Jimi Hendrix - Berkeley Community Theatre, Berkeley, CA, 5-30-1970, Early Show

I'm going through a Jimi Hendrix kick right now, so expect more posts of his music soon. I've finished posting all the stray tracks albums I've made for him, and I'm going to start posting more of his live material.

After three decades of fairly incompetent management, the Hendrix music catalog has been treated better for the last twenty years or so, since it's come under new management. That said, there still are some baffling decisions about what has been released and what hasn't so far. The two Berkeley concerts that Hendrix played on May 30, 1970 were professionally recorded and filmed. (The film of it, "Jimi Plays Berkeley," was released in 1971.) In 2003, an official live album was finally released. But it was only of the late show!

The release of only the last show is a real head-scratcher. Both of the Berkeley shows are great, and the set lists of the early and late shows are fairly different. Many serious Hendrix fans consider the Berkeley concerts to be among the very best of his concerts if you consider both performance and sound quality, and some even say it was him at his absolute peak. Furthermore, many also say the early show was even better than the late one. Plus, the early one is about twenty minutes longer, at an hour and a half. So why the heck hasn't the early show been released too?!

Actually, many of the performances from it have been released, here and there. For instance, "Johnny B. Goode" was released on "In the West" and other albums. "Hear My Train A-Comin'" was released on "Rainbow Bridge." "Ezy Rider" was released on "Band of Gypsys 2" (strangely enough, since Berkeley wasn't a Band of Gypsys concert). "Red House" was on the "West Coast Seattle Boy" box set. A few other songs were on more obscure releases, such as an EP that only came out in Britain for a limited time in the 1990s. But it's a crying shame the early show hasn't been released in full.

Luckily, there's an excellent bootleg version that came out around 2011 that sounds just as good as any live album from that era. (If you have a boot of the concert from before that time, you should replace it, because the sound is even better than earlier versions.) Clearly, it must come from the master tapes of the mobile recording unit. That's the version I've used here.

I only had two major issues with that recording. The first is that because it's such a pristine soundboard, it often didn't record much of the audience noise. So at the end of some songs, I've boosted the volume of the cheering to be as loud as typical cheering after a song ends. The second issue is that Hendrix's talking between songs was often unusually quiet. I've carefully boosted that up to make it more audible while leaving everything else alone. Sometimes it gets a little hissy because I had to increase the volume so much, but that can't be helped. The hissing is minor, in any case.

1970 was the last year of Hendrix's life. His concerts that year were admittedly hit or miss. But, in my opinion, when he hit, that was peak Hendrix. I especially like the fact that his set lists were more varied, with lots of new songs and less of the old warhorses like "Hey Joe" and "Purple Haze." Personally, I think if I were to recommend just one Hendrix concert to someone who doesn't know his music that well, it would be this one. Oh, and the movie "Jimi Plays Berkeley" is pretty good as well, so you should check that out too.

01 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
02 Fire (Jimi Hendrix)
03 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
04 Johnny B. Goode (Jimi Hendrix)
05 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
06 Hear My Train A-Comin' (Jimi Hendrix)
07 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
08 Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix)
09 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
10 Machine Gun (Jimi Hendrix)
11 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
12 Freedom (Jimi Hendrix)
13 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
14 Red House (Jimi Hendrix)
15 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
16 Message to Love (Jimi Hendrix)
17 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
18 Ezy Rider (Jimi Hendrix)
19 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
20 The Star Spangled Banner [Instrumental] (Jimi Hendrix)
21 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
22 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
23 Voodoo Child [Slight Return] (Jimi Hendrix)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15121534/JimiH_1970d_BerkelyCommunityTheatre__5-30-1970__Early_Show_atse.zip.html

For the album cover, I found a copy of a promotional poster for the Berkeley concerts. I used that for the framing artwork, plus the text. I had to make some major changes to clear out room for a photo in the middle. I also only kept some of the text, and then I edited the text slightly to make it specific for the early show (the poster was for both the early and late shows). The picture in the middle comes from Hendrix at the Berkeley concerts.