DVD

THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE LIVE AT MONTEREY
Release date October 16, 2007

Killing Floor (Burnett), Foxy Lady, Like A Rolling Stone (Dylan), Rock Me Baby (King/arr. Hendrix), Hey Joe (Roberts), The Wind Cries Mary, Purple Haze, Wild Thing (Chip Taylor)

+ A Second Look (alternate angles of some numbers)

+ "Stone Free", "Like A Rolling Stone" - February 25, 1967 at Chelmsford Corn Exchange, England !!!!

+ American Landing (23 minutes of interview extracts with various famous participants which leads into the concert)

+ Music, Love and Flowers (7 minute interview with Lou Adler)

This is the ultimate Jimi Hendrix Experience film, with the band setting out to show who's the boss. Jimi is in exhuberant form as "The Wild Man Of Rock" and puts on his whole show, pyrotechnics and all. Most of the footage had been available on videocassette and DVD prior to this but this edition was quite an event in October 2007, coinciding with a CD re-release of the show. The film was shown in theatres with even Mitch, Billy and Gary Moore playing live as an added attraction.

The original Pennebaker footage has been enhanced (and is presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.33:1). The soundtrack features new 5.1 surround sond and 2.0 stereo mixes by Eddie Kramer from the original eight-track live recordings which were made at the concert by remote engineer Wally Heider. So, clearer than the old "Jimi Plays Monterey" video cassette.

The bonuses provide extra interest of course, even if they are rather meagre. Most important is the "Second Look", an interactive feature which enables you to switch between previously unseen camera angles ! This is quite unique for a film of this age. This is made possible because there was a 6 camera crew filming The Experience, so for a few of the songs you can watch the sequences of the show from this side, that side, from out in the audience, from Noel's point of view (or just watch Noel if you are into bassists !). Distant shots are a little hazy and on occasions the camera you are on might wander all over the place but overall it does work quite well. Interestingly, on the "Wild Thing" second look (which is only a single alternate view), you can see that after the guitar smashing, Jimi remained on-stage a short while, distributing many peices of his guitar to the audience.
Also of interest on this DVD is the unreleased live (black and white) footage of The Experience performing "Stone Free" and "Like A Rolling Stone" (incomplete) on February 25, 1967 at Chelmsford Corn Exchange, England. These performances are part of what looks like a local TV film which begins with a 1967 interview with the manager of the famous military clothes shop "I Was Lord Kitchener's Valet". Interestingly he is wearing what he says is the only Royal Huzars jacket in his stock and it turns out to be exactly the same famous lavishly braided jacket that Jimi wore on-stage. The film of the two songs is fascinating and it's the oldest live footage of the band in action ! The audience seem so young and innocent with their straight clothes and haircuts, and making Jimi appear so other worldly (which he was).
As for the other bonuses, "American Landing" is simply a 23 minute introduction (and coda) to the Experience show with bits of interviews (John and Michelle Philips, Lou Adler, Derek Taylor, Chris Stamp, Chandler, Mitch, Noel… etc.). The same old thing basically. It briefly talks of Jimi's rise before concentrating more on the organising of the festival. "Music, Love and Flowers" is just a 7 minute interview with Lou Adler about the festival. It's intersting but not really a tasty bonus. The "Gallery" of photos is also rather limited. Full marks however for the Digipack style packaging with its 24 page booklet !

Note that "Can You See Me" is absent from this film (it is on the new CD) as Pennebaker had put his team on hold to save film for the end I believe. For "Jimi Plays Monterey", that song had been used at the beginning as a soundtrack to a spectacular Denny Dent wall painting (you can see that on YouTube). It's a pity that this time, crowd scenes or even stills weren't used for "Can You See Me", even as a bonus feature for example."Purple Haze" was incomplete on the old video cassette but here the gaps have been filled with some unreleased footage (which doesn't always match the visuals though).

