Artist:   Jefferson Airplane
Song:   "My Best Friend"
Album: Surrealistic Pillow
Label:   RCA
Year:    1967

There might not be a more evocative album of San Francisco’s Summer of Love than Surrealistic Pillow. Jefferson Airplane was like a super group before there even was such a thing. With dueling lead singers Marty Balin and Grace Slick, they had a sheer vocal velocity no other Bay Area band could get close to. Lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and the Jack Casady/Spencer Dryden rhythm section were without peer. That left wild card rhythm guitarist/singer Paul Kantner to light fires around the periphery and really cause trouble. “My Best Friend,” even though it couldn’t compete with the commercial success of the set’s mega-hit “Somebody To Love,” really felt like the album’s theme song. Written by original Airplane drummer Skip Spence, who had gotten bounced out of the band before defecting to found Moby Grape, the song is an unrepentant ode to the beauty of openness. It sounds like a big smile, and features the Jefferson Airplane in total harmony, like they’re trying to help tune the cosmos so the human species can move a few notches up the evolutionary ladder. The elegant lope of “My Best Friend” could come from a summer camp songbook it’s so seductively soothing, and it would take someone even snarkier than Scrooge to humbug these stirring emotions. Owsley’s finest might have been the original inspiration for Spence to pen “My Best Friend,” but its origin is beside the point now. What lasts is an anthem to inspire everyone to keep dreaming.