As the man says, these are super scary times. I’m not sure
at what point it happened, but some kind of collective insanity seems to have
got a grip on a large percentage of the population of the western world. The most
obvious cot case being the good old U S of A, which always tends to lead the stats
when extreme events are in play. According to this now conventional madness,
the USA (and by extension, the World) is being run by a cabal of Satan
worshipping paedophiles that also enjoy a bit of human sacrifice on the side.
Some schools of thought also include the notion that this cabal is not of human
origin, but is comprised of reptilian aliens that can shape shift into human
form. Take a moment to read that again. People actually believe that shit.
The inside skinny on this was provided (I say “was” because
I’m not sure if the people who subscribe to this cult still care about him or
not) by a ‘deep state’ insider going by the code name Q. Starting a few years
back, and in the style of Wiki-leaks, he was drip feeding allegedly top secret
files to followers via an obscure online chat application. Which immediately
raises the question, if it was so earth shattering why use the most obscure
platform possible to get it out to the public? But logic doesn’t feature in any
of this so I’ll stop there before I even get started.
So his group of followers developed a quasi-religion (complete
with shaman) that also incorporated, in no particular order, old testament fire
and brimstone Christianity, UFO-ology, illuminati-style elitism, scientology,
political conspiracy theory, international planned germ warfare and general
xenophobia / racism. About the only people not included were the Masons for a
change (but maybe they are a bit too mainstream for them). As we now know, this
putrid granola of wild speculation and paranoia produced Qanon. The building
blocks date back to the end of the Twentieth Century, but it took the
appearance of the great orange Potus to catalyse it into a movement. If you try
hard enough you can no doubt find references to Trump in the Book of
Revelations and the prophecies of Nostradamus. I would be disappointed if there
weren’t because it would suggest these theorists aren’t doing their job.
Fueled by a constant stream of lies from the top, its devotees have grown in
both number and fervour to the point that they felt motivated enough to
overturn a democratic election.
The rest is, as they say, history.
As a wise person once said, it isn’t where you come from
that worries me, it’s where you are going. And the future does not look good.
It’s bit like trying to turn around the driver of a run-away truck when they
are out of their minds on meth, and all you have to reason with them is a copy
of the road code. If I put on my Nostradamus hat I would predict that America
will sink into a second civil war at the start of 2025, with whoever wins then
setting their sights on the rest of the world. Religious fervour is hard to
stop, especially when it has its finger on the trigger of the largest nuclear
arsenal the world has ever seen. The irony of the US preaching to the Middle East
about the evils of nuclear weapons shouldn’t be lost on you at this point.
Exactly who can’t be trusted?
Even if Trump choked on his Big Mac tomorrow it still
wouldn’t change anything. The thing about mad conspiracies is that they morph
to suit the times. If they believe JFK Jnr is about to make a comeback and the
Queen is a reptile they will believe pretty much anything. And one in six Americans
now believe this stuff. That’s about 55 million people in the US alone, or the
same number of people as the population of England. All the futurists in the
late Nineteenth Century never predicted that the world would be going insane
early in the Twenty First. Weren’t we supposed to be living in an enlightened
Utopia by now?
Anyway enough already – it really is too scary. Besides,
there is only one alien cult worth listening to and that's us, right kids?
Disclaimer:
As with previous broadcasts of this nature, this is
presented as a free public service and no ownership is claimed for any of the
material herein. A note that this is generally pretty offensive so no minors
and no one with a nervous disorder should click play. But if you arrived here
because of the Q reference I would encourage you to listen – you need help.
For some reason we seem to be putting out a new release
around September each year. So predictable. It’s honestly not intentional,
especially since my little guy’s internal clocks are set to a different time
zone to the rest of the world.
With most of the planet locked down for the last 12 months
or so, opportunities for conventional approaches to music have been severely
curtailed, so we have been left to wander the Earth mentally and musically
without much of a compass to guide us. The result has been a diversion into
some of the most maligned musical territory in the world. We ended up exploring
New Age and World music for hidden opportunities. Why? Because it’s there,
silly. And what else were we going to do?
It would have been right and proper to take on conspiracy theorists
and anti-vaxxers given the current situation, and we might still do that in one
of our public service broadcasts
on Youtube, but no. I wanted to escape a bit and travel the world without
leaving home.
