Music Review: Jefferson Airplane - The Woodstock Experience - Page 3

For his part, Marty Balin does the most admirable job, keeping pace with Kaukonen and Casady on a considerably faster-paced version of "Plastic Fantastic Lover" than the one found on Pointed Head.

By this time, Kaukonen and especially Casady are basically playing in their own universe, blowing away pretty much anything in their way. You can start to see why these two guys would eventually just end up doing their own thing in Hot Tuna.

The set slows down just a bit with the Airplane's version of "Wooden Ships," the song made famous by Crosby Stills & Nash. But it picks right back up with a raucous version of "Volunteers," which finds Balin in particular preaching the revolution to the morning maniacs like he really means it.

Here again, the sound rather frustratingly drops off in places. But the band sounds so good that even Grace appears to wake up for this one. This continues on a punked-up version of the minor hit "Ballad Of You & Me & Pooneil." And don't look now, but Casady gets a filthy sounding little bass solo in here.

So this is mainly a case of ebb and flow in terms of performance. In other words, it's fairly typical of the west coast psychedelic music of the period, and especially of the Airplane themselves in a live setting. It doesn't always work — and the sound mix gets in the way more often than it should. But when it does work, the Airplane approach greatness much more often than not.

The Woodstock Experience sets arrive both digitally and in stores on June 30.

Next up for our series will be Santana.

Article Author: Glen Boyd

You'll find Blogcritics assistant music editor Glen Boyd sharing his Thoughtmares on his personal blogs The World Wide Glen, and The Rockologist. In a previous life, Glen was a music professional and journalist whose work has appeared in The Rocket, SPIN, Pulse!, and The Source. …

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