Track Listing

1. Who Knows
2. Machine Gun
3. Power To Love
4. Message To Love
5. Changes
6. We Gotta Live Together

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2744 in Music
• Released on: 1999-03-20
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Live
• Running time: 45 minutes

From Amazon.com
Tired of the showboating image that his early live performances had saddled him with--and that his black audience viewed as demeaning and degrading to his musical talent--Hendrix dissolved his Experience in 1969 in search of a more terra-firma-grounded, blues-oriented persona. On New Year's Eve, Hendrix, his old Army buddy bassist Billy Cox, and ex-Electric Flag drummer Buddy Miles performed a loose, jam-filled set at New York's Fillmore East (completists will want the panoramic though uneven Live at the Fillmore East). Released a few months after his New Year's Eve 1969 concert, Band of Gypsies underscored Hendrix's desired return to basics--even if his basic was at a level most guitarists could never attain in a lifetime of playing. --Billy Altman

CD Description
Following the breakup of the Experience, Hendrix took a sabbatical in Woodstock, New York, hooked up with bassist BillyCox, his old Air Force running mate, and began jamming witha wide variety of musicians, including R&B drummer Buddy Miles. Hendrix had become self-conscious about his image as a showman and rocker, and about the limitations of thrashing through the same repertoire night after night. BAND OF GYPSYSwas an attempt by Hendrix to redefine himself, and in a wayheralded his return to the ethos of the blues and R&B, a return assisted by a powerhouse, groove-oriented rhythm section.
During their brief tenure as a band, Band Of Gypsys performed New Year's Eve at the Fillmore East, and this live recording captures some of Hendrix's most monumental solos, particularly his long, intensely emotional improvisation on "Machine Gun" (including the screeches of bombs and gunfire) and his pithy blues work on "Who Knows". Buddy Miles's "ThemChanges" illustrates Hendrix's mastery of funk, while "Message of Love" and "Power of Soul" demonstrate his remarkable ability to provide a simultaneous rhythm accompaniment and melodic counterpoint to his vocals, in the blues tradition ofRobert Johnson. BAND OF GYPSYS was markedly different from Hendrix's work with Experience, but rivals it in terms of scope, vision, and beauty.

Customer Reviews

They don't know what I know...
"Band of Gypsys" is a fine album, and the blueprint for funk-rock, funk-metal and a hundred other funks which, ironically enough, languish in the CD players of a multitude of twenty-first century white kids. Buddy Miles' soulful songs of love and life are a refreshing contrast to Hendrix's new-found didacticism (witness "Message to Love"), and the whole thing is spolighted in an uncluttered performance, Cox and Miles a solid rhythm section a million miles from the flashy Experience.

The high-point on this album, recorded live on New Year's Eve, 1969, is "Machine Gun", Jimi's musings upon the Vietnam War, made shockingly real by the guitarist's otherworldly playing and Buddy Miles' onamatopoeic percussion. Other classics are the groovesome opener "Who Knows" and Miles' effervescent "Changes".

As well as being arguably the most successful live album of all-new material ever issued, "Band of Gypsys" shows Hendrix as less of a band-leader and more of a band-member. Furthermore, it grooves, it rocks, and it's excellent. Anyone who cares a jot about rock, funk or twentieth century popular music in general ought to purchase this.

Simply stunning!
This is quite simply the most amazing live guitar album ever. Everything on this album is perfect..I cannot find a single fault and I've listened to it many many times. Jimi's masterpiece Machine Gun is the most amazing piece of guitar work I've ever heard in my life......and the bass and drums throughtout the entire album are spot perfect. If you like Hendrix...or a big fan of guitarists like me....you just have to own this album. It's like a law of the universe.

PURE GENIUS
Joe Satriani once described jimi's playing on this album,as the best live guitar work ever.Machine gun the centerpiece of this album sends shivers down your spine,pure genius.Together with miles (Buddy) power drumming.And (Cox) Billy steady bass lines.Hendrix seems free to just play from within. Anyone who likes MUSIC MUST OWN THIS.