My little guys are always surreptitiously travelling the
world, so for them it was just a matter of diarising the whole thing and giving
me the lonely planet skinny to work with. So for those of you not put off by
the threat of New Age and World sounds, here is what you are looking at.
The focus of this is on rhythm and how rhythms can intersect,
even though they exist in separate physical and cultural spaces. We are going
to zig-zag you around the world in about 40 minutes and let you see it through
our shades. If Dick Dale got together with members of Can on a backpackers tour
of world, and then wrote a symphony about it on their return, they might have
come up with something like this. But it would have lacked the ambient icing on
the cake, which is where we come in. If you like our atmospheric stuff like
Light Well, Synaesthesia and Nullarbor & Void, you should love this. The
main difference is that with Munidvagrants you can even dance to it.
It’s kind of ironic that New Zealand and Australia are
currently involved in new covid lockdowns when the rest of the world is starting
to move out of them. Especially here in New Zealand, where we have managed to
avoid a few covid bullets and ridden out the storm in quiet isolation. Now a
single delta case has expanded out into a couple of hundred within a week and
we are all locked into our home bubbles again for a fortnight (at least).
Lockdown 2.0 is obviously not as much fun as lockdown 2020. There is no novelty
value anymore and it’s simply a matter of enduring groundhog day after day for
a few weeks.
Interestingly the mental impact this time isn’t so great,
since we have all been there and done that before. Anxiety, uncertainty, fear –
not so much (although it’s clear delta isn’t something you should play around with).
Now it’s just boredom that is the enemy.
So apart from “working from home”, the main challenge is how
to fill in time. During the first lockdown I had a lot of trouble working out
what I wanted to listen to. Nothing really felt right. This time around it isn’t
so hard, but the main focus has been on how to fill in time and stave off the
boredom with music. So with that in mind I have put together a list of steers
for anyone in the same boat. The common factor here is that these are all
artists that produce long pieces of music. No three minute songs here. These will
fill in a good quarter of an hour or so at a bite, so they will help your day to
fly by. This post also serves as a neat segue into our next release, but more
about that in September.
The art of jamming has largely been forgotten and/or
abandoned over time. It suits a live environment with an audience committed to
going on a journey with the band. The 1970’s saw jam bands thrive. Some might
say it was too healthy and the jam garden was allowed to grow a lot of tall and
thick weeds, but at its best there wasn’t much to touch it for its ability to
take you on a trip.
Jamming started in the world of jazz obviously, since jazz
is by definition an improvisation. It crossed over into rock at the tail end of
the sixties in the American West Coast ballrooms and developed further into
festivals and concert halls everywhere as the seventies progressed. A lot of
festivals actually saw both jazz and rock artists on the same bill, probably
best illustrated by the 1970 Isle of Wight festival where Miles Davis debuted
his “rock” band to an international audience. That cross-pollination was a
feature of the seventies and led to some of the most inspired music ever
created, laid down to willing and receptive audiences, many of whom would
literally go all night with multi-artist bills. There is a great Rolling Stones
bootleg in circulation where the band goes on at 3:00am and Mick is confused as
to whether they are continuing from the night before or getting everyone up for
breakfast.
Then punk happened, the eighties arrived and everyone got
obsessed with shiny glossy things that provided cheap thrills and instant
gratification. Jamming was driven into forgotten backwoods in the southern
States and parts of Europe that couldn’t care less anyway.
So let me hip you to some of this transcendental goodness.
Most of it is unashamedly from the golden era in the early seventies, but there
are also a few more recent pointers to keep things a bit fresh.
Southern rock.
Let’s get straight to the heart of the matter. The southern USA was essentially
jam band territory. Still is. What started out in San Francisco with acid rock bands
like the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service was translated into
something altogether more soulful and satisfying. The Allman Brothers and
Lynyrd Skynyrd are probably the best examples, but there were plenty of others
equally committed to playing all night. You can also add to this Humble Pie and
the original Fleetwood Mac, despite the fact they were Brits, because they
spent a lot of time in the States on the concert circuit. The best thing about these
guys was that their jamming was focused on a groove, it wasn’t an indulgent
show of ability, which you could say the likes of Led Zeppelin and lot of prog
bands were guilty of. Bands like the Black Crowes and Govt Mule have carried on
what has become a southern tradition into the nineties and noughties. There are
plenty of examples to go with, but my advice is to track down live recordings
of these bands and pretend you are in the audience as best you can.
