Astound­ing­ly good footage of Hen­drix play­ing Voodoo Chile live. The date is 1969, in Lon­don. (Video is added to our YouTube Playlist.)

This cre­ative bit has been mak­ing the rounds in the world of web 2.0. If it holds appeal, you can also check out the George Bush ver­sion of U2’s Sun­day Bloody Sun­day and Tony Blair doing the Clash’s Should I Stay or Should I Go?. All videos have been added to our YouTube Playlist. (Feel free to sub­scribe.)

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

In August 1971, George Har­ri­son and Ravi Shankar staged two ben­e­fit con­certs at Madi­son Square Gar­den in NYC to raise mon­ey for refugees in Bangladesh. (More on the con­cert here.) Also appear­ing on stage were Bob Dylan, Eric Clap­ton and Ringo Starr. Below, we’ve post­ed some footage from the show, and also includ­ed it in our YouTube playlist (feel free to sub­scribe to it). You can also watch oth­er songs from the con­cert here and here.

Just as an fyi, a record­ing of the con­cert was released as an album in 1971 and then as a film in 1972. Pro­ceeds from both still go to UNICEF.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

• The Bea­t­les: Pod­casts From Yes­ter­day
• What New York­ers Heard on the Radio the Night John Lennon was Shot

First there was the folk Bob Dylan. Then came the elec­tric Bob Dylan. And it all hap­pened one night at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val. The date was July 25, 1965.

In the clip below, you can see how the tran­si­tion was received. In a word, not well. Appear­ing in front of a folk audi­ence that lament­ed the rise of rock, Dylan hit the stage with his elec­tric band and played three songs, includ­ing “Like a Rolling Stone.” Much of the crowd react­ed vio­lent­ly (you can hear it at the end of the clip), and Pete Seeger, the folk leg­end, raged back­stage: “Get that dis­tor­tion out of his voice … It’s ter­ri­ble. If I had an axe, I’d chop the micro­phone cable right now.” After his short set, Dylan tried to exit the stage. But, as you’ll see, he was coaxed back, with acoustic gui­tar in hand, to give the peo­ple what they want­ed — an excel­lent ver­sion of It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. For more on this con­tro­ver­sy (which the music world even­tu­al­ly got over), check out Mar­tin Scors­ese’s doc­u­men­tary “No Direc­tion Home” as well as this Wikipedia entry.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed