From Anti-Music.com:

Four never-before-released live albums by Jefferson Airplane are set to be released October 26 on Collectors' Choice Music Live.
The four live albums include original vocalist Signe Anderson's farewell show and Grace Slick's first show, both at the Fillmore in 1966. Here is the announcement with more details:

The argument rages on, but for many music fans in the '60s, the best live band from the Bay Area was Jefferson Airplane. Formed during the summer of 1965 in San Francisco, the group triumphed in 1967 with Surrealistic Pillow, one of the key recordings of the Summer of Love, containing the hits "Somebody to Love," "White Rabbit" and "Today." The Airplane featured three master instrumentalists (Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady and Spencer Dryden) and three vocalists: Grace Slick (replacing original singer Signe Anderson in 1966), Marty Balin and Paul Kantner. The Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame inductees made a total of eight studio albums and released a smattering of live albums including 1969's Bless Its Pointed Little Head.

But what most fans don't know is that there are vast reserves of never-released live material by Jefferson Airplane capturing key moments in their history. On October 26, 2010, Collectors' Choice Music Live will release four previously unreleased live albums: Live at the Fillmore Auditorium 10/15/66 Late Show — Signe's Farewell, Live at the Fillmore Auditorium 10/16/66 Early & Late Shows — Grace's Debut, Live at the Fillmore Auditorium 11/25/66 & 11/27/66 — We Have Ignition, and Return to the Matrix 2/1/68.

The first three releases document the astonishing growth of the band, and follow the near-seamless absorption of Grace Slick's voice and material into the Airplane's sound just as they were entering the studio to record Surrealistic Pillow. The fourth release captures the group triumphantly returning to their home turf at Marty Balin's club The Matrix for a relaxed, exploratory set in an intimate setting, performing material from their first four albums, including Crown of Creation, seven months before its release. Taken together, the four releases confirm that at its best, when Jorma was soaring, Jack rumbling and the three voices joining in ecstatic melisma, no other band could ascend to the heights attained by the Airplane. Hand-picked by a team of devotees, annotated by frequent Airplane flyer Craig Fenton (author of the book Take Me To A Circus Tent: The Jefferson Airplane Flight Manual), and featuring rare photos inside handsome digi-packs, these concerts distill and express the dream and promise of the Haight-Ashbury scene.

• Live at the Fillmore Auditorium 10/15/66 Late Show — Signe's Farewell: The Grace Slick era of the Airplane has understandably received most of the attention paid the band over the years. But they had released a good album (Jefferson Airplane Takes Off) and were already a powerful live outfit before Slick came aboard. The 10/15/66 release not only marks the first appearance on CD of a live recording featuring Signe Anderson with the band, but also her very last show. Both Marty Balin and the Fillmore's Bill Graham give her shout-outs. Songs include "3/5ths of a Mile in Ten Seconds," "Tobacco Road," "Midnight Hour," "High Flyin' Bird" and "Chauffeur Blues" (which Grace never performed out of respect for Signe, who'd made the old blues tune her own). It was the end of an era. But a new one was about to begin the very next day, and is the subject of the 10/16/66 release.

• Live at the Fillmore Auditorium 10/16/66 Early & Late Shows — Grace's Debut: The 10/16/66 volume chronicles the first set of concerts featuring Grace Slick as a member of the Airplane, a mere day after Signe Anderson officially left the band. The band has yet to add the material Slick brought to the band ("Somebody To Love" and "White Rabbit) to the set list, but Grace's harmony work with Marty and Paul is impressive, and you can literally hear her confidence growing from the first set to the second. The album contains "The Other Side of This Life," "Let Me In," "Don't Let Me Down," "Run Around" and "High Flying Bird," plus versions of "3/5ths of a Mile in 10 Seconds" and "Tobacco Road" with the new line-up, and Leiber & Stoller's "Kansas City," which has never appeared on any Airplane studio or live album. Surrealistic Pillow photographer Herbie Greene contributes photos. Things would never be the same for the band or for '60s rock.

• Live at the Fillmore Auditorium 11/25/66 & 11/27/66 — We Have Ignition: CCM Live subtitled these shows "We Have Ignition" as they believe this is when the Airplane transformed from a high-flying bird into a psychedelic spaceship (but not yet a Starship.) It's difficult to believe, when comparing these November shows with Grace's live debut on 10/16/66, that only six weeks have elapsed. Not only has the band (particularly guitarist Jorma Kaukonen) progressed as musicians, but the infusion of Surrealistic Pillow material some four months before the album hit the stores shifts the focus of this folk-rock band to rock. Included are "Plastic Fantastic Lover," "High Flyin' Bird," "Bringing Me Down," " D.C.B.A-25," "My Best Friend," "Go to Her," "She Has Funny Cars," "3/5ths of a Mile in 10 Seconds," "Skip Spence's "J.P.P. McStep B Blues," "White Rabbit," "Today" and more. Two rarities are a mind blowing, 9:45-minute version of "The Other Side of Life" (performed for a photo session) that neither its author, the folk singer-songwriter Fred Neil, nor the band could ever have anticipated, and the only known recording of an instrumental known in some quarters as "My Grandfather's Clock." This is the Airplane at its early apex.

