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List Price: $10.98 | | Label: RCA
Salesrank: 1410262
Released: October 27, 1998 |
| Our Price: $4.50 |
| Used Price: $5.50 |
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| Media: Audio Cassette |
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No Place That Far Track Listing:
1. Great Unknown
2. Cryin' Game
3. No Place That Far
4. I Thought I'd See Your Face Again
5. Fool, I'm a Woman
6. Time Won't Tell
7. Knot Comes Untied
8. Love, Don't Be a Stranger
9. These Days
10. Cupid
11. There's Only One
No Place That Far Reviews:
Special & Unique 
2007-07-13 - Maybe it's the 40th Anniversary of the Summer of Love. Maybe it's the Iraqi war and it's uncomfortable deja vu with Vietnam, or George W. Bush's enhanced impersonation of Richard M. Nixon. But lately I've been on a Jefferson Airplane bender. I've been a diehard fan since I was 14, and nothing makes me happier than the recent surplus of live concerts from JA. Since I went to every Airplane performance at the Fillmore East, I'm sure I was at one of the shows recorded for this disc. It really takes me back to a special time and place in my life.
I bought Live At The Fillmore East concert after buying Sweeping Up the Spotlight, the newest concert release. This CD doesn't compare to SUTS soundwise. Live At the Fillmore East should be digitally remastered. The band is playing some amazing music here. But sometimes the vocals are way up front, and the musicians sound like a 9 Volt transistor AM radio. Jorma suffers the most. His guitar occasionally sounds tinny and low. Spencer Dryden's drums are also off in the distance. It seems to phase in and out. It takes a little getting used to. Best played really, really loud!
Sweeping Up the Spotlight does a much better job putting everything in balance, letting Jorma, Jack, Spencer, and even Paul Kantner's under-appreciated rhythm guitar skills, shine. But overall, the sound for Live at the Fillmore East isn't bad, and gets better as the songs play on. Grace keeps asking if a mic is working. Maybe that explains the phase in/phase out quality.
What makes this concert really unique and special is that it captures the Airplane at a really creative and transitional point in their career. The period right after After Bathing at Baxter's and on the threshold of Crown of Creation. 1968. Live versions of Greasy Heart, and Star Track, are worth the price of admission. Also, there are some live Baxter cuts that I hadn't heard before - Watch Her Ride is a highlight. I always loved the studio version, but the live version is played with passion and energy. Very good version of Won't You Try / Saturday Afternoon. Pooneil, a core staple live, is focused and strong, as usual a star piece for Jack Casady to take the bass to heights never seen before or after. He should be required listening for any musician thinking of playing this instrument in a rock band.
Thing, the jam that grew up to be Bear Melt, misses the lyrics and vocals from Grace, but is a lovely space for the band to stretch out and play. You get the feeling from this concert that it was a work in progress, that you get to hear in completion on Pointed Head.
Having the vocals way up front is a blessing, for the most part, and occasionally a curse. As always, sometimes Marty, Paul and Grace stumble all over each other. There are some monumentally flat and off key moments. So what. That was the Airplane live. Marty Balin relies a little too heavily on his upper range for my taste. On a couple of occasions he yelps like a puppy. But he does a beautiful job sweetly singing Today. Not in love with the funked out Other Side of This Life. Wild Tyme is pretty much a mess. Very ragged.
This is definitely Paul Kantner's time to shine. He was the primary writer and singer on most of the stand out cuts, especially Fat Angel, which is as good, maybe better than Pointed Head's version.
But Grace Slick, in particular, is doing some amazing singing. She's in full throttle wailing mode. Her solo turns are off the hook! She demolishes the studio version of Greasy Heart, making this one the definitive version for me. White Rabbit and Somebody to Love are strong and focused. It's possibly her strongest live performance. She's taking risks, and for the most part, they work.
As mentioned before, this is the transitional point from Marty's version of the Airplane to Paul's version. Marty is still very much engaged with the band. As time would move on, he would become more distant, and finally, gone. It's a fun show, on a good night. I even like the goofy audience chatter. Feels like being there again.Sweeping Up the Spotlight: Jefferson Airplane Live at the Fillmore East 1969Bless Its Pointed Little Head
No-point landing 
2007-01-15 - Many '60s bands were great in concert- but not all. Some played their hits very much like the original recordings, while others used a live performance setting to experiment, expand, expound and expose their material to fresh ideas, both vocally and instrumentally. If you enjoy the latter, JEFFERSON AIRPLANE LIVE AT FILLMORE EAST will not disappoint you.
Give this group credit for the willingness to mold and morph their songs improvisationally and in public, but subtract points where these well-intentioned efforts made a mess out of what had previously been nicely structured works. The latter results occur far too often in the 1968 concert songs presented here. Grace Slick's "What?" during the start of "Wild Tyme" almost says it all for me. Not only would I ask "What?" of the Airplane, I'd follow that up with a big "Why?" Neither question gets answered here.
TOTAL RUNNING TIME -- 76:22
Wow!!!
