RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH :
“He was dressed for last night’s Mosque con cert in bell-bottom cerise pants. He also wore an exotically embroidered vest over a black shirt, two belts - one wide and gold - and three ornate rings. His carefully clipped hair stands high and round like a topiary tree.
Hendrix, who taught himself guitar by listening to old rhythm and blues artists, has put that style of music aside. Instead, he has originated a music of his own, using amplifiers and electronics as a part of it.
The result is a lot of noise and harsh sound, but listen carefully and there are some startling musical effects emerging... His musical understanding is shown in the intricate figures he weaves on the guitar, often holding the instrument tight against his chest, as if he were a human resonator. At other times he is strictly a sensational showman, as when he swings the guitar between his legs, or lifts it high and seems to chomp on it like an ear of corn. All the time, he keeps playing, never losing the thread holding the song together.
When the amplifiers are lowered, and the music emerges a bit more, one realizes that Hendrix is playing blues and protest songs, as much as he is fiery, possessing ones.
He dedicated ‘I Don’t Live Today’ to ‘all the self-appointed soldiers in St. Petersburg, Chicago, Vietnam and, oh yes, the American Indian.’ The song ends in a special effect like a cat call. His ‘Red House Blues’ displayed his original harmonic technique around the old jazz form, but his version is a squalling, wailing blues — the lament is there, but it is shriller. In fact, if the music is representative of Hendrix’ own soul, then his soul seems to be shrieking and demanding a place in the sun.”
(Page?) [title?] [20 August, review] by Jan Bridge of the J.R. Tucker High School: “The Hendrix style is a jangling concoction of funky, heavy-beat rock- soul, a touch of Little Richard, a pinch of violence, several dashes of erotica and serves with a plentiful topping of intentional amplification and feedback.
The Mosque stage Tuesday night was well stocked with speakers, amplifiers and a confusion of wires, the life blood of the Hendrix group. Hendrix, a 23-year-old [sic] southpaw, sported a right- handed guitar with the strings reversed, instead of a mere left
handed instrument. ‘This is the easiest way to do it. Besides it’s the right way, he said of his backwards guitar.
Violence and eroticism in the unique Hendrix style has moved several critics to name the Experience as successors to the Rolling Stones, the “bad guys” of earlier rock.
Although Hendrix’s success has thus far been short-lived, he said Tuesday that he was tiring of the novelty. ‘The whole deal was fun at first,’ he said. ‘Now it’s no longer fun. The travelling and the rush is really getting boring.”