JEFFERSON AIRPLANE’S THIRTY SECONDS OVER WINTERLAND (1973)
EXPANDED AND REMASTERED ON CD
DELUXE EDITION WITH 5 BONUS TRACKS
Documents the final concerts by these pioneering rock legends
Latest release from Iconoclassic Records arrives on July 21, 2009
THIRTY SECONDS OVER WINTERLAND, originally released in 1973, was the final
original album release from rock icons Jefferson Airplane. Captured live in
concert, the album finds the early ’70s edition of the Airplane (with longtime
members Grace Slick, Paul Kantner, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady joined by jazz
and blues violinist Papa John Creach, former Quicksilver Messenger Service
vocalist David Freiberg and ex-Turtles drummer Johnny Barbata) at its hardest
rocking. The unique set focuses on their then-current material while
acknowledging Kaukonen and Casady’s Hot Tuna splinter group and glancing
backward to Jefferson Airplane’s groundbreaking ’60s work. Although their
contemporary studio albums (1971’s
Bark,
Long John Silver from ’72) were
somewhat disjointed and the group would disband after the release of THIRTY
SECONDS OVER WINTERLAND, Jefferson Airplane was still a unified force onstage
and many fans regard this period as the Airplane’s live peak.
As Jeff Tamarkin, author of
Got a Revolution! The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson
Airplane, writes in a new 2,000 word liner notes essay, “during the last few
years the core leadership had irrevocably split into factions: rhythm
guitarist/vocalist Paul Kantner and singer Grace Slick on one side and lead
guitarist/vocalist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady on the other. They’d
always been a band of misfits whose temperaments were as dissimilar as their
musical contributions, but those same tensions that had torn them asunder had
also served to fuel their creative juices. By the fall of 1972, the two cliques
were barely speaking to one another, but Jefferson Airplane remained one of
rock’s great live entities.”
That statement is borne out by the music captured on this CD, recorded during
Jefferson Airplane’s final shows at San Francisco’s Winterland on September
21-22, 1972 and a month earlier in Chicago. As dynamic and forward-propelled as
any music they’d created during the previous seven years, the tracks released in
1973 as THIRTY SECONDS OVER WINTERLAND reflect a band that had both come a long
way and was ready to move on.
Iconoclassic Records’ deluxe reissue of THIRTY SECONDS OVER WINTERLAND remasters
the original seven-song album, then adds five additional tracks from Jefferson
Airplane’s final Winterland appearances, newly mastered by Grammy Award-winning
engineer Vic Anesini from the original master tapes.
As Tamarkin attests in his liner notes, “An unbiased listen, divorced from the
shenanigans that were consuming the musicians offstage, reveals that Jefferson
Airplane, even in its final days, was still a remarkably powerful, charismatic
live rock band. The live renditions on THIRTY SECONDS were performed with a
renewed ferocity and, simultaneously, finesse. Jack and Jorma had always been an
intuitive, fine-tuned team, but the hundreds of hours they’d spent as Hot Tuna
had given them a new fierceness that manifested itself with the Airplane as
well. Barbata was an inspired choice to complete the rhythm section; Slick was
still a force of nature when she opened her mouth to sing; Kantner literally
kept the band alive with an influx of complex, fascinating new material; and
Creach gave the Airplane an injection of soul and funk as well as a sense of
showmanship that kept the audiences enthralled.”
So consider THIRTY SECONDS OVER WINTERLAND not a souvenir of a band’s demise,
but rather a shining representation of one of rock’s all-time great performing
bands as they leave one era behind and take off into the next.
THIRTY SECONDS OVER WINTERLAND by Jefferson Airplane
(Iconoclassic ICON 1009, originally issued April 1973, as Grunt BFL1-0147)
Selections:
1. Have You Seen The Saucers
2. Feel So Good
3. Crown Of Creation
4. When The Earth Moves Again
5. Milk Train
6. Trial By Fire
7. Twilight Double Leader
BONUS TRACKS:
8. Wooden Ships
9. Long John Silver
10. Come Back Baby
11. Lawman
12. Diana/Volunteers
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0029QLR1Y/?tag=imwan-20
Will it be any better than the final concert Winterland '72 that Charly put out a couple of years back ? That doesn't have great sound and isn't complete either.Marty's encore is missing "You Wear Your Dresses Too Short".
