BAND OF GYPSYS

With the Experience now blown to bits, Jimi attacked the new decade with his first all-black band and a once-only New Year's Eve concert in NY and the Band Of Gypsy. The bass was occupied with a former US-Army buddy Billy Cox and on drums the funk legend of Buddy Miles. With a rather simple coloured photo of Jimi at work for a cover, the album is rather surprising because it doesn't sound anything like the previous Experience. . Note that the BoG, the group was built against his manager Jeffries and the manager forced Jimi to fire Buddy Miles (uncontrollable to Jeffries) not long after the group's two concerts and reinstate Mitch Mitchell on the drum stool, but he failed to reinstate the "Experience" group. With Billy Cox on bass the new group went on tour in February 70 in the Cry Of Love tour, but this is out of the scope of this album.

The least we can say is that BoG is really a funk-rock group, and the opening track the 9-mins+ Who Knows where Buddy Miles is obviously as involved as Jimi. It is followed by a lengthy and stunning blues, the 12-mins+ Machine Gun, with its stunning imitation of the weapons. Easily the album's peak. The flipside is made of four shorter tracks, that go back to Who Knows?'s funk rock. Again completely dominated by Jimi's guitar, the tracks are more rhythmic than abut guitar heroics. Buddy Miles' drumming is quite different of Mitchell and therefore offers different opportunities. Cox's bass playing is fairly basic, partly because Jimi taught his buddy to play the instrument, but the man is obviously not a natural at it.

Historically this album was definitely not received as well as the previous three Experience albums, but there are some solid reasons for that too. First, this comes from a sole concert that was most likely under-rehearsed and comes with the "warts an'all". For my part, I keep the album for Machine Gun and a fourth Hendrix album in my collection.