"A broom is drearily sweeping up the broken pieces of yesterday's life."
A bootleg live
compilation
If Eddie Kramer once said that
"War Heroes" was scraping the bottom of the barrel,
then with what follows here, the barrel has been completely taken
apart, ground down and rebuilt.
Some very interesting things to be found however..
1. HIGH PROFILE UNNOFICIAL RELEASES
Some independant labels
managed to get recordings into record shops, unofficially. All this
really began back in 1978 with the Nutmeg label which put the 1968
Scene Club jam into the shops (see Various Labels below). Then, after
a very long gap, the CD era brought a proliferation of unofficial
releases on the market. So, parrallel to the carefully prepared and
steadily dosed output from the Hendrix estate came a flood of
recordings, mainly from ex members of the Yameta oganisation. All these releases were
good news for the maniacs among us who wish to sit through the various
stages of completion of studio tracks, jam sessions and live
performances of varying quality. Some live albums enable many fans to
get their hands on live material that has been deleted officially for
some time (Winterland 68, LA Forum 69, San Diego 69, Atlanta 70 ...).
Unofficial recordings do often allow us to hear unedited concert
performances (Band Of Gypsys, Woodstock,…) or songs rarely performed
live. The studio material is also fascinating, with tracks that never
made it to Jimi's albums and all the work-in-progress jams and mixes. Here are reviews of the
unofficial albums that craftily found their way into regular
distribution outlets. For that very reason, they deserve attention on
this site. Many of the albums can still be found on purchase sites
around the planet. Pretty well all the source materiel had already
appeared on other bootleg labels in the past.
The Albert Hall Joker/Sagapan Radioactive, Alchemy,
recordings
Nutmeg
Red Lightning
Depaja
Burning Airlines, Reclamation,…
