Jimi's spirit in Poland

On May 1st 2006 around 11.00 it was rainy and grey in the city of Wroclaw in Poland. What should become a great event looked rather depressing in the beginning. My expectations were almost zero: There were only a few kids and the rain kept falling. After the sound checks around 12.30 Leszek started playing with his band and a few guest soloists. A polish lady sang "Foxy Lady" and "Little Wing" and they started cooking. The audience slowly increased and around 14.40 it was my turn to play. I knew that within the calender of the Maya this day's hidden power was "White Mirror" so I had decided to play a version of Jimi's "Room full of mirrors" to ask the sky and Jimi to stop the rain. The audience stood pretty far away from my sight, so I had no idea if my message came across. I went right into the slow version of "Voodoo Child" and in the middle of the song all the umbrellas were gone ! It felt like a miracle (view 5 more fotos from my concert).

Now it was time to rehearse the songs for the attempt of a guinnessbook record.The empty space in front of the stage filled up completly with loads of guitar players within a minute. Leszek started tuning up and led them through the chords of "Hey Joe". Jimi's spirit was doing its magic. What seemed to be a chaotic mass of people turned into a musical wave of rare beauty. We all suddenly moved into a sea of music and sound.

At around 16.00 there was the big moment: 1581 players started with "Hey Joe" and a few minutes before that the sun had come out ! It felt like it was Jimi blessing these celebrating people in a true spirit of love of life.

Hiram Bullock arrived just in time to join us, here you can see him with Leszek Cichonski who directed the whole festival.

On stage the music was a huge wall of sound. Leszek asked us to stop in the middle of the song and the crowd consisting of a great amount of acoustic players took over. That was a very beautiful moment. There was a soft humming feeling all over the place. The electric guitars on stage joined and after the final chord the people were swaying with their instruments all over the place in extasy.

After explaining the chord changes to the players we continued with Jimis version of "Little Wing","Wild Thing" and "Red House" (for unknown reasons in the key of C) and Leszek invited the people to join into his tribute song "Thanks Jimi" as well . To make sure a maximum attempt was made we did another "Hey Joe" and there was a lot of cheering !

Member tickets had been counted in the meantime and the final result was announced: 1581 players, a new world record of biggest guitar orchestra ! The old guinness record held by guitar producer Epiphone (1555 players) had been smashed. The crown was in exstasy and one could feel a big smile of Jimi up in the skies.

Around 18.00 lots of the people started to leave. There were a few short concerts played by local celebrities and Hirams band until 21.00 I guess.

I went to my hotel, had some dinner and went to the "Weekendclub" to join a jam session of high quality polish guitar players. I enjoyed jams with different musicians on "Machine Gun", "Who Knows" and "Red House" and bluesy stuff. Around 2.00 I was back in my cold hotel room . I fell asleep with Jimi all around me on a bed with a ridiculous matress. HOME