This is a list compiled after an appeal to friends for suggestions on the greatest live albums ever released. It is undeniable that the demographic of the selectors of this list are mostly white males between the ages of 40 to 65, and it probably shows. The posts will be broken up into manageable chunks, and this is the first covering 1962 to 1969. The albums covered below are:
Live At The Apollo 1962 - James Brown (May 1962)
Live At The Star Club - The Beatles (Dec 1962)
The 'Royal Albert Hall Concert' 1966 - Bob Dylan (May 1966)
Iconic Performances From The Monterey International Pop Festival - Various (June 1967)
Kick Out The Jams - MC5 (October 1968)
Bless It's Pointed Little Head - Jefferson Airplane (November 1968)
At San Quentin - Johnny Cash (February 1969)
Live/Dead - The Grateful Dead (March 1969)
Live At Woodstock - Jimi Hendrix (August 1969)
A few features I've introduced for these reviews:
Band Bantz - Any notable utterances from the performers
Heckles and Coughs - Any notable contributions from the audience
Live At The Apollo 1962
James Brown and the Famous Flames
October 24th 1962
They knew how to introduce an act back in 1962 Harlem. Here comes Fats Gonder introducing "The hhhhardes' workin' man in showbins", along with lots more well deserved hyperbole. Well the g.f. of s. may work hard, but he doesn't necessarily put in a long shift, he knocks this out in 30 minutes, and that includes over 10 minutes of 'Lost Someone'. It's exciting, tight and efficient and the musicians know their business. You never know with a live how much editing has gone on, but it does seem like James and the Flames just transition from one song to the next without a pause. After reassuring everyone that he feels alright (they guessed) Brown spends most of the time yowling like a tomcat, but there's a touch of subtlety too. He does slow it down for passages of 'Lost Someone'. He finishes with 'Night Train', which Fats promised the punters at the start. The whole thing captures the atmosphere of the night perfectly. It sounds fraught, sweaty and and a not entirely pleasant, which is probably the point.
Band Bantz - No time for any chit-chat. Brown is on a mission. He does however orchestrate the screams like a conductor and the audience are happy to play along, starting and stopping to order.
Heckles and Coughs - There's plenty of audience participation and a lot of shouting out, but nothing very audible.
The 'Royal Albert Hall Concert'
Bob Dylan
May 17th 1966
Or more accurately 'The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert. Or even more accurately the not recorded at the Royal Albert Hall at all, but at the Manchester Free Trade Hall concert. I find Dylan challenging enough without all these layers of confusion to contend with. This is the concert with the most famous heckle in the history of Rock and Roll, except on the recordings served up by Spotify it's not there, and the 'electric' songs appear to have been brutally edited for any interjections from either the audience or Dylan. But I'm getting ahead of myself. This is a double, with an acoustic set to start. Bob, harmonica and guitar and then the electric set with the Hawks (later the Band) on the second disc. Background reading tells me that the audience were pretty bad tempered after the jack plug had been inserted in the socket, but it doesn't come across here. Certainly, for the acoustic set they respectfully applaud after each song (no cheering) and there's none of: Bob sings the first line. Everyone realises what it is. Everyone goes into raptures. For my part, I'm glad he resorted to some amplification. Bob is a tough sell for me and the added interest of a full band performance distracts from his already distracting vocal style. I guess I have fairly modern ears and it can be hard to appreciate his importance from this far away. And had I been around in May 1966, I would almost certainly have been more interested in the doings of Roberts Moore and Charlton than Zimmerman. On the acoustic songs he's wordy, he's first and foremost a poet after all, and the musical accompaniment is mostly quite simple and straightforward. I was going to take him to task for some of the lyrics on 'Fourth Time Around', like when he resorts to straightforward rhymes like Rum, Come and Some, but then he confounded me by not doing it later on when he could have. It almost takes you by surprise when you realise that he's still on 'Desolation Row' 10 minutes down the line. But there is a lot to take in and the impression is that he makes his voice wilfully nasal and ugly, especially on 'Mr Tambourine Man'. The audience may not have approved but the band performance on the second disc is outstanding. Rock music (as opposed to Rock and Roll) was not so much in it's infancy in May 1966 as embyronic, so you can kind of understand that it was a shock to hear this loud, free-form, clattery music from an artist known for his carefully crafted lyrics and serious approach. You can imagine most of the audience were sitting there in their dark suits and ties and black square-framed specs and stroking their goatees (they're mainly men of course) 'appreciating' Bob's craft, and then he starts making all this fucking awful noise, with drums and organs and all that. What a betrayal. To me it sounds at least 5 years ahead of it's time. The J-word was deployed at the start of the final song 'Like A Rolling Stone' and all it achieves is to prompt Dylan and his band to rip the song up even more after telling them to "play it fuckin' loud'. You don't hear that on the version I listened to, but here's the footage:
The end of the album is quite odd. It all goes quiet and you wonder what is coming next, but then the National Anthem strikes up. It's a minor disappointment that we aren't treated to Bob singing "God SAVE our grAAAcious QuEEEEN! Long LIVE our nOOOOOOBle QuEEEEN" (it's very hard to render his vocal style in words).
