Jefferson Airplane - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 9-14-1970

It's been many decades since what a consider a musical golden era of the late 1960s and early 1970s. You'd think that after all this time, all of the really excellent bootlegs would have either been leaked to the public or keep unaccessible in musician and/or record company vaults. But that's not so, and this recording is another good example. I found this on a bootleg site (Guitars101). It was made public there for the very first time as I write this in mid-September 2026. What's encouraging is the person who posted it said they'd recently gotten a bunch of recordings from a friend, and this is one of them. So hopefully there will be more like these. This is a really excellent previously unknown soundboard of Jefferson Airplane in 1970.

By the way, the people who posted this (David Minches and Charlie Miller) also posted a soundboard recording of Jefferson Airplane in the same venue the very next day, September 15, 1970. I decided to only post this one because they have very similar setlists. But you might want to download the other one at Guitars101. I picked this one because I had a slight preference for the few songs that were different. Most notably, this was the only one with a performance of "Starship."

In 1970, at the time of this concert, Jefferson Airplane was coming apart. They were using a lot of drugs, especially cocaine, and the band members were having increasing conflicts with each other. The drummer, Spencer Dryden, was fired from the band in February 1970, and was replaced by Joey Covington. More importantly, Marty Balin, a key singer and songwriter in the band, was increasingly estranged from the other band members. He would quit the band in early 1971.

The band didn't release a new album in 1970, the first time that happened since it got started in 1966. They only released a single, "Mexico" backed by "Have You Seen the Saucers," both of which were performed here. But their record company released a popular greatest hits album, "The Worst of Jefferson Airplane," so they were touring to support that.

However, the band had come up with a bunch of new songs that were unreleased at the time. Some of them were performed here: "Emergency," written by Balin, "Up or Down," sung by Balin but written by Peter Kaukonen, brother of lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, "You Wear Your Dress Too Short," a blues cover sung by Malin, "Whatever The Old Man Does (Is Always Right)" by Covington, and "The Man (The Bludgeon of the Bluecoat)," also by Covington. When the band finally released their next album, "Bark," in 1971, none of those songs were included. The Balin-sung songs weren't included because he had left the band by then. I don't know why the two Covington-sung ones weren't included. Maybe he wasn't important enough in the band, being merely the new drummer, or maybe they weren't deemed good enough. Either way, it's interesting to hear them here. 

Additionally, the song "Starship" performed here is from the album "Blows Against the Empire." It was released about a month after this concert. Technically, it was billed to "Paul Kantner and the Jefferson Starship." That the first use of the name "Jefferson Starship." The name would return into 1974, replacing "Jefferson Airplane." Although it was billed as a Kantner solo album, it also had lots of involvement from Grace Slick, who wrote or co-wrote some songs, and sang lead vocals on many of them. 

I noticed that there's a version of "Blows Against the Empire" with some bonus tracks. One of them is the exact version of "Starship." I think it's the only officially released song from this concert.

Also at this time, two band members, lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady, had formed their own spin-off group, "Hot Tuna." Since they were on friendly terms with other band members, Hot Tuna often served as the opening acts to Jefferson Airplane concerts, or there would be a Hot Tuna section in the middle. For this concert, the first four songs are effectively a mini Hot Tuna set.

As I mentioned above, this is an excellent sounding soundboard. However, I think I improved it still further. It had one problem that is common to excellent sounding soundboards: they record what happened on stage wonderfully, but don't get much of the crowd cheering. That was very much the case here. So I ran every single song through the MVSEP program, boosting the cheering dramatically at the end of each song. Now, it sounds like a normal concert, with the expected amount of audience reaction.

It sounds like the recording for about the first thirty seconds or so of "We Can Be Together" was wonky. I improved it a bit, but most of it was beyond my ability to fix.  

This album is two hours and 19 minutes long. 

01 talk (Jefferson Airplane)
02 Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning (Jefferson Airplane)
03 talk (Jefferson Airplane)
04 New Song [For the Morning] (Jefferson Airplane)
05 Been So Long (Jefferson Airplane)
06 Hesitation Blues (Jefferson Airplane)
07 We Can Be Together (Jefferson Airplane)
08 Mexico (Jefferson Airplane)
09 Crown of Creation (Jefferson Airplane)
10 talk (Jefferson Airplane)
11 Whatever the Old Man Does [Is Always Right] (Jefferson Airplane)
12 The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil (Jefferson Airplane)
13 talk (Jefferson Airplane)
14 Emergency (Jefferson Airplane)
15 Come Back Baby (Jefferson Airplane)
16 talk (Jefferson Airplane)
17 Somebody to Love (Jefferson Airplane)
18 Wooden Ships (Jefferson Airplane)
19 talk (Jefferson Airplane)
20 Up or Down (Jefferson Airplane)
21 talk (Jefferson Airplane)
22 Have You Seen the Saucers (Jefferson Airplane)
23 talk (Jefferson Airplane)
24 The Man [Bludgeon of a Bluecoat] (Jefferson Airplane)
25 The Other Side of This Life (Jefferson Airplane)
26 Volunteers (Jefferson Airplane)
27 talk (Jefferson Airplane)
28 Greasy Heart (Jefferson Airplane)
29 talk (Jefferson Airplane)
30 You Wear Your Dress Too Short (Jefferson Airplane)
31 talk (Jefferson Airplane)
32 Freight Train [Instrumental Version] (Jefferson Airplane)
33 Starship (Jefferson Airplane)
34 talk (Jefferson Airplane)
35 3-5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds (Jefferson Airplane) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/g3L7yzZm

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/iWjtOF0HNrB7dqw/file

The cover image shows a concert in Michigan State University, in East Lansing, Michigan, on May 24, 1970. From left to right: Jack Casady, Jorma Kaukonen, Grace Slick, and Marty Balin.