ago. We have to wait for the Allman Brothers and their Taj Mahal arrangement of "Statesborough Blues" to get a little excitement. The second side consists largely of 20 minutes of Mountain fooling around with "Stormy Monday" and doing the expected heavyhanded job of it.

Record Two doesn't get much better, starting with a couple of dreadful Sly & the Family Stone numbers at the Isle of Wight. Both "Stand" and "You Can Make It if You Try" sound like they were recorded in a vat of sump oil or something. Never has this band sounded so terrible, and it seems a disgrace that these cuts were released. David Bromberg doing "Mr. Bojangles" is OK, but god, does he sound terrified. Side two presents us with 20 minutes of Ten Years After essaying "I Can't Keep From Cryin' Sometimes."

Record Three is the meat on this skeleton, also from the Isle of Wight. Leonard Cohen starts off with a terrific, rollicking "Tonight Will Be Fine" backed by a dynamite fiddle and chorus. The usually moribund Cohen sounds better than I've ever heard him, and this number is a treat. Next comes 15 minutes of Jimi Hendrix, a great set consisting of a tough, surging "Power To Love," a slow blues called "Midnight Lightning," and the usual clincher, "Foxy Lady." It's amazing how the tremendous musicianship of this one man makes most of the other material in this album sound so lame. As we tune in Kris Kristofferson on the second side, we find the crowd is bored and booing him. We also find that Kristofferson is quite drunk, and the versions of "Blame It on the Stones" and "The Pilgrim Chapter 33" are lugubrious and slurred.

Finally we come to Miles Davis, and it is, with the possible exception of the Hendrix set, the best music here, a vintage 1970 set with Miles even playing a lot more than usual, including bits and pieces from Bitches Brew and the Fillmore concerts that were recorded a few months later. There's lots of Chick Corea's electronic sputtering, weird percussion from Airto Moriera and Jack DeJohnette, Stefan Grossman on soprano and the proficient Dave Holland on bass. If one is into Miles Davis' unique scene, this 18-minute cut is almost worth the price of the whole pile. "Call it anythin'" Miles told the record people, and so that's the name of the cut. (RS 95)

STEPHEN DAVIS