Band Bantz; Besides the contretemps before 'Rolling Stone', about the only other thing is his "Thank you" at the end.
Heckles And Coughs: Fully covered above. The recording on Spotify gives the impression the audience were half asleep.
Live At The Apollo 1962 - James Brown (May 1962)
Live At The Star Club - The Beatles (Dec 1962)
The 'Royal Albert Hall Concert' 1966 - Bob Dylan (May 1966)
Iconic Performances From The Monterey International Pop Festival - Various (June 1967)
Kick Out The Jams - MC5 (October 1968)
Bless It's Pointed Little Head - Jefferson Airplane (November 1968)
At San Quentin - Johnny Cash (February 1969)
Live/Dead - The Grateful Dead (March 1969)
Live At Woodstock - Jimi Hendrix (August 1969)
A few features I've introduced for these reviews:
Band Bantz - Any notable utterances from the performers
Heckles and Coughs - Any notable contributions from the audience
James Brown and the Famous Flames
October 24th 1962
They knew how to introduce an act back in 1962 Harlem. Here comes Fats Gonder introducing "The hhhhardes' workin' man in showbins", along with lots more well deserved hyperbole. Well the g.f. of s. may work hard, but he doesn't necessarily put in a long shift, he knocks this out in 30 minutes, and that includes over 10 minutes of 'Lost Someone'. It's exciting, tight and efficient and the musicians know their business. You never know with a live how much editing has gone on, but it does seem like James and the Flames just transition from one song to the next without a pause. After reassuring everyone that he feels alright (they guessed) Brown spends most of the time yowling like a tomcat, but there's a touch of subtlety too. He does slow it down for passages of 'Lost Someone'. He finishes with 'Night Train', which Fats promised the punters at the start. The whole thing captures the atmosphere of the night perfectly. It sounds fraught, sweaty and and a not entirely pleasant, which is probably the point.
Band Bantz - No time for any chit-chat. Brown is on a mission. He does however orchestrate the screams like a conductor and the audience are happy to play along, starting and stopping to order.
Heckles and Coughs - There's plenty of audience participation and a lot of shouting out, but nothing very audible.
