A beguiling collection of bluesy, druggy, idealistic leftovers from the Airplane’s 1965-1970 history, this nine-song album was one of the first instances of a major American rock band plundering its vaults for rarities — it’s also as good a record as any of their official original albums. Musically, it’s full of superb material, including the six-and-a-half minute Jorma Kaukonen-authored blues workout “In the Morning”— an after-hours jam from the “Surrealistic Pillow” sessions (with Jerry Garcia on one of the guitars and John Hammond blowing the harp) that’s as fine a piece of music as anything that made it onto the album — the Signe Anderson vocal blow-out “High Flyin’ Bird,” and the Grace Slick-Paul Kantner sung version of “Go to Her” off of Surrealistic Pillow.
The closing two tracks on side one and the first track from side two come from the recording sessions for “Surrealistic Pillow”, which took place from October through November, 1966 at RCA Victor’s Music Center of the World. Tracks from the “Takes Off” and “Surrealistic Pillow” sessions appeared later as bonus tracks on the respective 2003 remasters, albeit with different mixes.
The first three tracks come from the recording sessions for Jefferson Airplane “Takes Off” which took place in December, 1965 at RCA Victor’s Music Center of the World recording studio in Hollywood. These tracks feature vocals by Signe Toly Anderson and Skip Spence on drums. “Runnin’ ‘Round This World” had been previously released as a B-side on the “It’s No Secret” single.
“Up or Down” comes from the early recording sessions for “Bark” which took place in February 1970 at Pacific High and Wally Heider Studios before Marty Balin chose to leave the band. “Mexico” and “Have You Seen the Saucers?” had been previously released as a non-album single in 1970,
Released as Grunt CYL1-0437. It features previously unreleased material from 1966, 1967, and 1970 as well as both sides of a non-album 1970 single.
The Fat Angel Sings 