The Woodstock Experience: Jefferson Airplane

iTunes Review

The Woodstock Experience couples Jefferson Airplane’s landmark 1969 studio album Volunteers with their legendary performance at the 1969 Woodstock Festival, where their Saturday night headlining appearance became an early Sunday morning performance with the sun breaking out for a new day. There’s no sign of a Sunday morning come down here. The band plays ferociously from the first quaking moments of “The Other Side of This Life” into its most established hit, “Somebody to Love.” Six of the tracks are previously unreleased, including a 21-minute version of “Wooden Ships” and a 15-minute jam on “The Ballad of You & Me & Pooneil.” The extended jams put a greater focus on guitarist (and future Hot Tuna leader) Jorma Kaukonen, whose incendiary guitar work brilliantly matches the anarchic, political tone of the material. There’s a punkish energy to the band’s brutal charge. “3/5 Of a Mile In 10 Seconds” serves up a ferocity made more implicit by the banshee wails of singers Grace Slick and Marty Balin. The group was surely primed for revolution of any sort.