Intro
I'll Go Crazy
Try M e
Think
I Don't Mind
Lost Someone
Medley - Please, Please, Please/You've Got the Power/I Found Someone/Why Do You Do Me/I Want You So Bad/I Love You, Yes I Do/Strange Things Happen/Bewildered/Please, Please, Please"
Night Train
Live At The Star Club, Hamburg
The Beatles
December 1962
I'm probably not going to say anything about this that hasn't already been said. Historically fascinating but a recording quality that suggests the reel to reel used might have been located at the bottom of the Star Club fish tank. It's suggested that this was recorded just before the Beatles played in Hamburg for the last time. Ringo not Best on drums and only two Lennon/McCartney songs in the set as presented. I say that as, unsurprisingly, these recordings have a checkered history and the final version I listened to on YouTube is a condensed version of a much larger set of source material. There's 26 songs here and it only takes them an hour and 10 minutes to get through them. If you've seen anything about the early days in Hamburg (my preferred source is the movie Backbeat) then you'll know what to expect. Energetic, hoarse, powerful performances of Rock and Roll covers. It's funny I think that the Beatles live reputation is so patchy. We know about this dues-paying period, the Cavern, the TV and radio appearances, Shea Stadium and the roof of the Apple building, but their legacy is almost completely built on their studio output and not their live prowess. What makes it even odder is that from this they clearly knew their business. But it was a different time. Album - Tour - Album - Tour hadn't really become the done thing (albums were only in their infancy). The Beatles finally gained the rights to these recordings after they had been doing the rounds as bootlegs for a while and would probably have preferred that they had never surfaced in the first place. The story goes that John gave permission for the recording verbally, which obviously kept some lawyers in gainful employment for several years.
Band Bantz - There is lots, but I'm not going to sit jumping around a 1 hour 10 minute YouTube clip trying to decipher it through the static and aural fog, They do address the crowd in German and English.
Heckles And Coughs - Too much of this, drowning out the performance in places.
Intro/I Saw Her Standing There
Roll Over Beethoven
Hippy Hippy Shake
Sweet Little Sixteen
Lend Me Your Comb
Your Feet's Too Big
Twist And Shout
Mr Moonlight
A Taste Of Honey
Besame Mucho
Reminiscing
Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey
Nothin' Shakin' (But The Leaves On The Trees)
To Know Her Is To Love Her
Little Queenie
Falling In Love Again (Can't Help It)
Ask Me Why
Be-Bop-A-Lula
Hallelujah I Love Her
Red Sails In The Sunset
Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby
Matchbox
I'm Talking About You
Shimmy Like Kate
Long Tall Sally
I Remember You
Bob Dylan
May 17th 1966
Or more accurately 'The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert. Or even more accurately the not recorded at the Royal Albert Hall at all, but at the Manchester Free Trade Hall concert. I find Dylan challenging enough without all these layers of confusion to contend with. This is the concert with the most famous heckle in the history of Rock and Roll, except on the recordings served up by Spotify it's not there, and the 'electric' songs appear to have been brutally edited for any interjections from either the audience or Dylan. But I'm getting ahead of myself. This is a double, with an acoustic set to start. Bob, harmonica and guitar and then the electric set with the Hawks (later the Band) on the second disc. Background reading tells me that the audience were pretty bad tempered after the jack plug had been inserted in the socket, but it doesn't come across here. Certainly, for the acoustic set they respectfully applaud after each song (no cheering) and there's none of: Bob sings the first line. Everyone realises what it is. Everyone goes into raptures. For my part, I'm glad he resorted to some amplification. Bob is a tough sell for me and the added interest of a full band performance distracts from his already distracting vocal style. I guess I have fairly modern ears and it can be hard to appreciate his importance from this far away. And had I been around in May 1966, I would almost certainly have been more interested in the doings of Roberts Moore and Charlton than Zimmerman. On the acoustic songs he's wordy, he's first and foremost a poet after all, and the musical accompaniment is mostly quite simple and straightforward. I was going to take him to task for some of the lyrics on 'Fourth Time Around', like when he resorts to straightforward rhymes like Rum, Come and Some, but then he confounded me by not doing it later on when he could have. It almost takes you by surprise when you realise that he's still on 'Desolation Row' 10 minutes down the line. But there is a lot to take in and the impression is that he makes his voice wilfully nasal and ugly, especially on 'Mr Tambourine Man'. The audience may not have approved but the band performance on the second disc is outstanding. Rock music (as opposed to Rock and Roll) was not so much in it's infancy in May 1966 as embyronic, so you can kind of understand that it was a shock to hear this loud, free-form, clattery music from an artist known for his carefully crafted lyrics and serious approach. You can imagine most of the audience were sitting there in their dark suits and ties and black square-framed specs and stroking their goatees (they're mainly men of course) 'appreciating' Bob's craft, and then he starts making all this fucking awful noise, with drums and organs and all that. What a betrayal. To me it sounds at least 5 years ahead of it's time. The J-word was deployed at the start of the final song 'Like A Rolling Stone' and all it achieves is to prompt Dylan and his band to rip the song up even more after telling them to "play it fuckin' loud'. You don't hear that on the version I listened to, but here's the footage:
The end of the album is quite odd. It all goes quiet and you wonder what is coming next, but then the National Anthem strikes up. It's a minor disappointment that we aren't treated to Bob singing "God SAVE our grAAAcious QuEEEEN! Long LIVE our nOOOOOOBle QuEEEEN" (it's very hard to render his vocal style in words).