The interior and 24 page booklet of this and the CD are very nicely done. Here are a few pages

The previous release on videocassette :

JIMI PLAYS MONTEREY

Olympia Theatre, London 1967, "Christmans On Earth" Continued concert :Sqt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Wild Thing (Incomplete)
Monterey 1967 : Killing Floor (Burnett), Foxy Lady, Like A Rolling Stone, Rock Me Baby, The Wind Cries Mary, Wild Thing, , Purple Haze (Incomplete) -

The old videocassete version has bonus of excerpts of The Experience performing "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "Wild Thing" at the "Christmas On Earth Continued" all night event, at the London Olympia 22 Dec 1967. That sequence has a strange double track vocal as the actual soundtrack must have been insufficient. As previously stated,"Can You See Me" is present here but we only hear it at the beginning as artist Deny Dent performs a spectacular wall painting of Jimi. The incomplete"Purple Haze" is tagged on at the end of the film, with the closing titles. At the beginning there is a short commentary by John Phillips (of The Mamas & The Papas) who had organised the festival, plus a film montage over "Monterey", the song by Eric Burdon.

No longer available in this form - but see above and below

Nicholas Meyer's 1979 science fiction film "Time After Time" (with Malcolm McDowell as H.G. Wells chasing Jack The Ripper through time), features a brief clip of Jimi smashing his guitar at Monterey as one of the illustrations all that was wrong with the 20th century ! Hell, it was Performance Art, not blind vandalism !

THE COMPLETE MONTEREY POP FESTIVAL

The historic set by The Experience can also be found here on this collection of all the surviving footage from the famous 1967 festival (arious artists).

Jimi Hendrix: Jimi Plays Monterey / Otis Redding: Shake! Otis At Monterey (Criterium Collection)

A release of Pennebakers films of The Experience and Otis redding's performances.

JIMI HENDRIX AT WOODSTOCK

Message To Love, Fire, Izabella, Red House, Jam Back At The House, Voodoo Chile (Slight return)/Star Spangled Banner/Purple Haze/Improvisation/Villanova Junction/Hear My Train A Comin - (some songs edited down)

A fascinating film of Jimis short-lived bigger band at the legendary Woodstock festival. The band were supposed to close the three day festival on the Sunday night but because of the storm, things ran late and they ended up playing early on Monday morning ! That is why you can see large deserted areas of the site. Mitch said that he thrashed away on drums during "Star Spangled Banner" to warm himself up as it was so cold out there. The film features different angles of footage from what we see in the famous "Woodstock" movie of that sequence. This is far from being the complete show but it makes for essential viewing. Some great little moments, like when Jimi turns to a dreamy Jerry Velez and orders him to play. A tatty band but Jimi is on top form.

Jimi Hendrix: Live At Woodstock [The Deluxe Edition] - 2 DVD

For this new double DVD release, all the surviving footage has been restored and the soundtrack remastered. This gives us "Foxy Lady", "Message To Love", "Hey Joe", "Spanish Castle Magic" and "Lover Man " for the first time (the Larry Lee performances of "Mastermind" and "Gypsy Woman" are still absent).
We also see many alternate camera angles of the familier songs. A real treat is seeing Jimi dancing back and to while Larry Lee takes a solo on "Lover Man" ! Like with the raw bootleg recordings, one realises how well Eddie Kramer cleaned up the show for the MCA double CD. Here, it's warts and all, but it does give us a clearer picture of what it was actually like to be there on that cold Monday morning.

An interesting bonus is the "Second Look" at the concert, made up of alternate black and white video footage of every performance on DVD 1 (intercut with more colour angles). This gives us also "Hear My Train A Comin", which is missing from the colour footage. Also included is an interesting interview with Jimi at a press conference held two weeks after the festival (Harlem Sept. 3, 1969). He looks like an Afro-American President. Other bonuses are a documentary about the show featuring interviews with band members and organisers, an interview with Cox and Lee about their early days with Jimi, plus Kramers anecdotes about the problems of recording the concert.
The previous cassette/DVD was a better "film" perhaps but this is a treat for hungry Hendrix fans.

