Jimi Hendrix in an epic performance of “Room Full Of Mirrors” at Royal Albert Hall on February 24, 1969.

Chris Wood on flute, Rocky Dzidzournou on congas and Dave Mason on guitar
 

“Rainbow Bridge” by Jeff Kopp

For those you reading this lucky enough to be in Los Angeles tonight, our pal Jodi Wille of Process Media will be hosting a special screening of the freak-o-delic new age documentary, Rainbow Bridge at Cinefamily, along with a discussion, in conjunction with the new Process title, The Modern Utopian: Alternative Communities Then and Now

Back to the Land. Urban homesteads. Sustainable cooperatives. The movement that swept the nation in the 70s is back with a new passion. Economic, permaculture, and social concerns have drawn thousands across the country to rediscover the benefits of collective living. The new Process book The Modern Utopian is the definitive examination of the alternative communities in the ‘60s and ‘70s, documented by those who knew it and lived it—from the fabled Drop City to Morningstar Ranch, Timothy Leary at Millbrook to Detroit’s Translove Energies and the still-thriving Stephen Gaskin’s Farm.

Join Process Media’s Jodi Wille as she leads a conversation with members of a new generation (mostly in their 20s and 30s) of intentional communities in Los Angeles. Afterwards, Process presents a rare screening of the 1972 documentary/concert film RAINBOW BRIDGE. This gem of occult/commune 70’s cinema features Warhol stars Pat Hartley and Chuck Wein, Dr. Bronner, cosmic surfers, black power soul sisters, clairvoyant shamans, Jesus freaks, and the actual inhabitants of a chic mansion commune in Maui called the “Rainbow Bridge Occult Research Meditation Center.”

Then Jimi Hendrix drops in, and on the slopes of the Haleakala volcano, he performs for his penultimate live concert in the U.S. before his departure from the planet only two months later.

Rainbow Bridge is is a mind-blower. It was directed by a guy named Chuck Wein who palled around with Andy Warhol in the 60s and who “discovered” Radcliffe debutante Edie Sedgwick (at their mutual therapist)

Cinefamily, 611 N Fairfax Avenue, 7pm, but if you get there early, there is a meet-n-greet with snacks thing on the patio with the special guests.
 

 
Here’s a rare video of Little Richard performing “It Ain’t What You Do” on American Bandstand on March 6, 1965 with his back-up band The Crown Jewels. Jimi Hendrix was a member of The Crown Jewels in ‘65 and there’s some debate as to whether or not Hendrix appears in this American Bandstand performance.

Is that Hendrix in a Royal Guardsman uniform at the 1:29 point in this clip? No one seems to know. I think it is. You may not. But the one thing I think we can all agree upon is that Little Richard is wearin’ a bitchin’ wig in this video.

Sound is out of synch but this thing is still amazing.
 

The UK and Australian pressings of Band of Gypsys featured this cover, with puppet versions of Hendrix, John Peel, Bob Dylan and Brian Jones. (What would be the meaning of this grouping?)

Band of Gypsys was a short-lived “jam band” blues-rock project that came to fruition—and was dissolved—shortly before the death of Jimi Hendrix in 1970. The Band of Gypsys live album was his last release during his lifetime.

Band of Gypsys consisted of Hendrix, his old army pal, bassist Billy Cox and drummer Buddy Miles. They recorded very little studio material and performed live very few times, including four legendary shows that took place over two nights at the Fillmore East. commencing on New Years Eve of 1969. Before the month was out, the Band of Gypsys was no more, disbanding after a disaster at Madison Square Garden.

The Fillmore performances heard on the album were videotaped using a B&W half-inch open reel recorder, the then new Sony Portapak, from two different angles and forms the basis of this 1999 film, Hendrix: Band of Gypsys.
 

 
Thank you Joe Nolan!

 
This is rare and I can’t find any info on it. Reputedly it was shot in 1968. Anyone know where?
 

 
The sound isn’t great, but the video looks terrific and it’s new to me. Jimi kicks in around the 2 minute mark.
 

Footage from heart of Swinging London in legendary ‘I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet’ boutique, Carnaby Street. Jimi plays Like A Rolling Stone, Stone Free. footage was taken in 1967, Chelmsford, England.

 
Dangerous Minds pal Michael Simmons writes:

I just read and reviewed a well-researched, interesting book about Hendrix’ musical development called Becoming Jimi Hendrix by Steven Roby and Brad Schreiber, just pubbed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Jimi’s death on September 18th.  Roby & Schreiber will be at Skylight Books in LA on September 17th

They mention Jimi’s appearance in 1965 on a Nashville TV show with a duo called Buddy & Stacy as part of the Crown Jewels, Little Richard’s back-up band.  Lo and behold, it’s on YouTube.  Dig the guitar!

The song is called “Shotgun” and the TV show, televised on Nashville’s Channel 5 WLAC-TV, was called Night Train. Apparently, this is the oldest known footage of Jimi Hendrix playing guitar. Considering who they’ve got in their backing group, campy Buddy & Stacey seem pretty comical doing their little routine.
 

 
‘Scuse me while I miss this guy (LA Weekly)

Highway Chile Takes the Night Train (Brown Eyed Handsome Soul)

 
This performance of Wild Thing by Jimi Hendrix, from Tony Palmer’s documentary All My Loving (1968), is explosively sexy. Serpent power unleashed! Guitar as an extension of flesh.

When it comes right down to it, for me, Hendrix is the greatest rocker to have lived. He may not have been the greatest songwriter, but as an embodiment of the power, glory and sexuality of rock and roll, he is untouchable.

It sounds like director Tony Palmer played around with the audio on this, adding some sound effects and audience noise, but this clip is all about Hendrix and his body language. I can visualize Hendrix pulling his guitar from his body Videodrome style - a tantric machine.

