Chicago (Civic Opera House) : 25 février 1968

Chicago (Civic Opera House) : 25 février 1968


Titres :

1. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
2. Fire
3. The Wind Cries Mary
4. Foxy Lady
5. I Don't Live Today
6. Hey Joe
7. Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window
8. Manic Depression
9. Like A Rolling Stone
10. Purple Haze

Source : "The Chicago Shows 1968" (ATM 121)

C'est un enregistrement "audience" de bonne qualité, d'environ un demi-heure. Le son est assez clair (par moments, on distingue les coups de médiator de Noel !), relativement bien équilibré, même si Mitch n'est pas toujours audible. La guitare et le chant de Jimi sont bien présents, avec un rendu musical appréciable - surtout au regard des critères de l'époque.


Le concert s'ouvre sur une version compacte de "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", efficace, avec une partie jouée à la wah wah.

Comme à son habitude, l'Experience livre une version incendiaire de "Fire", où Jimi joue un très court solo central.

Suit une belle version de "The Wind Cries Mary", où Jimi nous gratifie de magnifiques traits à la Curtis Mayfield. Le solo central suit la trame du 45 tours, mais présente l'intérêt de s'en écarter quelque peu. Le chant semble plus appliqué qu’émouvant.

On se réveille avec "Foxy Lady". Même si Jimi se trompe un peu dans les paroles, l'Experience livre une version solide de son classique, lourde et puissante à la fois.

Sans surprise, "I Don't Live Today" est non seulement l'un des moments forts du concert, mais c’est peut-être le titre le plus intéressant du pirate. Jimi se livre complètement lors de ses deux solos, prenant beaucoup de liberté dans ses improvisations – jouant carrément free lors du second solo. Génial.

Comme à Houston la semaine précédente, Jimi ouvre "Hey Joe" par ce qui deviendra la fameuse introduction jouée au Winterland. Même si le titre souffre de quelques problèmes de justesse au début (on entend Jimi réaccorder son Mi grave...), ses parties de guitare solo, sauvages à souhait, méritent que l'on s'y attarde.

"Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window" est coupée... mais Jimi ne se lance (en principe) pas dans de longues improvisations sur ce titre.

Avec "Manic Depression", dont c'est l'une des rares versions en concert documentée, Jimi renoue avec l'intensité de "I Don't Live Today", même si son solo central est un peu lesté par un problème de justesse qu'il règle en direct. Là encore à connaitre.

On prend ensuite "Like A Rolling Stone" en plein milieu de refrain - ce qui nous donne deux reprises de Dylan. De nombreux cuts rendent malheureusement la performance impossible à apprécier.

L'enregistrement se termine par une version énergique de "Purple Haze", où le volume sonore de Jimi est tel qu'il a du mal à le contrôler en début de solo central... ce qui le conduit à poursuivre avec de la wah wah !

Au final ? Une performance solide servie par un son correct... A posséder !

Voici un article d'époque (publié la veille) assez instructif - Hendrix s'exprime sur le fait de se produire en concert :

Chicago Daily News : 24 February 1968

THE RISE OF JIMI HENDRIX

What has been termed the pop music underground will explode to the surface Sunday with the appearance of the Jimi Hendrix Experience in a pair of virtually sold-out concerts in the Opera House.

This is the second trip to the United States for this British rock group and its first visit to Chicago.

Actually 'British' is not the right word for this group, for leader Hendrix was born in Seattle, Wash., and has travelled extensively through the States, playing for such blues stars as Little Richard and the Isely Brothers before he was lured to England in 1965 by Chas Chandler of the Animals.

Once in England, he formed the Experience, with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, which hit the musical scene there with such impact that guitarist-singer Hendrix was voted the World's Top Pop Musician in the 1967 Melody Maker reader's poll.

The fast rise of the Experience can not be explained in the usual pop music terms of hit single recordings, a lot of radio play for Its records, television exposure and endless concert tours. It has more to do with word-of-mouth, acclaim in the underground press and an explosive perfor- mance at last June's Monterey (Calif.) Pop Festival.

But the results are similar. The Jimi Hendrix Experience has both of its albums on the Reprise label high up on the current charts. "Axis: Bold As Love" Is the fourth best- selling album this week according to Billboard magazine; "Are You Experienced is rated ninth. And everywhere the group plays is packed.

Ironically, the two banes of Hendrix' existence are the record charts and concert tours.

"Oh, the charts, that's a bad scene, he says. "A lot of nice records get abused through the charts. They throw them up to the top there, and then they come right back, straight down, and it might have been a nice record, you know, and nobody will remember it two weeks from now.

And speaking of the concerts: "Two shows a night are tough. We soon find ourselves completely boxed in with the same numbers. It really gets sticky and, like, icky. So we usually start jamming on stage, and have more fun doing that. And that really goes over. We do have to do some tunes like 'Purple Haze' every show, but for the others we try to play songs that maybe we haven't done before."

