Fly Jefferson Airplane (Music Documentary)
Picture: C+
Sound: B- Extras: C+ Main Program: B
Before they became Jefferson Starship with
underappreciated hits like Miracles, Count On Me and Runaway,
and especially when they shortened the name and quality of the music to the
really poor Starship with gutted-out-yet-chart-topping ditties like We Built
This City, Sara, Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now and
redundantly-named It’s Not Over (“Til It’s Over), they were The
Jefferson Airplane. The new DVD Fly
Jefferson Airplane (2004) is the first-ever long-form video program on the
band, exceptionally done and very thorough.
Somebody To Love and White Rabbit are
inarguable classics, but there was so much more to their creativity and then
cutting edge music that had something to say.
They led the way of all the bands exploding out of San Francisco, had
changing lineups that retained their sound and had two great singers in Paul
Kanter, Marty Balin and the stunning Grace Slick. These American originals were as good live as they were in the
studio and they had more memorable moments than even I knew. Bob Sarles and company do an
archival-caliber job of bringing together the footage of the band then and now
in a way that will give you new respect for their music contributions. For fans, this will be an easy
must-own.
Another great aspect of this DVD is that once you have
watched the show, you have the option of playing the music performances
independently so you do not have to pour though the documentary footage, which
is a nice. Either way, the clips come
from The Bell Telephone Hour, Monterey Pop Festival (released by Criterion and
reviewed elsewhere on this site), Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and even Perry
Como Show! This is fun. Film fans will love when French New Wave
legend Jean-Luc Godard tries to do a film about revolution by including them
performing on a rooftop before the police break it up. There is always something interesting going
on here.
The program offers two aspect ratios, the consistent 1.33
X 1 image for which the older footage is presented and newer interview footage
letterboxed at the 16 X 9 or 1.78 X 1 aspect ratio. In a theatrical presentation or HD format, the 1.33 X 1 frame
would more likely be set in the center of the 16 X 9 frame, but it is the
opposite here and looks good. The
program offers all kinds of great old film and NTSC video footage. It is also well edited. The sound is here in Dolby Digital 5.1 and
2.0 Stereo with Pro Logic surround. The
5.1 edges out the 2.0, though DTS might not have been a bad option here, but
the combination at its best is very compelling. Extras include a nice foldout with notes inside the DVD case and
the disc itself offers six extra segments that did not make the final cut of
the main program, plus a stills gallery that plays in regular motion, but
silently. This is one of the best music
DVD-Video programs of its kind yet, music genre notwithstanding, and it even
has all the original music in it. It’s
nice when these things get authorized.
- Nicholas Sheffo
