Sweeping Up The Spotlight:
Jefferson Airplane Live At The Fillmore East, 1969

Jefferson Airplane

Good things come in threes. The Remains, Moby Grape and this, Sweeping Up The Spotlight: Jefferson Airplane Live At The Fillmore East, 1969, the third entry from Legacy in the latest volley of 40th Anniversary of the Summer of Love releases so far this year. It's a decent “live” Jefferson Airplane CD. Perhaps I don't find it that gripping because I saw a similar concert at roughly the same time at a Midwestern college. In those days, you could still walk up to the band and talk to them, until Bill Graham made that verboten. I remember the Airplane that day though I likely remember my girlfriend more. The 60s were like that. If you were there it was one big blur of funny smoke and you aren't supposed to remember any of it anyway. Except maybe the yab-yum. Look it up.

Anyway, as for the new CD, ”Volunteers" opens this show. Love that song. Fail to see the significance of the muddled opening rap by someone…whoever? “Good Shepherd” and “Plastic Fantastic Lover” are hard to beat. Grace, one assumes, wears her dresses too tight after two more or less forgettable cuts. Then the band launches into “Come Back Baby” and “Won’t You Try / Saturday Afternoon” with the gorgeous Slick/Balin duets.

”White Rabbit” is one we've all been waiting for. One pill did make us larger while another pill made us small. I dropped most of my acid with my first ex-wife and my hippy friends on a southern Wisconsin farm/commune, with a herd of benign Brown Swiss cows. It was copasetic. This leads to “Crown Of Creation,” another Airplane classic. The end piece is “The Other Side Of This Life” by Fred Neil. David Crosby used to play guitar with him and he hung with Bob Dylan and Karen Dalton in long ago 1961, way before the Summer of Love. Does that mean things actually happened before and even after the Summer of Love? Yup.

~ Gary Peterson

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