a paragraph on "Two Heads" by Jefferson Airplane

Jefferson Airplane are a sadly underdiscussed band from the Sixties, an amalgam of varied musical personalities—jazz basslines, bracing electric guitar from a player of folk-blues origin, two equally bracing singers burning through harmonies that influenced (no doubt) the dueling warbles of X's Exene and John Doe. Jefferson Airplane was odd, political, anarchistic, experimental, electrifying in their literacy, and genuinely nonconformist. Not every odd trick they put forth worked—they could be as precious and self-gratifying as any Laurel Canyon minstrel—but in their best period, from Jefferson Airplane Takes Off (1966) to Volunteers (1969), they were gloriously wide open to opportunities to subvert audience expectations. This one, written and sung by Grace Slick, is one of those songs that has continued to ring and resonate in my memory since I first heard it on their After Bathing at Baxter's album in 1967. An utterly strange song, with a revolving Middle Eastern tonality that loops insinuatingly between choruses. An unusual time signature, not busy or virtuosic in the conventional sense, but precisely placed, slightly behind the bass: you're reminded that drummer Spencer Dryden had a jazz background and understood the odd time signature. Words and music by Grace Slick, stanzas conveying something like what it must be like meeting yourself in the thick of a problematic acid trip, and, of course, a very odd and splendidly hooky song structure. There are many snippets of what must be going through a first-time acid taker's brain that it simulates the literal idea of sliding deep down a rabbit hole.

I nominate Slick as a candidate for more serious scholarship about her songwriting and musicianship.