Sometime last week, we had some kind of half-assed straw poll in the office about our best gigs of 2007. You can probably guess a lot of the stuff that came up: The White Stripes, The Hold Steady, Arctic Monkeys, Dylan, Wilco, Lou Reed’s "Berlin". Good gigs. I held off submitting any suggestions, though, not least because I suspected I’d see my favourite gig of the year on Friday night. I was right, too. Since maybe around the turn of the decade, the Boredoms have come over here from Japan every couple of years or so and performed shows that have left me euphoric, exhausted and frequently gasping in wonder at the far-out psychedelic music, gripping spectacle and relentless excitement of it all. For the most part, the music they’ve been making through this period hasn’t appeared on CD, and there’s even an argument that the Boredoms don’t actually exist. In Japan, it’s assumed that the band broke up around the turn of the decade; the current configuration, without critical guitarist Seiichi Yamamoto, is known as the Vooredoms (it's not a double o, it's an infinity symbol, but I can't find that in my blogging tools). Tonight, the stage is set up in the middle of the venue – Shoreditch Town Hall – and fire restrictions or something have meant that the show is sold out, but that there’s acres of space to move about in. The Boredoms – or whoever – now consist of three drummers, whose kits are arranged in a circle facing inwards, plus Eye, their leader, who handles ecstatic yelps and sundry electronics. The show begins with Eye producing zinging, sizzling sounds in a darkened hall, illuminated only by the glowing globes in his hands that somehow seem to be generated the noises. Then the drumming starts, slowly and methodically at first, then building up a fierce momentum that calls to mind a kind of super-evolved Krautrock. On it goes, shifting constantly, punctuated by effects generated by Eye’s mixer. Sometimes he howls magically, leaping around amidst the gear, a real force of nature driving this crushingly devotional music. This is all pretty familiar to those of us who’ve seen the shows before. Tonight, though, there’s a markedly heavier feel, with the tribal beats often straying closer to the hardcore of the band’s early years than the organic techno feel that usually predominates. Sometimes, uncharacteristically, they even pause, briefly. There’s also a new instrument, which I think may be called a guitar fence, positioned right in front of me. This consists of seven guitar necks bolted horizontally onto two stands. At key moments, Eye turns away from his mixer, grabs a couple of drumsticks and throws himself at the guitar wall, making a thunderous racket that’s quite extraordinary (and which left me predictably deaf for most of the weekend). A roadie is on hand to steady the stands, which are shaking violently as you might imagine, especially when Eye decides the drumsticks aren’t substantial enough and goes at the guitar necks with what I can only describe as a bloody great pole. This goes on for about an hour and a half, eventually mutating into a sort of blissed happy house (very reminiscent of Eye’s “Anarchy Way” single as The Lift Boys on Smalltown Supersound), with Yoshimi, one of the drummers, letting out her trademark ululations in a glorious call and response. Because they’re playing in the round, I can see most of the crowd grinning joyously as they cluster worshipfully around the stage, willing them on to higher and higher transcendental peaks. It’s astonishing music, and I can’t easily compare the experience to much else I’ve felt in 20-odd years of going to see bands. Anyone else share the magic with me?

Jimi Hendrix: Not Necessarily Stoned. . .But Beautiful A few of us from the office went last night to the launch of the Jimi Hendrix Live At Monterey DVD and CD at the Hippodrome in Leicester Square, a swanky former nightclub now used for corporate events. I was last there for a party that followed IPC’s annual editorial awards, an event made especially memorable by a spectacular fall down a particularly steep flight of stairs, after which things become very vague, my memory of subsequent events – getting home, things like that – almost wholly non-existent. No such dramas tonight, I am relieved to report, and surprisingly clear recollections of the entire evening – which may have something to do with the fact that by the time we got there, the organisers had run out of the VIP passes we’d been promised would get us free drinks at the bar and we were pretty cleaned out after a single round at the prices being charged. I was greatly amused when the evening began with the appearance on stage of my old friend, Keith Altham, the legendary former NME reporter and later PR for, among others, The Who, the Stones and The Police. Back in the day, Keith was probably the hippest rock writer on the scene and is still dining out handsomely on his adventures back then, which were legion and usually hilarious. Keith, you may remember, wrote up the account of Jimi at Monterey we ran a few issues back – and tonight’s someone’s had the bright idea of asking him to repeat the story, now inflated from anecdotal length to a full-blown epic, only slightly shorter than something Homer might have put his name to. Keith’s got it all typed up, and proceeds to read from it for what seems like the next 40 minutes, quietly enough for it to become somewhat difficult to hear what he’s saying. I’m laughing, because I’ve read the original