Jefferson Airplane, After Bathing at Baxter's (side A)

I somehow found this quote on AllMusic.com: "this is not the album by which one should start listening to this band," and I couldn't disagree more.  1967's After Bathing at Baxter's, Airplane's third album, makes complete sense alongside anything from The United States of America to the Golden Dawn's Power Plant.  Like the Grateful Dead's Anthem of the Sun, it makes a very compelling argument that, at that time, even the most commercially viable bands could make genuinely inventive and damaged albums.  The band's excellent musicianship is manifest, though Spencer Dryden sometimes foregoes his precise drumming for subtler textures, and the guitar sound is blown out to extremes.  The compositions incorporate the blues riffs associated with Airplane, and sometimes even have recognizable choruses, but the majority of the album flows in a more linear and narrative fashion.  The sound is unimpressive for a commercial album of the late-60s—it seems that effort was focused on allowing freedom over any notion of technical mastery.  After Bathing at Baxter's is easy to overlook in the context of Airplane's less daring and inventive work, but it stands up as a genuinely original and powerful example of psychedelia's beautiful excesses.