Kantner Blasts Off With New Jefferson Incarnation : * Pop: Band’s co-founder and musical wellspring remains actively involved in several diverse projects.

Paul Kantner has a vivid recollection of “Career Day” at hishigh school in San Francisco. He remembers going in one door of the auditorium, stopping at each table that offered information on professions, then exiting on the other side, having narrowed his prospects to two.

“I realized that the only possible alternatives for me were bank robbery or suicide,” a laughing Kantner, now 50, said earlier this week in a phone call from his home in San Francisco. “Fortunately, rock ‘n’ roll found me before I ended up either dead or in prison. And music proved to be an extraordinarily useful vehicle for me to accomplish the distribution of ideas.”

That’s an understatement.

In 1965, a few years after Kantner passed on all the “straight” jobs available to him, he and vocalist Marty Balin formed the original version of Jefferson Airplane. After a couple of personnel adjustments, the band--guitarist-vocalist Kantner, vocalists Balin and Grace Slick, guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, bassist Jack Casady and drummer Spencer Dryden--became the focal point of the then-blossoming Bay Area music scene.

The Airplane was well-equipped for ‘60s-style leadership. Its synthesis of folk, pop, rock, jazz, avant-garde and even classical music into an obstreperous, frequently improvisational sound indicated a new creative direction for rock. Furthermore, the group’s crystallization of rogue thought, lifestyle, appearance, behavior and political activism into a living art form made them the outspoken conscience of an emerging American counterculture. Today, Jefferson Airplane is widely regarded as one of the most influential American bands in rock history.

By 1970, however, most of the members of Jefferson Airplane were involved in outside projects. Kantner used the down time to record a science-fiction rock opus (featuring Slick and some famous musician friends) called “Blows Against the Empire.” To differentiate that effort from the Airplane’s undertakings, the ad hoc group was billed as Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship.

Four years later, Kantner and Slick formed another group under the Jefferson Starship banner, various incarnations of which would enjoy great commercial success for the next decade-plus. In 1985, Kantner left the band and took the rights to the “Jefferson” part of the name with him. Recently, he revived the original concept of Jefferson Starship--he’s calling the new band Jefferson Starship--The Next Generation--for a current “Blows Against the Empire 1992” tour that will land in Pacific Beach for shows at Rumours tonight and Friday.

The new-old lineup features Kantner, Casady, fiddler Papa John Creach, Tubes drummer Prairie Prince, keyboardist Tim Gorman, guitarist Slick Aguilar and vocalist Darby Gould. Grace Slick isn’t in the group because she’s recuperating from a shoulder injury, because she is heavily involved in the World Wildlife Foundation and because Kantner was impressed with Gould after hearing her sing with the band, World Entertainment War.

“The original ‘Blows’ album was a singular project, and I’m not going to do a sequel or anything,” said Kantner, who suffered a stroke in 1980 but has fully recovered. “But I wanted to form this band to play some new and old material, and it’s sort of taken on a temporary life of its own. I have a whole body of new work, and I suppose we’ll probably record an album next year some time.”

The band’s set list includes selections from the Jefferson Airplane era (“Crown of Creation,” “Volunteers,” “We Can Be Together,” “Wooden Ships”), from the early versions of Jefferson Starship (“Blows Against the Empire,” “Ride the Tiger,” “Caroline”), and even from the short-lived KBC Band, which featured Kantner, Balin, and Casady.

Some of Kantner’s new tunes indicate that the sociopolitical fires that made him the Airplane’s de facto spokesman have not been extinguished. He described one song, called “Shadowlands,” as being about the first woman serial killer of Republicans, and refers to it as “probably the most curious update” on his politics.

“The protagonist is acting on general principle--just thinning out the herd, as it were,” he added with a chortle. “The song has a Swiftian touch to it, sort of in the mode of ‘A Modest Proposal.’ But there’s a serious retributional aspect to it in the sense that, on a metaphysical level, it needs doing. And, were I more crazy, had I lost more genes, I would not have much moral compunction about doing it myself. But being the clumsy person I am, and the good-hearted musician, I’m left to write songs about the concept.”

Such puckishness aside, Kantner takes a jaundiced view of the current political climate in America. That’s not surprising when you discover that his own world view was formed by a combination of factors that include a Catholic education, John F. Kennedy, the Weavers folk group, the social upheaval of the ‘60s and science fiction.

