Two months to the day after The Jimi Hendrix Experience became an overnight stateside phenomenon at the Monterey Pop Festival, the group freaked out California a little further south at the Hollywood Bowl. The band was simply white hot at this point, still flying from rearranging brains en masse at the beginning of the summer and still so fresh that they hadn't even put out a sophomore LP yet. This material must have still been new enough that Jimi hadn't quite gotten it all down yet, as he kept forgetting to sing lines in "The Wind Cries Mary". But such gaffs are part of the charm of hearing a vintage, unadulterated performance, as you can on the new live disc, Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live At The Hollywood Bowl: August 18, 1967. The power of the band at this stage in their career is what makes it electrifying.
Much of the set mirrors the one the band used at Monterey pretty closely, with covers of Howling Wolf, Dylan, and Troggs sprinkled amongst the Experience essentials "Purple Haze", "The Wind Cries Mary" "Foxey Lady", and "Fire". The major addition is a raging rendition of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band", which so knocked McCartney for a loop when he heard the Experience play it just days after The Beatles released the original.
Hearing The Jimi Hendrix Experience at this juncture when they were just starting to blow so any minds makes Live At The Hollywood Bowl very historically significant, which goes some way toward balancing out its audio shortcomings. The vocals were captured significantly louder than the instruments and everything is a bit fuzzy. But as a document of a phenomenal live band at their playing peak before live recording tech has had a chance to catch up, you couldn't do much better.