We’re going to be
here for a while. They didn’t play 15 minute epics, but the seventies also
saw the high water mark of some rock artists playing for a looong time. Neil
Young would do an hour long solo set before bringing on Crazy Horse for another
two hours of rock. Likewise Bruce Springsteen would pretty much play his entire
back catalogue if you let him. Tom Petty was another who would play a couple of
dozen tracks in a set that featured plenty of jamming. Did the audience care?
Hell no, and you shouldn’t either. There is a ridiculous 5 LP box set by Bruce
Springsteen that admittedly spans a decade, but is programmed like a concert.
You get the idea.
Fusion. So rock
and jazz got together and had a baby. There is a warning flag on this though. A
lot of fusion is self indulgent crap of a similar kind to prog rock. When it’s
good it’s very good, but buyer beware. My advice here is to stick to the
obvious players like Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis from around 1970 – 1975, and
preferably closer to 1975 than earlier. It’s that specific. Miles Davis’ Pangaea
and Agartha sets are sublime (although Miles himself is off colour on much of
them because he was sick at the time) and Herbie’s work with the
Headhunters is also essential.
Latin. Basically
War and Santana. War started life in the spotlight as backing band for Eric
Burdon, but went their own way in the seventies. They are a bit lighter than a
lot of the other bands on this page and feature a harmonica as a main solo
instrument. Nice though, especially their extended instrumental jams. Santana
are the daddies here though. Carlos hit a rich vein of inspiration in that key
1970-75 period. Caravanserai is one of my favourite studio albums, but it is
blown away by the Lotus live set recorded in concerts from Japan in 1975. Lotus
was originally only released in Japan as a triple album (with an incredible
fold out design that is a product of the time in itself), but has since been
made more accessible. It’s jaw dropping how a band can jam so wildly and be so
tight at the same time. There are plenty of well recorded bootlegs of Santana
from all around the world during this time, so if you want to explore further
get googling. One recorded in Alaska springs to mind…
Ambient. Change
of pace. Ambient music is intended to form a background to activity. Music for
airports. No pussyfooting. You have to be careful with ambient music though. It
can slow down time too much rather than filling it in. For that reason I’d
generally avoid this during a lockdown situation as it could have you climbing
the walls. If one must, Brian Eno’s ambient stuff is the most accessible (read ‘boring’),
and Robert Fripp, Harold Budd and other krauty minimalists also have their
moments. Another goodie is a solo album by Edgar Froese from Tangerine Dream entitled
“Epsilon in Malaysian Pale”. Say what now? Apart from the decidedly pretentious
title, this album features two side long tracks that attempt to transport you
to a tropical Asian jungle. And almost succeed.
Prince.Surely not. What’s the purple one doing here?
Well, his princeliness was one to jam live. The song Purple Rain was often dragged
out to about 20 minutes and Head regularly made ten. He would often throw
several tracks together into long medleys going back and forth between them in
the same way that James Brown did. He was also so prolific and varied that you
can spend days going through his back catalogue and not get bored. I miss this
guy.
Acid.No list of time bending music would be
complete without some genuine acid rock. Not the tame, sub-blues that passed
for acid rock in the original San Francisco explosion in the sixties. I mean
stuff like Gong, Hawkwind and Acid Mother’s Temple. Brain
fried, guitar and effects laden stews of sound. I’ve linked you to our page on
Gong, but you also need to check out Hawkwind’s Space Ritual and pretty much
anything live by Acid Mother’s Temple. You need to be in a strong frame of mind
though, otherwise you might get crushed.
So there you go. This little list should see you through.
And if the music doesn’t, the googling possibilities should. Like I say, we
will be back in September with our new release. It would also fit onto this
page, but we’ll have to keep it for freer days. In the meantime, you can check
out our other stuff top right.
Stay safe and get vaccinated peoples. It’s the only exit
from this mess. You wear a seat belt don’t you? Same thing. It will save your
life.
