Jimi Hendrix Experience* – Hollywood Bowl | August 18, 1967

Fantastic release, aweseome "greassy" sound, you know what to expect.

I honestly don't understand all these criticisms about sound quality, have you ever listened to the various bootlegs circulating about Hendrix? The sound quality of this album is damn good, the only thing you don't understand is why it has been buried in the archives for all these years! However, it's always a pleasure to get hold of live shows like this! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED TO ALL HENDRIX FANS!

Not that great. I wouldn't involve myself in soundboard recordings if I was Bernie Grundman.

50/50 on this soundboard recording, quality sucks but it's sort of expected...

Is this the best sounding Jimi Hendrix Experience live show? No. Does that stop it from transporting you to a time and place instantly upon the very first moments of this essential document? Absolutely not. This is an invaluable recently unearthed live recording, captured by an eager engineer who worked for local LA radio station KHJ. The same radio station that is featured so prominently in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Big thanks to that engineer whoever you are, because this show captures the Jimi Hendrix Experience on the ropes. They had just played the Monterey Pop Festival, where they blew the minds of all who attended, but the legendary concert film that resulted from that festival wouldn’t come out for another year and on this night the Jimi Hendrix Experience were opening for the Mamas and the Papas. The crowd who went there to listen to the laid back California Folk Rock of that group, were simply not ready for the sonic bombast created by the greatest power trio to ever live. The audience reaction at this show ranged from a smattering of applause, to indifference, to boos. Yes, boos! Jimi’s stage banter holds nothing back in terms of his reaction to the crowd’s tepid to hostile response. At one point Jimi says, “This song (Wild Thing) is dedicated to, well, us. Why not? There’s nobody else here.” It’s unbelievable to think there was a time where audiences reacted like this to the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Only in this specific time, before the advent of the internet and viral videos, could you have such powerful music get such a powerless reaction. A mere two weeks later their debut album Are You Experienced? Would be released in the US and their status as the king of all power trios grew quickly thereafter. The most important aspect of this record is that a lackluster recording and a flippant audience, which clearly had an effect on the band, did not effect their playing. This performance is like a middle finger to an audience that was too close minded to recognize greatness right in front of their faces. You could tell from the very first notes that less than ideal conditions were not going to stop this incendiary group of musicians. Nothing short of a complete power outage or a nuclear war was going to stop Jimi and the boys this night. For a nearly rapturous 180 degree reaction to a live LA Jimi Hendrix performance, check out the live album at the Forum from April 26, 1969, where the LAPD could barely keep the fans from completely taking over the stage.

how could this show be not discoverd until now, great performance and sound great to me,

Snagged for £12.99 in a sale. Absolute SCORE. Not sure I'd be happy paying £30 or whatever, as even though it's a soundboard recording, the mix is often all over the place, with waaaay loud (and distorted) vocals and so on that Peter Jackson's MAL tech could do with isolating and remixing somehow. An important historical document, no doubt.

Compares to Songs For Groovy Children…it’s a joke…BUT I LIKE IT!

If you can get this for a fairly low price (I paid £21.69 on Amazon Prime for next day delivery) then it is a show that was very important to The Experience, being just weeks after Monterey and they HAD to impress! :)

Soundboard recording which is a lot better than almost any of the boots I bought on CD in the late 80s/early 90s and apparently this was pretty much undiscovered or not known to have been recorded until recently.

I like to think of myself as a major Jimi fan and after sampling some of the tracks uploaded to You Tube the other week, it got me excited enough to want to add this to the collection. And as ever we have a nice LP sized booklet too.

For a soundboard recording, this sounds so well. An essential for any Hendrix fan