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Matt Gardner's Collection

Jefferson Airplane   03/10/1967

Winterland, San Francisco, CA
Source Mono SBD>MR>DAT>CDR
Media CDR   1 disc
Notes Mono SBD. Ahuka's Choice #5-1. See notes for set list and release notes.
J-Card Comment These are the release notes for Ahuka 5. They are for all 3 dates, March 10-12, 1967.

Ahuka's Choice: Volume 5

March 10, 11 & 12, 1967
Winterland, San Francisco

Source:
Monaural Soundboard -> Reel to Reel Tape -> DAT ->CDR
Digitally Restored in January 2000

Disc One: March 10, 1967
Set 1
1. And I Like It
2. Don't Slip Away
3. Tobacco Road
4. Somebody to Love
5. Leave You Alone
Set 2
6. High Flying Bird
7. She Has Funny Cars
8. Let Me In
9. My Best Friend
10. Come Back Baby
11. White Rabbit
12. 3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds

Disc Two: March 11, 1967
Set 1
1. My Best Friend
2. Come Back Baby
3. Today
4. Don't Slip Away
5. Plastic Fantastic (Intro)
Set 2
6. The Other Side of This Life
7. Get Together (Intro)
8. Bringing Me Down
9. Today
10. Running Round This World
11. 3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds
12. Fat Angel
13. Thing (cuts)
14. It's No Secret

Disc Three: March 12, 1967
1. It's No Secret
2. White Rabbit
3. Bringing Me Down
4. Don't Let Me Down
5. Jam ->
6. Leave You Alone (cut)
7. Today
8. She Has Funny Cars
9. High Flying Bird
10. And I Like It
11. 3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds
12. My Best Friend
13. Come Back Baby (cut)



It's Friday, March 10 and Jefferson Airplane touches down at Winterland in their hometown of San Francisco for a weekend of concerts, supported by blues legends Jimmy Reed and John Lee Hooker. A sense of moment is in the air: the second single from the soon-to-be-released SURREALISTIC PILLOW album is only a few weeks old and the A-side ("Somebody To Love"), on the strength of Grace Slick's searing lead vocal, has begun to vault them out of the San Francisco club scene onto the national stage. AM radio will soon seize upon the sound and the record will catch fire in a big way, shaking the band to its very foundations before redefining it in a big way.

What is perhaps most remarkable about these three performances is that they capture a very brief moment in time when Jefferson Airplane was entering its full instrumental potential while founding member Marty Balin was still holding the vocal reigns of the group. Just listen to the first night's performance of "Don't Slip Away" from JEFFERSON AIRPLANE TAKES OFF: the album's cautious, guitar-driven performance is here replaced with a thunderous bass solo intro by Jack Casady, who is quickly joined by the joyous swing drumming of Spencer Dryden; the two of them set up an irresistible groove before guitarists Jorma Kaukonen and Paul Kantner can jump in. The final instrumental playoff is an incredible, charging showcase for the band as a whole, with Balin riding the crest with a voice that is at once virile and vulnerable and romantic in the best sense. Amazingly, the song's performance on the following night (when Grace makes the surprise move of joining Marty on the chorus with an engaging harmony part) would be its last known appearance on the band's playlist. Also, given rare public performance on all three nights is "My Best Friend," written by the group's ex-drummer (and Moby Grape founder) Alexander "Skip" Spence, which happened to be the first 45rpm single picked from SURREALISTIC PILLOW by RCA. Reportedly, Casady and Kaukonen loathed the sweet, AM-friendly number and it was retired from live performance as soon as "Somebody to Love" freed the group from their obligation to plug the earlier single.

The band's rising star, Grace Slick, is virtually absent from the first set, offering some soulful background vocal shadings to "Tobacco Road" (one of the Airplane's best performances of this standard) before stepping up to the front mike for "Somebody to Love." Even seasoned collectors of live Airplane tapes will be startled by this performance of the song, which stretches out to incorporate a like-themed Balin stomper called "Leave You Alone." While it's a lusty, gripping performance, it's hard to get past the idea that Marty was (subconsciously or not) jealously intruding on Grace's already meager time in the spotlight, and keeping her "in her place." (The album and single have yet to be released, but "White Rabbit" is already attracting the loudest applause when it's announced.) Similarly, Jorma Kaukonen is given one token vocal spotlight per night; on all three nights, Jorma burns his way through "Come Back Baby" (introduced by Marty as "Jorma's Blues"), a wildcat blues groove which he, Casady, Dryden, Balin (on maracas) and possibly Kantner had laid down in Hollywood's RCA Studio B only three days earlier. Jorma's first studio vocal, "Come Back Baby" sounds like it was being primed for a slot on the band's next album, but the song remained unreleased until it showed up on the JEFFERSON AIRPLANE LOVES YOU boxed set, decades later, in 1992.

Other weekend highlights: the kaliedoscopic intro to "The Other Side of This Life" on the second night, with Jorma's giddily elastic, dribbling lead carried proudly on the shoulders of Paul Kantner's chiming Rickenbacker 12-string; Kantner's breathy, time-bending guitar accents in "Fat Angel" rising from a whisper to almost horn-like prominence under the first culmination of Jorma's lead, and Grace joining tentatively in on keyboard; a jam called "Thing," which had been kicking around in the band's repertoire for about a year (an earlier, different performance showed up on Koala Records' 7/22/66 Avalon Ballroom bootleg FAT ANGEL); the first of only two known live performances of JALY's "Don't Let Me Down" (the second came in 1970), in which Marty launches on a stoned rant about the general lameness of folks from other cities they've visited on tour, and women in general; and a Sunday night jam that builds to a newly seperate version of "Leave You Alone," which itself segues into a riveting Casady bass solo -- THE Jack moment of this three-disc offering. (The opening portion of the jam previously appeared, cut off at the segue into the song, on the aforementioned FAT ANGEL boot, under the title "Leave You Alone." Both this and "Things" were later included on the 2400 Fulton CD/tape tree compilation JEFFERSON AIRPLANE RARITIES in 1999.)

Once "Somebody to Love" and the follow-up "White Rabbit" single were released, Grace Slick was granted more opportunities to share the stage with Marty Balin as an equal partner. That equality was not long to last, given the attention paid to the band's laser-eyed, laser-tongued siren by the press. That's why I say that these three nights at Winterland -- for Marty's fans and Airplane purists, especially -- capture a very special, fleeting moment in the history of a great band that was bound for different times. On these discs, the band occupies a twilight state between the band they were, and the band they would be.

? 2000 -- Tim Lucas
All Rights Reserved

Trades Allowed Yes
Ratings Show: A-
Owned by Matt Gardner · Last Updated May 23, 2023