Disco de Jefferson Airplane: “Thirty Seconds Over Winterland”

It has become axiomatic to point to this album as representing the last gasps of a great but now disintegrating band. But despite the proximity of "Thirty Seconds Over Winterland" to the "Jefferson Airplane's" demise, this was not a group in its death throes, but rather a statement by a great collection of musicians from the depths of their greatest maturity.

Much has also been made of the fact that the band had by now broken up into two factions: one centered on Paul Kantner, the other made up of the "Hot Tuna" core of Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady. But if such factions existed, there was little evidence of it here. The real division, between Kantner and Airplane co-founder Marty Balin, had finally been resolved with Balin's leaving the group along with drummer Spencer Dryden. For years both Kantner and Balin had fought to become the defining creative force of the group, and this competition was evident on most all of the band's previous releases--including two previous live albums in which the music seemed almost to tear itself apart as a result of the attempts of Balin and Kantner and partner Grace Slick to outdo one another.

Here one finds none of that. Kantner was now firmly in charge, and the current line-up of musicians, including newcomers Papa John Creach, David Frieburg, and John Barbata, all made firm contributions to his creative vision. Kantner's music was at once deceptively simple and uniquely complex, with its continuous layering of sounds both instrumental and vocal. Most of all, it was incredibly disciplined, requiring each player to stay within certain bounds so as to allow the overall blend to reflect Kantner's sense of the larger creative vision. For the most part the group was content to do just that, and that included Kaukonen and Casady, who lent their considerable musicianship to setting the tone for Kantner's harmonies with Slick and Frieburg--who himself wisely did not try to emulate Balin's onstage hystrionics, even though he was nominally Balin's replacement. It says something about their respect for Kantner that the "Hot Tuna" crew saved their extended jamfest for one of Kaukonen's own tunes, "Feels So Good," and didn't try to do more with Kantner's songs than what they knew he wanted to get out of them.

The only disparate voices heard on this album were that of Creach, whose soaring violin added an untamed and raw quality that never quite jelled with the rest of the band, yet still managed to make its own mark in a way that would have been missed had it not been there; and Slick, whose occasional wisecracks betrayed the fact that, for all the storied political seriousness of the music, she was not above simply kicking back and having some fun once in awhile. Fortunately, these two restless souls managed to keep the music from becoming too ponderous--another description commonly used in connection with Kantner's writing, again without much accuracy.

All in all, this was the performance of a band in the full light of its adulthood, one which both understood its message and the best ways to share it, and did so with a quiet confidence and no hint of apology. All the growing pains were over, and if the end of this incredible group's life was just around the corner, then we should enjoy this album all the more for the way it showed the "Airplane" in its fullest flight.

This album now comes in two versions--the original seven-track version and a newer import with additional tracks and digital re-mastering. By all means get the expanded version, but don't overlook the original: shorter and rougher it may be, but it has its own internal logic, as well as a sound that evokes the atmosphere of the original performance as no studio reinvention ever could. Above all, forget the revisionist history--this album has nothing it needs to answer for!

I was reluctant to purchase "30 Seconds Over Winterland", since I had already purchased "Last Flight". But, I was pretty darn disappointed with the sound quality of "Last Flight". So much so, that after a couple spins, I just put it away. But, with the promise of a remastered version of this great concert, I had to take the plunge with the hope that the engineers knew how to bring out a quality product. What I found on this new attempt is actually two levels of sound quality on this recording. The cuts that were taken from the original LP version are of superb quality. And the additional cuts that were added to this CD, although not to the quality of the original version, are head and shoulders above those cuts on "Last Flight". I did a direct A/B comparison between two of the songs, Long John Silver and Lawman. There are noticeable improvements in the dynamics on the new version and reduction of distortion. The "Last Flight" version definitely sounds like it was taken from an FM recording (or worse). There is now more stereo separation, especially noticeable on the drums.

To make a long story short, if you are a J.A. fan, this remastering of the concert is worth it. If you are a completist, go ahead and get "Last Flight" for the missing cuts, but don't settle for the inferior sound quality just get those extra cuts. Your ears will thank-you.

P.S. I was there at Winterland when they performed this show, so it has a special place in my heart. Now I have a recording of it that I can continue to enjoy.

