By Angelo Moore of Fishbone
There was a point in my life where I was listening to a ton of Jimi Hendrix and reading a lot of his lyrics. When I would get his albums, I would look at every picture, study every word and blast the music. Jimi Hendrix is a part of my mainframe when it comes to music initiation. It’s a big part of the music I make and I play even today. I have never played guitar, but I remember trying to play a lot of my saxophone solos based off Jimi Hendrix solos. I was constantly listening to his music when I was learning and practicing on my own. Here I am, a saxophone player, listening intently to a guitar and trying to emulate it.
Silverback management hooked us up with Danny Kapilian a little while back and it was Danny’s vision to have Fishbone do this Jimi Hendrix tribute at the legendary Apollo Theater last month. He thought we could really pull it off. He brought us out to New York about a week before the show. We rehearsed all the tunes and we did it. That’s it, we only rehearsed one week. Danny picked the songs he thought would match the themes he wanted with the different artists he wanted to feature.
I also got to MC. I got to introduce everyone, walk all around and shake everyone’s hand while I was singing. “Crosstown Traffic” and “Dolly Dagger” is what I sang on along with “Move Over and Let Me Dance,” by the Isley Brothers and Jimi Hendrix. Ernie Isley joined us as a special guest.
Thinking back to the performance now, I really didn’t reminisce back to what the music meant to me when I was on stage because I was doing it. I was truly in the moment. I made all those Jimi Hendrix songs my own. Hendrix didn’t have horn sections. We put them in the arrangements. Here we are in 2016, and there’s something new in Hendrix songs.
I’ve always wanted to play the Apollo. It’s a historic black theater for music and art. I felt like it was long overdue having Fishbone play the Apollo, but it turns out when we finally got to play there, we got to play celebrating one of our great heroes of Rock n’ Roll in Jimi Hendrix. It was magical.
In collaboration with Jeff Gorra — Artist Waves.
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