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After Bathing at Baxter's, the third album by the San Francisco rock band Jefferson Airplane was released in 1967 as RCA Victor LSO-1511 (stereo) & LOP-1511 (mono).
After Bathing at Baxter's is notably psychedelic and provided a contrast to the band's previous album, Surrealistic Pillow, released earlier the same year, as it eschews the more commercial type rock songs, such as "Somebody to Love," that appeared on the earlier LP. As such, it was a watershed album; Jefferson Airplane was now a much heavier rock group. Jorma Kaukonen's electric guitar was especially more to the forefront in both volume and tone.
Divided into "suites," this musical shift is typified by longer and more experimental compositions such as the nine-minute instrumental "Spare Chaynge" (reputedly put together by Spencer Dryden when no-one else in the band showed up to a recording session) and Grace Slick's mammoth and unusual "Rejoyce," an homage to James Joyce's novel Ulysses, with its quirky arrangement and Jack Casady's stentorian bass line. Many of the album tracks reflect the band's heavy use of the drug LSD. The cover art is by artist Ron Cobb.
The album peaked at no. 17. The first single, "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil," barely missed the top 40 mark, charting at #42 while the second release, "Watch Her Ride," charted at #61 on Billboard. Both singles made it to the top 40 in the Cash Box Top 100. The band would continue its major commercial success the next year with Crown of Creation.
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