Band Bantz; Besides the contretemps before 'Rolling Stone', about the only other thing is his "Thank you" at the end.
Heckles And Coughs: Fully covered above. The recording on Spotify gives the impression the audience were half asleep.
Solo Acoustic
She Belongs To Me
Fourth Time Around
Visions Of Johanna
It's All Over Now, Baby Blue
Desolation Row
Just Like A Woman
Mr. Tambourine Man
With The Hawks
Tell Me Momma
I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Have Never Met)
Baby Let Me Follow You Down
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat
One Too Many Mornings
Ballad Of A Thin Man
Like A Rolling Stone
ICONIC PERFORMANCES FROM THE MONTEREY INTERNATIONAL POP FESTIVAL
Various Artists
June 16-18 1967
The problem for me with a 'Various Artists' album is that I feel duty bound to give attention to every song, whereas with a single artist I can conveniently ignore anything on which I can't find an angle. Fortunately the content here is pretty rich, so it's not too much of a challenge. Considering this was an outdoors event the quality of the recordings is very good and first up we have Buffalo Springfield drifting in on the breeze with 'For What It's Worth'. To my shame I know little of Buffalo Springfield beyond this song and the involvement of Neil Young, but this is a chilled performance, I imagine them occupying a spot around 3pm on the Saturday afternoon, while everyone has a doze. Young wasn't there so David Crosby sat in. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band put in 'Driftin' Blues', which lives up to it's name. Now, I know that some commenters on these posts are tie-dyed-in-the-wool fans of the Grateful Dead, so I must step carefully on 'Cold Rain And Snow'. Another band that have so far eluded anything but passing attention from me. Does Garcia always sing like that or was there some kind of vibrating stage set up that gives him that quaver? Grace Slick suffers from it a bit later on as well. Anyway, you'll be glad to know that I enjoyed the song. Next a barely audible (at first) Simon and Garfunkel with 'The Sounds Of Silence'. I've tried to figure out who is singing the 'lead' and who is providing the harmonies. I'm going for Garfunkel on lead. It's a bulletproof song and they perform it well, although Garfunkel shouts out 'FOOLS! said I you do not know", as if Paul has just pinched his bum. Laura Nyro puts in a great performance of 'Poverty Train'. Love the drum brushes simulating the steam engine. There's a terrific piece of jump jive from The Electric Flag with 'Wine' and then we get Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit, which might contain drug references. Not sure. Next up, 'Ball and Chain' by Big Brother and the Holding Company and Janis Joplin, whom I think we can assume may have been quite difficult to keep up with if you were enjoying a few sherbets with her. It's certainly a big performance. Joss Stone can only dream of that level of commitment. The Who do 'My Generation', a remarkable song if only because it seems to be going so fast that it's tripping over its own feet. How the band manage to hold it together for the duration is a minor miracle, vocals, guitar and drums all appear to be in a breakneck race to the finish line. Didn't enjoy Hugh Masakela much. I mean the trumpet playing is fine, but the singing on 'Bajabule Bonke (The Healing Song)' feels more like kill than cure. Otis Redding seems knackered at the start of 'I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now)' but it's a great performance and he seems to have both the band and crowd onside. Hendrix does 'Like A Rolling Stone', warning the crowd that he's about to bore them for about 6 or 7 minutes. What a git, I bet they asked for their money back. It's the usual extraordinary set of noises that he manages to coax and bludgeon out of his guitar. He's utterly cheerful throughout, chuckling all the way through. And finally we get The Mamas and The Papas with 'California Dreamin' They must have been what amounted to the headline act since band member was an organizer. It's actually a bit of a rough performance when you consider their reputation for close harmony. The whole event probably heralded the oncoming Summer Of Love and was important for Joplin, Redding, Hendrix and The Who and this is a pretty enjoyable digest of some good performances.
