Rating: Summary: Live It. Love it. Review: "The mark of a great music movie film or concert," a friend of mine once said, "is that it makes you want to play guitar after watching." After watching the rapid-fire lyrical version of "Machine Gun," complete with a bombastic, inspirational guitar solo, I agree. Indeed, I found myself halfway through this film with my guitar and a small practice amp--my Marshall is over at a friend's house--plucking away at a backing track for "Red House" while the film was set on pause, the incredibly [...] Jimi striking a pose with the guitar turned up towards the sky. This video is great, not as great as some of his other videos, but definitely the most inspiring. Get it. Live it. Play on.
Rating: Summary: A TOTAL DISGRACE FOR HENDRIX FANS Review: . . . As a true fan I was disgusted by this video because thesongs are EDITED FOR TIME. Anyone familiar with an audio recording ofthis show will instantly recognize that they edited out AT LEAST TWO of the best solos in Machine Gun (It's edited from 13 minutes down to 6 minutes). This song alone would be half the reason to get the video, but since the best parts have been edited out there's no point at all. Some of the footage which they edited out is featured in the documentary ("Jimi Hendrix") so it's not as though it wasn't intact. Isle of Wight is one of Jimi's best shows hands down, but this video edits out many of the best parts leaving the video too specific for casual fans and too butchered for serious fans. The producers of this video have done a great disservice to Hendrix fans by buying the rights to quality footage and then destroying it.
Rating: Summary: hendrix in a good mood , his drummer at this stage is lousy! Review: Anyone who thinks hendrix was deep into drugs during his final days are terribly wrong! 10 minutes into the video its very clear that hendrix is happy, healthy and talkative! In fact he's almost appears to be glowing. Let's face, Mitch Mitchell is the one who is out of it. I was sad to hear such a pitiful performance from such a masterful drummer. Seeing him slouched over his drums for the ENTIRE SHOW was dissapointing.
Rating: Summary: Don't cheat yourself out of a really great DVD! Review: Anyone who thinks that this performance is lackluster, lazy, or anything but great is out of his frigging mind. I am so glad I bought this DVD, and it is another example of why you really have to make up your mind yourself and never listen to negative reviewers. All of the songs played on this DVD are typical Hendrix - exciting, mind blowing and illustrative of his incredible talent that to this day has never been equaled. I could not really see what flaws everyone was talking about. Every Hendrix performance is different from any other, so this one had a little shorter version of "Machine Gun" so what? It was still great. The audience was extremely pleased. If there were equipment problems, you never see it on this DVD. ALL PERFORMANCES ARE OUTSTANDING and I agree with another reviewer that Any Hendrix is better than NO Hendrix. There just is no other performer alive today, and probably never will be who can play a guitar like that, period. If you like Jimi Hendrix, or if you just like supernova guitar playing, do yourself a favor and buy this DVD. The price is WELL worth it. And don't listen to those who are so spoiled that they have to pick apart everything they see and hear, as if they could actually play better than this, or anyone else could. Great great performance that is head and shoulders above anything you will ever see today.The only bad part of the DVD is that you are reminded that 18 days after this performance, we lost probably the greatest guitar player of his generation.
Rating: Summary: This video offers a glimpse of Hendix's genius Review: Buy this video for two songs: (1) All Along The Watchtower and (2) Red House. On Watchtower, he uses his Fender Strat and it wails. Red House gets much more visceral with his Gibson Flying V. Red House starts slow and benign, then builds into great blues crescendo. He is awesome!
Rating: Summary: JIMI HENDRIX BEING TOO TOUGH ON HIMSELF Review: Even though Hendrix's final concert performance was slightly plagued by technical problems and the late start time (2am) you are still inclined to enjoy the concert despite some of the mild flaws depicted in the concert. Hendrix , at times , seems to be discontent about the sound quality and whatever technical problems he was acknowledging to on stage during a few song. He even , apoligetically , acknowledged it to the crowd. He did things like this during SPANISH CASTLE MAGIC and VOODOO CHILE. Also , at the end of MACHINE GUN he just seemed to have gave up on the song and just closed the song with a not so smooth ending. At the end of the concert after he said his goodnights to the crowd he took his guitar off and just dropped it on the stage floor and walked off. The manner in which he dropped the guitar and walked off implied to me that he wasn't happy with the performance or the concert overall or he may have just been tired. I believe it was all of the above. My belief was if Hendrix had just played on without gesturing to stagehands or displaying any sort of discontent then the crowd wouldn't have noticed or even cared. It may have been a case of a genius being too hard on himself. None the less , you get the legend , live , in his final concert performance and outside of the Hendrix-acknowledged flaws it seemed like a really great concert. His version of SGT. PEPPER is shortened here but played with fun. The best performances are ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER , FREEDOM , DOLLY DAGGER , RED HOUSE , and the final song IN FROM THE STORM. The DVD displays inconsistencies that are typical from the original film source. It is in stereo(uncompressed PCM soundtrack) , in full screen format(not letterbox) , 56 minutes long , and there are no DVD extras. This Hendrix performance isn't considered one of his overall best but everything about it like the unnoticeable technical problems and Hendrix's discontent are very interesting to see none the less. Fans of Hendrix must get this DVD simply because it is the final performance. It isn't the ideal swan song concert , like Elvis singing MY WAY in 1977 or something , but you can still enjoy and appreciate the greatness of Hendrix here despite the flaws.
Rating: Summary: It's OK...but Blue Wild Angel is better... Review: for YEARS this was all we had of Jimi's appearance at the Isle of Wight. It's a shorter, lo-fi version of Wild Blue Angel. Unless you lived with this version, and don't care otherwise, buy the newly released Blue Wild Angel DVD instead, it has MUCH better sound, and the complete performance. Well, almost complete. The CD has two or three tracks, like "Hey Baby/New Rising Sun" that you won't find here.
Rating: Summary: A must for Hendrix fans Review: Gape in awe at the waterfalls of sound that cascade from Jimi's guitar. Proof positive that he was at the top of his form before his tragic death.
Rating: Summary: Save your money... Review: Having just seen this mess of a performance on Trio, I'm glad I didn't purchase the dvd. If you watch carefully, you can see from Jimi's facial expressions that he is not happy with his performance or the band's or both. The band sounds unrehearsed, the playing is sloppy, vocals are missing. Jimi does try his best to salvage things with some interesting solos but that as brilliant as it was, can't save things. Some songs in very raw form- Machine Gun, are trying to listen to. Yet on the other hand, 'Red house' is quite good. Sound quality is nothing to brag about, sounds like an old 8-track transfer-raw. I wonder if Jimi would have approved of this release, based on the way he takes his guitar off at the end of the show and slams it down on the stage, I think not. The serious fan will pass this one up. Hopefully, the Hendrix estate will choose future releases(both audio and dvd)more carefully.
Rating: Summary: Sure it isnt the best, but it's HENDRIX Review: I agree with others that this is not the best Hendrix you can find, but the world is short on Hendrix performances. I enjoy watching even BAD Jimi Hendrix... the guy always had the ability to amaze me, and he still does. I would be happy to sit through 2 hours (...) to see him hit a groove for 5 mins. If I had 20 different live shows to choose from, I would be a lot more picky.
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