Well....being a long-time Airplane/Grace Slick fan (including her better vocal cuts after-the-Airplane, like 'Fast Buck Freddie') I'd have to say that this CD has stood the test of time and gotten better with age. Why? Because, unfortunately, the basic music business of the last 15 or so years has been dominated by essentially awful, vanilla 'clone-vocalists' (female AND male) complete with homogenized unison singing and writhing to a boring R&B beat and instrumentation with virtually no imagination or musical interest (except for perhaps Madonna and earlier Janet Jackson) - unless you are a teeny-bopper in which case it's all for you, kid.

Anyway - I used to listen to this album a lot (like all of my Airplane releases) and at the same time in the early 1970's go see the "Jefferson Starship" (by then) and compare. Hmmm....back then the Starship live concerts sounded better than this CD. And that vintage of live concert Starship (circa 1975-78) did A LOT of Airplane material, which was thrilling. Then, now, as always - Kantner's semi-acoustic stuff with Grace's vocals and harmonies have been the hallmark of the best [later] Airplane/Starship recorded or live music; and Grace's singing in virtually every concert I ever saw (not to mention very carefully recorded albums post 1970) was *stunning.* By then she'd lost a lot of weight, too, and looked very appealing again on stage. Whereas the Starship lived on for years, gradually dying away under the various internal pressures, the Airplane returned in 1989 for a brief but welcome (to the REAL fans, anyway) tour. They were just AWESOME, in 1989, live on stage. Grace, especially.

So it's great to go back in the past and especially revisit the "30 Seconds" CD, as it conjures images of those long-gone, very special, really big and famous bands; those that were seriously musical and fun to follow in the media and on the road.

Which is really saying something.

What a truly long, strange trip it was - for this country, the emerging post-War "youth culture", and popular music during the decade following JFK's murder November 23 1963...The Beatles and Stones arrived in the US within a few short months and sparked the sort of seismic shifts in perception that only occur during what can be seen in retrospect as a true renaissence period. By 1964-65, many musicians from the early '60s 'folk boom'- or the best and brightest - were suddenly growing their hair and forming bands such as the Byrds, the Music Machine, and the Airplane. Few rock 'n roll bands so vividly reflected the glory and the contradictions of the era, with its giddy sense of boundless possibility - political, artistic, personal, cultural - as Jefferson Airplane. Songs like "Today" and "House At Pooneil Corner" and live performances such as those captured on "Bless Its Pointed Little Head" are as cathartic as any in rock 'n' roll ("I'm so full of love I could burst apart and start to cry," Marty Balin sang in '66 - and if you hear him you believe it) - all the joy and wonder and energy, articulated in music fueled by desire and that barely contained dread underlying it all. Though the Grateful Dead's popularity and aura of hip cachet grew as the decades passed, the Dead could never figure out how to make records, at least until the '70s ("Workingman's Dead", "American Beauty", and "Wake Of The Flood"), yet JA (whose own legacy has faded at least in part thanks to the depressing success of Jefferson Starship during the late '70s and '80s). But from their very first single, recorded in 1965, the Airplane knew how to make records (thanks at first to Dave Hassinger, who engineered "Aftermath"). The Airplane were THE most successful band to emerge from the San Francisco scene, as a glance at their Billboard LP chart history confirms. Not coincidentally, the Airplane made a series of classic albums that remain complex, vital and fresh even today, when those of their contemporaries - the Dead, The Fish, Quicksilver, or Steppenwolf, to mention the most obvious - feel uneven, far less audacious, or indifferently made. As the times changed, so did the band's music, and by the 1970s chaos, rage and betrayal became part of the mix, and fantasies of escape met post-Altamont skepticism of what "we" can do "together"; communication breakdowns were followed by ennui and retreat. This headlong rush towards who knew what vividly, convincingly infotmed later, darker artifacts released by the band.

