After monsoon-like rain temporarily stopped ’s final day, Country Joe’s had primed the crowd nicely when commenced their 60-minute set at 8.15pm. Although is routinely cited as the Woodstock movie’s defining moment, at the time it was Ten Years After’s frenetic rampage through , which precipitated the London blues band’s US breakthrough.
Previously, only buyers of 2009’s 38-CD mega-box would have possessed the five tracks Ten Years After played before the balls-out closer that started life on 1968’s UK-conquering live album . Restored and remixed for vinyl (with a tie-dye pressed Indie store exclusive), it’s interesting to hear the band ignoring recently released third album , mainly with epic workouts around 1967’s debut album. Announced by singer/guitarist as “a bit of old blues to warm us up”, ’s follows the template of using its stop-start riff as an improvisatory gateway.
Over seven minutes, Lee boils up into the ‘fastest guitarist in the west’ that made the band’s name but would dog him into feeling like a one-trick rock god. Previewing upcoming fourth album , a defiantly lascivious (and somewhat unwoke) version of Sonny Boy Williamson’s endures two crowd-testing false starts before becoming another seven-minute axe-twiddling showcase. shows how times have changed, with an eight-minute drum solo before 18 minutes of ’s arrangement of Blind Willie Johnson’s displays jazz leanings before Lee ascends into fretboard-melting overdrive.
On .