The Stillaguamish Festival of the River will turn into a lovefest, of sorts, on Saturday when Jefferson Starship headlines the “Summer of Love 40th Anniversary Celebration” at River Meadows County Park in Arlington.
The band, which is anchored by founding members of the original Jefferson Airplane, rhythm guitarist Paul Kantner and singer Marty Balin, is on tour to support the release of a new album, “Sweeping Up the Spotlight.” It’s a 61-minute live recording at The Fillmore in San Francisco from 1969 one of Jefferson Airplane’s last captured-live recordings before the band began to fall apart in 1970.
The 18th annual version of the Stillaguamish Festival of the River also includes a day of music on Sunday that features The Verve Pipe, which had hits in 1996 with “Photograph” and “The Freshmen,” and the 1990s folk rock band Toad the Wet Sprocket.
The weekend’s entertainment at the festival also includes a variety of American Indian storytelling, powwows, drumming and dancing, as well as logging demonstrations.
But the summer of love revival will come courtesy of Jefferson Starship and friends. Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Tom Constanten of The Grateful Dead join the band on its “Summer of Love” celebration tour.
Kantner, who won a legal dispute over his bandmates for the Jefferson Starship name more than 20 years ago, resurrected the band that will appear in Arlington. Mickey Thomas, who joined the band in 1979 and took a leadership role of Starship in the ’80s, also tours under the name Starship starring Mickey Thomas and focuses on the band’s more pop period while he was the frontman.
Kantner’s Jefferson Starship aims to revive the psychedelic vibe that made Jefferson Airplane one of the purveyors of the sound in the late ’60s with hits such as “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love.” And the celebration seeks to recall some of the thoughts and attitudes that resulted in the summer of 1967 becoming known as the Summer of Love.
Set against the backdrop of an increased deployment of troops in Southeast Asia, Surveyor spacecrafts touching down on the moon, “Be-Ins” taking place in major cities across the country, it was an unmatched time in American culture, and one that was experienced by many through music and perhaps some other stuff.
Kantner recently told the Monterey County Weekly newspaper, while discussing the impact of the Monterey International Pop Festival that summer one of the first major rock festivals that the band in 1967 was “reflecting on the times, and it was a positive; we were just making music. Nobody knows how or why (music) works or how it impacts our consciousness; (music) still mystifies me, but it’s a mystery I don’t want to figure out.”
Kantner, who also told the paper he gave up on “the way things were” when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, summed up the decade by saying, “From 1962 until 1969, nothing happened in linear time, everything was happening at once. There were all these random factors: LSD, the Beatles, the sexual revolution, the anti-war movement, the Civil Rights movement. It was exhilarating and encompassing and with (the festival) we wanted to bring all that emotion and passion to Monterey.”
The passion and emotion may or may not still be there, but the music lives on this weekend in Arlington.
Reporter Victor Balta: victor.a.balta@gmail.com.
Associated Press
Jefferson Starship’s Paul Kantner (left) performs in front of Diana Mangano during the “Freedom Sings” benefit concert in New York on June 20, 2001.
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