TORONTO TELEGRAM - ‘Olé for El Jimi, the guitarador!’ by Peter Goddard:
“Versatile
Playing the guitar with his teeth, his forearm, the microphone stand, Hendrix began to give the impression of a man possessed by a devil and resisting exorcism. [… more text?] Finally, in ‘Wild Thing’ Hendrix’s singing burst out in wild frustrated spasms. Leaping from his knees, the singer poised his guitar in the air, stood quietly for a moment, then plugged it into an amplifier as if it was a bull.
‘Olé!
Like a matador offering the bull’s ears as tribute to the crowd, Hendrix turned and offered his guitar. For a second nobody moved, the idea still frozen in their minds. Then came the rush: girls crying, “Jim-i-i-i-...” police pushing everybody grabbing at everybody else. Suddenly the lights blared on. Hendrix was shoved to safety and the show was over. It all seemed so carefully planned, so simple.”
TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL - ‘Hendrix is an ordeal’ by Marilyn Baker:
“How can one be enthusiastic about a rock show in a football stadium? The CNE Coliseum may not be a football stadium, but on Saturday night it felt like one, especially considering the backfield-bleachers seating arrangement. The .Jimi Hendrix Show had been sold out weeks in advance. The ticket-grabbing had made everyone think something big was in the offing. At $4 a ticket, CHUM radio station, advertising the show, announced:
“There are no reserved seats. Just come and stand around. It’s like a big dance.” Well, it wasn’t. It was just another bunch of rock promoters getting away with murder in Toronto. Most of the people were packed high in the bleachers, while many were bunched into a tiny area around the makeshift stage. Youngsters in satin Indian jackets, long hair and curls squatted with sit-in determination in a variety of excruciating yoga-like positions. In a pitiful number of chairs behind these squatters sat the lucky ones: they had the best seats in the house. But they had to stay in them. “Don’t leave your seats!” bellowed a black-suited man from the stage, “or they’ll be taken away!”
So nobody dared to move. There were other troubles with the show. Chief among them was the fact that it was far too long... The Paupers, as usual, performed in fine style... Everyone was delighted, and after the last number, when the appetite was whetted for Hendrix, the Soft Machine came trotting out, as though of a nightmare... The sound they generated was loud and mushy. There was no conclusive, constant sound, no lead guitarist; and the vocals were merely incidental. The drummer couldn’t make up his mind what style to adopt, and went into bursts of formless rock one moment and standard flourishes the next... By their last, interminable number the whole thing had become quite a bore. The crowd was restless, exhausted, and when Hendrix finally came on the fans were completely worn out. It was impossible not to notice that Hendrix was a competent, exciting musician. All his work was superior - even when he plucked his guitar with his teeth. Unfortunately, not even the Hendrix ‘experience’ could arouse an audience in that hall to empathy, though there was good applause. If you sat in the backfield bleachers, Hendrix looked for all the world like an ant dressed in green trousers and print shirt. From that distance. too, the words of many of his songs, such as “Hey Joe,” “Foxy Lady,” were unrecognizable, and the guitar was an electronic blast. By the end of the show it became too much to become involved. The only persons inescapably involved with what Hendrix was doing were those mashed souls sitting in front of the stage. By the last number, people were drifting out, just like at a foot ball game when the outcome is obvious, and you straggle out early to the parking lot. Those people missed the most exciting part of the show—assuming you exclude the few fights that broke out in the crowd earlier in the evening. That was when Hendrix smashed his guitar, and a flock of teeny-boppers rushed down to the stage. Hendrix started throwing over the drummer’s equipment as the police tried to restrain the screaming girls. It was all over quickly, and Hendrix bowed out. At $4 a ticket, the evening wasn’t so much an experience as an ordeal.”
TORONTO STAR - ‘Audience experience with Jimi Hendrix was a cool one’ by John MacFarlane:
“Having seen the Jimi Hendrix Experience at the CNE Coliseum on Saturday night I suppose you could count me among the converted - I’ve been experienced. Hendrix is one of the most exciting performers I’ve ever seen. But more interesting than the experience - for me, anyway - was the audience of maybe 6,000 hippies, college students, teenyboppers and pretenders (mostly pretenders) with whom I shared it. This was a new kind of audience, quite different from the audiences that used to attend pop-rock concerts. It was ‘cool.’ They hadn’t come to scream at Hendrix (Imagine a pop-rock concert where you could actually hear the music!) They hadn’t come to maul him. (I didn’t see anyone try to jump on stage; the police really had an easy night of it.) Some of them didn’t seem to care very much about seeing him! (There was the couple, for instance, who lay on the concrete floor at the far end of the arena ‘making out’ for the 40 minutes Hendrix was on stage. To each his own experience.) The fact is, most of the people in this audience (I can’t speak for the couple on the floor) had come to listen to music. Which gave the evening a rather ironic twist, because there really wasn’t much to listen to, and some of what there was wasn’t worth it. The program began - 25 minutes late - with the Paupers, a Toronto group whose reputation at this point exceeds its accomplishments. Their performance - they played 11 numbers, most of them from their album The Magic People - was slick, professional and in the end rather dull. The only thing that distinguishes the group is its use of rhythm - it occasionally employs three sets of drums - but after two or three numbers even that becomes boring. […]
Like movie Indian
Dressed in a widely colourful shirt and vest, hip-hugging lime green trousers and a black fedora with down turned brim, he looked like the kind of Indian you see hanging around army forts in western movies. By contrast, Redding and Mitchell, both of whom are slight
to the point of being child-like, looked like London hairdressers. What surprised me most about Hendrix was his accent; it was odd hearing a Negro speak with an English accent. And rather pleasing too. When Hendrix finally went on stage it was 11 p.m. and for the first time in the evening the audience applauded without reserve. He did 11 numbers, some from his first album, Are You Experienced - ”Purple Haze,” “Hey Joe,” “The Wind Cries Mary,” “Foxy Lady” - some from his second album, Axis: Bold as Love, and a couple he’s never recorded. It was really a remarkable performance. Hendrix plays and sings with great bravado, arms swinging and slashing at the guitar (which he plays upside down because he’s left-handed), twisting and bending his body as he forces sound from the shoulder-high bank of amplifiers and speakers behind him, lunging at the microphone between runs on the guitar. He sings with a kind of cat-voice - soft yet powerful. He can play the guitar with tremendous feeling - when he wants to he can make it another world electronic orchestra. Occasionally - too often - he’s a musical gymnast, not nearly as exciting to listen to as he is to watch (several times on Saturday night he actually played the guitar with his teeth or tongue - I couldn’t tell which.) Still, his performance was always musical, and it was exciting, and the audience loved it. Times change - pop-rock stars that want to be heard, audiences that want to listen. For a moment on Saturday night, all those old Maple Leaf Gardens concerts - the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Monkees - they all seemed like a bad dream. And then Hendrix spoiled it by smashing his guitar - as contrived a finale as any the Monkees might have dreamed up.”
Sujet: Toronto (Coliseum Arena) : 24 février 1968 
Jeu 8 Juil 2010 - 20:53
