A Fun Album

This is a collection of live tracks recorded at clubs and small arenas in 2001. There are 2 discs, totally 128 minutes. The sound quality fairly good on most of the tracks. There is some feedback, and sometimes there is a high pitched noise. Sometimes you can make out talking in the background. The CD comes with a nice little booklet, where Grace Slick gives her inputs about a number of the songs on the album.



The band consists of Paul Kantner and Marty Balin, with Diane Mangano on vocals, Slick Aguilar on guitar, Priarre Prince on Drums and Chris Smith on keyboards. This has been the same line up for the past several years.



This is a fun album, but not great. The performance is uneven. Some tracks are on fire, while others are just sloppy. Miracles is especially a mess.



What makes this fun is the choice of songs and what the group does with them. There is no White Rabbit or Somebody to Love, played for the umpteenth time. Mostly it is the more obscure tracks that have not received that much attention. And many of them are played with a new energy and in different ways.



Some people have complained that Slick Aguilar is not Jorma Kaukonen and that Slick does not play like Jorma played the originals. Well, if Jorma was playing now, he wouldn't be sounding the same either. He would be moving on and trying new things. What do people want...an old record? Aguilar's guitar brings a new life to the songs, and make this an interesting album.



Diane Mangono sounds very much like Grace Slick at times. However, she just does it when it is appropriate, instead of trying to sound like Grace through the whole thing.



This is not a perfect CD. As mentioned earlier, sound quality and the performance on some of the songs is bad. The song selection and order is not good. The second CD really tapers off at the end, with a couple of tracks that feel like they were tacked on at the last minute. But, this still has over about an hour and a half of some very good and fun music.

Best of the Jefferson Starship live albums

If we can't get a new JS studio album--with all new material--I suppose the next best thing is this very good new double live CD. This is the best live JS album so far (and a zillion times better than last year's dreadfully produced and edited live CD, "Greatest Hits - Live At the Fillmore"). The sound here is crisp and the music is great. Best of all, even though none of Jefferson Starship's more recent tunes are here (none from 1998's wonderful "Windows of Heaven" CD), there are a LOT of songs presented here that I don't believe have ever been released before in live versions, including old Jefferson Airplane numbers like "She Has Funny Cars," "Today," "DCBA-25," "Mexico" and "Hey Frederick." And there's some more obscure stuff: "There Will Be Love" from RED OCTOPUS and "When I Was a Boy I Watched the Wolves" from SUNFIGHTER. There is more than two hours of good music here, and that makes it a must-have for JS fans. After 35 years, the Jefferson Family still sounds terrific and is still flyin' high!

Sorry excuse for what was once a great band

I bought this release with the lure of all the old classic Airplane tunes such as "Eskimo Blue Day","Pooneil" etc. What a joke. I am a huge Marty Balin fan and find that his voice is sadly strained on this CD. He retains none of the fire that used to characterize the end of such songs as "Bringing me Down". The harmonies are worse than the Airplane's were live which were always pretty band. Lots of times the vocalists are slightly off from one another making for some pretty shabby harmonies and that's not to mention the pitch problems. Praerie Prince's drums sound pretty terrible not helping the matters, Slick's tone is pretty bland and he clearly has very little grasp of the psychedelic "zone" which Jorma used to inhabit. And to add the biggest insult to them all for an old Airplane fan, no Jack. No bass player whatsoever in fact. To hear "Eskimo Blue Day" or "Pooneil" without a bass player is downright disgraceful. The only redeeming qualities are songs like "Have you seen the stars tonite". Hardly a surprise since they have been performing this tune as the Jefferson Starship Next Generation for over 10 years.
I will say that Paul's acoustic during the jams is one of the highlights musically speaking. Perhaps it is unfair to compare it to the original Airplane. I disagree. You really get the sense that this band has potential if they cared and bothered to rehearse, get the harmonies tight, find a bass player, find a guitar player who understands psychedelia and is a hardcore Jorma fan, and find a drummer who knows how to tune a snare drum. Save your money and spending it instead on anything by Hot Tuna. A band from the Airplane lineage who retains integrity.