Jimi Hendrix: Not Necessarily Stoned. . .But Beautiful A few of us from the office went last night to the launch of the Jimi Hendrix Live At Monterey DVD and CD at the Hippodrome in Leicester Square, a swanky former nightclub now used for corporate events. I was last there for a party that followed IPC’s annual editorial awards, an event made especially memorable by a spectacular fall down a particularly steep flight of stairs, after which things become very vague, my memory of subsequent events – getting home, things like that – almost wholly non-existent. No such dramas tonight, I am relieved to report, and surprisingly clear recollections of the entire evening – which may have something to do with the fact that by the time we got there, the organisers had run out of the VIP passes we’d been promised would get us free drinks at the bar and we were pretty cleaned out after a single round at the prices being charged. I was greatly amused when the evening began with the appearance on stage of my old friend, Keith Altham, the legendary former NME reporter and later PR for, among others, The Who, the Stones and The Police. Back in the day, Keith was probably the hippest rock writer on the scene and is still dining out handsomely on his adventures back then, which were legion and usually hilarious. Keith, you may remember, wrote up the account of Jimi at Monterey we ran a few issues back – and tonight’s someone’s had the bright idea of asking him to repeat the story, now inflated from anecdotal length to a full-blown epic, only slightly shorter than something Homer might have put his name to. Keith’s got it all typed up, and proceeds to read from it for what seems like the next 40 minutes, quietly enough for it to become somewhat difficult to hear what he’s saying. I’m laughing, because I’ve read the original copy and the jokes are funny enough for me to remember them and know when they’re coming. Others, more restless, quickly start to wonder how long this is going to go on for and whether dynamite may have to be used sooner or later to remove the affable Altham from sight, so the evening’s principal entertainment may commence. And it does eventually, I’m relieved to say, with the showing of American Landing. This is a new documentary included as one of the bonus features on the Monterey DVD, which indeed ends with spectacular footage of Jimi and The Experience blowing minds at the festival. It’s extraordinary stuff, and 40 years on remains jaw-droppingly amazing, people moved to clap and cheer and give up the occasional whoop as if they were watching an actual gig. Which we soon are – the night’s second Big Marketing Idea, as announced in the official press release and elsewhere, has been to invite drummer Mitch Mitchell, the only surviving member of The Experience and Billy Cox, bassist with Band Of Gipsies, to play with grizzled guitar stalwart Gary Moore, who I now recall exchanging blows with at a record company reception when he tried to break up a brawl I was having with Phil Lynott. Anyway, the brawny Moore duly takes station, squeezed by no doubt expert hands into a rather too-tight black shirt, whose buttons even before he’s started throwing grimly predictable guitar hero shapes are under some considerable strain, threatening from the off to pop, probably blinding someone in the process. There’s no sign at this point of Mitch and Billy, and there’s a rumour going around that Mitch, always apparently a handful, has this afternoon thrown a fearful strop, has locked himself in his hotel room and cancelled all the interviews lined-up for him, including a chat with Uncut. I’m not sure anyone actually introduces Gary’s rhythm section, but all three of them are on a hiding to fucking nothing, of course – we’ve just seen 30 minutes or more of absolute transcendent genius at work and now this bunch of brickies are playing some of the same songs and they are bound to suffer by comparison. In fact, it’s like swapping a Ferrari for a lawn mower. They have a lot of fans here, though, several of whom are playing air guitars with some gusto, transported by the burly Moore’s rough house treatment of Hendrix’ music which was surely intended to be played with a lot more psychedelic sensuality than Moore’s heavy-handedness is capable of. I don’t know how long the trio holds the stage for, but I’ve got a beard when they finally quit and I’m already getting my coat on when Keith Altham reappears to announce Billy and a rather bemused Mitch, who has the somewhat distracted air of someone still trying to recover his senses after going through things he couldn’t believe were happening to him at the time. He sits down on the drum stool and disappears from sight. Billy Cox, a congenial old duffer in a stylish Fedora, then takes a vocal lead on “Red House”, the long blues from Are You Experienced, which they follow with “Stone Free” and a version of “Voodoo Chile” they still haven’t finished by the time I get home.