Detail : An extract of the long lost track "Easy Blues" ("Nine To The Universe") is used over the menu section.

BAND OF GYPSYS

1. Hendrix: Band Of Gypsys (documentary)
2. A Second Look - Live At The Fillmore East, January 1, 1970 - Who Knows (incomplete), Machine Gun, Them Changes, Power Of Soul, Stepping Stone, Foxy Lady, Stop (incomplete), Earth Blues (incomplete)
3. Resume (a totally pointless shortened version of the documentary)

This is a documentary about Jimi's Band Of Gypsys project, built around some interesting footage of the band at the Fillmore East. We in fact see very little of the gigs in the documentary but the whole thing is very well put together, with some informative comments from all concerned. Funny though, for an hour or so, the film builds the band up to be something extraordinarily brilliant, only to abruptly admit that it wasn't working. The Band Of Gypsys were superb. The Band Of Gypsys were a failure. One of rocks most intriguing accidents.
Interesting comments from Mitchell, Cox, Miles, Kramer, Gerry Stickells, The Ghetto Fighters, Slash, Vernon Reid, Lenny Kravitz ...

I discovered the "Second Look" part of the DVD only recently with the new Sony Legacy edition. It presents almost all of the first show on New Year's Day 1970. The source for this is some rather fuzzy black and white video footage (from two cameras) but the sound is fantastic with the new 5.1 surround sound mix. I only have twin speakers in the TV den but at high volume it's terrific.
Luckily we have the incredible opening performances of "Who Knows" and "Machine Gun" which Jimi had selected for his "Band Of Gypsys" album back in 1970. Great to see Jimi actually playing those legendary songs with top sound quality (rather than streaming on YouTube). The rest of the show doesn't attain the same heights but remains fascinating as always.
This was not the best of the four Fillmore East shows despite the brilliance of those two opening numbers and the DVD underlines again the paradox of the Band Of Gypsy's Fillmore concerts with awesome moments right up alongside some rather awkward ones. As I have said before, despite many weeks of rehearsals, the band hadn't yet really gelled and Jimi was still trying to get to grips with his new compositions. "Stepping Stone" goes a little astray and Miles does his old school R&B thang on "Them Changes" and "Stop" and although Jimi does put in some fabulous guitar playing throughout the set (despite the drummers uninspired metronome thrashing) at times one can see and hear that they weren't really working all that well as a unit.
"Burning Desire" is missing and three songs are infuriatingly incomplete ("Who Knows", "Stop" and "Earth Blues") with the gaps left in! Absolutely stupid! They could have at least let the music play on and filled the spaces with still photos for exemple (like on the superb Led Zeppelin double DVD compilation). Note that the "Foxy Lady" here was last heard officially on the deleted "Band Of Gypsys 2" and that "Them Changes" plus the incomplete "Earth Blues" are unique to this disc.

CD sources for this 1/1/70 first show:

Who Knows (Band Of Gypsys)
Machine Gun (Band Of Gypsys)
Power Of Soul (Live At The Fillmore East)
Stepping Stone (Live At The Fillmore East)
Foxy Lady (Band Of Gypsys 2)
Stop (Band Of Gypsys 2 & Live At The Fillmore East)
Burning Desire (Live At The Fillmore East)
.

2011 RE-RELEASE
This April 2011 re-release has 5.1 surround sound mixes but no new footage.

JIMI PLAYS BERKELEY 1/2

Johnny B. Goode, Hear My train A Comin (Incomplete), Star Spangled Banne(Incomplete)/Purple Haze, I Don't Live Today, Hey Baby, Lover Man (Incomplete), Machine Gun, Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)

A rather slapdash montage of Jimi's excellent performances at Berkely Community Center in 1970. Unfortunately some songs are edited down, ruining "Hear My train ..." and "Lover Man" for example. For the 2003 rerelease, it is a pity that the gaps in the songs weren't filled out with stills (like on the superb Led Zep DVD) or slow motion scenes for example. Bickering aside, there is some superb footage of Jimi in action here, obviously feeling good, and playing to the audience like in the early days, with his characteristic stage gymnastics. Many scenes of the anti-vietnam war rioting that went on at the time are edited in, and Jimi gets into the spirit of things saying "Big deal !" in the middle of "Star Spangled Banner".

