but what the heck, there it is.

My girlfriend says that if I devoted the brain power I do to this nonsense, to something productive, the world would probably be at peace by now. I think she highly over rates what I could do - but point taken.

 

[HudsonHawk]

My girlfriend says that if I devoted the brain power I do to this nonsense, to something productive, the world would probably be at peace by now. I think she highly over rates what I could do - but point taken.

This is what my wife says about the time I spend online at sites like this. That, and when she found out how much time I spend online discussing baseball she said "Really? That's what you do on the internet all night...talk about baseball? Don't tell anyone, just let them think you're watching online porn."

 

[2jakes]

Things I use on a daily basis which are now found in antique shops.

 

[vitanola]

Man, that name switch confused the hell out of me back then, but once I heard "We Built This City" or whatever that horrible, hateful song was called, I couldn't have cared less if they called themselves Thomas Jefferson - I was done.

How does it differ from the other dreck of the period? Right up there with other deathless ditties like "White Horse" and "Pull the Sucker Off". I prefer my references to the radio to be more direct:

 

[MisterCairo]

born seven years after "Rumours"

Consider yourself lucky!

 

[Trenchfriend]

Consider yourself lucky!

But I got Bowie's "Low" from nearly the same time, so Mac's "Rumours" is a little too mainstream to me, sorry buddies!

 

[MisterCairo]

But I got Bowie's "Low" from nearly the same time, so Mac's "Rumours" is a little too mainstream to me, sorry buddies!

Don't apologise to me, I'm no fan of Fleetwood Mac!!! Love Bowie.

 

[Fading Fast]

This is what my wife says about the time I spend online at sites like this. That, and when she found out how much time I spend online discussing baseball she said "Really? That's what you do on the internet all night...talk about baseball? Don't tell anyone, just let them think you're watching online porn."

That is very funny. I see your wife, like my girlfriend, has access to a SSLMS - Sarcastic Shoulder Launched Missile System. My girlfriend can be stirring a pot on the stove top, nonchalantly pick up the SSLMS, fire one at me across the apartment that hits dead on and never miss a stir.

That said, as she (1) lurks on FL all the time herself and (2) introduced me to FL, she really can't give me too hard a time for all the time on spend on the site. She's even come to know some of you guys through me and will ask "what's Hudson Hawk or Lizzie been up to lately." Yet, I can't her to join.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

I must be the only person in the universe that hasn't listened to Fleetwood Mac, at least not knowingly, so I popped over to youtube to hear a few tracks. I would class it under what was termed in the 80's, 'easy listening' .............it ain't something I would dunk my biscuit in.

 

[Fading Fast]

How does it differ from the other dreck of the period? Right up there with other deathless ditties like "White Horse" and "Pull the Sucker Off". I prefer my references to the radio to be more direct:

Your point is a good one - it was all garbage.

The only distinction Jefferson Starship (what a stupid name) had is that its progenitor Jefferson Airplane wrote "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit" both killer rock songs with the second one possibly being at the top of the rock-song-as-drug-trip-metaphor category (a very competitive field).

For a group like that to put out "We Built this City" is embarrassing and heartbreaking.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Okay, I went through a period of intense Jefferson Airplane fandom in my early college years (the mid-seventies, after they'd already started morphing into Jefferson Starship). They were a tremendously influential psychedelic band with really strong musicianship, and the textbook example of group with too many strong personalities to stay together. They happened to have a couple of hit records, but they were much more about live performance and improvisation, like their fellow San Franciscans the Grateful Dead. Their evolution into Jefferson Starship, then Starship, was mostly about losing great players like Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady, and Paul Kantner to other groups, and replacing them with shallow pop losers. By the time just Marty Balin and Grace Slick were left from the original Airplane, it was a totally different band, producing disposable mainstream pop.

So really, they were almost a totally different group from the gang that did Somebody To Love by the time they got to We Built This City. Hence the Airplane is deserving of respect... but not the Starship.

PS - Author Grace Slick always insisted that White Rabbit was totally misinterpreted as a drug song: "When I said 'Feed your head' I meant you should READ!"

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

It was an era so drenched in pop culture that even the hangers-on could acquire a certain fame. Who remembers Cynthia Plastercaster?

 

[MisterCairo]

Outside of the music genre, I remember Skinny Minnie Miller. A schoolmate in first grade was mad about her...

Kudos to the first who can guess her talent without using google or bing...

 

[LizzieMaine]

You know you're getting old when the whole past page of "You Know You're Getting Old When..." posts are absolutely incomprehensible to you.

 

[Fading Fast]

Okay, I went through a period of intense Jefferson Airplane fandom in my early college years (the mid-seventies, after they'd already started morphing into Jefferson Starship). They were a tremendously influential psychedelic band with really strong musicianship, and the textbook example of group with too many strong personalities to stay together. They happened to have a couple of hit records, but they were much more about live performance and improvisation, like their fellow San Franciscans the Grateful Dead. Their evolution into Jefferson Starship, then Starship, was mostly about losing great players like Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady, and Paul Kantner to other groups, and replacing them with shallow pop losers. By the time just Marty Balin and Grace Slick were left from the original Airplane, it was a totally different band, producing disposable mainstream pop.

So really, they were almost a totally different group from the gang that did Somebody To Love by the time they got to We Built This City. Hence the Airplane is deserving of respect... but not the Starship.

PS - Author Grace Slick always insisted that White Rabbit was totally misinterpreted as a drug song: "When I said 'Feed your head' I meant you should READ!"

Great info and analysis.

As to GS's comment - it's all a game that these old rockers play with us about what their songs mean. They love to contradict the prevailing narrative.

For a song about reading and not drug use, there are some odd references to pills altering your sense of proportion, a "hookah-smoking caterpillar," the ineffectiveness of the pills "your mother gives you," "some kind of mushroom," and a general sense of mind-altering reality. Yup, sounds like she was just promoting the book-of-the-month club with that song - come on Grace.

 

[Fading Fast]

You know you're getting old when the whole past page of "You Know You're Getting Old When..." posts are absolutely incomprehensible to you.

You and I are the same age, you just chose to ignore rock music - that says nothing about you "getting old."

What does make you feel old though is when the 30 year old woman who cuts your hair tells you how much she "loves all the old classic song by the Stones, the Who, etc." and then asks you what it was like when that music was new.

She was born in '86 and by the time she was aware of music, all of those groups where well, well past their heyday. To her, they are like what the Big Bands were to me growing up - music that I loved, but music that was from the past. It wasn't relevant to my friends or part of current culture - that's how she sees classic rock.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The thing that gets me is that when I was a kid, I'd turn on the TV and see Benny Goodman or Lionel Hampton or Count Basie or Harry James performing on some PBS or variety show -- and they didn't seem old. I knew they were in their fifties or sixties, but they didn't seem old. But when I flip around and see some of these sixties or seventies-era rock stars grotesquely capering around, they look absolutely ancient. And ridiculous.