Busking sucks. Standing on cold streets, feeling exposed,
putting up with smart ass comments from passing strangers for hours, before
finally sifting through the lolly wrappers for the chump change to buy your
next burger. It’s not a great gig, but you would earn more from a day of that
than you would from a year on Spotify.
I’ve said before we aren’t in this for the money, and it’s
probably just as well, because earning a living from music these days is nigh
on impossible unless you are ‘lucky’ enough to become a puppet of some
multi-national entertainment corporation. The Covid pandemic has exposed this
more than ever. With musicians unable to work live they are relying on
streaming and vinyl/CD sales to get their chips. With CD sales evaporating and
vinyl still a bit of a luxury item, that leaves streaming as the main source of
‘income’.
Hands up all those who think musicians must be creaming it
in this brave new world of instant access music. Not so fast. Here’s some basic
facts to help you make your mind up. Spotify’s average payment per play on its
service is $.0038 USD. That’s 0.38 cents. That means an individual artist on
that pay would need to have around 3,000 plays to earn one hour’s worth of the
minimum wage in Britain.
So for a 40 hour week that would be 120,000 plays or 6,240,000 plays to earn
the minimum wage for a year. For one person. Building that kind of following
without live promotion is impossible.
At the same time, Spotify has tripled in value during the
Covid pandemic, and its founder is now a certified billionaire. The gap between
business owner and ‘employee’ has never been so stark since the days of cotton
production in the slavery days. Streaming services basically say take it or
leave it, since they hold all the aces. And it’s true. What else exists at the
moment?
If it continues this way real music (as opposed to corporate
product) is going to be another 21st century extinction.
The kind of absurd inequities highlighted in music are
playing out all over the world in almost every industry. The flip side of
globalisation is that it benefits the few on an international scale, while
leaving the vulnerable exposed to the shifting sands of local exploitation.
What do you mean you want a living wage? Get it from someone else – I need to
build a tennis court on one of my super yachts thanks and my private jet needs
upgrading. I can go to another country and find cheap labour if you want to
make a fuss.
Revolution is never pretty, but the appetite for it will
continue to grow as the 21st century progresses. Then we’ll see how
much sway the mega corporations have over individual governments. Will
governments repress their own people to stay onside with the billionaires club?
Of course they will. You can bet your last wooden nickel on it. But the same
tools that make the mega corporations powerful can be used against them to
deflate their power. People have to organise themselves to create their own
global communities outside of governments to compete as a way of avoiding messy
and violent show downs with the powers that be. Access to technology hasn’t
been limited. Yet. And there are some vastly clever people out there that can
do it.
So where does all this leave your average musician right
now? There is a ground swell of protest from established artists who are sick
of being exploited, and there is an appeal to the parliament in Britain
to try and get some kind of regulation in place. That’s fine if it puts
pressure on the corporations, but it isn’t going to hit them where they live.
They are exploiting musicians, so if there are no musicians left, what are they
going to do? As I say, musicians need to start working together to claim some
kind of territory for themselves. Any kind of alternative streaming service
with a fairer payment system will do the trick, preferably owned by the people
who are benefiting from it. Sounds like communism? If you say so, but what the
fuck is wrong with people supporting each other to destroy a corrupt and
exploitative regime? It’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees,
and you should never die wondering.
The only problem is that artists of any kind are
historically a selfish and bitchy crowd with no desire to help anyone except
themselves. So on top of a commercial shift we are also requiring a complete
cultural shift. And given how the covid pandemic has exposed the weaknesses in
human nature, you would need to be a massive optimist to see the light emerging
at the end of the tunnel. The times we are living through are tough, but tough
times lead to the strongest solutions and those who can adapt best will
eventually win out. It will be interesting to see what that looks like, and
that alone should be enough to keep you looking ahead.
If you feel like chucking us a fraction of a cent or two,
you can find our releases listed top right. I’m saving up for some new bass
strings in 2023.