The re-release features the CD tracks as a bonus.
Originally a cinema release.

ATLANTA
This was a nineties video cassette release. About a month after the Berkeley concerts, this was, like Woodstock, another gigantic festival in 1970. Jimi seems rather nonchalant and displeased with his own performance which is a little shakey in parts. He does seems quite alone out there in the darkness, his mind perhaps troubled by Mike Jeffrey, bad drugs, girl trouble,…we can only guess. It is of course a valuable historical document.

No longer available

> Video extracts here

JOHNNY B. GOODE
A montage of various concert extracts from Atlanta 70 and Berkeley 70 for this video cassette which accompanied the shoddy album of the same name.

Are You Experienced (80s promo), Johnny B. Goode, All Along The Watchtower, Art Attack*, Star Spangled Banner, Voodoo Chile (Slight Return).

No longer available

+ Must be the Denny Dent wall painting scene previously on "Jimi Plays Monterey".

RAINBOW BRIDGE
Chuck Weins shambolic 1971 film following protagonist Pat Hartley to the Rainbow Bridge Occult Meditation Center on the island of Maui, Hawaii. This is not a Hendrix movie. Manager Mike Jeffery produced this mess and roped Jimi into playing on the slopes of the Haleakala volcano. Jeffrey, who was frustrated with Jimi's slow working pace and reluctance to tour, saw theatre movies (of Berkeley and Mauii) as a way to generate cash.
This is rambling hippie nonsence and it is a long wait until we finally see extracts of Jimi's performance on the island. On the day, before he played, the rather stoned crew used up nearly all the film, shooting Wein leading a chant with the equally stoned audience (to create the right vibe, Man). As a result, we only get a fascinating 15 minutes or so of the gig, in a shoddy montage at the end of the film. There is hardly one complete song ! Wonderful images however, of the band playing on a makeshift stage with the sky behind them and flowing coloured flags everywhere. Jimi in fact played as part of what was called a "Vibratory Color/Sound Experiment". I remember seeing this "Foxy Lady" in the early seventies on "The Old Grey Whistle Test " (the legendary late-night, BBC rock programme) and being completely blown away by it.
Jimi's music also accompanies many other scenes in the film (some songs with earlier mixes than on the album of the same name) and he also makes a brief appearence in a pretty spaced out conversation with Pat Hartley and Chuck Wein (an extract of which appeared on the inner sleeve of the soundtrack album).
Mitch said that the film is so boring that he fell asleep at the film premiere ! He was right, it is awful. Thank God for the fast-foreward button.
More footage of the two shows does exist, see unofficial video details at the bottom of the page.

Originally a cinema release.

> Link to article about Rainbow Bridge

BLUE WILD ANGEL - LIVE AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT
Visual evidence that this was a bad night for Jimi. We see him throw his guitar down in disgust and exhaustion at the end. By this time, he had really had enough of three piece rock and he didn't want to do the European tour, but his management insisted, and in the end, it killed him. It is moving to see his occaisional smiles but I do find the whole thing too depressing to enjoy.

One version features the CD tracks as a bonus.

2. OFFICIAL DOCUMENTARIES

BEAT BEAT BEAT
This features some German TV appearences by The Experience in 1967 ! The DVD is made up of various 60s artists (Kinks, Move, Yardbirds, Traffic, ...) with four live in studio performances from Jimi : "Stone Free" and "Purple Haze" from the "Beat, Beat Beat" show plus "Hey Joe" and "Purple Haze" from "Beat Club".

