Sweeping Up the Spotlight Live at Fillmore East 69

Jefferson Airplane - Sweeping Up the Spotlight Live at Fillmore East 69

Sweeping Up the Spotlight Live at Fillmore East 69
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CD Details

Artist: Jefferson Airplane
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2007-05-15
Music Label: RCA
Soundtracks:
  1. Volunteers
  2. Good Shepherd
  3. Plastic Fantastic Lover
  4. Uncle Sam Blues
  5. 3/5 Of a Mile In 10 Seconds
  6. You Wear Your Dresses Too Short
  7. Come Back Baby
  8. Medley: Won't You Try/Saturday Afternoon
  9. The Ballad Of You & Me & Pooneil
  10. White Rabbit
  11. Crown Of Creation
  12. The Other Side Of This Life

Music reviews of Sweeping Up the Spotlight Live at Fillmore East 69

Music Review: I Was There!
Rating: 5 Stars

When I saw the November 28 & 29th dates on the back of the CD for this Fillmore East live show I realized I was in the audience for at least one of these nights. My friend Selena & I took the R train from Queens to 8th Street & walked the two blocks to the Fillmore. Somehow we had two extra tickets, which we elected to give away to two out of towners, who repaid our kindness with party favors. As a result, other than remembering the band infront of the moving blobs of light show color, my memory is a little hazy.

Considering this concert was recorded back in the days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the sound quality is outstanding. Also, this is NOT the Airplane at the end. This is them a couple of months after Woodstock, smack dab in the middle of their reign.

This will be considered sacrilege but I think I may like this live disc even better than Pointed Head. It is at least on par with it. Pointed Head is essence relaxed San Francisco jam music. This show is New York City battering ram. The Airplane is on fire. For once everybody in the band is on the same page - the vocalists are in tune, weaving in & out & inbetween one another. Everywhere there is a spare opening, Jorma sends out lightning bolts of guitar fire like a Norse god. Spencer Dryden was the band's secret weapon, even though shortly after this performance the band showed him the door. His inventive and authoritive backbeat kept the band on track during the guitar and vocal acrobatics. The Airplane suffered when they switched him out & went with the drummer-of-the-month club.

And then there is Jack. His bass-as-lead solo in the middle of Pooneil is jaw-droppingly brilliant. He just won't behave. I can still remember a free gig in Central Park where the vibrations from his bass rumbled up from the ground & thru my feet into my body. There never has been another bass player in rock that could touch him, probably never will. This concert lets him rock out and strut his stuff.

Nearly all the versions of classic Airplane songs are better represented here than previous incarnations - blasting off with the best version of Volunteers I've ever heard, thru a ripping version of Good Shepard that lays waste the acoustic version, a better organized Pooneil than usual, a sensuous & powerful White Rabbit, Crown of Creation on steroids, and core staple Other Side of This Life ripped & gutted by Jorma's blistering solos. Young & strong doesn't even begin to come close to describing the performances on this CD.

The only out and out cringer (and all live Airplane gigs always had a couple)is Marty Balin's excruciating vocals on You Wear Your Dresses Too Short. I wish somebody had turned his mic off. Great jam, embarrassing vocals.

If you love the Airplane, you need to own this. 40 years later, this CD documents that on a good night nobody could touch them. They tear the roof off.
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Description of Sweeping Up the Spotlight Live at Fillmore East 69

12 LIVE tracks - only two were previously released on the Volunteers Expanded Edition. Hole in barcode art.
Sweeping Up the Spotlight: Live at the Fillmore East 1969 features the definitive edition of Jefferson Airplane, icons of 1960s psychedelic rock and political agitation. Jack Casady and Spencer Dryden hold down the free-floating rhythms on bass and drums, Jorma Kaukonen launches feedback-laced guitar solos, and Paul Kantner adds rhythm guitar and backing vocals. Topping it all are the voices of Marty Balin and the '60s acid queen, Grace Slick. In concert, the Airplane were always more rough and ready than on their acid-hued vinyl. Outside the studio, they were ramshackle and punky, which is why they were sometimes referenced when talking about punk bands like X, who also had male and female lead singers. Despite having six albums under their belt, mostly consisting of original material, the Airplane's live set has a lot of mediocre blues and folk filler. Some of their more characteristic repertoire is sacrificed to workman-like renditions of "Uncle Sam Blues" and "Come Back Baby," albeit with some ripping Kaukonen guitar solos. Balin's raucous rant on "You Wear Your Dresses too Short" is embarrassing in its soul-singer aspirations. Assuming this was their set sequence, it takes a while for the Airplane to congeal on stage. They ride roughshod over much of their materiel, but pull it together two-thirds of the way through on one of their most complex tunes, "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil." With its shifting time signatures and overlapping vocal lines and harmonies, it's a challenge to pull off live, but they do, with soaring vocals from Balin and Slick and a long instrumental jam with a fractured guitar solo from Kaukonen and a feature slot for bassist Casady, the most innovative and powerful bassist from that era. That paves the way for a darker version of "White Rabbit," the mock celebration of "Crown of Creation," and their show closer, a hyped rendition of Fred Neil's ballad "The Other Side of This Life." As they always did, the Jefferson Airplane land high. --John Diliberto

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