Sound Colour Vibration (Music | Art | Film)

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This is the just recently found tape of the Jimi Hendrix shows in Rome, Italy from May 1968. Thanks have to go out to Experience Hendrix and John McDermott for giving this to the fans for free. All info below in the original text file from the seed over at Crosstown Torrents.

1968-05-25 Rome, Teatro Brancaccio

This is the new Rome tape in all its unedited glory.
Experience Hendrix bought this tape from the taper and now they give it to us for free, not bad!

So thanks to the taper, and Experience Hendrix, we have a new tape to enjoy.

I’ve not touched it, the files are the same as what EH sent out.
IDLT and WT are in 2 parts, there are some cuts all the way through, and some closeby audience members can be heard pretty clearly. The 2nd show fragment is in one piece.

Its a good show with not enough electricity in the building to power those amps properly, but the JHE make the best of it.
A lot more could be said about this tape, but i’m not going to.

1968-05-25 Rome, Teatro Brancaccio

1st show

1 intro, I Dont Live Today
2 I Dont Live Today (part 2)
3 Hey Joe
4 Stone Free
5 Manic Depression
6 Foxy Lady
7 Red House
8 Wild Thing
9 Wild Thing (part 2)

2nd show

10 Intro > Fire > Stone Free

DOWNLOAD

This translation of the words of the person who recorded these shows was posted by Finder Fingers, a Crosstown Torrents moderator, it’s a really good read, check it out here:

RECORDING JIMI HENDRIX IN ROME

My name is Adriano Assanti Gironda. In 1968 I was a 17-year old drummer and music lover. In Naples, where I lived, the music scene in those days was dull, mainly classic Neapolitan songs and the four or five famous Italian singers that everyone knows about. My friends and I were among the very few who listened to, and played, American and English music.

There were no music magazines in those days, and imported records were hard to find. Our main source of information was the radio program “Bandiera Gialla”, or we would tune in to Radio Luxemburg on medium wave at two o’clock in the morning to hear James Brown and groups like Blood Sweet and Tears and Chicago.

One day a friend of mine, Geppino Esposito, turned up with an album of Hendrix. We put the LP on the turntable and heard this strange music. We thought “Wow, this is good stuff!” We didn’t understand what he was singing but the music was really different from everything we had ever heard before. Jimi might as well have come from Mars, for all we knew. Not long after that Geppino turned up again and told me that Jimi was booked to play a concert in Rome. Although Jimi’s music was not uppermost in my thoughts at that time, I was curious and asked when he was coming, and my friend said “in May”.

We were very young and getting to Rome was a problem, but the gig was a month away, so we asked lots of people if they would take us by car, but no one was willing to come with us, and we were starting to get desperate. Near where I lived, in the Vomero district of Naples, there was – and still is – a car park where people used to leave their cars under cover. We used to go down there to play cards with the attendant, a guy called Emilio. He was much older than us, and seemed light years away from being interested in pop music, never mind Jimi Hendrix. He didn’t speak proper Italian, just the dialect, and he only ever listened to Neapolitan songs by Aurelio Fierro and people like that. He seemed the last person in the world who could possibly appreciate this new, completely unheard-of, type of music.

Anyway, Geppino said “let’s ask Emilio”. I thought “he’s never going to be interested”, but it was our last chance, so we went round to see him with our Jimi Hendrix record and told him that this amazing, astonishing, genius guitar player from America was coming to play a gig in Rome. Obviously Emilio had never heard of him before and was not particularly inclined to take us to Rome. He wanted to hear the LP first, but we kept finding an excuse not to play it because we were afraid that he would hate it. Despite this, we were so persistent that when Saturday, May 25, arrived, we set off from Naples in Emilio’s little Renault Dauphine. It was an unbelievable journey, about three and a half hours long.

We didn’t stop talking about Jimi Hendrix for the whole journey, but we were frightened that Emilio would make a quick getaway and leave us behind the moment he heard the first notes of the concert. Instead, to our surprise, when we got to Rome he turned out to be even more enthusiastic about Jimi than we were. He was dancing and grooving to the music and kept saying “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life, he’s playing the guitar with his teeth, and look at the way that drummer is laying into those drums”. For ages afterward, when we got back to Naples, he would tell everyone how he had gone to Rome to hear this Guitar God.

