Music, Money, Madness... Jimi Hendrix in Maui

With hingisght, a lot of the counter-culture appears stupid and self-regarding, something that it's hard to believe its protagonists ever took seriously. Yet many still revere the music that accompanied it, and at that time, these two worlds had a very definite overlap. That Jimi Hendrix, rock god, starred in a film about young people attaining altered states of consciousness (partly, thought not exclusively, while listening to Jimi Hendrix) is maybe not so surprising, and potentially very interesting. But actually Hendrix played as part of a business deal. He played pretty good, as was his wont, but the maddest dreams of those whose project the film really was were not his. You watch this documentary, made with the assistance of the Hendrix family, and Jimi is cool, and some of those around him are crazy (although mostly we see old people talking to camera about the craziness of their youth); but those two worlds are more separate than one might have expected. A few months later, Hendrix was dead, and the film was released (after much cutting) to a decidedly mixed reception. Still, it must have been something to be there at the time.