CoronaVinyl Day 444 (J): Dragon Fly by Jefferson Starship

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Today's CoronaVinyl category is "J," and it's another letter for which I only have repeat artists.  I went with Jefferson Starship's 1974 debut album, Dragon Fly.

After seminal San Francisco psychedelic rockers Jefferson Airplane slowly disintegrated in the early '70s and then eventually broke up for good in 1972, some of the band members didn't want to stop making music together.  In 1974, Grace Slick, Paul Kantner, Marty Balin, Papa John Creach, and David Freiberg of Jefferson Airplane joined together with guitarist Craig Chaquico, percussionist John Barbata and bassist/keyboardist Pete Sears to form Jefferson Starship.    

Dragon Fly is a pretty good post-psychedelic rock album.  It definitely sounds like an extension of Jefferson Airplane, which I think is a good thing.  There are harder rocking songs, softer rocking songs, and some extended jams.

The album did pretty well, reaching #11 on the Billboard album chart, and it went gold in the U.S., though they only released two singles from the album -- "Ride the Tiger," which topped out at a meager #84 on the Billboard Hot 100, and "Caroline" (sing by Marty Balin in his only contribution to this album), which failed to chart.

The band would release seven more studio albums through 1984, going through various lineup changes.  Of course, Jefferson Starship would rebrand again in 1985 as Starship, under which they would have some massive '80s hits, including three #1 songs in the U.S., "We Built This City," "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now," and "Sara."

Favorite Song on Side 1:  "Ride the Tiger"
The album kicks off with a solid rocker.  "Ride the Tiger" is one of those songs where you can hear the remnants of Jefferson Airplane.

Favorite Song on Side 2:  "Hyperdrive"
The last song on the album is a trippy, nearly eight-minute song that has some guitar solos that sound like they could have been on an Ozzy-era Black Sabbath album from Sabotage forward.  The song was also used in the opening ceremonies of the 1976 World Science Fiction Convention, which seems about right.