Jimi Hendrix -- Live At The Hollywood Bowl: August 18, 1967 LP

Sergent Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Killing Floor, The Wind Cries Mary, Foxey Lady, Catfish Blues, Fire, Like A Rolling Stone, Purple Haze, Wild Thing

3 days after playing Ann Arbor at the Fifth Dimension Club!

Yet another live album and this time it’s a never-before-heard performance (not even on bootlegs) from August 1967 at The Hollywood Bowl, when the band were the support act for The Mamas & The Papas. The two acts had of course also played at the Monterey Pop Festival only two months earlier.

Apparently, on the day, the band didn’t go down well with the more folk-orientated audience (Scott McKenzie was also on the bill). I wonder if we’ll hear the boos on the recording.

Listening to the extracts, this appears to be from a very good quality radio station soundboard tape (not a professional multi-track recording) capturing all instruments very well and even Mitch’s cymbals. The original tape was a two-track recording apparently but perhaps due to over-separation, it has a central mono-like mix here.

“Killing Floor” is complete on YouTube and here is a short official interview film about the performance, where you can hear some other extracts.

It captures the Jimi Hendrix Experience at a unique moment in their illustrious career. Before a sold out audience of 17, 000 people, the Experience overwhelmed an unsuspecting audience with a superb show that encompassed his renditions of songs by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters as well as signature songs such as "Purple Haze" and "The Wind Cries Mary". Are You Experienced, the group's debut album, had not yet been released by Jimi's label Reprise.