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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Classic Jimi - yahooo!!, July 2, 2003
No questions asked, if you like Jimi Hendrix, buy this album.
I originally purchased this album in 1987 when it first came out. Unfortunately, I lost it and was bummed out to find that it was out of print.However, I got my hands on it again. The concerts are from a series of live recorded performances at the Winterland concert hall in San Francisco, just before Jimi went to work in New York City at the sessions destined to produce Electric Ladyland, one of the finest albums of the rock era, and one of the greatest works in music history (up there with Mozart, Beethoven etc.) I consider many of Jimi versions of the songs here definitive versions, because after a while Jimi became disillusioned with playing "Fire" and "Hey Joe" and other songs that made him a star. If you listen closely with headphones you can hear why.
Before one of the songs, you can hear some [person] yell out, "Burn the guitar!!." Jimi hated the reputation he carried with him since the infamous performance ( and inferior recording) at the Monterey Pop festival (Monterey California 1966). Jimi started to get weirder in his playing of his so-called famous songs after this time (check out recording Live at the LA Forum 1969, if you dont believe me).
Fortunately, his guitar playing on "Fire," Hey Joe," and "Foxy Lady" is revelatory. Wow, no one can produce the sound that Jimi was able to produce. Listen to his amazing solo on "Hey Joe." "Sunshine of your Love" (insturmental) is terrific ...P>If you want to hear why Jimi Hendrix is remembered fondly by so many people, buy this album as an example of his live performances, you will be very happy. However, I believe any serious rock fan would have this album along with the three albums Jimi produced in his lifetime - The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Axis - Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland. If you want other albums, the other Rykodisc album Radio One is interesting for the things it includes, such as "Burning of the Midnight Lamp"
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Aye, Jimae, do you believe in God?", May 18, 2006
"Live at Winterland" was my first Jimi Hendrix CD, bought by sheer chance in 1993, when I was 16 years old and still knew him mostly from hear-say. Ever since, it has remained my favorite of all his recordings, with the arguable exception of the "Blues" album, and I have never heard a live CD or watched the live video of a better Hendrix performance, including Woodstock, Isle of Wight and the 4-concert compilation entitled "Stages". My impression is that in none of the other concerts I've heard Jimi is more at ease, sober, and enjoying his creative powers as viscerally and spontaneously as in this one. If I were to point out one single recording by our unforgetable man, I would have no doubt and say that Live at Winterland is the very hurricane's eye.
And so the CD has become my standard of comparison for everything else. In this one concert, we feel in Jimi through his music the overflow of such a healthy energy, such sane inspiration; he's got the right punch at all songs and is much more well-grounded and attentive than in other presentations - in which I feel him either too high, or simply bored, to give his best. Smartly taking his chances to push frontiers of improvisation in each note, even a song that otherwise doesn't catch my attention, "Maniac Depression", seems crisp and new. Soloes are long and beautiful, and playing fellows are incredibly tuned with his intuition. I never heard more intense and beautiful versions of "Sunshine of Your Love", "Tax Free" and "Foxy Lady"; the final sequence that starts with the intro to "Hey Joe" is mind-blowing and "Purple Haze" has a most special, longer solo, that I have not heard anywhere else. Finally, here "Spanish Castle Magic" is simply Revelation: I dare not even speak about it.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The one LIVE Jimi album you need to have. , April 13, 2006
There are lots of different recordings avalible of Jimi on stage. They're all mostly damn good. This one is ( I'm not kidding)the crown Jewel. Its not that he's playing that much differently to the audience, its the whole "feel" of the concert. He was completly loose and playing from the gut. Jimi had a tendency to play the way he felt at the moment. Sometimes nervous and uptight, like at Woodstock. The Winterland recording has the audience captured. He was having a damn good time that night. The version of "red House" goes on for ever with crashing hendrix blues licks, and while you're sitting there taking it all in, you ask yourself why for gods sakes didnt this album ever hit when it first showed up? Well produced and remixed for CD, this is one you need to have and actually listen to over and over. You wont get tired of it.
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by The Jimi Hendrix Experience 
