Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live In Maui

Above, the front of the set's package front (top) and the booklet. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

A package arrived at my post office box today. It was the Blu-ray/CD set, Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live In Maui. 

Back in the summer of 1970, a movie was in "production" in Maui, Hawaii that was called Rainbow Bridge. It was a hippie counter-culture flick "directed" by Chuck Wein. It was a mess production-wise. No script. No pre-production. It was basically a mess captured on film.

Hendrix had been working on a new studio in New York, Electric Lady Studios, at the time, but work on it stopped and started, depending upon there was any money to work on it to completion. Much of Hendrix's concert fees that year went to the building of the studio. Manager Michael Jeffrey saw the Maui flick as a means to bring in some cash to complete the studio. Hendrix really didn't want to have any part of the movie, but was eventually talked into it.

Admittedly, when Rainbow Bridge first came out in theaters, I was, admittedly, entertained by it even though it was obviously flawed. I have a copy of the movie on VHS. One shot in the movie I got a kick out of seeing (nearly 40 years later) was of La Cienega Blvd. in West Los Angeles with the White Front department store very prominent.

Above, the set has interesting packaging for the booklet, 2 CDs and Blu-ray. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

The Blu-ray in this set contains a documentary, Music, Money, Madness...Jimi Hendrix in Maui on how Rainbow Bridge came about and how Hendrix and sidemen Mitch Mitchell (drums) and Billy Cox (bass) participated. Since Billy Cox is the sole remaining member of the Jimi Hendrix Experience still with us, he adds his own memories to the documentary.

The Blu-ray also has the two shows the Jimi Hendrix Experience put on at the Haleakala Crater on Maui on July 30, 1970. These shows also comprise the two CDs of the set.

The concerts were flawed as the wind was blowing towards the band causing sound issues. For the footage used in Rainbow Bridge, Mitch Mitchell dubbed new drumming sound while watching footage through a movie editor's moviola screen.

Also included in the set is a 31-page booklet.

The set is an interesting piece of music history and Hendrix fans will enjoy it.