Description
Pressed on 180-gram vinyl at Quality Record Pressings!
Cut from the analog masters by Bernie Grundman! The 2003 version of this title was cut from digital files. Not this time!!
Includes deluxe 8-page booklet with rare photos and comprehensive liner notes
Live at Berkeley is a posthumous live album by The Jimi Hendrix Experience originally released in September 2003.
On May 30 of 1970, Jimi, Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox played two shows at the Berkeley Theater. This disc consists of the songs played at the second show. Parts of both shows have been available as a bootlegs for many years, some of them relatively low quality affairs. Eleven tunes, all of them well known to Hendrix aficionados, are presented here in the best sound yet — a significant step up from the best bootlegs. This LP captures Hendrix in a period of transition. He was ready to start a new chapter, having no way of knowing he'd be dead in a matter of months. After his Band of Gypsys phase, he had decided to reunite the original Experience, but bassist Noel Redding declined, perhaps convinced that his band, Fat Mattress, was bound for glory. Consequently, the visceral R&B of the Gypsys mixed with the fluid open-endedness of the Experience through the combination of Mitch Mitchell and drummer Billy Cox.
On this night in Berkeley in 1970, the trio was on fire, roaring through "old" chestnuts ("Hey Joe," "Purple Haze") invested with new life, and pushing the boundaries with works-in-progress (embryonic versions of what would become "Straight Ahead" and "New Rising Sun"). It's interesting to note that while Hendrix's gut-wrenching solos on the evening's second set were among his most expressive, the song list tended toward the more blues-based numbers rather than the psychedelic masterpieces he'd been concocting in the studio. It's as fascinating to hear him make his way through the thickets where composition and improvisation meet, as it is tragic that we'll never know where he would have emerged at the other end of his journey.
