Hendrix 50th Anniversary Electric Ladyland Box Release


Looking forward to release tomorrow. In my humble opinion one of the greatest albums ever. Imagine hearing this album when it was released, Compositionally and technically from another time and place, truly ground breaking. Thanks Jimi!!!!!!!
toneranger58

Showing 7 responses by bdp24

If that's the case @tzh21y, the least you can do is spell Jimi's name correctly. ;-)

I saw and heard him/them live twice, and while I know a few guys my age who still like his/their music, to me and many of my contemporaries it sounds pretty dated. Yes, I realize that is a minority opinion. The first time I saw them ('67), Jimi was on fire. The second time ('68), he seemed bored, just going through the motions. I'm sure had he lived he would have evolved into a less "showbizzy" player. But I doubt he would have ever come close to Danny Gatton, or any number of other guitarists most are unaware of.

As for groups, I have seen and heard dozens of better bands/groups than The Experience, but then that is of course purely a matter of taste.

I saw Hendrix on his first tour of the U.S. (at either The Fillmore or Carousel Ballroom, I don’t remember), in support of the debut album. He and his band were firing on all 8 cylinders, absolutely blazing. I then saw them at Winterland on their next tour, for the second album. He seemed bored, just going through the motions. Or was it my impending drastic change in musical taste?

Whichever, he soon changed course, dumping Mitch and Noel, hiring the rhythm section of Buddy Miles and Billy Cox. I never saw them, and completely lost interest in the type of music Jimi made. Most people didn’t ;-) . His music has held up quite well, still sounding contemporary. Definitely the most influential guitarist of his generation. Stylish dresser, too. His and his band's duds look like "costumes" to me, but that's what England seems to like; another difference between English and American bands, most especially, of course, those of the hippie persuasion.

Yes, onhwy61! The choice of drug is a really, really good one (as is the weather), one I hadn’t considered. Seems obvious now that I’ve heard it! Even on the West Coast, there were pockets of anti-hippie music and culture sentiments, a counter/counter-culture, if you will. I never owned a pair of bell bottoms or a tie-dyed T-shirt (thought they were corny), and switched to booze in ’69, partly ’cause I started playing in bars regularly that year (my first time was at age 15, with a bunch of hot rod greasers in a band playing lots of Chuck Berry), where the beer was free for the band. That about doubled your pay ;-) . One of the few San Francisco bands eschewing hippieness were The Flamin’ Groovies, whom The Dolls, MC5, etc., considered peers. Another was Moby Grape (the best SF band, imo), though you wouldn’t know it from their goofy name.

Speaking of The Dolls, when I got to NY I went looking in pawn shops for vintage instruments (I play/collect/and deal only vintage drums---1920’s through early 70’s). In one I found Jerry Nolan’s set of pink Ludwigs, for sale. Sad.

Is Neil Young considered a great guitarist? A unique one, that’s for sure. Hearing him trade licks with Stephen Stills in Buffalo Springfield songs has always amused me.

Yeah slaw, in interviews, the guys in The New York Dolls, MC5, Stooges, etc., said they didn’t share the Peace, Love, & Understanding sentiments of the West Coast bands. After living in New York for a year, I came to understand why. Life in San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland is very different from New York, Chicago, and Detroit. Not so brutal. They also said they didn’t understand the whole "back to nature" ambitions of hippies. I can’t picture the above bands camping ;-) . Notice also that none of them had beards, or wore bell bottom jeans.

The West Coast bands also viewed "traditional" talents---singing, musicianship---as more important than did The Dolls, MC5, Stooges, Ramones, etc. A person may like Lou Reed, but it won’t be for his abilities at carrying a tune or playing guitar. Style and attitude are more of a concern to the aforementioned bands, and the bands they influenced. Of course, that statement is an over-simplified explanation of a more complex matter.

omhwy61, The Velvet Underground are very interesting in terms of their West Coast vs. East Coast impact and influence. All the New York, Detroit, and other Midwest and East Coast bands that followed cite them as a major influence and inspiration. On the West Coast, however, they were considered a bad joke. The Midwest/New York bands, whose Rock music was of a more "hard" strain than that of the West Coast bands, viewed the San Francisco and Los Angeles bands as hippies, and that wasn't a compliment. I can't picture The VU playing at Woodstock ;-) .

I not only listened every day to Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold As Love, Fresh Cream and Disraeli Gears, and Surrealistic Pillow and After Bathing At Baxter’s (the latter playing as the ascent of my last "flight" was occurring ;-) at the time of their releases, but saw and heard Hendrix, Cream, and The Airplane each a couple of times in 1967 and ’68. I also saw Big Brother once, but didn’t own any of their albums (didn’t care for they or them).

Those bands and albums got all the attention (and sales), but there was a much richer vein of music being mined deep underground at the time, as I was to discover shortly thereafter (beginning in mid-1969).