"Right now, when it comes to actual playing, I like to do really funky clubs. Nice, sweaty, smoky, funky, dirty, gritty clubs, 'cause you can really get to the people then. All this stuff where you stand 2,000 miles away from the people and all that - I just don't get any feeling at all."

"But I guess we can't do that for the rest of our lives. We'll just have to play these other scenes, too. Just as long as there are people there."

To see Hendrix perform is to understand the meaning of the word Improvisation. Sometimes Hendrix and Redding will get into fencing matches on the stand, using their guitars as sabres. At the Monterey Pop Festival, Hendrix poured lighter fluid on a guitar and burned it as a finale.

"Sometimes I jump on the guitar," he has said. "Sometimes I grind the strings up against the frets. The more it grinds, the more it whines. Sometimes I rub up against the amplifier. Sometimes I sit on It. Sometimes I play the guitar with my teeth, or I'11 be playing along and I'11 feel like playing with my elbow. I can't remember all the things I do."

Hendrix gives the audience credit for most of his best performances. "Sometimes you get good feelings from the audience, but when we get bad ones, we try to ignore it.

"And you can feel it as soon as you get out there. You can feel it actually before you hit the first note sometimes. Then when you hit that first note you feel it yourself, and you can find out just where you're at. If the people help us out you can really get together. But if they're going to sit up there and pantomime themselves... be wallpaper people... well, I don't give a damn. I'm not mad or nothing."

"After all, I'm not trying to give out a message to any- body. I'm not saying that you should copy us because we're right. We might be just as wrong as hell."

"A lot of people are trying to straighten things out by means of entertainment and music and the whole pop scene. But I'm not going to break my neck trying to do that because there's too many hard-headed people In the world."

When asked whether he thinks he can remain that detached, especially in light of today's social unrest. Hendrix says: "I don't think too many people can touch me mentally If I don't want them to. But physically anybody can come up and kick you."

"I remember when I use to be in Nashville, and we'd go down every Sunday for sort of demonstrations, you know, take a little lunch with us, and go to the riots. Well, we'd be on one side of the street, and they'd be on the other and we'd call each other names and all that. You were supposed to meet down there about 3:30, say, and to you'd call up some of your friends and say,'We're going to be shoutin' at you down there tonight; so be there.' And we'd call each other names and every once In a while stab each other. Then we'd all go to some club and get stoned."

"But political action and all that... I mean politics is like a gift. It's a gift of talking, that's all. Which is saying, 'I can do this... blah, blah, blah... and all your kids will be born naked if you don't vote for me,' you know. They have a gift for talking, just like somebody else has a gift for dancing, or a gift for safe-cracking. Well, I have a gift for music."

Source : http://www.digitalhighway.co.uk/axis/reviews/1045.asp

La chronique du concert, publiée le lendemain :

Chicago Tribune 26 February 1968

THE SHATTERING HENDRIX EXPERIENCE

Electric guitar hiding his face, he started plucking the strings with his tongue and teeth. He scraped the guitar against the mike and made suggestive gestures with It. Across the stage the bass player threw his instrument behind his neck.

Then Hendrix began rushing the amps, banging the guitar against them, each time with a louder thud. He finally stop- ped, backed toward the audience, and flung the Instrument crashing Into the equipment. He turned around, smiled a supercool smile, and said goodbye.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience was over.

Yesterday afternoon's Opera house audience sat stunned, having gone thru it, many having fought it most of the way, and most of them having lost.

The Experience overwhelm their audience, beat them down, dominate them with sound and onstage magnetism, make thee embarrassed captives -musical masochists- who In spite of themselves are excited and fascinated by the cascading violence.

For one of those who fought and lost, who doesn't like the albums, who finds Hendrix's voice bothersome and harsh and the group's sound fractured and distorted, it posed a curious question: Can destruction and creativity co-exist?

The music is undeniably powerful. Without coming right out and saying so, it lets you know there is a war in Viet Nam and there will be more big city riots next summer, that the world is not very pretty and people don't commun- icate and want to escape, that there are things like sex and drugs and violence which people are afraid to talk about but maybe should.

Hendrix writes almost everything that the three-man group does, though there is occasional homage to Dylan or the Beatles. The sound is hard and a bit too much the same thruout, but the lyrics are good, particularly on the new album (which for some reason, they avoided here).

Preceding The Experience was another superb three-man group from London, The Soft Machine, lead by a drummer vocalist in black bikini trunks. They're touring with Hendrix.

They sit in front of a large projection screen. Their light show has the rare distinction that it works - floating images coincide with the musical line and comment on it. "Your eye becomes your ear, the first song says - and it does.

Amoeba like, the sounds jump onto the screen. Big ones grab little ones. They split, they unite, they explode.

Copy provided by Jon Price

Source : http://www.digitalhighway.co.uk/axis/reviews/1045.asp