Jimi Hendrix exploded into popularity at the head of the power trio behind “Purple Haze” and “Foxy Lady,” but his restlessness prevented him from being satisfied. In the last years before his death he tried different settings and accompanists, including the short-lived Band of Gypsys. Machine Gun documents one of his performances with that lineup, a New Year’s Eve concert on the final night of the ’60s. The band had only been rehearsing for a couple weeks before the show and the performance was loose but sufficient to support Hendrix’s titanic guitar solos, which served as one-man symphonies of emotional force and range. Most of the material on Machine Gun has never been released (unless on sonically ragged bootlegs).