LIVE IN STOCKHOLM 1969
Excerpts from this first set from the Konserthuset, Stockholm, 9th January 1969, appeared on the "Experience" compilation listed further up and a little of "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)" cropped up on the "Band Of Gypsys" documentary. The audio recordings of the two sets that night were recently the subject of the lawsuit between Experience Hendrix and Purple Haze Records. Yes, this video unfortunately features the lousy first set where the band and the sound crew just didn't get it together. It's the worst ever filmed performance of the band! Interestingly however, this was shot on video tape, giving us very crisp images and the close-ups give us an opportunity to study Jimi's long fingers in action. Jimi is totally static and the band seem to be in a very bad mood. Fascinating stuff, even if the set was a disappointment. The second set was a little better than this but the film crew had already packed up and left!

The DVD pictured also features "Wind Cries Mary" / "Purple Haze" from the Sweedish TV show ("Popside" May 67) which are on the official "Experience" DVD aswell as a documentary titled "The Making Of Modern Music".

EXPERIENCE

The Experience's UK farewell concert filmed at the Royal Abert Hall (24 February 1969) by the directors Gold and Goldstein. The film was only screened once or twice, then legal wrangles have left it in the can all these years.
A pirate video has circulated, revealing as usual, a very sloppy montage, repeating the same crowd scenes over and over for exemple. I don't know what the directors or film editors were on, but it certainly wasn't suited for filmaking. For example during "Gettin' My heart Back Together", as Jimi sings "I'm gonna leave this town", we are treated to extensive footage of the back of a car, as it takes Jimi, out of town. Creative stuff. The rest of the film features great footage of Jimi on top form at The Royal Albert Hall and by this time adopting his more static, studious approach to performing but he still lets loose at the end for the good of the occaision.
I have been listening to this gig on the many releases that have appeared over the years and it was just awesome to finally see the film. At this stage the band were in such complete controle of their music, taking it to such a high level that after their demise, Jimi would never again acheive the same balanced perfection in live performance. His playing is of a breathtaking precision and beauty, as you can hear on all those "Experience" soundtrack albums. Compared to his Monterey character, you can see how much Jimi's attitude to live performance had changed over the years, and at times he seems almost embarrassed to be up there. We also see Traffic members Chris Wood and Dave Mason appear with Rocky Dzidzornu for the jam on "Room Full Of Mirrors". At the climax guitar smashing, a riot practically ensues in the clamer for souvenir guitar parts, and as a result, the last image shows Jimi backstage evidently quite upset about all the mayhem.
Soundtrack recordings were put out as early as 1971 and the audio rights have since been hap-hazardly leased to numerous budget labels, resulting in an over exploitation of these fine performances.

The film also features a brief appartment interview with Jimi plus an improvised "Hound Dog" performed on acoustic guitar.

> We continue to wait for the official release of footage of the Royal Albert Hall concerts.

MAUI 1970
There exists some extra footage of the two Maui sets. A DVD compilation is in circulation among collectors which throws together the best of the live "Rainbow Bridge" scenes plus some previously unseen sequences inter-cut with many scenes of surfers, volcanos and hippies in an effort to keep the songs complete. One fascinating long sequence has Jimi on Gibson Flying V playing "Dolly Dagger" and "Villanova Junction".
Some blurry scenes of this bootleg compilation are from a dreadful short film called "Strange Day On Maui" where film of the band seems to have nightime cityscapes overlayed. This drug induced idea makes these sequences practically unwatchable.

CELEBRATING JIMI
Purple Haze (Blackpool 67), Hey Joe /Wild Thing (Monterey 67), Johnny B. Goode (Berkeley 70), Jam Back At The House/Improvisation (Woodstock 69), Hey Baby/ In From The Storm (Maui 70), Red House (Atlanta 70), Voodoo Chile (Berkeley 70) - 50MN.

An interesting live performance compilation. It looks like a succession of complete songs and must be without commentary. Nice collection, though rather short.

Two other releases of these tracks:

UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN

ON THE ROAD - The Ulitmate Experience Live!