Band Bantz: There's plenty and much of it sounds touchingly retro. Hendrix proclaims "Yeah, I dig brother" and declares the event "Really outta sight", while Mama Cass notes that it has been "so groovy", there have been "good vibrations" and the naysayers have been getting "up tight".
Heckles and Coughs: Otis gets the most out of the audience. He can definitely hear them say "yeah!"
For What Its Worth - Buffalo Springfield
Driftin Blues - The Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Cold Rain And Snow - Grateful Dead
The Sounds Of Silence - Simon and Garfunkel
Poverty Train - Laura Nyro
Wine - The Electric Flag
White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane
Ball And Chain - Big Brother And The Holding Company and Janis Joplin
My Generation - The Who
Bajabula Bonke (The Healing Song)
I've Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now) - Otis Redding
Like A Rolling Stone - Jimi Hendrix
California Dreamin - The Mamas and The Papas
Kick Out The Jams
30-31st October 1968
MC5
This is the joy of doing these kind of blogs. We almost don't notice in the modern day that way back when, if you wanted to hear an album you either had to have a mate who owned it, or you had to go out and buy it yourself. Record libraries were an option I guess, but the inherent abuse suffered by the vinyl as it passed through dozens of sweaty hands of people with no reason to respect it meant that the quality was always going to be a problem. Now you can access pretty much anything (apart from a good chunk of Ringo Starr's back catalogue, but that's another story) and so the whole of musical history is available to you for a small monthly fee. That means I can compile a list of albums and immediately start working my way through them. The point I'm groping toward is that I would never normally have listened to this. In fact I was honestly unaware of MC5 at all and when they were suggested for inclusion I blanched a little inside and wondered what the hell I was going to encounter. For a start the band name itself isn't very 1968 is it? More suited to a gangster-rapper. And I didn't know the person who suggested it, so they could have just been making mischief. I knew the title track vaguely from the Blue Oyster Cult version (still to come) so I think I was vaguely aware that it would be fairly forthright, loud rock, and background reading told me that MC5 were 'proto-punk' (more alarm bells). Anyway, I needn't have worried. Clearly hugely influential, despite their short-lived reign of terror and about as un-1968 a sound as you could possibly imagine. I'm going to take issue with the 'proto-punk' label. This lot clearly paved the way for heavy rock, metal and thrash, while I think we have to credit the New York Dolls and the Ramones as the founding fathers of punk. It's visceral, exciting, noisy, rampant, political and not a little terrifying. I think that's an attempt at a falsetto on the vocal to the opening 'Rambling Rose', although possibly he's just got his gonads in a vice. There isn't a lot of point in trying to overly analyze the songs I think. It's mostly about being outrageous, sticking it to The Man and maximising the volume, but it is clear that they are a pretty tight outfit for all the raggedy edges. Recorded at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, although not too many quicksteps possible to this particular beat.
Band Bantz: Is there an echo in here? Everything seems to require immediate repetition. It's the fire and brimstone evangelist preacher approach. Rev. Springsteen occasionally plays that game too. They whip the crowd up into a frenzy. Apparently the most famous quote of the original album is the opening to 'Kick Out The Jams' in which the Melon Farmer bomb was dropped. It's not on the Spotify version, probably since the record company cut it from the original recording too. They have lots more to say, most notably at the start of 'Motor City Is Burning' - "Brothers and Sisters! I wanna tell ya something. I hear a lotta talk. By a lot of honkys. Sitting on a lotta money. Tellin' me they're High Society. But I'll let ya know somethin'. If you ask me this is the High Society. This is the High Society!"
