It happened in April 1971

On our way home from school my pal, Bruno Muff, gave me a Jimi Hendrix cassette which he insisted I should listen to. For my 14th birthday on September 8, 1970, my parents had given me a Philips cassette recorder, which since then had not been idle one single day. Back home I took the Musicassette out of my schoolbag - "The Cry Of Love" was written on it - and inserted it into my tape recorder. The very first beats of "Freedom" already blew me away.

I can't remember how many times I played that MC that evening, but of one thing I was dead sure: this Jimi Hendrix was out of this world. It was hard to believe that I had never heard of him before. On that day my life took a new direction: I caught the fan fever, I became a Jimi Hendrix fan.

The next morning at school Jimi was the number one topic, and I made it absolutely plain to Bruno that the two of us were in no way to miss the next time Hendrix played in Switzerland. He looked at me incredulously and explained to me that this would, sadly, not be possible, since Jimi had died six months earlier. I was shattered.

I knew that I had to lay my hands on anything to do with Jimi, and most of all: I had to get a guitar!

Back then, as a kid of fourteen, I would not have dared to dream that many years later I would play with my band More Experience at the Olympia in Paris, that the Hendrix sidekicks Noel Redding and Buddy Miles would tour with us as guests of the band or that one day I would become friends with Jimi's girlfriends Kathy Etchingham and Kirsten Nefer.

In the late seventies I started concentrating my collecting efforts on Jimi's two Zurich concerts and have since accumulated the probably most extensive archive on this event. The idea of writing a book about the Monsterkonzert, however, I gave up a long time ago. I would hardly finish it since I always kept on finding more and more information. This is why I decided to start a website dedicated to the Monsterkonzert - as a medium it is decidedly more flexible.

I am convinced that there is still a lot of material (pictures, movies, posters, tickets, tapes, etc.) waiting in basements and attics to be discovered, and I have made it my goal to find and preserve as much of it as possible.

To guarantee the continuity of my collection a partner was found in the Swiss National Sound Archives into which it was integrated in January 2005. In case you have anything to contribute, please contact me.

And now, enjoy your journey back to the year 1968.

Marcel Aeby / jimi.aeby@sunrise.ch

 in memory of Bruno Muff (1955 - 1999)

Bruno 1972

PS: The cassette Bruno gave me back then, belonged to his brother Markus, and of course, as good friends do, I gave it back to him the very next day.
44 YEARS LATER
A short telephone call, and Markus confirms that the cassette is still in his posession. At a meeting 14.11.2015, Markus donates THIS VERY CASSETTE, that completely changed my life, to me.
Thank you very much Markus !