I've been preparing myself today for tonight's Boredoms show at Shoreditch Town Hall by subjecting the office to a 105 minute continuous bootleg of their show with 77 drummers in New York from the summer. But it also seems like Japanese rock is much on my mind right now, since I've finally got round to reading Julian Cope's "Japrocksampler". Cope's career is in a very strange place right now, so that he can release comparatively accessible albums like "You Gotta Problem With Me" to almost no attention whatsoever, yet write esoteric tomes like "Japrocksampler" and find them a biggish deal in the publishing world (my copy still has the "£3 off Foyles" sticker on the cover, which for some reason amuses me no end). I must admit, "Japrocksampler" deals predominantly with bands I've heard of, but never heard. This morning on the bus, Cope's writing became so compelling that it occurred to me that I just had to hear what these bands actually sounded like. His subject was a particularly extreme outfit called Les Rallizes Denudes, whose mind-boggling story involves a bassist who hijacked an airplane, a leader who retreated to a remote cave, and absolutely no proper records whatsoever. Cope's writing is a bit more academic and formal than in "Krautrocksampler", but there are moments when his gonzoid brilliance crashes through. This bit made me laugh, as he tries to explain the complex web of live bootlegs which make up the crypto-available catalogue of Les Rallizes. "If all this sounds a little cretinous," he notes, "then you'd better turn your attention to another part of this book and come back when you're feeling less tense." Anyway, by coincidence, someone sent me a great link today to the You Are Hear podcast, which presents an hour of the music that Cope writes so eloquently about. It's a relief to discover that this stuff is as great as Cope makes it sound, not least Les Rallizes Denudes, whose incredibly ravenous feedback jam constantly threatens to collapse in on itself, but is somehow anchored by a devious, almost funky bassline buried beneath the spits and flares. Office favourite today, though, is a cut from "Satori" by the Flower Travellin' Band, which is a kind of highly formalised gunk-metal that comes on like a ritualised Black Sabbath. I'm going to investigate this further. In the meantime, see you at the drum circle tonight.

A pretty tendentious post appeared on the blog last night from someone who styles themselves Sad Indeed. "After seeing the live performance download MSNBC Today show 10/24, not only is Robert Plant coming off as sad as hell - a lifetime of dedication to the mermaid has broke his heart - but Krauss and Plant had NO chemistry and were out of synchronicity," Sad Indeed spiels. "This was not tight harmonies," the rant continues. Krauss is way overrated as a vocalist, in fact it makes you all too well aware that miracles can be done in the mixing of modern tech - I really think that it is desperate and he would appear very much even sadder than sad if he were to continue to try to make this project into anything more then what has been done - pathetic. Perhaps fresh Zep with a mini tour would be wiser." Now I can share the frustration of everyone who's failed to get tickets for the Led Zeppelin O2 show; I'm currently fuming because my wife appears to have snagged a ticket and I haven't. But that frustration seems to be prejudicing people like Sad Indeed against the Plant & Krauss album which, the more I listen to it, the more I'm blown away by. In fact, I'm now wondering whether Plant should have come up with a new group name for the project, not just to deflect attention from himself, but to highlight what a collaborative endeavour it is. There's Alison Krauss, of course (I agree in part about her voice, because her solo records have often struck me as multitracked schmaltz, which she certainly isn't here), and the producer T-Bone Burnett. But when I listen to "Raising Sand" now, my ears go straight to the guitar lines, the twanging and febrile leads of Marc Ribot. It's a truly great record; does anyone know what that stuff about "a lifetime of dedication to the mermaid" means? Anyway, this morning we're starting with the latest treasure unearthed by Trunk Records, a collection of soundtrack music from "Ivor The Engine" and "Pogles Wood" by Vernon Elliott. I'm aware that by listening to this stuff, it makes us look like slightly creepy nostalgists, fetishising ancient children's TV programmes. But like Elliott's "Clangers" music which Trunk released a few years ago, this is wonderful stuff which isn't predicated on an obsession with '60s and '70s children's shows. Elliott's music largely consists of lovely, ornate baroque miniatures, with a lot of woodwind to the fore. It's the sort of thing which should be unpalatably twee, but which actually succeeds in capturing a kind of elusive rural charm, an authentic magic that sometimes tips over into a certain spookiness. Some pleasure, too, from the track titles, which include "Plant Growing", "Apprehensive Music", "Piccolo Attempt", "Donkey Departing", ""Effects: Coal" and "Effects: Get Art Of It", which seems to involve the animators Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin shouting, "Get Art Of It" in superbly inauthentic working class accents.