🏊 January, 23

1967.
🔻 For $500, Mike Jeffery acquires rights to Curtis Knight & The Squires (including Jimi Hendrix) material, cut for Jerry Simon's RSVP Records in New York.

1968.
🔻 Richard Robinson interviews Hendrix and Noel Redding for Hullabaloo at the Upper Berkeley Street flat.

1969.
🔻 West Berlin (enclave), Sportpalast, 170 Potsdamer Strasse, East Germany.
Concert at 20:00, probably sold out. Support: Eire Apparent. Promoter: Lippmann & Rau. Audience: ~ 10,000
Filmed conversation in the dressing room (09:01) with the JHE, Eric Barrett, Mick Cox, Gerry Stickells, Trixie Sullivan, and others. Filmer and/or producer: Oets Kempe. First transmitted on German TV in 1970 (details unknown). Re-transmitted on Germany 1 TV during an unknown WDF program, possibly in 1973.
🔻 Various film clips, showing the JHE on tour in Germany and Austria (at airports, being driven around, hotel arrivals, etc.), can be seen in the (unreleased) film The Last Experience.

🔽 Songs:
Fire, Hey Joe (Billy Roberts), Spanish Castle Magic, Foxy Lady, Red House, Come On (Earl ‘King’ (Johnson), Sunshine Of Your Love (Jack Bruce, Pete Brown & Eric Clapton), Purple Haze.

🔽 Abe Jacobs (sound engineer): “We were escorted by armed troops [sic, must have been police, armed troops were not allowed at that time in Berlin] with Dobermans to the stage from the dressing room...”
🔽 Noel: “Berlin is always a strange place. It takes two separate flights to get there. There were about 20,000 people and we were told before we went on that there was going to be a riot. I walked onstage and the first thing I saw, virtually, was someone being beaten up in the audience. The police had to surround the stage in the end. But that’s a different kind of violence, sure.” [Interview by Allan Jones, Melody Maker, 26 June 1976]
🔽 Axel Schumacher [fan]: “It’s a long time ago, but I do not agree with Redding’s comments: I never saw a concert in Berlin with police surrounding a stage. Of course, the violence was there in January 1969. You know about the upcoming political movement in 1968, so at concerts in this period everybody started with trying to get in for free. People were taking a big metal trash-bin hammering it against the door, trying to break it and get in. Thus the only violence was outside, no problems inside. By the way, the Sportpalast was torn down in November 1973 “
🔽 Der Tagesspiegel (‘The Daily Mirror’ 25 January) ‘Porridge’ - review by Peter Baumann: “The Sportpalast was already in the mood for riots, even before the three American ‘underground’ musicians Jimi Hendrix, Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell started their program. The organisers were wise enough to send an Irish beat band to the frontline for the first part of the concert. The rudeness of their music, which roared from about twenty man-size amplifiers, stood against the aggression of thousands of youngsters, who besieged the aisles, occupied seats which they had not paid for, and threw fire crackers. The tired flank of grandfatherly looking ushers had long left the battlefield of ongoing failure. When Jimi Hendrix finally hurled his unhappy experience with our ugly world into the audience, the midfield got into a serious swing. Besides, the music of the three men dressed in half Wild West-style wasn’t exciting at all: what is there to be heard when twenty amplifiers mess any beginning of sound or building of tones into one single annoying porridge? This didn’t worry most of the fans who in protest against the consumer society dressed sloppy [‘Sack und Asche’]: willingly, they had paid and now they wanted to party.
The organizing establishment cashed in with a pounding heart, but cash in it did: every time the waves against the stage came too high, the Frankfurt-based concert promoter Rau started to grumble out loud: ‘In eleven cities all went well, in this city all goes wrong. Right after Frank Zappa’s concert [when a riot broke out] I took an oath: never again in Berlin!’ Oh well, the leopard cannot change its spots, especially when it comes from Frankfurt. However, the police forces positioned behind revolving doors could keep their clubs where they were, after all.”

🔽 Noel: “Back at the hotel, promoter Fritz Rau had a very stiff and formal press party going. You could almost hear heels click. Mitch and I are so smashed and all the Germans are so straight - particularly here in Berlin. We decide to do something about it and it only takes a few minutes to put bits of Mandrax in the ice creams. All we have to do then is sit back and watch it all hit - and it does.”

🔽 Jimi spends night with Uschi Obermaier (famous/infamous model and formerly part of the 'alternative music commune scene' in München centered around Amon Düül), she had moved to West Berlin. He visits ‘Kommune 1’ which Uschi was a member of. Filmed leaving Kempinski hotel together, kissing and petting farewell. Jimi wrote to her later asking her to visit him in NYC. But she was off with her German lover round the world.



