Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/09/15/rare-footage-of-jimi-hendrix-d.html
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This couldn’t wait till Friday, the 50th anniversary of his death?
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I have a VHS copy of “Rainbow Bridge” that I think I picked up at Newberry Comics visiting a friend in Boston while in college. Besides the silly hippie New Age mumbo-jumbo, there’s a great scene of the hippies slicing open a surfboard to gain access to the “unpressed pollen” smuggled back from 'Nam (I learned that it wasn’t kief at all). The Hendrix footage is of him drunk in the basement and part of his concert. The footage isn’t particularly well sync’d to the sound but the performance is amazing. I would love to see a better edited version of the full performance.
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Lovely footage and audio, but not only are they not well sync’d, near as I can tell they are not from the same performance.
my god. i have so many thoughts!
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such a TINY stage and crowd! i mean, it’s not like he was an unknown at this point… i give boomers a lot of shit, but i’m jealous as hell they had the chance to see stuff like this first hand.
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the quality of this film is amazing! not even woodstock looks this good.
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guy with the straw hat taking pix from the front row (no security guards??)… wonder where those pix are now. are they out there somewhere in someone’s old forgotten photo album?
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LOVE the fashions going on. clothing and hair, oh so groovy.
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pissed off kid at 3:25 (left side of the screen) made me LOL
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also found the guy in the crowd with his hands over his ears at 3:40 amusing
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love the completely high girl waving her hands around starting at 4 minutes in, bottom middle of the screen. bet she never even remembered this show, haha.
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I think the correct title is really ‘Voodoo Chile’. And a had the recipe for it around here somewhere.
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From a performers point of view: Tough crowd.
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Yeah I hooked on those two moments too!
I sometimes wished I was a little older to be able to hear Hendrix for the first time when he was breaking out.
My one degree of separation from Hendrix is meeting Chip Monk the lighting director of Woodstock who gave the “brown acid” warning. We live in the same town in country Victoria, Australia. A good fit for Chip as it’s got more than it’s fair share of hippy’s and crystals. He also lit the Stones concert at Altamont (Gimme Shelter film) where he got his some teeth knocked out by a Hell’s Angel via a pool cue… Ah the good old days.
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wow, that’s a Brush With Greatness in its own right. Chip is certifiably famous!
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This is the best Hendrix I’ve ever seen. Going wherever the song takes him.
Also, I was distracted by the film crew, using state-of-the-art portable equipment. And the obvious director’s comment: “When they’re on the stage, pan the audience.” There apparently was a lot of arm and back footage from the stage, which is why we get the delicious
So much to love here! If you’re a certain kind of A/V nerd or were in a blues band that played this song or digs the late 60s-early 70s aesthetic or all of the above.
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The hilariously sad part about it is that every one of those folks who ho-hummed their way through this performance have since bragged about seeing Jimi live.
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Watching old footage of crowds at shows like this, I’m always struck by the fact that some of these folks are now grand parents and great-grandparents. For most of us, I reckon it’s hard to imagine grampy and granny as barefoot, hip-shaking, bead-wearing concertgoers gettin’ all psychedelic with it.
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Some of the places Hendrix played are very surprising now.
Carlisle was pretty much dead during the 90s when I was growing up, it was hard to imagine the nightlife of just 20-30 years earlier.
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“Rainbow Bridge” is well known among Hendrix fans, particularly for the weird quote of Hendrix talking about pyramids and space, which is printed on the back of the LP.
At least one track of the audio was previously released, the version of “Hey Baby/In From The Storm” came out on this big Hendrix box several years ago.
I’m more interested if anyone has ever seen the supposed film “Experience”, the two volumes of soundtrack have been booted/reissued multiple times and are not bad (some of the same tracks appear on the legit Reprise “Jimi Hendrix Concerts” album), but I’ve never seen the film, wonder if it even exists. My understanding is that it was never completed and got tied up in legal limbo.
Was thinking the same thing but maybe they were doing a bit to much of the “ho-hum”!!
Can’t believe they weren’t going nuts… then again seeing what the younger folks go nuts to???
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Yeah he anecdotally confirmed the Spinal Tap reference where Hendrix would always dial everything up to 10 so they lowered the output on his guitar which gave the impression of going up to 11 on the Marshalls. ‘anecdotally’
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I remember when “Rainbow Bridge” played here, I guess at a rep house. It was presented as a film about Jimi Hendrix.
I can only take him in small bits, so I never saw the film. Oddly, seeing the description now, it sounds interesting as a historical piece.
I was ten in 1970, and it’s fifty years later. That’s a slightly longer period than between 1970 and when my mother was born in 1923. Jazz and blues from the 20’s and 30’s always seemed “ancient history” and yes, it seemed odd that my mother was interested in big band music.
But when you live through it, it always seems a shorter time, and 1970 doesn’t seem far off from yesterday.
I didn’t know about Jimi Hendrix whike he was alive, or even his death. But I remember vividly seeing that “rock star dead at 27” headline on the front page of the paper (the article was inside the paper) early in October that year. I remember it well since there was a local story that took up most of the front page. Then in 1973 I saw a review for a book, and realized it was about that rock star, Janis Joplin. It was a long time ago, and also very recently.
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Do The Hippie!
Were white people always so… blonde?