• Return to the Matrix 2/1/68: The Airplane returned to the first club they ever played, the Matrix, in 1968 for a 103-minute show at the height of their commercial prowess. They band premiered two songs from the Crown of Creation album (which was months away from being released): "Share a Little Joke" and an instrumental version of "Ice Cream Phoenix." They also performed "Blues From an Airplane," a song from its first (pre-Slick) album. Also here: "Somebody to Love," "Young Girl Sunday Blues," "She Has Funny Cars," "Two Heads," "Martha," "Kansas City," "Other Side of this Life," "Today," "Won't You Try/Saturday Afternoon," "It's No Secret," "Watch Her Ride," "Plastic Fantastic Lover," "Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil," "White Rabbit," "Fat Angel" and "3/5ths of a Mile in 10 Seconds."

The above is for Geff and all those wondering about these releases. Sounds awesome, I'm just not much of a fan.

I'll get all of these.

But apparently, on "We Have Ignition", one song had to be dropped from the first show, due to CD running time limits. The dropped song is "Somebody to Love". As I understand it, some or all of these concerts can presently be bought from Wolfgang's Vault as FLAC downloads. I wonder if the Collectors Choice & Wolfgang's vault tape sources are the same.

There is another thread on here where someone said they are the same masters.

viewtopic.php?f=17&t=63491&hilit=jefferson+airplane&start=30

http://theseconddisc.com/2010/07/21/fee ... -off-live/

The thread also links to this article:

IP, thanks for thinking of me!

I'll still buy it. It would suck if the song is missing just because of runnung time, but I'll still take actual CDs over FLAC/CDRs anytime.

That third disc, from November '66, looks really tempting. D.C.B.A-25. is one of my favorite Airplane tracks; I'd love to hear it live.

Some good news. The October release date is for widespread release....but the discs are available direct from the Collectors Choice catalogue and website August 10th.

Very exciting. Will be grabbing these for sure.

I contacted Collectors Choice Music concerning my order for the four Jefferson Airplane titles, to find out if they've actually been released, and the response that I got was pure corporate double-talk: The discs were released August 10th, but they are presently backordered. Translation:they haven't actually been released.
If they don't actually start shipping them after another month, I'll have to consider buying recordings as FLAC downloads from Wolfgang's Vault. Two weeks ago, a friend pointed me in the direction of a free program to convert FLAC to WAV, I downloaded that program, and it works perfectly, so now I'm equiped to handle FLAC.

My 2 fav methods for converting flac to wav:

1. Trader's Little Helper freeware
http://tlh.easytree.org/

2. There is a .dll running around that will allow Nero to convert .flac to .wav on the fly while burning a cd. PM me if you need the dll, & I'll email it to you with simple instructions. (there are also similar dll's for ape, shn & mp3. I know they work on Nero 6. I ASSUME they work with newer editions.

Thanks for the offer. The program I'm using to convert FLAC to WAV is called XLD. It works fine.

Just found "Signe's Farewell" and "Return To The Matrix" at my local brick-and-mortar. They didn't have the other two, and I couldn't find out from the clerks if the other two have hit the floor yet. These are sealed but they're promos, which leads me to believe that a rep dropped off a bucket of discs for credit (a very common everyday occurence).

How are they? Do the cover art & liner notes make this a higher quality item then the WGV lossless downloads?

Yeah, I want to know if it is worth a lengthy(possibly months) holdout for Collectors Choice to ship these CD editions. I resent Collectors Choice because the discs aren't described as a preorder item on their website, and they claimed(via e-mail) that the four titles were released August 10th, but they haven't shipped them to any customers(promo/sample copies for distributors don't count)

Phil, a number of years ago CCM did a large exclusive series of V-Disc titles. I corresponded with their owner, Gordon (can't remember his last name at the moment) at length on that series, & came away impressed with him as a person.

The V-Disc set was very cool also. I believe most of the titles are oop today.

Well, I've got the discs on order, and I'll only be charged if they ship, but after the end of October, I'll go with the downloads from Wolfgang's vault. I'd have no problem with the idea of the release of the Collectors Choice discs being 6 to 8 weeks away, if CCM would at least be honest about it, and not pretend that they're available. By the way, Sony's budget "Setlist" series of live concert discs(not to be confused with the "Playlist" series) has a Jefferson Airplane live disc that contains one track from one of the shows that Collectors Choice intends to release. On the song, the drums are barely audible. Sound is direct from the soundboard, but not a professional multitrack record company recording. Therefore, we should expect the Collectors Choice Jefferson Airplane discs to be basically(for 1960's live recordings) equivalent to good quality bootlegs.

I own the WGV flac of the '68, & your description is 100% accurate.

I have sampled streams of some of the '66 shows from WGV (they have so many I couldn't tell you if I've heard these or not), & they tend to sound worse then the '68.

Geff,

Artwork has always been EXTREMELY important to me; even more so in the last few years since I've started to purchase lithographs from the Hoffman, Marshall, Diltz and Kreigsmann archives. These booklets do not disappoint! Chock full of rare pics, detailed notes and all the minutae that we desire; they're impressive enough to warrant purchase over a download. (Reminds me a little of what Iconoclassic is doing with the Guess Who reissues, or Hip-O's titles from Motown Select.)

Thank you for the info. I'm a huge JA fan, & though I hate to buy something 2x without bonus tracks or a remaster, I will keep this in mind. Also will need to play the 3 on WGV that I haven't bought yet to see if i like them.

In the latest advertising e-mail which just arrived from Collectors Choice, the Jefferson Airplane CD's are now (correctly) described as preorders. I'll update you if I can obtain a release date.