POP MUSIC REVIEWS : Kantner’s Idealism Still Flies

The death Friday of rock promoter Bill Graham did not dampen the idealistic fervor of Jefferson Airplane founder Paul Kantner’s concert at McCabe’s on Saturday. Kantner downplayed the loss of a man whose guidance helped shape the group’s revolutionary, communal vision; in the first of two sets Saturday he made just one brief comment. But the memory of Graham seemed present in a show that successfully connected mature ‘90s idealism to heady ‘60s radicalism.

They may seem almost quaint in the N.W.A-Public Enemy days of rage, but some of the Airplane’s late-’60s songs were anti-authoritarian standards of those times. Kantner at first pushed aside revolution Saturday in favor of his post-hippie, utopian, escapist fantasies, beginning with “Wooden Ships” and a suite from his ‘70s sci-fi epic “Blows Against the Empire.”

But then he did a new song he described as being about “the first female serial killer of Republicans,” and the old spark was back. Kantner, accompanied by guitarist Mark Aguilar and keyboardist Tim Gorman, pushed his dry but expressive voice through a good balance of old and new songs, spiked by the reading of two pieces by a martyred Guatemalan poet. By the time he climaxed the show with “Volunteers,” the call to arms seemed just as relevant now as it did at Woodstock.