It’s been a couple of months since the last post. No excuse,
just having a break to focus on the new normal of a covid world. The last
couple of posts focused on politics, so I’m back with a post on music for a
change. They say in politics you have to swallow a few dead rats. I’d say that
politics itself is a carcinogenic dead rat that is force fed to the world. You
don’t need politicians when you can think for yourself. For our own survival as
a species we need to develop contempt for those narcissistic power grabbers and
as individuals we need to build our own relationships with the world and the
universe in general. Which is my lateral segue into the subject of this blog:
Jimi Hendrix.
My guys and me love Jimi Hendrix, but for different reasons.
They love his mental freedom and the way he was able to transcend the world in
a way that messed with time. I love the fact that he could meld electronics and
space together and make it sound like it came from the dirt. I’ve already
touched on this in a previous post, but on this one I thought I’d list a
random selection of reasons why he was more than just an uber-guitarist. He was a
man out of time that killed fashion and shredded showbiz. He defines words like
“rock”, “cool”, “psychedelic” and “freak”, but he was also none of these. He
defied labels. He knew a label was trap. He wanted to be a gypsy and his desire
for freedom eventually killed him. Or rather, the world killed him because it
couldn’t contain him.
My own experience of the Jimi effect came in a land a long
time ago, when goths were treading the boards pretending they ruled the cool. I
was chilling in a room at a party when a couple of gothic wannabe posers came
in and acted like they owned it. They viewed everyone with smug contempt then sat
down, scanning the room for hip artefacts they could connect themselves to,
when their eyes landed on a poster of Jimi up on the wall. It was a good
poster. Jimi in full flight at a concert wearing his nineteenth century
military waistcoat, his guitar upside down in his left hand, eyes closed, mind
elsewhere. The goths stared at it for while, taking it in. They looked
impressed and asked their host “who is the left handed guitarist up there?” I
thought they were taking the piss, but no, they had no idea who Jimi Hendrix
was. But they knew he was something special. Something they couldn’t classify
into cool or not cool. Something that represented a lot of familiar things but
in a way that’s unfamiliar.
I have the same problem trying to define him, so I don’t
bother. I relate to what he represents instead. He represented the freedom rock
stood for. He blew away all the bullshit inherent in human society – religion,
politics, race, culture. He was a primal force that linked us back to a time
when the rhythms of the earth defined our lives and gods were elemental forces
that could could be conquered through the power of soul. He was also a lot of
fun. Bob Marley is the only other musician who has the same presence, but where
Bob represents the bonds that make the people, Jimi represents the people that
make the bonds.
Presented below is a baker’s dozen of Jimi moments that
define his intangible power. They are listed in no particular order and are purely
personal to me. There are 100s of other moments that could be put up and they
would still resonate in some way. I haven’t bothered putting in links to most
as you all know what to do and there are likely to be multiple sources for most
anyway.
1. The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam’s Dice. Let’s start
with the greatest B-side ever recorded. In the world of recorded music there is
nothing else like this. Maybe Funkadelic’s “Wars of Armageddon” is a close
relative, but it lacks the fire and intensity of this. The title is one of
those barely concealed 60’s references to acid (Laughing Sams’s Dice = LSD,
geddit?) and it sounds like it had a part to play - but no amount of acid could
induce the combined humour and abandon of this track. From the second he starts
soloing you are on a wild ride. Intensity, feedback, backward tracking, it’s
all chucked in. The only trouble with it is that it has a thin sound as it’s
likely to have been done on a 4-track tape (!). That aside this is pure 60’s
madness that will never be repeated. Ever. The kiss off “I hope you’re enjoying
your ride, I am!” pretty much says it all.
2. Gloria. Taking it one step further is a studio outtake
that manages to even beat Laughing Sam. Gloria was the Them track that pretty
much every garage band in the 60s cut as a single (either that or Louie Louie).
Here Jimi does his own take on it, out-garaging every garage band in the land.
The rhythm track sounds like something an R’n’B inspired punk band like
Slaughter and the Dogs or The Saints would have produced with dirty bass and
nasty guitar sound. Over the top of that Jimi ad-libs a ribald tale of sex and
drugs that has the whole band as the butt of the joke. This is no Top of the
Pops material (eg “I said hey girl what’s your name?, she said it don’t make no
difference anyway” “I said Hey Gloria, get off my chest”). But what clinches
this track as defining rock’n’roll is some of the most searing guitar playing
ever caught on tape. It outdoes Laughing Sam because he crams the intensity of
that track into half the number of bars then lets his band mates take solos to
finish it off. Eight minutes later you are left exhausted but happy. Like a
good shagging. Which is what rock’n’roll is all about.
