Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An Underrated Gem, August 9, 2000
Jefferson Starship's "Dragon Fly" must have looked very promising in 1974 for fans of the recently-disbanded Jefferson Airplane. This has a great bouyancy of sound and a clarity of vision and purpose not seen by this group since 1969's "Volunteers". The singing and intrumentation have bite, vigour and elegance. This is no nostalgia-for-the-sixties band here. This is the work of a new band with a refined direction. With long-estranged vocalist Marty Balin back in the fold on one killer track, "Caroline", this album was assured some commercial success and lots of news coverage. Individual cuts are amongst the finest by either the Airplane or Starship: Paul Kantner's "Ride the Tiger" is a heavy rocker with a clever lyric, great group singing, and dynamic guitar work by young Craig Chaquico; "That's For Sure" is a lovely, jazzy(!) number played with a restraint unknown to the Airplane; Grace Slick's "Devil's Den" has great bass work and sounds like a polished version of the kind of writing she was doing on "After Bathing At Baxter's"; Kantner's and Balin's ode to wonderlust, "Caroline", is the track that garnered airplay for this new band and contains Balin's most exuberant vocal ever; and the final cut "Hyperdrive" is perhaps Slick's finest hour as a writer and singer. Even the lesser cuts such as "Come to Life" and "All Fly Away" are enjoyable and contribute to the overall mood of this fine album. This is a worthy addition to any Jefferson Airplane fanatic's music collection and is easily the best Starship album by any of its incarnations. It deserves a listen and a reassessment.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
AIRPLANE BECOMES STARSHIP, September 9, 2006
Jefferson Airplane evolves into Jefferson Starship in this 1974 album that, despite the name change, seems a natural progression of the Airplane's cosmic minded, hippie drenched music. Marty Balin returns to the band with the stunning and dramatic rock epic, "Caroline"; a 7-minutes plus progressive ballad that soars like a released bird into flight. Paul Katner's "All Fly Away", is a hallucinegenic dream of other worldly horizons that offers H.G. Wells imagery in a world where "we rode a bubble to the sun,... there were men with fiery wings". Grace Slick's "Devil's Den" is a clever jaunting word play with fiddle,(Papa John Creech), assessing time running out on an evil capitalistic nation, that gets slightly sinister in Slick's spoken line followed by a creepy mocking laugh, "he thinks he's born to glory". Opening track, "Ride The Tiger" offers Jefferson's leftist political leanings in a racially divided America that needs to 'ride the tiger' to a better tomorrow, and Grace Slick's "Hyperdrive", (she once cited it as one of her favorite compositions), combines cosmic imagery with scientific logic, in yet another attempt to leave this world for another, asking quite eloquently, "where do you go on a night that is clear and warm?", along with bizarre geometric inclined lines like, "I've heard circles moving right through corners". The song, "That's For Sure", (love that indifferent group harmony), is a windswept hilltop of life and death philosophy, and "Come To Life", comes alive as a catchy rocker with touching nostalgia, "remember the times and places, glass eyed stares from glowing faces?". Dragon Fly is a humble and confident offering from the Jefferson clan, and it's got one of the best cover arts of the '70's.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The music remains a solid 4 stars, just DON'T BUY THIS! (or any other SONY/BMG "Custom Marketing Group" CD...) , August 21, 2008
So, what makes this bargain not a bargain? Read on...the mastering/re-mastering is EXACTLY the same as the 1997 version (I compared both versions several times to verify the sound quality). The 1997 CD has a beautiful variation of the original inner sleeve art on the disc itself, in 2008 we get plain blue with album/group name and song titles/lengths. The 2008 case does have a clear jewel tray, but the picture underneath artistic squiggles, in variations of blue. Last, but unfortunately THE LEAST is the travesty done to the 1997 art and booklet. The 1997 version has a faithful reproduction of the original album jacket on both sides of the enclosed booklet. The back tray liner features a color reproduction of the original inner sleeve art. The booklet itself is 8 pages, 3 of which contain a helpful and informative summary of the groups origins and the album itself written by David Cohen. Song information and further well-reproduced artwork variations round out the rest. Not only does the 2008 version only have a 4 page booklet with 2 blank inside, the back of the booklet and the back liner tray only contains song tiles, times and credits. I've saved the worst for last, which is the shody reproduction of the original front cover artwork. Not only is it blurry and lacking detail compared to the 1997 version, they don't even use the original font! All in all not even worth the lower price. Sony/BMG has recently re-released what seems to be at least a hundred different older or out-of-print titles under the "Custom Marketing Group" imprinture, many that in the past had excellent booklets chock-full of informative information and photos. I can only STRONGLY recommend that if given the choice between a 2008 lower price "Custom Marketing Group CD", or the actual original it is meant to replace, don't think twice. As more and more music lovers catch on to this latest "major label" scam, the prices wanted for the superior originals are bound to skyrocket. Don't say I didn't warn you......
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~ Jefferson Starship
~ Jefferson Starship
~ Jefferson Starship
~ Jefferson Starship
~ Paul Kantner
by Jefferson Starship 
