Jefferson Airplane Album: “At The Family Dog Ballroom [Digipak]”

This show from 6/9/69 is a marvelous release for all fans of Jefferson Airplane, one of the all-time greatest psychedelic bands, and for all fans of freeflowing, spontaneous 60s music. And deep, visonary music in general.

The band is certainly on fire this evening, driven by the thunderous basslines from the masterful Jack Casidy, playing a handful a songs from the then upcoming "Volunteers" album, as well as old classics like "Somebody To Love". Starting with a long, trippy "You and Me and Pooneil", which includes a snippet of "Starship", and ending with a great jam where Jerry Garcia spreads his unique guitar-magic. Great songwriting, the obligatory Jorma blues and all in all the Airplane heading for the stratosphere. There is also a percussionist added at the final jam, could it be Mickey Hart?

Considering the time the soundqaulity must be characterized as absolutely excellent, A- at least, though the vocals are a bit too upfront. But as both Marty Balin and Grace Slick, two of greatest rockvocalists ever, are in topform, it doesn't matter at all.

Won't you try?

Excellent live recording, with outstanding vocal performances. The mix does seem a bit skewed, with the instrumentation buried way down deep, although with singing this good it seems almost churlish to quibble (compare with the often ropey-as-hell vocals on Sweeping Up the Spotlight). The overall performance is tight and focused (even if the sound isn't as crisp as you'd like), and the concluding 25-minute jam with Jerry Garcia is rambling, exhiliarating magic.

I'm a huge fan of the Airplane and live music. I have been scarfing up most of the recently released ancient live recordings of my favorite bands, so I was delighted when I found this. Don't bother. The mix is so bad (particularly after the first two tracks) that the vocals (which are, by themselves, not bad at all) almost completely drown out all the instruments except the drums, except when no one is singing, or it's a Jorma tune where, for some reason, the mix is much better). Oddly enough, Kantner's 12-string is much louder than usual so you can actually hear him better than in most other recordings (but still not when Marty, Grace and he are singing). What you can hear of the instruments is OK, but not stellar. Not one of Jorma's better nights. Jack is OK but not nearly loud enough to compete with Spencer and the vocals. And what was supposed to the the piece de resistance - the 25 minute Jam with Jerry Garcia is pretty weak. Neither Jerry or Jorma ever really get into a groove in a too fast,drums too loud presumably chemically-enhanced athematic mishmash. Casady is inaudible, asleep or not there for large parts of the first 20 minutes or so, and the whole thing fails to gel as well as lots of previously recorded Jerry or Jorma jams available elsewhere.

I realize that I'm gonna get creamed by all those who gave this album a 5 star review, but they are probably the same folks that screamed their heads off at Dead shows in the early-mid 1980s when the Dead were at their all-time worst. This CD is not the worst recording in the world but it is pretty disappointing. I listened to it 3 times and then deleted it from my iPod. It was that bad.

There is lots of live JA out there that is way, way better. "Bless its Pointed Little Head" is infinitely better. So is " "Live at the Filllmore East" , Live at Woodstock, "30 Seconds Over Winterland" (even sans Marty) and the live cuts on the JA Box Set, "Jefferson Airplane Loves You".

JMT

This group was perfectly capable of getting a good live recording as heard on Bless His and Sweeping the Spotlight, and all the bonus tracks, mostly notably the live version of Pooniel which was actually going to be used over the studio track. So, why do the bother with these bad recordings? This one and the Fillmore East '68, both of them with the vocals blarring into the recorder so you can hear every flaw, instruments moving in and out of nowhere creating imbalances as you go along. C'mon, guys, you have the stuff in the archives, so quit using stuff like this and the Filmore '68. Oh yea, and that other one on Charley Records, which could have been OK if you only EQ'd the thing up....

I got this principally to give my daughter a taste of an honest-to-dog 60s rock concert in San Francisco. The live performance is captured quite well, and covers most of the Airplane's hits. The jam at the end with Jerry Garcia is worth listening to.

The sound quality could be better (it sounds like a bootleg, but they probably didn't think about the historical aspects of putting a serious engineer on the board).