From their formation in 1965 and throughout its career JA was a group functioning as an uneasy collective, with no real leader but shifting power bases. Bursting with talent, everyone wrote songs and all but Jack Casady sang. From the beginning these were sophisticated, educated, intelligent artists, not teenaged kids, with strong personalites and emotional temperament, each with his/her own musical roots/values and (more importantly) vision of how and where the band should fly. But volatile as this mix always would be, JA could cohere with an almost telepathic sense of singular purpose, and that life force fuels the thrillingly mind-warping music on the Airplane's first live album "Bless Its Pointed Little Head" (recorded late 1968). These ex-folkies and blues purists, pop singers, jazz and r&b fans, made passionate and incredibly intense music, exploratory yet soulful, full of fury, originality, and vitality.

By 1973's "Thirty Seconds", an awful lot had changed. Jazz-inflected drummer Spencer Dryden left in 1970, to be replaced by the terrific Joey Covington, another very distinctive personality who brought a funkier style, drenched in soul and r&b yet capable of rocking out with sympathy and intelligence within the group. Covington also brought violinist Papa John Creach aboard later that year. The group's co-founder and true romantic, Marty Balin, having grown detached and disillusioned, split in April 1971, while the band was working on "Bark". And Covington himself was replaced in 1972 by the competent ex-Turtle/CSNY drummer Johnny Barbata, who had a session man's sensibility, and neither invigorated nor detracted from the music and is perhaps the least distinctive drummer ever to join the Airplane. "Long John Silver" (1972) was a harder, more aggressive album than its predecessor, one fueled by a dark energy and dense, edgy textures. Despite its considerable merits LJS was a pretty joyless affair. Jorma and Jack are in top form, the band churns and rumbles and rocks hard, but there's a sense of darkness visible throughout the project, especially on Grace Slick's material. This final studio album features some superb ensemble playing, and fine moments from each band member, capturing especially the interplay between Kaukonen and Creach, with more emphasis on texture and less on the famous vocal harmonies of yore. Among several highlights is the brilliant title track - a rare Jack Casady composition - with Grace's funky keyboards and steely, piratical vocal, Jorma's wailing guitar. And Kaukonon/Slick's closing "Eat Starch Mom" perhaps sums up the mood best, aggressive and sarcastic, massive Zep-like riffs driving one of the group's hardest rockers ever.

"Thirty Seconds", issued in April 1973, was the first Airplane album since "Takes Off" to miss the Top 20 on Billboard's Top LP chart. The band's second official live album always suffers in comparison to the great "Bless..." but put preconceptions aside and dig a band that is still creating compelling rock 'n' roll as it nears dissolution - big, loud, loose and grungey. Again, Barbata lacks Dryden or Covington's rhythmic invention, but he anchors the band, allowing Kaukonen and Creach (and lets not forget Kantner's always solid rhythm guitar)to soar. Hear Casady coaxing otherworldly sounds from his instrument, still as distinctive and brilliant a bassist as any in rock. The song selection emphasizes the group's '70s material, including the non-album single "Have You Seen The Saucers," a dazzling eleven-minute "Feel So Good" from "Bark", and three excellent tracks from "Long John Silver". The earliest song is "Crown Of Creation", with Grace's vocal asides letting you know how much has changed since '68, yet it still sounds magnificent. This edition is a Japanese pressing (available for under $20 as I write this) that sounds superior to the US CD from the late '80s, an inferior transfer from the early digital era. The Japanese disc is truly hotter than my first pressing Grunt vinyl, and will surely be played (loud) regularly in my house. The CD is housed in a gorgeous cardboard cover, and inner sleeve, that reproduce the original LP package precisely. I do hope, though, that Bob Irwin finally gets to remaster and expand this for US BMG, along with "Bark" and "Silver" and even an expanded "Early Flight", the other late-period albums that have not been upgraded as part of the recent JA reissue campaign. At just under forty minutes "Thirty Seconds" begs to be fleshed out with more material from those excellent Chicago and San Francisco gigs.

I haven't heard "Thirty Seconds Over Winterland" in years. I'm very glad to finally have this recording again. Although "Bless Its Pointed Little Head" is the best live Airplane album, "Thirty Seconds" is essential. My favorite tracks are "Have You Seen The Saucers" and the extended jam version of "Feel So Good". Love Jack Casady's bass solo on this! The bonus tracks are worthy of being here! The CD itself replicates their Grunt Records label nicely. After years of missing this album, it's like the return of an old friend!