 
Well, maybe 40 years ago…

Update: Jimmy Lee Wirt points out, “Obviously, she is experienced.”

(via Das Kraftfuttermischwerk)

 
A fascinating look at what Jimi Hendrix was listening to at home can be seen at the Record Mecca blog. A collector acquired several of Jimi’s “well loved” (i.e. played to shit) albums in an auction from Kathy Etchingham, Jimi’s longtime girlfriend:

I thought people might enjoy knowing—and seeing—what Jimi was listening to during his London years.  The collection I purchased included Jimi’s copies of these albums:

Robert Johnson “King of the Delta Blues Singers”; Muddy Waters “The Real Folk Blues”; John Lee Hooker “Drifting Blues”;  Wes Montgomery “A Day In The Life”; The Roland Kirk Quartet “Rip, Rig and Panic”; Ravi Shankar “India’s Master Musician” and “Portrait of a Genius”; The Jimi Hendrix Experience “Electric Ladyland”; The Dream “Get Dreamy”; Howlin Wolf “The Howlin’ Wolf Album” and “Moanin’ In The Moonlight”; Bob Dylan “Greatest Hits” and “Highway 61 Revisited”; Elmore James “Memorial Album”; James Brown “Showtime”; Clara Ward “Gospel Concert”; Acker Bilk “Lansdowne Folio”; The Beatles “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” Various “Chicago The Blues Today”; Various “American Folk Blues Festival ‘66” and Bill Cosby “Revenge.”

The copy of “Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits” has some psychedelic doodling on the back, clearly by Jimi.  Somehow Bonhams didn’t notice this for the auction description—a very happy discovery for me.

The copy of Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” has some of Jimi’s blood on the cover—according to Etchingham, the result of a wine glass accident.

 
Jimi Hendrix’s Record Collection (Record Mecca)

Thank you Michael Simmons!

 
Via Mr. Michael Simmons

 
Since Michael Jackson and the Beatles are, respectively, the best and third best-selling artists of the decade (with music that wasn’t even recorded this millennium in Jackson’s case and that is four decades old in the case of the Fab Four) the record industry seems to have realized that (Taylor Swift aside) most people actually want good music rather than bland, marketing department driven ditties. Or is that the reason? Of course there is also the old music biz adage that “the only good artist is a dead artist” (lookit Elvis, for f’s sake, to say nothing of Tupac and Biggie Smalls). There’s big money in death, it’s a great career move (although one difficult to enjoy), so it comes as no real surprise that the Jimi Hendrix estate announced today that they’d be releasing a 40 year old bunch of recording Jimi made with Billy Cox and others back in ‘69, called Valleys of Neptune. There has been a fair amount of posthumous Hendrix material ranging from great to not so great. Who knows, this Band Of Gypsys era material seems like it may actually be pretty good.

From Geoff Boucher’s cover story in today’s LA Times:

South African native Eddie Kramer was the lead producer on the album, and he was also the engineer in the studio with Hendrix during the original sessions. Kramer spent months using vintage analog approaches and the latest digital tools to excavate the material. “I felt like an archaeologist using a brush who finds, underneath the dust, this marvelous gold artifact,” he said.

Kramer said the music of “Neptune” comes primarily from 1969, a time of “both frustration and real excitement” for Hendrix as he pushed his way toward “a new direction.” The guitarist had brought in an old friend, bassist Billy Cox, to play on some of the tracks; on Friday, Cox, now living in Nashville, said he is giddy at the prospect of hearing the results of his work with Hendrix.

“I can tell you that Jimi was on his way to a powerful new thing, a new direction completely, he was going back to his roots and he wanted a sound with more soul,” said Cox, later in Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys. “Who can say where it would have led him if he hadn’t died?”

 
Jimi Hendrix fans have a new experience in store (Los Angeles Times)

 
Betty Davis is one of the lost greats of 70s funk, but if there is any justice in the world her music will one day be as revered as it deserves to be. This woman was outrageous, sexy and she had mad musical chops! Originally a successful fashion model when she met trumpeter Miles Davis, Betty Mabry, as she was then known, traveled in circles that included Jimi Hendrix, The Chamber Brothers and Sly and the Family Stone. In 1968 she married Davis, but the marriage lasted just one year, breaking up, it was rumored, because she was having an affair with Hendrix (which she has always denied). In his autobiography, Davis credits Betty for opening his ears to the new possibilities inherent in the music of Sly and Jimi, and she inspired his music from Filles De Kilimanjaro (Mademoiselle Mabry is a tribute to Betty, obviously) to Bitches Brew (the title again alleged to reference Mlle. Mabry, albeit by then in a less flattering light).

After her divorce from Miles, Betty recorded two albums in the early 70s with crack backing musicians like Larry Graham, Merl Saunders (Grateful Dead, Bonnie Raitt), Neal Schon (Santana/Journey) and members of Graham Central Station, Tower of Power, even the young Pointer Sisters singing back-up. Davis was the original “nasty gal” creating the blueprint for suggestive “outrageousness” well-trod by today’s female chart toppers. One of her songs, the sexually forthright If I’m In Luck I Might Get Picked Up was so controversial that the NAACP condemned her.
 

 
Then she recorded another great record of hard funk in 1975 called Nasty Gal, but sadly, she never really caught on. There’s no good reason for it, but luckily her reputation has risen again in recent years due to reprints of her albums by Seattle-based label, A Light in the Attic Records, who recently released her recorded in 1976 but shelved ever since album, Is It Love or Desire.

(When I met my future wife, she had a Betty Davis CD in her car stereo. As a man who puts “good taste in music” approximately third on the list of what makes a woman attractive, I can assure you I was impressed).

The Sound of Young America: Betty Davis Interview ?