Island Man


Island Man features Jimi in one of his final concert appearances. I had heard probably about half or so of Jimi's Isle Of Wight concert appearance on previous releases (In The West, Isle Of Wight I & II), and while it was okay, it didn't really stand out much. Much of the reason being the incomplete concert, and hacked up versions that had appeared (insert burning Alan Douglas effigy pic here) up to this point. Even the concert video release was incomplete. But with Island Man, all that has been fixed. Some inbetween song chatting has been edited from this release, but all the songs are intact and in their proper running order. This was not one of Jimi's greatest performances. He had been in New York just a couple days before for the grand opening of Electric Lady Studios, his own personal recording studio. The band hadn't played together for nearly a month as well, and the concert shows signs of rust. But a Jimi Hendrix at 75% is better than most people at 150%. And my personal highlight, a 23 minute Machine Gun, lets there be no doubt of that. The security radio somehow gets picked up by the amplifiers and heard by everybody, and accidentally becomes a perfect addition to the song. This double CD gives me a whole new respect for this concert. It's still not one of his best, but now feels so much more...right.

Quality is very good to excellent throughout. There is a fair bit of tape hiss present, but a little turning down of the treble fixes that in a hurry.

Catalog #: Silver Rarities SIRA 39/40