Anyway, when we got to Rome we bought our tickets for the afternoon concert. I remember that the Brancaccio Theatre was not full. In those days, I brought my Philips cassette recorder to concerts whenever I could, and I would record everything so I could listen to the musicians and find out their tips and tricks. Usually no one took any notice of my tape recorder and, sure enough, I had no problems bringing it into the Brancaccio Theatre. Once inside we met some friends from Naples, Ugo Cirino and Toni di Mauro. They had decided to come at the last minute. Toni probably persuaded Ugo that he would enjoy the concert.

I don’t really remember the support acts that played before Hendrix, although I have a vague memory of some dancers. I was only interested in Jimi Hendrix.

During the concert I was worried that the tape recorder’s batteries would run out while Jimi was playing, so I didn’t really follow the first concert closely because I was concentrating on positioning the microphone and I kept moving around to get the best possible recording. By the time the concert finished, I was completely bowled over by Jimi. Ugo and Toni told me they were staying for the second show and could give me a lift home in Ugo’s Porsche, so I decided to stick around and buy a ticket for the second show.

The second show confirmed what an exceptional musician Jimi was. I also remember that he seemed a bit angry because of problems with the amplification.

Seeing Jimi convinced us that we needed to create our own original music and inspired me to form my group, Moby Dick. In the early seventies we recorded an LP at Olympic Studios in London, the same studio where Jimi had recorded “Axis: Bold as Love” a few years earlier.

When I got home I played the cassette recording of Hendrix at the Brancaccio several times, and, being a drummer, I studied Mitch Mitchell’s drum solo particularly closely. Eventually the cassette disappeared under a pile of other tapes and I forgot all about it.

In the mid-70s I moved to Switzerland, and in 2001, during a reunion with old friends in Naples, Ugo Cirino said “I have a surprise for you” and played me the tape that I had forgotten. I thought of putting it out on disc, but quickly realized that it wouldn’t get legal clearance, so I got in touch with the Hendrix Foundation through a contact at Blue Star Records and sold the tape for $1,500. They made me sign a 15 page contract in which I undertook to not make copies of the recording available through any other channel.

In retrospect I regret having sold it. I don’t consider myself a major Hendrix fan, but even today whenever I listen to the tape it takes me back in time and makes me quite emotional. I’ve been very lucky in two situations in my life: firstly I saw Hendrix live and recorded him in concert twice; and secondly I formed the Moby Dick, which remains a unique group to this day.

THE RECORDING

First Show:

The tape begins with MC Eddie Ponti introducing the band, after which the Experience immediately launch into “I Don’t Live Today” (duration 3:30). The performance is very close to the original with a solo towards the end.

The crowd is noisy as Jimi briefly introduces the second song, “Hey Joe” (duration 4:15). It’s an unusual version: the start is similar to the original but then Jimi plays some different licks and a second solo at 3:30.

The third song performed by the Experience is “Stone Free” (duration 3.42). It is similar to the original but with a killer solo after about 2:00 minutes.

Before the fourth track Jimi tunes his guitar and then plays an excellent version of “Manic Depression” (duration 5:48). Although Jimi plays a wrong note during the solo, his inadvertent error adds an extra twist to the song and turns the solo into something incredible and psychedelic. Mitch Mitchell plays a masterful drum solo towards the end, after which Jimi re-establishes the riff and ends the song.

The fifth song performed by the Experience is a truly inspired version of “Foxy Lady” (duration 3:40), which has the audience entranced.

While introducing the next song Jimi changes his guitar and uses a Gibson Les Paul for “Red House” (duration 10:10). This version is one of the Hendrix’s best performances by far, very slow, almost acoustic, with a long solo. The audience responds with warm applause to every change of dynamic.

Eventually Jimi greets the Roman audience in perfect Italian with “buona sera” and then dedicates the last song “Wild Thing” (duration 6:30) to soldiers fighting in Vietnam. This is also an unusual version, much slower than normal. He plays a few bars of “Strangers in the Night” in the middle, and finishes the performance with some riffs that sound like “Star Spangled Banner”, before heading offstage and leaving the audience in a frenzy.

Second Show:

Unfortunately, the recording of the second concert is very short.

It starts with the audience cheering impatiently. The first track is “Fire” (duration 2:50), which is very similar to the original but brought to an abrupt end by Jimi after a short solo.

The audience is much noisier than during the previous show and Hendrix follows the first song by launching straight into “Stone Free” (duration 3:40). Noel Redding sings the backing vocal here, and Jimi plays a terrific and rather unusual solo towards the end.

Before the third song Hendrix apologizes to the audience, as he did in Bologna, for the electricity problems and then begins “Red House”. Unfortunately the tape ends shortly after the first stanza … but the performance is remembered as being exceptional.