Heckles and Coughs: The punters can't compete with the band. They just acclaim everything they hear.
Intro/Ramblin' Rose
Kick Out The Jams
Come Together
Rocket Reducer No. 62 - Talk/
Borderline
Motor City Is Burning
I Want You Right Now
Starship
Bless Its Pointed Little Head
October - November 1968
Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane belong to a category of American bands that are known and appreciated in the UK but I don't think they ever really captured the British imagination. Coming up right after this are the Grateful Dead who have a similar profile (I would contend). And I'll be honest, they don't really capture my imagination on the strength of this either. It's all a little generic, woozy and unfocused. Which is not to say it's awful or unenjoyable, I've had no problem with repeat listens. A stand-out, probably because of its familiarity as well as anything else is 'Somebody To Love', which is like one of those 'magic eye' pictures that were all the rage 20 years or so ago, where you had to look at what first appeared to be a confusing pattern, cross your eyes and go into a trance-state before you could see a 3-D image of a dolphin (or at least a flat dolphin slightly raised from the page). So 'Somebody To Love' starts out like a jumbled auditory ramble but suddenly resolves itself into a familiar song. Just like the pictures, JA seem to find it hard to sustain the illusion and as each verse comes along you lose concentration and the confusion reappears. But its a great song nonetheless and has that urgency in the chorus that characterises virtually nothing else on this album. It's followed by the meandering, spaced out 'Fat Angel', where everyone is getting high and having their minds blown to a background of Indian tablas and sitars. In other places they deliver some pretty straightforward blues songs ('Rock Me Baby') and some good rockin'-out jams ('It's No Secret' and 'Plastic Fantastic Lover'). These were recorded at the Fillmore (East and West) and blog post number 2 in this series will focus heavily on performances at the Fillmore up to it's closure.
Band Bantz: 'Turn Out The Lights' seems to be an impromptu celebration that Grace has finally managed to convince the lighting crew to dim the house lights so that the audience can appreciate the on-stage illumination.
Heckles And Coughs: The intro is a bit strange, the audience seem to be watching the end of King Kong and are intermittently booing and cheering. Whether this is to show their support for Kong or the Airplanes is unclear. I guess it indicates that Jefferson Airplane were playing with a little theatricality before they made their entrance - or maybe they just showed the movie to the crowd while they waited for the band.
Side 1
Clergy
3/5 Of A Mile In 10 Seconds
Somebody To Love
Fat Angel
Rock Me Baby
Side 2
The Other Side Of This Life
It's No Secret
Plastic Fantastic Lover
Turn Out The Lights
Bear Melt
Live/Dead
At San Quentin
February 24th 1969
Johnny Cash
The perfect storm of Cash playing a concert at a penitentiary. And clearly it's a calculating move on his part as it keys in perfectly with the mythology of his own image. In this case the interaction with the audience is easily as important as the performance itself and, if you'll pardon the phrase, Cash walks a very fine line to perfection, managing to transmit respect to everyone in the room. Cash has plenty of suitable material up his sleeve but leaves it open to the old lags to holler out requests. He does a very short version of Walk The Line. That humming he does between verses, which is on the studio versions as well, is him finding the key each time, probably just landing on what he thinks is right for that moment. June Carter and Carl Perkins are there too, so woebetide any punter who complained about getting not value for their entrance fee. I have no idea of what level of security of inmate they were playing to, but they are pretty respectful to the few women in the room. He airs his new song about San Quentin, which the audience lap up "San Quentin, I hate every inch of you", "Mr Congressman, you can't understand", "San Quentin, May you rot and burn in hell", but there is acute scathing insight too, "Do you think I'll be different when you're through?" he sings and claims he will emerge "a wiser and weaker man". How he quite got away with such blatant rabble rousing is a mystery - and he does it twice through as well. This includes the version of 'A Boy Named Sue' that is most often heard. The inmates love the violence, and the swearing. He and June so immediately soothe the atmosphere with 'Peace In The Valley'. He finishes with 'Folsom Prison Blues'.