copy and the jokes are funny enough for me to remember them and know when they’re coming. Others, more restless, quickly start to wonder how long this is going to go on for and whether dynamite may have to be used sooner or later to remove the affable Altham from sight, so the evening’s principal entertainment may commence. And it does eventually, I’m relieved to say, with the showing of American Landing. This is a new documentary included as one of the bonus features on the Monterey DVD, which indeed ends with spectacular footage of Jimi and The Experience blowing minds at the festival. It’s extraordinary stuff, and 40 years on remains jaw-droppingly amazing, people moved to clap and cheer and give up the occasional whoop as if they were watching an actual gig. Which we soon are – the night’s second Big Marketing Idea, as announced in the official press release and elsewhere, has been to invite drummer Mitch Mitchell, the only surviving member of The Experience and Billy Cox, bassist with Band Of Gipsies, to play with grizzled guitar stalwart Gary Moore, who I now recall exchanging blows with at a record company reception when he tried to break up a brawl I was having with Phil Lynott. Anyway, the brawny Moore duly takes station, squeezed by no doubt expert hands into a rather too-tight black shirt, whose buttons even before he’s started throwing grimly predictable guitar hero shapes are under some considerable strain, threatening from the off to pop, probably blinding someone in the process. There’s no sign at this point of Mitch and Billy, and there’s a rumour going around that Mitch, always apparently a handful, has this afternoon thrown a fearful strop, has locked himself in his hotel room and cancelled all the interviews lined-up for him, including a chat with Uncut. I’m not sure anyone actually introduces Gary’s rhythm section, but all three of them are on a hiding to fucking nothing, of course – we’ve just seen 30 minutes or more of absolute transcendent genius at work and now this bunch of brickies are playing some of the same songs and they are bound to suffer by comparison. In fact, it’s like swapping a Ferrari for a lawn mower. They have a lot of fans here, though, several of whom are playing air guitars with some gusto, transported by the burly Moore’s rough house treatment of Hendrix’ music which was surely intended to be played with a lot more psychedelic sensuality than Moore’s heavy-handedness is capable of. I don’t know how long the trio holds the stage for, but I’ve got a beard when they finally quit and I’m already getting my coat on when Keith Altham reappears to announce Billy and a rather bemused Mitch, who has the somewhat distracted air of someone still trying to recover his senses after going through things he couldn’t believe were happening to him at the time. He sits down on the drum stool and disappears from sight. Billy Cox, a congenial old duffer in a stylish Fedora, then takes a vocal lead on “Red House”, the long blues from Are You Experienced, which they follow with “Stone Free” and a version of “Voodoo Chile” they still haven’t finished by the time I get home.

I've been preparing myself today for tonight's Boredoms show at Shoreditch Town Hall by subjecting the office to a 105 minute continuous bootleg of their show with 77 drummers in New York from the summer. But it also seems like Japanese rock is much on my mind right now, since I've finally got round to reading Julian Cope's "Japrocksampler". Cope's career is in a very strange place right now, so that he can release comparatively accessible albums like "You Gotta Problem With Me" to almost no attention whatsoever, yet write esoteric tomes like "Japrocksampler" and find them a biggish deal in the publishing world (my copy still has the "£3 off Foyles" sticker on the cover, which for some reason amuses me no end). I must admit, "Japrocksampler" deals predominantly with bands I've heard of, but never heard. This morning on the bus, Cope's writing became so compelling that it occurred to me that I just had to hear what these bands actually sounded like. His subject was a particularly extreme outfit called Les Rallizes Denudes, whose mind-boggling story involves a bassist who hijacked an airplane, a leader who retreated to a remote cave, and absolutely no proper records whatsoever. Cope's writing is a bit more academic and formal than in "Krautrocksampler", but there are moments when his gonzoid brilliance crashes through. This bit made me laugh, as he tries to explain the complex web of live bootlegs which make up the crypto-available catalogue of Les Rallizes. "If all this sounds a little cretinous," he notes, "then you'd better turn your attention to another part of this book and come back when you're feeling less tense." Anyway, by coincidence, someone sent me a great link today to the You Are Hear podcast, which presents an hour of the music that Cope writes so eloquently about. It's a relief to discover that this stuff is as great as Cope makes it sound, not least Les Rallizes Denudes, whose incredibly ravenous feedback jam constantly threatens to collapse in on itself, but is somehow anchored by a devious, almost funky bassline buried beneath the spits and flares. Office favourite today, though, is a cut from "Satori" by the Flower Travellin' Band, which is a kind of highly formalised gunk-metal that comes on like a ritualised Black Sabbath. I'm going to investigate this further. In the meantime, see you at the drum circle tonight.