Jefferson Starship: Dragon Fly Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		0.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Jefferson Starship: Dragon Fly Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 11, 2024

It may not exactly qualify as "the first shall be last" (especially if Rhino keeps up with their impressive gauntlet of hi res audio releases), but Dragon Fly at least might be jokingly called "the first shall be second" since Rhino already released Jefferson Starship: Red Octopus a while ago. That album was the band's actual sophomore effort, and is probably the better remembered of the two albums. Dragon Fly preceded Red Octopus by almost a year in both its recording time and then release date, and it may still reveal Paul and Grace still kind of feeling their way at times. There's some really lovely music on the album though, with Papa John Creach's electric violin in particular giving several tunes an almost neo- Americana feel. Caroline didn't really make much of an impact on any of the charts, but is one of the better remembered tunes from this era of Starship.

The album's track list can be seen in the screenshots of the disc menu I've uploaded to accompany this review.

Jefferson Starship: Dragon Fly Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

As can be seen by the screenshots accompanying this review, the video content of this AVC encoded disc is simply a static menu. This disc features the kind of authoring I personally prefer, where using the colored buttons on your remote allows you to toggle between audio codecs, so it's not strictly necessary to even have a monitor or display on to enjoy the disc.

Jefferson Starship: Dragon Fly Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Jefferson Starship: Dragon Fly features a DTS-HD Master Audio 4.0 track that at times can mimic some of the simultaneous four channel engagement for riff driven material that I mentioned in the Foghat: Energized Blu-ray review, but which nonetheless offers clear separation and discrete channelization throughout. Papa John Creach's violin is literally all over the place in this mix, rather enjoyably so, but you can kind of interestingly hear it at times emanating, for example, in only the left rear channel in tunes like Be Young You. The beautiful piano solo opening That's for Sure is slightly weighted toward the rear as well, but is rather impressively spacious. Vocals are well prioritized and in showcases like Caroline, there is both discrete channelization for solo vocals and then four channel engagement for backups.

Jefferson Starship: Dragon Fly Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

As with every Quadio release I've reviewed, there is no on disc supplemental material. The insert booklet recreates the original album's cover information, while offering the Quadio standbys of a picture of the boxes holding the master tapes, as well as Rhino's typical verbiage on setup.

Jefferson Starship: Dragon Fly Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Dragon Fly may frankly not have the high sheen gloss of Red Octopus, but some may feel that's a better reflection of the band's "humble" Jefferson Airplane roots. This album may be ripe for rediscovery, and this four channel offering is often very nicely immersive. Recommended.