Gold [ORIGINAL RECORDING REMASTERED] [Original recording remastered]

Jefferson Starship | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (April 1, 2008)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: SonyBMG Special Markets
• ASIN: B0015XAT7K
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #51,845 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Ride The Tiger

2. Caroline

3. Play On Love

4. Miracles

5. Fast Buck Freddie

6. Light The Sky On Fire

7. With Your Love

8. St. Charles

9. Count On Me

10. Love Too Good

11. Runaway

12. Hyperdrive

Editorial Reviews

Of the 12 songs on this superb 1979 release, eight of them hit the charts: Miracles; Count on Me; With Your Love; Runaway; Play on Love; St. Charles; Light the Sky on Fire , and Ride the Tiger . Digitally remastered with new liner notes.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Streamlined Starship, February 16, 2005

By 

Gregor von Kallahann - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gold (Audio CD)

"Best Of" albums are by definition hodge-podgey affairs. Yes, there are artists whose works are best represented by retrospective repackagings, but even Jefferson Starship's detractors (and the reviews below suggest that there certainly are some) would have to admit that the group was attempting more--even in their most commercial periods--than their singles alone might suggest. A "best of" is likely to only begin to suggest the range of the group's experimentalism, which WAS there even in the 70s.

As someone once said, any group that included a songwriter and singer as idiosyncratic as Grace Slick could never be a totally commercial venture. The Starship enterprise was certainly as commercial as a bunch of hippies could ever get, but neither Paul nor Grace were really capable of churning out the hits over the long haul. Sweet voiced Marty Balin finally received his due in the 70s (since, as is commonly noted, he felt justifiably frustrated in the 60s when the interloper Slick brought the Airplane their only real hits and got ALL the media attention). And who can deny that "Miracles" wasn't a deserving hit? For a while, he was being hailed as a white soul balladeer. But that proved to be a pretty shortlived phenomenon, and by the time of "Runaway" and "With Your Love," people were screaming "formula." Worse yet they were referring to him as a "lounge singer."

What are you gonna do? When Balin was in his prime, I could have listened to him sing the phone book. And the more uptempo numbers here, such as "Caroline" show him at his versatile best. But Balin himself once referred to the group that brought him stardom as essentially "a variety show." And that's a statement that you could take in a positive or negative light. (I gather he meant in negatively himself.)

Even more so than the Airplane before them, the Starship really did seem to be three or four songwriters all "on separate trips," as we used to say. You had Grace's cool obscurantism, Paul's sci-fi and poli-sci-fi tracts, and Marty's ardent love songs. Throw in a few instrumentals and one or two experiments and you had your typical Starship record circa '74 to '79. More than the sum of its parts? Less? Or just a strange assemblage of parts, sometimes coming together in a perfect fit and sometimes not? The last may be the best and most accurate way of viewing them.

So, in order to get the full flavor, it's still probably preferable to listen to the complete albums--even if you do find them flawed. On the other hand, if you have to have a "best of" collection, this is pretty much as good a one as you could hope for. Really, if I had been assigned the project (fat chance, but in my dreams), I would have selected pretty much the same Starship tracks: "Caroline" (a little long but still the JS track that recaptured some Airplane magic and likely convinced Marty to rejoin the group fulltime for RED OCTOPUS), "Ride the Tiger" (a little heavy handed but also as rocky as a Kantner opus is gonna get) and "Hyperdrive," (a favorite of mine, with Grace at her most elliptical) all from DRAGONFLY. The RED OCTOPUS tracks are what you would expect, "Miracles," "Play On Love," and "Fast Buck Freddie" (classic Marty, Grace at her most accessible). The EARTH and SPITFIRE tracks are also virtual musts in any Jefferson Starship collection. I know some would argue against the Balin ballads, but they WERE hits. "Love Too Good" is latter day Grace at her very best--one of her best vocals ever. And "St. Charles" is as good an example of a successful collaborative effort by the group's three main songwriters as you're going to find (from their entire oeuvre). And as I suggested, those collaborations were getting rarer and rarer by the late 70s.

Overall, then, it's as good a collection as you're gonna get, if you're not up to investing in a complete set of all the JS albums. The bonus track "Light the Sky On Fire" probably shouldn't be the decisive factor in anyone's purchasing decision. It's a nice non-ballad Marty vocal. He sounds a little strained, and the Kantneresque lyrics and arrangements don't quite work here for him. Not the way they do on "St. Charles" -- that track is the GROUP at their magical best.

One caveat: apparently the remastered edition of GOLD has the album length version of "Miracles." That's doubtless a plus for most listeners. Actually, though, since I also own RED OCTOPUS, I didn't mind having the single version as well. I knew that the hit version had been edited down, but since I didn't really listen to commercial radio back in the 70s, the 45 version was pretty much unfamiliar to me. It was interesting to see how it was skillfully edited down to a more "radio friendly" length. Doubtless some will even prefer the more stripped down version.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Much improved over original release, January 28, 2005

By 

D. Myers (Orlando, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gold (Audio CD)

I just bought this rereleased disc, and I must say I was very pleasantly surprised to find out that the four tracks that had been edited for the original 1979 release (as well as the original CD release) have been replaced with the full-length album versions.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jefferson Starship's Gold, March 1, 2001

By 

J O'Malley (Long Island NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gold (Audio CD)

This collection features the hits and many of Jefferson Starship's classic songs from their four studio albums between 1974 to 1978. In the early 70's, after recording a couple of fine solo albums, legendary Jefferson Airplane members Paul Kantner and Grace Slick decided to start a new band, fittingly named Jefferson Starship. Also aboard this new band..Craig Chaquico, David Freiberg, Pete Sears, John Barbata, (Papa) John Creach & Marty Balin.

An incredible and very diverse collection of songs emerged from this new group. Their new sound was an eclectic mix of rock, folk and r & b, a sound that sometimes could be heard all in the same song at times. Their biggest hits were the romantic ballads but that was only part of what defined their soaring music. Balin and Slick's memorable vocals, Chaquico's blistering lead guitar, and Kantner's unique vision was what fueled Jefferson Starship's musical voyages of the 1970's. The accompanying liner notes nicely details the band's members and the music during that time period.

The songs: Ride The Tiger, Hyperdrive and Caroline comes from 1974's Dragon Fly. Play on Love, Fast Buck Freddie and the classic ballad Miracles came from 1975's Red Octopus. With Your Love, St. Charles comes from 1976's Spitfire. Count On Me, Love Too Good, and Runaway from 1978's Earth. Light The Sky On Fire was a single only release from 1978.