These shows are sick!  Anyone in vault land who was actually at any of these shows?

I was born 4 years after this show so I missed this one.

try 12 years

Holy flute solo!

Yes I was at the Friday night show. I was sixteen years old and so straight and white. Man was he loud and when he played Red House it changed my life.

tenorcat:

Yes I was at the Friday night show. I was sixteen years old and so straight and white. Man was he loud and when he played Red House it changed my life.

 

Wasn't there (for I was born 9 years later), but listening to it now... like acid under the headband, this guy knows how to get under a person's skin.

I was at both times he played the Winterland in 1968, the infamous Eyeball show in February and the more eclectic show he put on in November. I was growing up down the road in San Jose so we got up to the Filmore and Winterland a number of times. I was 16 years old for the first and a much more mature 17 (hah!) for the second. We were all white suburban kids, but we were definitely not straight. If you indulge me for a minute, I will give some thoughts and recollections.

The February show was far better in terms of supporting acts. I think I was there on Saturday night. Mayall opened with Mick Taylor on guitar. We were huge Mayall fans, having lived on a steady diet of his first two albums with Clapton and Peter Green; we were anxious to see the new young guitarslinger he had in tow. It turns out there were even better musicians in the group than Taylor, with Ansley Dunbar on drums and *** Hextall-Smith on sax. Their two sets were good, competant blues with Taylor at times getting us excited as he reached towards the type of playing we had come to expect with Clapton and Green.

Albert King came next and he was outrageously good. His skillful professionalism made Mayall's show seem a bit like the British guys were posing. Now, I loved British blues (Mayall, Fleetwood Mac, Yardbirds, Savoy Brown, Ten Years After), but to see the three Kings, Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Magic Sam, James Cotton, and others -- well they just had more stage presence and were more fun. The British groups openly admitted who their idols were and they were following in their footsteps.

Hendrix opened with Sgt. Pepper's and something occured that night that I had not seen before. The crowd spontaneously STOOD UP and stayed up for his whole first set. Before that time, it was my experience that folks sat through basically the whole evening (which was not the case at the Avalon Ballroom, which was more of a dance hall than a concert hall). Anyway, Hendrix totally blew us away. I can still remember that the number one impression I had was that his guitar was part of his body. Also prominent was the sexual energy he gave out with his moves. Then there was the stuff coming out of his amps. We had never heard anything like it, obviously, and it left an impression. And I should not fail to mention the drumming of Mitch Mitchell; I had yet to see Moonie, so he was definitely at the head of my little rock world at that point. Hendrix repeated songs in his second set like Foxey Lady, Fire, and Purple Haze. We wondered at the time if he thought the audience had been cleared out and he was playing to a new set of ears. I have always wondered about that.

I have to say that we all agreed that Albert King almost stole the show in his second set. He just got the audience in the palm of his hand. A high point was when he broke a string and kept playing the song WHILE he replaced the string. If the Vaultsters can find that on video and put it on DVD, you'll see. Something about the way he did was so genuinely casual and somehow better than any moment of the night, except the Hendrix's Sgt Pepper's.

Did you know that the Winterland held only about 3,200 concert goers? That's ain't too big. But it "drawfed" the Old Fillmore, which was only 1,200. I have still never met anyone who was at the first Hendrix show when he was third-billed at the Fillmore.
I have been unable to find out how many folks could be at the Fillmore West, but I am guessing from how Graham used the two venues, it was on the order of 2,500. Not a big place either. Can you imagine why "Days on the Green" were not very attractive to me after seeing these groups in the old buildings?

Hendrix's second set of shows in 68 had Dino Valenti as a solo act and Buddy Miles new band, the Express. Valenti was frankly boring. He was out of jail and trying to re-establish himself and it was still a couple of years away that he would get into Quicksilver. Buddy Miles had put together a tight group from the demise of the Electric Flag; his lead guitarist was Jim McCarty, who I think was from Mitch Ryder's Detroit Wheels band. He was so-so, and Buddy carried this band on his ample shoulders (and stomach!) with his soulful singing and power drumming. I like him more as a part of the Flag, but what do you expect?

We were there for the last night, Sunday, and it became clear that this was going to be a different Jimi that night. One of the largest impressions we came away with was how much he talked. I am no kidding. He blabbed and blabbed between songs, so much that folks started yelling out to "play Jimi." We think he had taken some kind of mind-altering substance. Was this possible? Anyway, he had sound system problems all night long with one of the Marshall amps misbehaving.

The music he played was definitely more interesting and less structured than the show earlier in the year. He was moving away from the Greatest Hits thing that was to plague him his whole short career. How many times did stoned people scream out "Purple Haze!" when he was trying to talk or tune. He was starting to explore the bounds of the instrument and the compostions. Again, Mitchell was sterling on the drums. Full disclosure: someone gave us a joint soaked in DMT during the second set and I have to say, the music moved onto a different orbit for awhile.

