Jefferson Airplane

GW: This is Dylan Muhlberg of Grateful Web here with Richard Loren. I am thrilled to have the company of one of the rock era’s most pivotal music agents. His new memoir High Notes, recounts his monumental career. His early days in the corporate music world representing such legendary acts as The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and The Chambers Brothers gained him recognition and success in the music business.

Real Gone Music continues to chart regions of unexplored musical space with its September 3 fleet of releases, which features a legendary concert by one of the biggest bands of the '70s alongside two acts improbably gaining fame 40 years after the fact, two underappreciated female singers of the '60s, a country contrarian pushing against the Nashville Sound force field and the missing piece in the late-'70s East Coast power pop and new wave scene.

Few musical journeys spanned as long and varied as Jorma and Jack's. As pioneers of the premier San Francisco electric sound with Jefferson Airplane, something else much bigger was meant to spawn and thrive for decades to come. Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady have held the foundations of their lifelong band and partnership Hot Tuna together for over forty-three years.

It was sometime in the early 90s when I first heard Hot Tuna. One of the older hippie kids in my neighborhood who used to flow me Dead tapes (and weed) said "hey man, you dig Hot Tuna?" I was the furthest thing from hip to what he was saying, and probably replied with something along the lines of "I don't know them." He said something like "shit, you don't know Tuna.

The argument rages on, but for many music fans in the ’60s, the best live band from the Bay Area was Jefferson Airplane.

It was Jorma Kaukonen’s big San Francisco homecoming on his current tour with G.E. Smith. Kaukonen, who grew up to be an accomplished guitar player in Washington D.C., moved to San Francisco just in time for the psychedelic rock of the sixties, and was one of the founding members of Jefferson Airplane; San Francisco’s golden fleece of psychedelic rock in the 60s. Since Jefferson Airplane, Kaukonen’s career has taken a far left turn in another direction.