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Rating: On the distant June 17, 1967, a man named James Doughlas Hendrix (if I'm not mistaken) began teaching the world what it means to play rock and, above all, what it means to play the guitar. On that day, he impressed the audience at Monterey and beyond, and even today, he continues to impress people worldwide (including me) with the way, the passion, the style, and the fury with which he "fiddled" with his Fender Stratocaster.
On that day, something (much more than something) changed in the history of rock. On that day, Jimi Hendrix, accompanied by an outstanding Noel Redding on bass and a spectacular Mitch Mitchell on drums, showed all the guitarists on the planet (and new generations of guitarists) a new way of playing the guitar and a new way of presenting their own rock, the rock that lives inside each of us.
The concert was presented by the then-mythical "Rolling Stone" Brian Jones (R.I.P.). As soon as Jimi's guitar attack was heard, an attack impressive for its violence and the speed with which it was executed, the riff of Killing Floor had started. The songs follow one another among the pearls of the trio's first album, like Purple Haze, Hey Joe, Foxy Lady, The Wind Cries Mary, and other wonderfully performed covers like Like a Rolling Stone and the concluding Wild Thing. Jimi also displayed his entire technical repertoire (although he was not yet the best Hendrix) by performing magnificent solos, using not only the pick with his hand like a mere mortal but also playing the strings with the pick between his teeth or with the guitar positioned in some strange position like between the legs or behind the head. His Fender Stratocaster sounded like nothing had ever sounded before, a hard, distorted, and sometimes even dirty sound, showing everyone the power that could be unleashed by a simple electric guitar.
The concert ended with a splendid version of Wild Thing and the famous guitar destruction complete with a fire. This shocked the audience, the faces seen in the dvd are faces of scandalized, shocked people, people who had seen nothing like it before and never expected to witness a "concert" (call it that) like this one; what I would have given to be there.....
In short, if you have never seen this dvd, you have no idea what you have missed, a true Big Bang in the history of rock.
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By hellraiser
An epoch-making live performance, one of the musical events that have remained carved in the history of rock.
Jimi knew what he wanted to achieve and he achieved it; after an excellent musical performance that alone would have sufficed, this final scene elevated him to a 'wizard' of the six-string.