Band Bantz: Cash is on top form and connects with the audience like a master. He's funny and self deprecating. He thanks the governor and guards, which results in swelling jeers, to which he says "Aww. You don't really mean that". He also tells of how he was fined $36 and banged up for picking flowers. The inmates can relate because clearly they are also locked up for things like stroking a cat, whistling a merry tune or helping an old lady across the road.
Heckles and Coughs: They may be hardened criminals, but Cash keeps them in line. An incoherent song request is met with "I didn't hear what you said because I was talking". Classy.
Wanted Man
Wreck Of The Old 97
I Walk The Line
Darlin' Companion
Starkville City Jail
San Quentin
San Quentin (again)
A Boy Named Sue
(There'll Be) Peace In The Valley
Folsom Prison Blues
January - March 1969
The Grateful Dead
Whatever album I'm on, it quite often forms the soundtrack to my thrice-weekly self inflicted torture of a 5 km run. The mind is left clear by the physical activity to absorb the music and form thoughts, drag up memories and allow the forging of some wordplay around the experience. I'll rarely finish an album in the 30 minutes it takes me to cover the distance, but I usually get a fair way through. For the Grateful Dead I was just approaching the door at the end of the run and second track 'St. Stephen' was finally getting into its stride. So I'm thinking that the Dead are a band that you have to savour. Like a fine wine, you are not expected to gulp this stuff down, and the band are only going to feed it to you in small portions so that your experience is as protracted as they can manage. They clearly have the audience's best interests at heart and will not allow you to gorge yourself on such rich fare. This is a double and 'Dark Star' takes up all of side 1. In fact there are only 7 tracks on the entire thing and one of those is the 36 second 'And We Bid You Good Night'. Not that I'd know, but the literature informs me that this is considered something of a pivotal piece in Deadhead lore. To me it is a pleasant enough guitar noodling ramble that I'm sure the live experience and it's attendant pharmacological enhancements would have added several extra dimensions. When it finally arrives 'Saint Stephen' seems like a piece of fluffy pop in comparison, for all that it tops 6 minutes in length. Their bluesier numbers of 'Turn On Your Love Light' and 'Death Don't Have No Mercy' both feel very technically pure and crafted. Love Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan's twinkling, precise organ throughout the latter. AllMusic tells me that 'Feedback' was a fairly typical show-ending at the time. I daresay it takes some skill to control the effect in that way, but is it art? So evidently this is why the Dead are important. They introduced the concept of the extended, rock virtuoso jam. Now that presents fewer problems on a live album than on studio work, but the conclusion has to be that "You had to be there, maaan". I'm sure the live experience amounts to more than just seeing the band on stage and doing what they did and so listening to a recording of a live show is missing a bit of the special sauce. I guess I'm skirting around saying, it's fine, but it's not grab-you-in-the-nethers-and-transport-you-to-the-promised-land stuff. It certainly isn't the best music for running 5K on a cloudy morning at the Pembrokeshire coast, Jerry and the guys added almost 2 minutes on my normal time (along with that steep hill outside Aberaeron). A small-ish claim to fame is also that this is the first live album to use 16-track recording, and the quality of the sound on it is exceptional. Also, this is yet another recorded at the Fillmore (West).
Band Bantz: They are taciturn. The audience are advised to "keep it on" having had their Love Lights activated.
Heckles And Coughs: Not much to report. Maybe the crowd were too bombed or just beaten into submission. There is a fair amount of whooping during 'Turn On Your Love Light' which is admittedly quite a lot of fun for a 15 minute blues riff.
