FLY JEFFERSON AIRPLANE

Of all the DVD I was hoping for one day, I never thought this one would see the light of day the way it has: a real rockumentary that only in prog-related affairs Colosseum's previously existed. Right from the background music's menu, you just know you are in for a treat. While there is no full concert footage, there is plenty of different film footage from festivals or TV shows or even videos. One of the few claims I would've rather seen included would've been a wider view on the Haight-Ashbury scene which thev Airplane was so linked with. Alas that small subject showing and discussing the "Be- ins" around the Golden Gate Bridge parks and even a full shot of their headquarters in 2400 Fulton Street are all absent. To bad for the tour guide of the scene.

Through the many interviews of the members (all of them except Barbata, Creach, Skip Spence and Signe), we are taken for a chronological (general but not complete or even thorough) overview of the group's career. From the early ballrooms gigs to the Monterey Pop Festival to the few TV shows they did to JL Godard's shoot of their sole rooftop track and police arrest, from their manager and recording technicians or light engineers (The Airplane was hardly behind Floyd in this dept) to the nightmare of Altamont (The Airplane was of all events , even the bad ones), the essential years are fairly deeply explored, but hardly exhaustively (see above and below), but suffieciently to allow their legend to grow more.

Actually one might just be a little frustrated and have a little taste of "not enough" as the later years of the Airplane are not covered >> they actually shun Bark and LJS and do not talk that much of Hot Tuna or the Kantner sci-fi-influenced solo albums etc. One has the feeling that if they could rewrite the story, they would've stopped the Airplane in 70 instead of mid-73. This is understandable because the Airplane had stopped being groundbreaking by then and the hippy dream was over. So apart from this last remark and the opening one about the Frisco summer of love scene, we have one of the best kinds of documentary about one of the most important and groundbreaking group around the 60's and had they not been around, we would've had to invent them. Hopefully we will get some full concerts DVD soon (although the Airplane and Hot Tuna could easily surpass the 5-hours gigs) and eventually a coverage of the transition years between the Airplane and the Starship years, because there is much to be said of those years as well.

Although related rather from afar from the scope of our interest, these guys and gals were essential in developing the freedom that further groups would beneficiate in the early 70's. The Airplane's early years are filled of "firsts" or "among the firsts" happenings (see the blog I wrote on them in the forum section) that they truly deserve their inclusion in this site under the label proto-prog.

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