I seem to remember seeing Grace Slick say in an interview that
\nshe refused to play live anymore because she didn’t want to be a
\nspectacle, or an image of an old person trying to be young. After
\nhearing the last Jefferson Starship album
\nWindows Of Heaven<\/i>, I thought she just might have been on to
\nsomething.<\/p>\n
But I’m blindly allegiant to bands in that I’m willing to give
\nthem second, third… hell, even tenth chances. Enter the picture,
\nfrom stage left:
\nGreatest Hits – Live At The Fillmore<\/i>, a show recorded in
\n1998, broadcast on New Year’s 1999, and released on CD in late
\n1999. Everyone got that so far?<\/p>\n
There are times when Jefferson Starship sounds like they are
\nwithin a hair’s width of recapturing the spaced-out glory of their
\nearly days, and there are other times where they sound like a
\nnostalgia act desparately clinging to glories of the past. In the
\nend, this disc paints a rather uneven picture of Paul Kantner and
\ncrew, and it is quickly relegated to the “for diehard fans only”
\nfile.<\/p>\n
Singer Diana Mangano has possibly the toughest job in the whole
\nact: trying to fill Grace Slick’s shoes. There are a few times
\nwhere she sounds like she’s quite capable of doing just that –
\nnamely, on the version of “Somebody To Love” featured in this set.
\nAt other times, such as on “White Rabbit,” Margano sounds like she
\njust doesn’t have the range necessary to pull off the vocal tricks
\nthat Slick became known for – even to the point where she sounds
\nflat at times. But for the most part, Mangano seems to be the
\nmodern-day Donna Jean Godchaux when she was in the Grateful Dead –
\na pretty face, but for the most part, not a vital part of the
\nband.<\/p>\n
That’s kind of a shame, because Paul Kantner occasionally sounds
\nlike he’s still living in an acid trip (though his amblings are
\nnothing compared to the bullshit-laden rants that permeate
\nWindows Of Heaven<\/i>), while Marty Balin does the unthinkable
\nby failing to give his own songs the justice they deserve. Balin
\nplows through a half-assed version of “Miracles” that fails to live
\nup to the magic that this song has had over the years. In Balin’s
\ndefense, the song has been overplayed to the point where it’s the
\nonly thing anyone knows from Jefferson Starship – but that doesn’t
\nmean he shouldn’t show us why we should still care about this
\nsong.<\/p>\n
The more magical moments on
\nGreatest Hits – Live At The Fillmore<\/i> come, ironically, from
\nthe songs you might not know unless you have followed the band
\nsince their days as Jefferson Airplane. Tracks like “Plastic
\nFantastic Lover,” “Crown Of Creation,” “Count On Me” and
\n“Volunteers” – as well as a cover of “Wooden Ships” – all show that
\nJefferson Starship still knows how to turn on the magic. If only
\nthey had been able to do this throughout the bulk of the show.<\/p>\n
Incidentally, the two songs taken from
\nWindows Of Heaven<\/i> – “The Light” and “Let Me Fly” – are not
\nas horrendous as their studio counterparts, but they also don’t
\nstand out on this disc.<\/p>\n
As long as there are people who wax ecstatic about the ’60s and
\nthe Haight-Ashbury scene, there will be an audience for Jefferson
\nStarship (or whatever the hell they choose to call themselves
\ndepending on what quadrant of Mars that Jupiter is in). But unless
\nyou feel you can’t live without it,
\nGreatest Hits – Live At The Fillmore<\/i> isn’t the must-own disc
\nthat sums up this band’s vast career. Then again, it could have
\nbeen much worse.<\/p>\n
2000 Christopher Thelen and “The Daily Vault”. All rights
\nreserved. Review or any portion may not be reproduced without
\nwritten permission. Cover art is the intellectual property of the
\nrecord label, and is used for information purposes only.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25271,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6110],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-36477","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-jefferson-starship","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36477"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36477"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}