1970.
🔻 Record Plant, New York Studio Recording. A wild evening of inspired jamming by Jimi. One of the evening’s many highlights was a remarkable “Villanova Junction Blues” that lasted over fifteen minutes. Several other extended jams were recorded on this evening including “MLK,” “Slow Time Blues,” “Country Blues,” and “Burning Desire.” In addition to Cox and Miles, an unidentified harmonica player would also join Hendrix. Jimi and company launched into a lengthy workout of Carl Perkins’ “Blue Suede Shoes”. An edited version of this recording was later included as part of the 1973 international compilation Loose Ends. Hendrix also made efforts at “Freedom,” “Midnight Lightning,” and “Highways Of Desire”. This work gradually segued into “Seven Dollars In My Pocket,” an impromptu blues. Following the blues groove already set in place, Hendrix then began “Country Blues”. This extraordinary recording was not a numbered take, but rather another inspired jam session. Hendrix, Cox, and Miles relished such interplay and “Country Blues” is a joyous example of their shared musical vocabulary. This recording would become one of the highlights of The Jimi Hendrix Experience box set issued in September 2000. One other song from this session, an edited version of the blues workout “Once I Had A Woman,” has also been released, last included as part of the 1994 collection Jimi Hendrix :Blues (Experience Hendrix).

🔽 Album’s review by http://www.collectorsmusicreviews.com/:

§ The no-label release, Old Time: Record Plant Jams 1970.1.23, captured The Band of Gypsys in the studio and in total free form shortly before they disbanded. The recording quality is high and there was no mistaking that Jimi was the shining star of these sessions. Buddy Miles’ unmistakable “cement mixer” style, as Mitch Mitchell described it, and Billy Cox’s bass playing go nowhere near the heights where Jimi was playing in these recordings.

This is quickly evidenced in the opening “Ezy Rider/Jam/Cherokee Mist (AKA Martin Luther King Jam),” which is a rambling instrumental that lasted more than twenty minutes. Jimi’s guitar sounds in this track are at times mesmerizing, vicious at others, but always electric with loads of tasty feedback and whammy bar attacks. Calling this a “jam” is entirely correct as Miles and Cox improvised with Jimi through multiple fascinating links that abruptly ended after Miles hit his snare and hi-hat while Jimi seemingly drifted off.

Like the opening track, the second jam starts already with the playing in progress. Once again there were no vocals and lots of fuzz-box and unmistakable stratospheric Jimi Hendrix soloing during the more than sixteen minutes of this recording. Billy Cox’s bass is a bit more prominent in this track than the first. Differing from how the first jam’s recording ended, here Jimi asked for someone to come in and change a string he had broken. This is the type of unedited stuff that makes music collecting so special.

Track three, called “Villanova Junction Jam,” is a more polished “song” if you like than the prior two tracks. It also is without vocals and laden with constant exploring by Hendrix, but we get a better taste of Miles’ playing and booming drum sound here. About 3:25 into the track they slow down as Jimi commented on “treble” in the sound, but without halting his amazing wah-wah noodling. Amazing creativity on display. Then, after more than 2 minutes pass of relatively idle playing, the band launches into a fantastic composition that leads into yet another thrilling Hendrix solo. It is here that you get a vivid glimpse into what the Band of Gypsys had brewing, and the excitement that surrounded that short-lived group. Because this track exceeds nineteen minutes, the spikes in playing temper as they amazingly drop into a blues groove that – for the first time to this listener’s ears – has Hendrix accompanied by a soulful harmonica performed by an “unidentified harp player.” The first three tracks alone encompass about an hour’s worth of music, and it’s all passionate, creative and unmistakable Jimi Hendrix, making this title a treasure.

The final two tracks on disc one are alternate versions of a slow, southern blues song called “Once I Had A Woman.” Accompanied again by harmonica, Hendrix delivers vocals about heartache while never letting us forget he’s still got that guitar strapped around his neck. His strat work with Cox and Miles juxtaposed the harmonica playing, and didn’t work quite frankly because the band was in one place and the harp player was somewhere else.

Disc two opens with a great take on “Blue Suede Shoes”. The track is more than thirteen minutes long, but not all of it is playing. In fact, it is here where we find out where the title “Old Time” apparently came for this release. Jimi, who was “stoned as hell and asking where’s the rest of that grass?”, described the drum pattern he wanted on the cymbal and snare. It was a “very old time, real old time” pattern he scattered for Miles who eventually got it down. Once he did, Jimi said he felt “evil” and joked “if you want trouble, you’ve come to the right place” before singing a little “Heartbreak Hotel”. The version of “Blue Suede Shoes” that was then played is nothing short of remarkable. A harmonica solo moved alongside Hendrix’s inspired playing that was wringing devilish sounds out of his guitar while Miles and Cox drove the rhythm section. The beautiful clarity and completeness of this recording allows us to travel back and experience the creative and thoroughly entertaining juices flowing during those sessions, further showing why this is an essential release for any Hendrix or rock music collector.

The second track on disc two is another eclectic rock & blues jam exceeding more than twenty-three minutes, akin to the first two tracks on disc one.

Track three, “Country Blues/Astro Man (w/harmonica),” is yet another unbelievable performance captured in pristine studio quality. While undeniably blues in its foundation, this is a Jimi Hendrix instrumental that quickly takes the listener on one of those rides only he could provide. Some initial strumming was played while the harmonica player, Cox and Miles laid down the beat, but his cavernous guitar sound gradually and steadily drove the song into greater and greater heights. This could be considered a highlight track on the whole release, and the two remaining “Country Blues” tracks continued with that caliber of playing and creativity.

Old Time: Record Plant Jams 1970.1.23 comes with tasteful inserts and is most definitely a treasured recording of the incomparable Jimi Hendrix with his Band of Gypsys. Repeated listenings will only reveal further depth in these performances, easily making this title highly recommended.§