August 3, 1998 marks 30 years since the Experience's show at Moody Coliseum in Dallas, Texas. This is the first recorded show of their fall 68 US tour (they'd played 3 days in Louisiana and the day before in San Antonio). The tape has a pretty good instrumental balance though the loud passages are a bit distorted and the vocals are very low- probably yet another woefully inadequate PA system, and in fact Jimi mentions the PA at a couple of points during the show. Here's a few highlights:

• After a long tuneup and a female voice's intro, Jimi does Traffic's 'Dear Mr. Fantasy'. His chordal intro is reminiscent of his versions of 'Like A Rolling Stone'. It's a fun jam and Jimi does some nice soloing but, truth be told, they don't really know the song very well. Jimi seems to be making up most of the words and they never do play the 'B' section of the song, sticking to the verse chords throughout. This is the only available example of Jimi playing this song, though there is apparently a version with Buddy Miles on a soundboard recording from Winterland 2/68 (who knows when we'll hear it, though...).

• Jimi goes straight from 'Mr. Fantasy' into 'Rock Me Baby', one of two known times that he revisits this version before settling on the 'Lover Man' rewrite for good. It's an interesting reading of it, too. He does it pretty much straight through, but then, when he would normally end it, he extends it into a jam. It starts off fast and bluesy, almost sounding Cream-like in spots, then Jimi switches to a muted-string percussive vamp and Mitch takes a short drum solo (this often meant Jimi had broken a string). During his solo, Mitch slows the feel to half time and after a strange sounding burst of noise (almost sounds like a walkie talkie- Jimi plugging in a different guitar?) Jimi re-enters. He plays a few 'Red House'-style slow blues licks, but then they switch to a 3/4 feel, much like the middle section of 'Tax Free' on War Heroes. Jimi then goes into a guitar-and-voice 'scat' section, improvising around the words 'rock me baby', finally returning to the uptempo intro then immediately to the familiar ending. After it, Jimi says he "...felt like jamming for a sec...". At a total of over 9 minutes in length, I think of this as Jimi's "going away party" for 'Rock Me Baby', though it does appear one more time in Maryland a couple of weeks later....

• A bit surprised to hear Jimi introduce 'I Don't Live Today' by saying he wanted to dedicate it to "..all the soldiers fighting in DC, Detriot and, oh yes, all the soldiers in Viet Nam...". This is of course familiar as his intro for 'Machine Gun' from 'Band of Gypsys' and later, but didn't know he was using it almost a year and a half earlier! Goes on to dedicate it to the American Indians as well. Gets a nasty squeal out of the guitar at a couple of points during this song, hinting at technical problems.

• 'Hey Joe' is once again without it's "dramatic" intro.

• Nice version of 'Red House' (rarely met one I didn't like..). He's using a Gibson, and sounds a little more like the Flying V than the Les Paul. This is a bit slower than usual, and Jimi really seems to linger on his string bending. This is a usual feature of his blues playing of course, but here he really seems to savor each bend, playing with a few micro-tonal variations on each before moving on to the next. He switches on the fuzz for the first post-verse solo, and it sounds to me like he's using an octave fuzz as heard on the studio Purple Haze and One Rainy Wish. Could possibly be the wah in the down position, but it's very distinctive so maybe he was carrying one of the Roger Mayer units at this time? Anyway, this solo leads to the 'slapped chordal' bit. Here it sounds like the guitar isn't ringing out quite the way he would like but he keeps at it, then goes into a short lightly picked solo with wah, then another quick go at the slapped bit before the final verse. Sometimes I wonder if I should call these posts 'RH+30' and just review the versions of 'Red House'!?

• 'Octave fuzz' sound also evident on 'Purple Haze'. He seems to try the free-form feedback intro but doesn't seem to be getting the response he wants so goes into PH quickly. During the ending solo he heard to exclaim "..not neccesarily stoned but beautiful.."!

• 'Wild Thing' cut short after first verse, Jimi saying they have to stop....

Interesting that although he was just finishing up 'Electric Ladyland' at this time, he wasn't adding any of that material to the live set for the most part (except for Voodoo Child (SR), an occasional Come On, and, much later, Watchtower. Burning of the Midnight Lamp was long gone from the live set). Not like today, where the expectation is to promote the new product!