Again, I am dying to know if there is video of his last set. I distinctly recall Jimi saying before the last song something like, "I love you San Francisco and I will be a back with better equipment." At the finish of the last song, he went back to the amps and punched a big whole in one or more of the Marshalls. Hendrix was not into destroying the set like The Who were -- Monterey Pop was an anomaly. With the whole set up squealing like a bunch of hurt wild boars, he punished the amp and walked off the stage. Noel Redding, taking cues from Jimi, worked to produce nearly equally loud feedback, but did not mash his instrument. Anyway, we walked out into the cold, damp SF night, once again, impressed by Mr. Hendrix.

I never saw him again, but I can't complain. Not many people can say they saw him twice.

I just caught onto the Mr. Paul Caruso name. Nice.

Billiam, just wanted to say thanks for an unbelievable description of the concert.  What a blast to read.

ej:

Billiam, just wanted to say thanks for an unbelievable description of the concert.  What a blast to read.

Indeed. Makes me wish even more that I was born earlier enough to have seen the 60's.

very enjoyable memorie you shared here, makes for a great  read while the concert you are referinjg to plays in the background thanks What an unbeleviable websight

I can remember that my brother and I sat up in the balcony, about five rows up. There were some people with about a pound of weed just rolling joints and throwing them off into the crowd or lighting them and passing them down. There were some hippies in the front row that had brought in gallon glass jugs of wine and were getting pretty wasted.

It is hard to relate how much of a straight suburban white kid I was at that point. I grew up in the City, my grand parents lived there, We knew how to get around, so when my parents moved to San Mateo, they could be easily talked into letting us go up there and hang out. We listened to the first FM stations like KMPX to find out what was going on.

I was kinda far away and the sensory overload of being in such an outrageous party. It was hard for me to figure out what was going on down on the stage. Jimmy seemed to have a running dialog with the crowd down in front. He seemed kinda agitated between a couple of songs. The wasted crowd kept chanting Foxy Lady or Purple Haze over and over again. He must have played Purple Haze twice and Foxy Lady three times.

I had only gone to a few live concerts at that point and so I was no critic, but I thought at the time that it was kinda unprofessional to repeat tunes in a set. At that point in my musical education, I wanted to "hear it like the record". I remember thinking that the improvised nature of his performance of Hey Joe, was unbelievable!

At some point the whole packed balcony was just shaking and the music was so loud that one of the hippie kids elbows a half empty glass gallon of wine off the edge of the balcony with out even knowing it. It seemed like after a second that I was the only person the even saw it happen. I couldn't help but bolt out of my seat into the isle and jump over all the people laying on the stairs. I leaned over the edge of the balcony and saw a girl, flat on her face, motionless, with broken glass, wine and blood all over the floor. The people around her started to push back but further away on the dark densly packed danse floor, people couldn't see what had happened and couldn't really go anywhere. It got really wierd, really fast. For the most part, the music as so loud and there were so many people, that it was mostly unnoticed.

I grabbed my brother and made it down to the main floor, where it was just grid lock. Somehow we made it inside the main floor back against the wall. Jimmy was messing with his amp and talking to Mitch Mtchell. He seemed to take his time and the crowd was still yelling Purple Haze. Finally, he came up to the mike and said something like, "I'm gonna play this one for myself", or some thing like that. He turned his back to the audience and started Red House. It was so slow that I remember not really being able to figure out where the beat was for a second. It was nasty, funky blues sound and screaming loud. The PA must have sucked because between Jimmy mumbling the words and the guitar, I couldn't tell what he was singing. My memory was that he had sixteen Sunn bottoms with two twelve inch speakers, set up in a semi circle with eight on top of eight.

I know that the solo he played made my whole musical sensibility change for life. It was like suddenly a genie with a goofy foot Strat was casting musical mojo over the whole place. It seemed like every one frozen and was hanging on every turn in every lick. Man, I know I was.

Music is a language. Louis Armstrong defined a dialect. Jimmy defined a dialect. I saw Miles Davis, he defined a dialect. I have bought a lot of tickets and stood in line to see a lot of music in 40 years. There are only a handful of performances in my life that had that kind of magic. I was so lucky to come up seeing all the great music at the Fillmore and the Family Dog.

I always wondered why nobody has tried to write a screenplay about the ballroom scene. The sound track would be great. In my travels, whenever I meet music fans and they ask what it was like to see Led Zepplin, Deep Purple, Ten Yeas After, Traffic, Cream, Who, Jeff Beck, etc. Man, it was the local bands, the Dead, Airplane, Moby Grape, Country Joe, Janis, Santana and the mighty Quick Silver Messenger Service, that were the back bone of the scene. How can I relate that experience. It would be a tall order to make a movie that did it justice. My favorite bands from the time were Tower Of Power, The Sons, Cold Blood and Electric Flag. I know that I saw history. One Winterland show was BB King, Albert King and Albert Collins. I saw Sonny Terry and Brownie Mc Ghee, James Cotton, Magic Sam, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, Big Momma Thornton... so much great stuff that informed my musical taste. It is hard to get very worked up over artists today. It is all so derivative.

But Jimmy set the bar as far as channeling energy right from the source.

Tenorcat - what an amazing post.  The thing I find so fascinating about the music on the site and the posts is that much of the music and the memories were created before these bands were legends.  I always wonder if people knew they were seeing an artist destined to be one of the greats.

                                          sixteen sunn bottoms

thank you  Tenorcat

some of best Hendrix i ever heard.