Side 1
Dark Star
Side 2
St. Stephen
The Eleven
Side 3
Turn On Your Love Light
Side 4
Death Don't Have No Mercy
Feedback
And We Bid You Goodnight
Live At Woodstock
18th August 1969
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
As I write this, I am currently on my annual holiday. We are usually joined by my father-in-law, Tony, who is 78 or thereabouts, I forget. It was my turn to cook the other night so I put this on while I pottered around the kitchen. Whilst he never said anything, I could read his thoughts about the infernal racket coming out of the speaker. Made me feel like a teenager again. Anyway, pretty soon after there was some classical CD getting a loud airing in the other room. Jimi Hendrix is so extraordinarily different from any other artists. His purpose seems to be to push both his guitar to the limits of what can be done with it and the audience to the limits of what they can endure. The guitar screams either in agony or ecstasy, you are left to decide for yourself I think. I think my first memory associated with Jimi Hendrix was to do with my brother’s awe that he could play his guitar, with his teeth, behind his head and while it was on fire. That’s showmanship. I needed to include something of Woodstock on this list and I needed to include something of Jimi too. This marks the end of the first instalment of this series of blogs and it seems fitting that both event and artist represent the climax of the sixties and all its excess and inventiveness. The first half of this is what I (in my ignorance probably) would count as less well known stuff, ‘Message To Love’, ‘Hear My Train A Comin’’, ‘Spanish Magic Castle’, ‘Red House’ and ‘Lover Man’. This last is particularly frenetic. Jimi sings (or more-like chants), but that bit is hardly important, it’s the spiralling blues jams and uber-distorted noise that matter. During ‘Spanish Magic Castle’ there’s a drum and bass break during which he just chugs away at his guitar in the background, and it’s still weirdly fascinating.
Then he moves on the stuff the layman is more likely to associate with him. There’s the crashing, magnificent ‘Foxey Lady’ which at moments he seems to pull back from the brink of collapsing into utter chaos. Voodoo Child (Slight Return) (Spotify says ‘Child’, but it’s usually billed as ‘Chile’ isn’t it? – leading to my confusion when I was young that it should be pronounced “Voodoo Chilli”, which makes a sort of sense anyway) gives him an opportunity through the causally repeated riff to introduce the band. Hendrix is probably not considered an overtly political artist, but of course this includes his scorching rendition of ‘Star Spangled Banner’. Make of it what you will, a sly poke at the establishment, reclaiming the song for his generation or an out and out criticism dressed up as national pride (do you know how hard it is for me to not mention Born In The USA here?...Oops). Probably all of the above but notably, everyone knows the words, but no-one is singing along.
By the time he gets to ‘Purple Haze’ he seems to have announced the end of the performance, but there is no evidence that he has left the stage and come on for an encore, the numbers just flow on from each other now, all the way through to ‘Villanova Junction’, when he does appear to have gone off before coming back to nail ‘Hey Joe’.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience headlined probably the most famous and significant festival ever, and on the evidence of this recording (which benefits from top-notch quality – whatever the audience thought about the mic levels – they were correct for the recording) they were the right band at the right time.
Band Bantz: Jimi Hendrix seems to be the dead 27-year-old that everyone agrees didn’t deserve to die because he was so sweet natured. Here he is endlessly concerned that the performance is perfect for his audience. He pauses to tune up after every song and doesn’t mistake volume for quality. Just like at Monterey, he worries that the punters will get bored while he amuses himself, thanks them for their patience and admits to nerves. At the end of Voodoo Chile he advises that folk can leave if they want to since they are ‘just jammin’’. He introduces the Experience under a new name, which is (I think) Gypsy, Sun and Rainbows. He announces ‘Hear My Train A Comin’’ as “Something to get the rats out of your bones” (again, I may have misheard). It probably would at that.
Heckles and Coughs: “Wanna get high?” They shout at the start. “I have mine thankyou” replies the ever-polite Hendrix. After ‘Hear My Train..’ they plead for the voice to be turned up. Jimi does his best to oblige.
Introduction (Live At Woodstock)
Message To Love
Hear My Train A’ Comin’
Spanish Magic Castle
Red House
Lover Man
Foxey Lady
Jam Back At The House
Izabella
Fire
Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
Star Spangled Banner
Purple Haze
Woodstock Improvisation
Villanova Junction
Hey Joe
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