Grace Slick & the Great Society - The Matrix, San Francisco, CA, 6-1966

Do you like Jefferson Airplane? How would you like an entire album that sounds like Jefferson Airplane in their prime but has Grace Slick sing most every song, instead of her just being one of four lead vocalists? That's basically what the Great Society were. Even though I've been a Jefferson Airplane fan for ages, I only recently started appreciating the Great Society. 

There have been a couple of official albums released by them: "Born to Be Bad," which contains early studio demos that aren't very good, and "Collector's Item," which is an excellent concert recording. This is a bootleg, so I feel free to post it here, and the sound quality and performance are very similar to "Collector's Item."

The Great Society only existed for about a year, from 1965 to 1966. For most of that time, they had two lead vocalists: Grace Slick and David Miner.  I have to be brutally honest here. Miner generally sang his own songs, and they were pretty bad. As a lead vocalist, he was merely adequate. I think it's telling that after leaving the band, he went to college and left the music business. As a result, I've taken a longer bootleg and removed all of the David Miner originals, making it a much stronger album. The only ones I've kept where he sings are the covers "Down Home Girl," "Black Crow Blues," and "Get Out of My Life Woman." For that last one, he and Slick harmonize together on the vocals. 

Removing his songs may sound harsh, but believe me, you're not missing anything. Note this is exactly what the official album "Collector's Item" did. That was recorded about three months before this, so Miner probably sang half or more of the songs, but all of the songs with him singing lead were removed.

With Miner gone, the Great Society would have had a bright future being fronted by Slick. But right as they were offered a record contract, she had a chance to join Jefferson Airplane and replace their departing female lead vocalist. She obviously chose to join Jefferson Airplane. Somewhat surprisingly, the other band members encouraged her to do so, knowing that was the better path to success. Then the band folded, since they knew they wouldn't be much without her.

You can read more about the band at their Wikipedia entry, if you're curious:

The Great Society (band) - Wikipedia

What surprises me about the band is that it had multiple talented songwriters. Slick sang some songs she wrote herself, others written by the bassist (Peter van Gelder), and still others written by her brother-in-law Darby Slick. The Jefferson Airplane classic "White Rabbit" was written by Slick and was first performed by the Great Society, though sadly it's not included here. Another Jefferson Airplane classic, "Somebody to Love," was written by Darby Slick and is included here in a slower version called "Someone to Love." The songs are originals other than the three Miner sung or co-sung ones mentioned above, plus "Outlaw Blues" by Bob Dylan.

As an aside, I find it interesting that there's a slight lyrical difference with the early version of "Somebody to Love" compared to the hit version done by Jefferson Airplane. The Airplane version has a verse that goes: "Your eyes, your eyes may look like his. But in your head, baby, I'm afraid you don't know where it is." But the original here goes: "Your eyes, your eyes may look like his. But in bed, baby, I'm afraid you don't know where it is." It's a subtle difference, but it makes more sense. I'm guessing it was changed because the "in bed" part was considered too risque by the very innocent sexual standards of that era. (To show just how much standards have changed, consider that in the same year of 1967, the Van Morrison song "Brown Eyed Girl" was banned by many radio stations merely for containing the lyric "makin' love in the green grass behind the stadium.")

This album is 35 minutes long. As I said above, you can find longer versions of this bootleg with the Miner songs included, but in this case, less is more. I also removed a second version of "Born to Be Burned" that got cut off before the end, and a short instrumental that wasn't very good. Both on this bootleg and the live "Collector's Item," there doesn't seem to have been any banter between songs.

By the way, at the time, the band was simply known as "the Great Society." But due to Slick's later fame, after the band broke up, they have often been called "Grace Slick and the Great Society." I've gone with that latter, less accurate name, to help make sure people don't miss this music.

01 Down Home Girl (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
02 Born to Be Burned (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
03 Black Crow Blues (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
04 Didn't Think So (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
05 Darkly Smiling (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
06 Father Bruce (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
07 Often as I May (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
08 Outlaw Blues (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
09 Get Out of My Life Woman (Grace Slick & the Great Society)
10 Someone to Love [Somebody to Love] (Grace Slick & the Great Society)

https://www.imagenetz.de/fWM5y

I wanted to use a photo of the whole band, but I couldn't find a good one in color that wasn't used for an album already. So I went with a photo of just Grace Slick. I don't know when or where this photo is from, but I'm guessing it's from 1967 or thereabouts.