3. Monterey 1967. Probably a bit obvious, but you can’t ignore
it. This is the gig that exploded Jimi onto the international stage. Loaded on
coke and grass he is having a ball and blows the audience away with the
intensity of “Can you see me?” and “Rock me baby” before ending the show with
his fiery guitar sacrifice at the end of “Wild thing”. Watch the movie and
check the audience reactions. The flip side of this gig was that it cemented
his label as the ‘wild man of pop’ in the press - something he would have to
work hard to shake for the rest of his short life. It also took him far away
from his roots into the white dominated hippie culture, something that impacted
negatively on his later work when he self-consciously tried to win back an
african-american audience.
4. Hush Now. This is a single recorded when he was a side man
for low rent R’n’B star Curtis Knight in 1966, but released in 1967 when Jimi
had already left for England. Pre-fame and anonymous, the wah-wah guitar
throughout this is all Jimi. He was the one person who pioneered the effect to
the fullest extent and at times he makes it sound like a human voice doing
backing vocals. Incredible and utterly alien for the time. No wonder it wasn’t
a hit.
5. LA Forum, 26/4/1969. This gig exists as a soundboard quality
bootleg and captures one of the wildest shows of his career. The audience is
worked up so much that there is a near riot going on at the end with stage
invasions and police threatening to pull the plug. Noel Redding is at his grumpiest
while Jimi is coolly detached, gently admonishing the crowd while slyly taking
their side. Just before the last jam on Voodoo Chile he plucks his guitar to
make it say “fuck you motherfucker, fuck you too” in response to police threats
to stop the show. Worth the price of admission alone.
6. Red House. His most famous blues track, if only for the
closing lines “If my baby don’t love me no more, I know her sister will”. The
version recorded on the UK release of “Are You Experienced?” is so funky it’s like
a dance track. It wasn’t included on the US release because the Reprise label
decided Americans don’t buy blues. As a sly jibe to them the UK release
includes a trail off conversation between Jimi and the studio engineer. Jimi:
“How was that?”. Engineer: “Yeah that’s cute that one. You should put that on
an album”.
7. Are You Experienced? Jimi’s first album is so beyond mere
classic status it’s almost criminal. There is only one average track on it,“Remember”,
and even that would cut it against any other R’n’B track released in the 60s.
In amongst this company the title track manages to stand out as something utterly
unique. Well actually that and “Third Stone from the Sun”, but that’s another
list. “Are you experienced?” features a drum track played backwards to produce
a ghostly shuffling beat and a guitar solo also backwards tracked to
mind-melting effect. Jimi’s party trick with the solo was that he learned to
play it live in a way that matched the backwards track on the LP. The best
recorded live version was captured on 10 October 1968 at Winterland, available
on the Jimi Hendrix Concerts LP.
8. Oakland Coliseum 27/4/1969. This is an audience recording
but is high quality and quite amazing for the time. Recorded the day after the
LA Forum show, this is another incredible gig. The year 1969 was Jimi at his
peak and he seemed to be on a roll on this tour. No riot this time, but the
highlight comes at the end when he does a 15 minute encore jam on Voodoo Chile
with Jack Cassidy from the Jefferson Airplane joining on bass. One of Jimi’s
few failings musically was that he underused his bass players. They were told
to stay deep in the pocket so he had a reference point when he needed to get
back into the song. He didn’t syncopate the bass with the guitar to build a
groove, or allow the bass to drive the changes. That is rectified in this jam
as Cassidy takes the lead in places and sets up some playful interplay with
Jimi’s barely controlled soloing. Awesome. The reactions of the guys nearest
the tape deck say it all. One extra bonus – one of the bootleg versions of this
concert has a photo taken from the crowd showing the thin blue line of police
lined up along the front of the stage, keeping an eye on the crowd. All except
one are white and are dutifully staring ahead. The lone african-american cop is
looking over his shoulder. He’s watching Jimi play instead.