“I was a Kennedy boy, raised in the ‘50s in Catholic school,” he said. “Despite all the downplaying of the Kennedy years by the revisionists, the spirit that existed during his administration was real potent for my generation. We felt moved to better ourselves, to go beyond ourselves, and, for me, science fiction played a big part in that process. It opened channels that enabled me to think in other dimensions, to speculate. All those elements became fused in the spirit of the ‘60s, and they created a great balance in my life that continues to this moment.”

Kantner said that, like Oliver Stone, he left the political fold after Nov. 22, 1963.

“We, of the generation that some have characterized as being one of the best-educated in history, were insulted by the garbage foisted on us by the Warren Commission,” he said. “Since then, politics has not been real for me. And we’re still not being told the truth about things. Iran-Contra and the Persian Gulf War are perfect examples of the government lying to our face and getting away with it. I don’t like being treated like a stupid yokel who can’t see what’s really happening.

“So, I’ve chosen to remain outside the pale of the political approach to life, because it’s too frustrating,” he added. “I’d probably end up shooting people, or, more likely, getting shot. Fortunately, I’ve been drawn to the world of music and poetics, which is a way of accomplishing similar tasks on another level. I think it was the Chinese who said if you cloak anything in poetry you can get it across. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do for thirty-some years.”

Kantner is many things, but one thing he is not is lazy. When the Jefferson Starship project takes a break next month, he’ll resume his leadership role in the acoustic trio Wooden Ships, which includes Gorman, Aguilar, and, at times, Kantner’s 10-year-old son, Alexander.

He also is writing material for an album that will feature lead vocals by five of his favorite singers: Slick, Gould, original Airplane vocalist Signe Anderson, Tramaine Hawkins of the Edwin Hawkins Gospel group and Ronnie Gilbert of the Weavers, the ‘50s folk group that included Pete Seeger, Lee Hays and Fred Hellerman. The inclusion of Gilbert has personal significance for Kantner.

“Pete Seeger has always been one of my heroes, and the Weavers in toto had an even more profound effect on me,” he said. “Pete was always a little Calvinistic in his approach to life; he was sort of horrified by Lee Hays’ excesses and joie de vivre. I really think the balance of the two approaches formed the soul of Jefferson Airplane.”

According to Kantner, the all-female album project stems from his “long-held awe of women,” including the nuns who awakened in him a sense of seeking truth by challenging accepted tenets.

“I first learned the concept of the devil’s advocate from Catholic-school nuns,” he said. “Right then, I thought, ‘I’m home. I’ve found my niche.’ After that, I made all my teachers miserable--albeit in an amusing and intellectual way--by constantly asking why? why? why? I’m still doing that. And I don’t pretend to have found all the answers. There are enough things in my own life that are out of place, so I don’t want to be a sanctimonious finger-pointer. But there’s always a need for someone to shine a light into dark corners.

“In a way, that’s what we did in the ‘60s,” he continued. “At places like the Fillmore (Ballroom, in San Francisco), we provided an alternate quantum reality that none of us had experienced before. People were drawn to that, and there was great value in producing an alternative rather than merely going up against the political monolith.”

Kantner believes that the proof of the success of the countercultural approach can be seen in various sociological developments now taken for granted.

“If you look around you, you’ll see that the ripples of the ‘60s are headed into the next century,” he said. “The various human rights movements, environmentalism--all of that came out of the ‘60s attitude of creating something new instead of trying to go head to head with the jerks in power. There are other ways of doing things, whether it’s the approach taken by Mother Teresa, Wavy Gravy or H. Ross Perot. Otherwise, it’s like going up against an army with a slingshot; you spend all your effort trying not to get killed, instead of accomplishing something constructive.”

For one who claims to be appalled at the American political system--and, especially, at the do-nothing press that seems to have lost the will to expose its evils--Kantner is anything but pessimistic. He believes that an unexpected, unknown “random factor” will come along sometime before the end of the century and provoke a wave of beneficial change in the American system. And when that occurs, Kantner will be there to capture the moment in song.

“You know, musicians are a lot like the Mickey Mouse character in ‘The Sorceror’s Apprentice,”’ he said. “Sometimes, the magic spell causes us to get a little out of control, but we still keep delivering the water.”

* Jefferson Starship--The Next Generation performs tonight and Friday at Rumours (in the Diego’s club), 860 Garnet Ave. Shows are at 8 and 11 p.m. both nights. Tickets are priced at $17.50, and are available through the TicketMaster outlets (278-TIXS). For more information, call 272-1241.