Live at the Fillmore East [Live]

Jefferson Airplane, Sara Evans | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 28, 1998)
• Original Release Date: April 28, 1998
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Live
• Label: RCA
• ASIN: B000006380
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #260,950 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What a treat!, June 19, 2002

By 

Mark Colan "duke-of-url" (Medford, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Live at the Fillmore East (Audio CD)

I've been a fan of the Airplane since "Somebody to Love" was on the radio. There aren't many live recordings available, and none of the ones I've heard cover any of the songs on "After Bathing at Baxter's", which remains my favorite album.

This album was recorded while material for "Crown of Creation" was still being written. They play "Greasy Heart", which Grace says she wrote only three weeks ago. They have at least three tracks from "Baxter's" (which had been published just a few months earlier). As such, the band is at the peak of their writing. "Bless It's Pointed Little Head" has far fewer tracks, but some outstanding performances; they were playing better that night than when this one was recorded.

The recording quality is very good, performance ranges fair to very good at various times. At times their vocal arrangements don't hang together -- but they are attempting amazing things, such as a four-part harmony involving complicated chords and controlled dissonance. I'm amazed at what they attempt in this concert; sometimes it comes off quite well too.

If you don't know the Airplane, this isn't the first album you should buy. But if you've been a fan all these years, and especially if you like their psychedelic and revolutionary phases, you're in for a treat!

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ...ABX, April 29, 2006

By 

Don Schmittdiel "running_man" (Clinton Twp., MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Live at the Fillmore East (Audio CD)

In May of 1968, when Jefferson Airplane performed the four concerts that have yielded this 'Live At the Fillmore East' release, I was all of 14 years old, and one of my favorite listens was the underground FM radio station in Detroit, WABX. Aside from playing the cutting edge psychedelic music of the era, it was a trip in itself to take in the spaced-out DJ's this station let loose on the airwaves. It wasn't unusual, for instance, to hear a couple minutes of dead silence while the chemically altered spinmeister tried to decide what to play next, or to accomodate the station identification regulation with a quick "...ABX". This Airplane disc made me harken back to those days, what with the obviously random, spontaneous, and unrehearsed between-songs banter offered up by singers Grace Slick, Paul Kantner, and Marty Balin. They meander through conversations about when songs were written, to a discourse on a recent bust of the Grateful Dead in New Jersey, to a Slick monologue on a chocolate cookie that had been handed to her. And yes, there are a couple minutes of dead silence to be had. Surrounding the nostalgia, however, is a host of great psychedelia.

Aside from Grace herself, the slickest moment on 'Live At the Fillmore East' is the opening minute, featuring a deafening recording of a Boeing 707 taking off. As the wail of the jet engines subsides, we hear "Thank you for coming..." echoing about the Fillmore, and the opening, feedback-drenched strains of 'The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil'. It's a great opener, with its fat, fuzz-tone guitar leads from Jorma Kaukonen, and a several minute pounding bass bridge solo courtesy of Jack Casady. It's one of four tracks that break the seven minute barrier, in addition to the stealth rocker 'Star Track' (an homage to James T. Kirk?), featuring a great wah-pedal lead from Kaukonen, the instrumental 'Thing', which slowly builds in tempo, intensity, and complexity into a flat-out rocker with many guitar variations on its theme, and a cover of Donovan Leitch's 'Fat Angel', a typical Donovan flower-powered ("Fly trans-love airways, get you there on time...") yet funky compostion. The only other cover is Fred Neil's 'The Other Side of This Life', which along with 'It's No Secret' and 'Watch Her Ride' are rather generic rockers, undistinguished but doing no harm here either. For me, the standout tracks are those drawn from my favorite JA disc, 'Surrealistic Pillow', and those featuring Grace Slick, the finest female vocalist from the psychedelic genre. Her talents are front and center on 'Greasy Heart', 'White Rabbit', and 'Somebody To Love', and the performances are fresh, vibrant, and intense. Add to this list of highlights a worthy electric rendition of the acoustic beauty, 'Today' from 'Surrealistic Pillow', and you have the core of one outstanding, even historic performance. The only weak tracks on the disc are 'Wild Tyme', whose lyrics are embarassingly dated, and 'Won't You Try/Saturday Afternoon' which comes off sluggish and pressured.

Given that the year was 1968, these recordings are of astounding quality. It's truly a wonder than such a fine document of the Airplane's live persona remained buried for three full decades. Brilliant graphics and several pages of interesting liner notes from Jeff Tamarkin make for a complete, informative package (lyrics would be too much to ask from a live disc, since you so seldom are blessed with them even from studio productions). If you're a fan of early Jefferson Airplane studio discs, you should find this production both entertaining and enlightening. It's truly one of the better live testaments from the psychedelic era.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Good Companion To "Pointed Little Head", November 9, 2000

By 

Michael Topper (Pacific Palisades, California United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Live at the Fillmore East (Audio CD)

The Jefferson Airplane hit their live peak in 1968 on every front: set list, playing ability, and willingness to take risks. Thus, these shows taken from their debut nights at the Fillmore East in May of that year are most welcome, and make a fine companion disc to the "Bless Its Pointed Little Head" live album which was recorded six or so months later. The set list for this CD includes many tracks never released before in live form, including several from the ferocious "After Bathing At Baxter's" released only a few months earlier, and a few previews from the upcoming "Crown Of Creation" (an extended "Star Track" and a soulful take on "Greasy Heart"). Although some of the vocal performances go flat in places (the band usually played so loud that it was hard for Balin and Slick to even know what was going on), the Kaukonen/Casady/Dryden instrumental team is on fire, coming up with a rendition of the jazz-ragaish "Fat Angel" that is actually superior to the "Pointed Head" version, a surprisingly funky (for early '68) reading of "The Other Side Of This Life" and the definitive "Ballad Of You & Me & Pooneil", which features an edge-of-your-seat Casady solo and double the time length of the studio version, without being quite as meandering as the '67 Monterey and "Loves You" versions. The de rigeur psych jam "Thing" misses the wonderful Slick vocal improvisation which made it the powerful closing number "Bear Melt" on "Pointed Head", but does manage to show the Airplane daring to go boldly where no rock group had gone before. What strikes one most about "Fillmore East" is how edgy, powerful and diverse the Airplane could be, even at the expense of a few mistakes here or there; the sound quality is incredibly good for a show of this kind and thus would not only make a good addition to a fan's collection, but even a good intro to the group in general.