9. Hear My Train a’Comin’. His best blues track. Never recorded
on a commercial release in his lifetime, it’s never-the-less one of the high
points of his live shows during 1968-69. Lyrically it sounds like a classic
delta blues track, but it has a deep groove that could only come from the late
sixties. The “Film about Jimi Hendrix” released by Warner Brothers in 1973 has
a solo version of the song performed by Jimi in a TV studio, played on an
acoustic 12 string guitar. It’s the only time he was filmed playing unplugged
and is mesmerisingly good. By way of contrast, the encore version he plays
during his three night stand at Winterland from 10-12 October 1968 is loud,
deep and funky. It’s also found on the Jimi Hendrix Concerts LP. When he gets
through the story of loss, despondency and revenge to the line “if you make
love to me one more time little girl, I might even give a piece to you” the
hairs invariably stand up on the back of my neck.
10. Drivin’ South. This is an instrumental track released on BBC
Sessions. It’s Jimi at play, running through a kaleidoscope of blues styles at
break neck speed. The drumming from Mitch Mitchell as always matches Jimi’s
skills, but on this he is almost the star as he drives the changes with funky-as
breaks. As the liner notes state: guaranteed to get you a speeding ticket.
11. Lulu Show, 1969. This was recorded on live TV just before
the BBC six o’clock news. Jimi obviously missed the memo as he first of all
stops playing “Hey Joe” and launches into an instrumental tribute to Cream, who
had just broken up. As he jams on “Sunshine of your love” the producers wonder
what to do. The news can’t wait for this wild haired guitar freak can it? Jimi
relishes the confusion and keeps going, leaving poor little Lulu wide eyed and
gobsmacked. Mitch and Noel just keep their heads down and ride it out with quiet
smiles on their faces, having seen it all already with Jimi by then.
12. Stockholm 9/1/1969 2nd Show. The first show
played at the Stockholm Concert Hall that day was a weird live practice session
with no real highlights. The band hadn’t played together for weeks and it
shows. The second show was a different shade of blond altogether. The opening
track is “I don’t live today”, which usually appeared much later in the set.
It’s a heavy track to open with and it must have left the audience wondering
what they were in for. After lots of improvising during the freak-out section,
Jimi enters the closing jam on a mission. He hits an escalating scale of
sustains near the end that build in tension and intensity before releasing it in
a myriad screed of notes at the highest end of the fret board. Anyone in the
crowd on acid would have felt like their head was about to explode at this
point. He ends on a whammy bar effect that would have made them feel like they
were sinking into the ground. Brutal. Other worldly. He then goes into a
pulverising version of “Spanish castle magic” to really finish them off. This
gig also features some of his most lateral between song comments, dedicating
“Spanish castle magic” to the “little band of gypsies of there in the amen
section”, before apologising that the show might be a bit loud. This isn’t
entertainment, it’s a primal experience.
13. Rainbow Bridge. This is a documentary movie and cash-in LP
from Jimi’s 1970 concert on the island of Maui in Hawai’i. The music is
forgettable and badly recorded for a commercial album, but the doco is
unintentionally hilarious. It’s full of period pseudo-guru crap with commune
living hippies spouting shit about stuff they don’t understand, but which will
ultimately get them laid. Free love in full cynical action. Just when you can’t
stand it any more, Jimi arrives and sits down in the corner getting quietly
pissed on beer. Once he’s settled in he sets about mercilessly taking the piss
out of the pseuds, whilst unsubtly hitting on the female host of the
documentary. His blunt honesty is like someone opening a window to let out the
cabbage smoke. The concert itself is okay, but by this stage of his career it’s
clear he is only just keeping the evil influences of half-baked counter culture,
murder politics, race war and money men at bay. Within months it would all be
over.
And that’s it. I haven’t even mentioned Woodstock as that
was a musical low point despite the whole “Star spangled banner” Vietnam protest
and his subsequent Dick Cavett interview in which he described it as
“beautiful”, or other random tidbits like how he lost the original master tape
for “If six was nine” at a party because he got so loaded he forget he had it
with him. It’s safe to say there will never be anyone like him again.
I play a little bit of guitar but I won’t be using this post
to plug it. I have a go and play what I feel, and that’s what I learnt from
listening to Jimi. Our releases are listed top right anyway, as you no doubt know
by now.
