Flight Box

Ok

The first disc is from 1969 and the second two cover the Airplane's final flight in 1972. Most Airplane fans that I know consider that their later albums ('Bark' and 'Long John Silver') represented a considerable drop-off in terms of quality from their peak of '..Baxter's' to 'Volunteers' and I couldn't disagree, but it is the 'Last Flight' discs on here that are the most intertesting even although the song selection comprises mainly material from those later albums. Perhaps this is because this material (Paul and Grace's often quite pompous; Jorma and Jack clearly Tuna-esque) is more rarely heard but I also think the recording quality is better. Whilst '...Pointed Head' is one of the all-time great live albums, exuding such power both vocally and instrumentally, much of JA's live output was frankly pretty rough and the first disc here is again fairly puny sounding at times, but if you liked the Airplane and accept the material on offer then this is worth getting for the 1972 stuff.

Good service top music

Good, transitional Era Airplane,. Not quite as ballsy as their earlier live stuff - the transformation to Starship has begun. Still recomended for anyone into '60s/'70s West Coast Stuff.

The three cds in this box set have been released as two separate sets - 2cds and 1c under different names. Be careful to check your collection!

This three-CD set consists of one CD covering a gig from May 1969, with the classic Jefferson Airplane line-up, and the remaining two taken from the JA's last performance in September 1972.Unfortunately, the 1969 gig is taken from a low-quality audience tape, the balance amongst the instruments is all awry -- Spencer Dryden's snare whacks away louder than anything else, Jack Casady's bass can hardly be detected, and he's one bassist who deserves to be heard -- and the overall sound is pretty awful. It's not a bad gig by any means, and were it recorded as well as another from that year, released as Sweeping Up the Spotlight, then it would have deserved four stars; on its own I'd give it one star on account of its poor sound quality.By 1972, with members of the band barely talking to each other and more interested in their own bands and projects, it was a miracle that the Jefferson Airplane could actually get into the air, let alone fly. Compared to the band's earlier official live release, Bless Its Little Pointed Head, the band is rather sluggish; it had lost a fair bit of its energy in the intervening years, as well as one of its lead vocalists, Marty Balin (he makes a brief appearance at the end of this gig). Hence 'Somebody to Love' lacks the attack of the version on Pointed Head.Nevertheless, despite all this, the band could still put on a pretty good show. Not all the band's later material was mediocre, although some certainly was: Grace Slick's 'Law Man' and 'Eat Starch Mum' aren't up to much. On the other hand, Paul Kantner's 'When the Earth Moves Again' and 'Have You Seen the Saucers' are solid numbers, even if 'Twilight Double Leader' veers a bit towards the empty noisiness of a lot of hard rock of that time.An indication of the band's problems emerges when it feels like they sound most comfortable bashing out blues numbers. Songs on which Slick and Balin's replacement David Freiberg sit out are basically Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady's band Hot Tuna with a different drummer and with Kantner on rhythm guitar. 'Papa John's Down Home Blues' (basically Freddie King's 'Hideaway') and 'Come Back Baby' have real energy. Kaukonen gets going on lead guitar, and Papa John Creach, who sounds like an afterthought on some tracks, really shows his ability on fiddle. Unfortunately, there is a nasty 'edit' (to put it politely) in Kaukonen's 'Feel So Good' that mars an otherwise strong performance.Altogether, these two CDs document a once-great but by now rather fading band, by no means out but a bit down, both in the quality of its songwriting and in the vitality of its playing. It's best that they gave up at that point, rather than struggle on and really become a self-parody, in the way that this subsequently happened with Jefferson Starship.Finally, I do feel that with archive releases there should be clear indication on the outside of the CD box should the quality of the recording not be up to a normally-acceptable standard, such as with the Grateful Dead's Dick's Picks series, which always stated that they were not professional quality recordings. With no quality warning on this CD set's box or even tucked away in the notes, one might expect these to be of a professional quality: the 1972 material is not quite up to that level, but is pretty good, apart from the aforementioned tape cut, but the 1969 material is well below an acceptable level. Charly should be given a hefty, well-aimed boot up the backside for effectively deceiving the purchaser.