"MCA released :Woodstock in 1994, and Live at Woodstock in 1999. :Woodstock was one of the crown jewels of the Alan Douglas regime, a masterpiece of compression…The booklets that came with the releases are the area on which I want to focus. The :Woodstock booklet features an essay by Michael Fairchild. The more current essay was written by a man named David Fricke, a name I have never seen in association with Jimi Hendrix's music. These two essays approach the Woodstock show in completely different ways.

"Before I begin to discuss the content of Fricke's essay, I want to mention a couple of typographical errors….So what if there's a word missing here or there? So what if David Fricke doesn't know what a serial comma is, right? So what if some of his longer paragraphs are actually one sentence? Why do these things matter? They matter because they are indicative of an overall attitude: an attitude of ignoring details within the essay…is Fricke saying that the Woodstock performance of Beginnings was never released in complete form until 1999?...the 1994 MCA release of the same concert includes the complete version of Beginnings.

"Grammar and punctuation are not two of Jane [Fujita] [producer of Live at Woodstock] areas of expertise. I do think it's funny to see everyone thanked with a picture of garbage as the visual backdrop for the text…The Live at Woodstock booklet is full of the same old tired euphemisms, the same old statements about the Star Spangled Banner, the same old insights that are about as insightful as the religiously-themed thank-you notes on the last page. Michael Fairchild's essay on Hendrix at Woodstock is much more interesting than Fricke's essay. Perhaps the most revealing difference between the two essays is the frequency with which the authors quote Hendrix himself. There are 18 Hendrix quotes in the Fairchild essay; Fricke quotes Hendrix in his essay only two times…Fairchild also quoted the event organizers, the people who worked at the scene, and other musicians who performed at Woodstock. Fricke's only lengthy quote comes from a man who was neither at Woodstock nor old enough to remember it. There are no bibliographical notes in the Live at Woodstock booklet, no real suggestions for further reading. Is David Fricke worth reading at all?...I am disturbed by this decision to sacrifice honesty and accuracy in the name of poorly-written prose."

[NOTE: Paul Allen and Jane Fujita replaced Michael Fairchild's "Woodstock Hurricane Story" with the "uninteresting" and "same old tired euphemisms" junk by Mr. Fricke that reviewer Alex Thayer notes. Allen and Fujita's "new" Hendrix company aims to dumb-down Jimi's legacy and promote their "releases" to a tiny crowd of non-thinking collectors and guitar greasers. Most of the products they put out are purchased by "billionaire" Paul Allen's organization to make it appear that a significant number of people are interested. Their main concern is to persuade media everywhere to follow their example and conceal all insights from Michael Fairchild. The booklet stories they have replaced Michael's insights with are totally insignificant, they are intentionally uninteresting and designed to be mere filler in the packaging. Their aim is to snuff out all connections that Jimi's story naturally has wth universal issues and world history/fate, and replace it with embarrassing superficiality in an attempt to hide Fairchild's insights from more intelligent, thinking readers.]

"In honor of the 25th anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, MCA Records announced this week the release of Jimi Hendrix :Woodstock, a musical celebration of Hendrix's famous head-lining appearance at the Aquarian Age's ultimate music festival. The release includes a 28-page booklet with an extensive behind-the-scenes Woodstock history written by Hendrix scholar Michael Fairchild, author of A Touch Of Hendrix. On the then-new tune, Izabella, Hendrix debuts the Univibe, a new electronic device that, in Fairchild's words, 'makes his guitar sound like jet engine or orgasms.' The band closes with an etheral A-minor masterpiece known as Villanova Junction Blues, 'Like a butterfly floating to a halt,' Fairchild concludes, 'this serene prayer returns the audience to their futures.' Hendrix's technique was so revolutionary that many of the things he did 25 years ago remain a mystery to this day."

"Jimi Hendrix is arguably the greatest electic guitarist who has ever lived. You won't get any argument from local Hendrix historian, Michael Fairchild. He's a paid consultant on MCA's new Jimi Hendrix :Woodstock CD and home video. And take a look at what Fairchild's doing at Woodstock this weekend: The Jimi Hendrix Exhibition is a multi-media tribute to the rock legend, and, since it was Michael Fairchild's idea, he'll accompany it this weekend. The Exhibition has been touring the country for about a year now and it's part of Woodstock '94's free 6-acre 'Mind Expansion Village.'"

Hendrix scholar Michael Fairchild takes a definitive look at the equipment of rock's greatest guitarist and comes up with a series of stunning revelations...Michael Fairchild is the writer and consultant for the official Hendrix production company, Are You Experienced? Ltd., and is the author of booklet notes for the Hendrix albums: Are You Experienced?, Axis: Bold As Love, Electric Ladyland, :Blues, Stages, Lifelines, Isle of Wight, Woodstock and more. He also programmed the song selection and wrote notes for Cornerstones, the highest-charting posthumous Hendrix album. Finally, Michael was the Contributing Editor and consultant for Hendrix: Cherokee Mist - The Lost Writings, and author of the book's Introduction.

In Part One of our epic look into the equipment of Jimi Hendrix, rock historian Michael Fairchild dissected the guitar legend's prodigious use of effects one pedal at a time, instantly creating an encyclopedic mass of knowledge on this previously obscure subject. In this final installment, the author now turns his attention to Hendrix's guitars and amps, an equally broad subject, but one that surely warrents another round of microscopic rock scholarship...Michael is also editor and consultant for the Jimi Hendrix Exhibition "On The Road Again" tour and the author of the 1988 historical novel A Touch of Hendrix, and the 1993 short novel Really A Strange Town.

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