Im reposting this from a message I posted to the rather excellent UK Blues guitar player Matt Bullard, and am eager to find out if anyone has more info on the actual event/movie in question. The track in question is, *perhaps* the best recorded Hendrix live blues work-out ever. Theres a long back story to this event, and as I have understood it through lots of searching over the years, the context is a chaotic festival on Randall’s Island, New York, summer of 1970. Its all the more edifying that Hendrix played this absolute barnstormer of a gig in light that, immediately prior to hitting the stage, he had been under serious pressure give up his entire fee to the radical groups, who had torn down the festival fences, and thrown the event into an aggressive confused mess, both backstage, and out front. By several first hand accounts, he was being heckled loudly during the set. I have never in my life heard a better way to shut up a rowdy, hostile crowd, and the 36 bar solo is a master class in itself on how to keep raising the temperature, ferocity and attack in an extended solo, and then wind it perfectly back down into the following verse. I think its a textbook definition of how to perfectly enmesh virtuosity and feel, to pull that off while being accused of being a sell out and an uncle tom is extrordinary. The whole festival was filmed professionally, and then later screened in LA initially under the title Free” but it was latterly known under the title “The Day The Music Died” (perhaps apt, given its post-woodstock, Altamont era context) - but, sadly never saw general release as far as I am aware. Presumably the Hendrix Estate cant or wont revive it. There are other songs from that set available sporadically on you tube, but terribly lit/filmed, e.g. a pretty good audio version of Fire with very dark, grainy silhouettes of Hendrix. The audio track of this unprecedented version of Red House, as far as I know, originally saw light of day on the CBS Release Jimi Hendrix - Concerts circa 1982 (which I have on the vinyl I bought at the time, and cd), on which Allan Douglas team had for some reason seen fit to have some engineer retro-fit rather grand sounding echo/hall effects to the vocals and guitar - perhaps to enhance the live feel for a new, younger audience schooled on the slick production values of Journey, Foreigner and Van Halen rather than the legends of Monterey. Not necessary. Two months later, Jimi was dead. Anyone who still peddles the myth Jimi had burned out by then is sorely, sorely mistaken, by all the evidence herein. See what you think. Ill be very grateful for more insight from anyone who was there.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 02:59:01 +0000
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