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Fretplay.com
 Jimi Hendrix guitar tabs CD reviews Blue Wild Angel: Jimi Hendrix Live at the Isle of Wight
A fair review of the Jimi Hendrix "Blue Wild Angel: Jimi Hendrix Live at the Isle of Wight" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Jimi Hendrix reviews here, or go back to the Jimi Hendrix tabs.
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Band: Jimi Hendrix Title: Blue Wild Angel: Jimi Hendrix Live at the Isle of Wight Rating:  Release Date: 2002-11-12 Media: Audio CD Tracks: 1: God Save The Queen 2: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band 3: Spanish Castle Magic 4: All Along The Watchtower 5: Machine Gun 6: Lover Man 7: Freedom 8: Red House 9: Dolly Dagger 10: Hey Baby (New Rising Sun) 11: In From The Storm |
It was a murky, sludgy, out-of-tune mess back then, and after painstaking expansion, digital remastering and lovingly detailed repackaging it's still a murky, sludgy, out-of-tune mess. I used to have the original vinyl 'Isle of Wight' album, with a cover photo from a completely different concert.
Don't mistake me. I think Hendrix was the greatest rock guitarist who has ever lived. But at the Isle of Wight, he just couldn't get it together. His singing sounds distracted and toneless, his guitar tone is horrible and the band is not in the groove at all, weird considering it consisted of his old Army buddy Billy Cox and the normally fiery and inspiring Mitch Mitchell, here bashing away like a bad Ginger Baker impersonator.
The Experience Hendrix team have produced some great releases, but this is not one of them. Where are the blazing, incendiary live tracks from the Winterland in 1968, that I remember from the long-deleted and much-missed 'Jimi Hendrix Concerts' album? (Does Alan Douglas have them?) They would have been far more welcome than this sad, weary, almost unlistenable swan song.
Don't Believe the Hype
Very sloppy very sad. . . . . . .
He is very tired and very out of it.
The songs drag on and on.
Machine Gun is long and painful to listen to.
If you want a good 70's era hendrix concert I suggest
Berkeley, Rainbow Bridge, or Isle of Fehmarn
(Fehmarn is actually VERY good.
Even though he was booed at the beginning, he lets loose and preceedes to blow minds. YOu can buy it off dagger records. )
All that glitters is not gold and this is one of those items.
.
The End Was Near
And I like it, although it does leave a little to be desired. A long time ago, a friend gave me this performance on VHS as a gift. Of course, the CD would have better sound, and a DVD would have superior quality. So this will just be about the show as presented in the older format.
Before getting started, on The Who's "Thirty Years Of Maximun R&B" video, Pete Townshend spoke of this performance with mixed feelings. He was proud of The Who's Isle Of Wight performance, but commented on the condition Hendrix was in at the time. He said that as he walked onto the stage, he remembers looking at Hendrix, and thanking God that he was healthy. And if you pay attention to how Hendrix is acting on the stage, you can see he wasn't doing very well.
The sound is ragged throughout, but any live performance from that time, especially from an outdoor performance, will be such. And when the show starts, personally, I think it's awful. The band slowly picks up momentum, and by the time they are playing "All Along The Watchtower," it seems to smooth out a little, even though he forgets lyrics several times during the middle of the show. Watch his face, he is doing the exhausted, puffy-cheeks exhale, staggering around a little, and seems to be somewhere else while doing the show. This is a fractured, tortured performance, but he seems to still keep it going, and considering all that was going on, this is commendable.
He does show brilliance several times here, like when he starts to let his "Red House" solo take off. But, as Townshend said, "He was in such tragically bad condition, physically. . . ," not like the performance he did the previous May, at Berkeley College, and even though this was loud and sloppy as well, he had some energy there, that is missing here. And what's with the gum chewing? Gum is one of those things that should have never been invented, it's bad enough seeing a cow chewing the cud, but on a person, it is the most unflattering thing there is. LOSE THE GUM, JIMI! YOU TOO, BILLY!
But you have to wonder what was going through his mind at this show, the previous four years were complete chaos; the British Invasion, the Summer Of Love, the riots at the Chicago Democratic Convention, Vietnam, the black eye given rock festivals at the Altamont Speedway, the pressure on him to continue blazing new trails, the marathon use of drugs, and the obvious toll it took on him, physically. Given all this, it's surprising he didn't just keel over on the stage that night. And even though he was alive and conscious, you still could call this his "deathbed" performance. At the end, he seems to be relieved that he could go somewhere, and crash.
If he would've just slowed down a little, who knows where he'd be today?.
Hendrix lets loose
Is spite of this, this contains some truly inspiring improvisation from the king of improv. While there is SOME sloppy playing on this CD, it is a concert after all, and conditions were pretty poor from a technical standpoint from what I hear. If you are familiar with H only from radioplay, you are in for a treat, as Hendrix's genius as a live perfomer really shines forth on these tracks. Truly sounds like two guitars. Credit should also go to the band, who are totally in synch with H's playing. You can hear how Hendrix is getting real jazzy in his phrasing. God, what could have been. . . . My favorite track: Hey Baby.
Magical...
He's clearly frustrated with his playing and certain tunes are at times both brilliant and also a letdown at others. As usual with any performer that flies by the seat of his pants when playing live (unlike most of today's acts which rehearse their sets and perform the same things in the same way night after night), Jimi is hot and cold. Machine Gun is one example. The beginning is probably the best rendition of this tune I've ev