What a mystery this record is. I'd been hearing rumors for a long while that said that the Airplane was in a kind of semi-retirement, and that Jack and Jorma were playing around with various sit-in drummers, including, I think, Mitch Mitchell. All of which sounded like a gas. I still think that "Spare Chaynge" on Baxter's is the greatest instrumental achievement of rock to date, and that's kind of what I expected from this splinter group, which, I later learned, was calling itself Hot Tuna. Then came the news that they would be releasing an album. My mouth watered with anticipation.

And here it is, I guess. Acoustic guitar, electric bass, vocals, and, here and there, a little harp. Recorded live at the New Orleans House in Berkeley. Playing what appears to be, on first examination, Dave Van Ronk's Greatest Hits.

But appearances deceive, and I should kick myself for trying to second-guess two of the finest musicians in the country today. Hot Tuna is a couple of guys from a rock band who got bored sitting around waiting for the rest to get over their throat-node operations and various forms of tripping around, so they started jamming the old favorites back and forth and came out with an album. A convenient fiction which we will let stand while we talk about the music on RCA LSP-4353.

To begin with, I have sat in on jam sessions, lazed around Washington Square Park when the folk boom was at its height, attended concerts and hootenannies, and consorted with all manner of speed demons and would-be guitar virtuosi, and have not, until this point, heard anyone play guitar as rapidly as Jorma Kaukonen. Ever. There are times when he sounds like Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, with a third person playing rhythm. And it's all tasteful and blessedly free of wretched excess. Cassady's bass is very subtle and unfortunately not crisply enough recorded to make the kind of impact that it should, but any close listening will reveal that he is in just as fine shape here as he ever was.

The songs, though, are just jumping-off places for instrumental excursions, usually carried off with lightning inventiveness, as if the players' heads were so jam-packed with ideas that they could hardly wait to dispose of one so that they could get the next one in. The mysterious Will Scarlett provides harp textures that are very reminiscent of the extreme sensitivity of Mel Lyman, and, while he never really lets go and blows his brains out, it is hard to imagine any more fitting addition to Jorma and Jack's dynamism.

Still, the album is not the titanic masterpiece that an Airplane fan might expect. Its uncomplicatedness fits in well with the atmosphere of the place where it was recorded; one can hear glasses being dropped and the engineers discussing equipment problems. It is a relaxing album, one to sip wine and sit on the back porch by, but it isn't gonna do your head in like you might expect. And as far as talking about any individual cut, well, you've heard them all before, with the exception of the lovely "New Song" and the instrumental "Mann's Fate," which stand out mainly because they are nothing like the ragtime-blues that make up the bulk of the album. Relaxing music, all of it, regardless of how fast or slow it is. Which is probably why that guy dropped his glass.

But still, this Hot Tuna bears very little resemblance to the electric Hot Tuna that so many San Franciscans have seen playing at the clubs and ballrooms. That band is loud, includes a drummer (Joey Covington, the new Airplane drummer, started out with them), and is supposedly into a whole nother trip. It's just too bad that we never got to hear any of what they could do. Oh, well, until the next Airplane album, "Spare Chaynge," anyone? (RS 62)

ED WARD