2007-01-10 - Often when we are exposed to something from our youth we wonder just what it was that we saw in something.
This music is the music of my youth-- indeed the JA was my favorite band and I saw EVERY concert that they ever did at the Fillmore East, so I was at every performance on this CD! (I would return home to make curfew after the early show and after my parents went to bed I would sneak out and take the IRT subway back down to the Village for the late show.)
With this CD I find out how utterly right I was about this band. The musicianship, the diversity of styles and musical structures, the creativity and the sheer passion are all here. They were as good as I remember!
I put this CD on in my car and soar down the road.
Flashing back 
2006-12-20 - With the advent and progresssion of electronics and mixing it is refreshing to be taken back to the Fillmore, once again, and to bands and sounds (the recordings for the Fillmore were done from under the stage) that became so polished they lost there brightness that was reflected in this revolutionary time period. Unique sounds like Quicksilver, Big Brother & the Holding Company, Spirit etc and in some respects the Dead brought forth this wonder that consisted of fuzzy guitars, hyponotizing lyrics and mixtures, that reflected the events (revolution) of the period that felt like all of them were performing just for you not for the money, (brought out in Pink Floyds "Welcome to the Machine) the glory and the complete narcissistic reflection that has given us slop today. Ahhhh this was a refreshing collection that anyone that has seen them understands exactly what was said in the liner notes that "you never knew what or how they were going to play" and always turned into a gig. Bless digitizing and bless those that have kept this music over the years so we can go back in time. What would we hear if recordings were made during the masters days of Beethoven, Brahms, etc and gathering but the basic of what we have come to respect as classic music. This is our fortune that some of the 60's early 70's music are brought to us and whether it is exactly as we might remember it, (and those of us that lived through it have a problem remembering exactly what happened) we are able to bath in it's coseptualized greatness. Whoa that was quite a rush
...ABX
2006-04-29 - In May of 1968, when Jefferson Airplane performed the four concerts that have yielded this 'Live At the Fillmore East' release, I was all of 14 years old, and one of my favorite listens was the underground FM radio station in Detroit, WABX. Aside from playing the cutting edge psychedelic music of the era, it was a trip in itself to take in the spaced-out DJ's this station let loose on the airwaves. It wasn't unusual, for instance, to hear a couple minutes of dead silence while the chemically altered spinmeister tried to decide what to play next, or to accomodate the station identification regulation with a quick "...ABX". This Airplane disc made me harken back to those days, what with the obviously random, spontaneous, and unrehearsed between-songs banter offered up by singers Grace Slick, Paul Kantner, and Marty Balin. They meander through conversations about when songs were written, to a discourse on a recent bust of the Grateful Dead in New Jersey, to a Slick monologue on a chocolate cookie that had been handed to her. And yes, there are a couple minutes of dead silence to be had. Surrounding the nostalgia, however, is a host of great psychedelia.
Aside from Grace herself, the slickest moment on 'Live At the Fillmore East' is the opening minute, featuring a deafening recording of a Boeing 707 taking off. As the wail of the jet engines subsides, we hear "Thank you for coming..." echoing about the Fillmore, and the opening, feedback-drenched strains of 'The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil'. It's a great opener, with its fat, fuzz-tone guitar leads from Jorma Kaukonen, and a several minute pounding bass bridge solo courtesy of Jack Casady. It's one of four tracks that break the seven minute barrier, in addition to the stealth rocker 'Star Track' (an homage to James T. Kirk?), featuring a great wah-pedal lead from Kaukonen, the instrumental 'Thing', which slowly builds in tempo, intensity, and complexity into a flat-out rocker with many guitar variations on its theme, and a cover of Donovan Leitch's 'Fat Angel', a typical Donovan flower-powered ("Fly trans-love airways, get you there on time...") yet funky compostion. The only other cover is Fred Neil's 'The Other Side of This Life', which along with 'It's No Secret' and 'Watch Her Ride' are rather generic rockers, undistinguished but doing no harm here either. For me, the standout tracks are those drawn from my favorite JA disc, 'Surrealistic Pillow', and those featuring Grace Slick, the finest female vocalist from the psychedelic genre. Her talents are front and center on 'Greasy Heart', 'White Rabbit', and 'Somebody To Love', and the performances are fresh, vibrant, and intense. Add to this list of highlights a worthy electric rendition of the acoustic beauty, 'Today' from 'Surrealistic Pillow', and you have the core of one outstanding, even historic performance. The only weak tracks on the disc are 'Wild Tyme', whose lyrics are embarassingly dated, and 'Won't You Try/Saturday Afternoon' which comes off sluggish and pressured.
Given that the year was 1968, these recordings are of astounding quality. It's truly a wonder than such a fine document of the Airplane's live persona remained buried for three full decades. Brilliant graphics and several pages of interesting liner notes from Jeff Tamarkin make for a complete, informative package (lyrics would be too much to ask from a live disc, since you so seldom are blessed with them even from studio productions). If you're a fan of early Jefferson Airplane studio discs, you should find this production both entertaining and enlightening. It's truly one of the better live testaments from the psychedelic era.
