Axis: Bold As Love

[LadyHitchhiker]

Let's discuss Jimi Hendrix, the greatest guitarist of all time......

He needs his own thread..

[obscurejude]

This is what I posted when I had Jimi as an avatar a few weeks ago:

Why Jimi?

I've been going through some things lately and well, life has been particularly difficult. Existential despair is where I'm at right now- the inability to make sense of life once you're aware of its immense fragmentation- what Nietzsche refers to as "the fall of man's awakened conscience." A lot of you know how difficult it is to navigate the big questions if you also have a big heart (which I am damned with). Regardless of all this fragmentation in my soul, the guitar always feels the same way when I put it in my hands. That's what Electric Ladyland is about- existing within the muse, and beyond your intellect. When you exist within those notes, you exist beyond the tensions inherent in the human condition. You are free, if only for a few moments.

[obscurejude]

It's amazing everything he accomplished and all the classic music he was responsible for was all done within essentially a 3 year span. 3 perfect albums with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Band of Gypsys album, a legendary live performance at Woodstock and the classic songs from his final unfinished album. Amazing.

I can never get over how current all of it sounds. I never get the feeling that I'm listening to music written in the 60's, and I listen to a lot of Hendrix. What about some favorites?

I'm a big fan of:

Bold as Love
Little Wing
Castles Made of Sand

Voodoo Chile Blues
Voodoo Chile
Voodoo Chile (slight return)
Red House (especially the blues version)

Wind Cries Mary
Hey Joe
All Along the Watchtower- no matter where I'm at, I must pause and experience the solo with my eyes closed. Its the reason I got a wah wah pedal.

[alinda]

Need I say more?
http://pixdaus.com/pics/zpaTEzeF7JdiYMvSZi.jpg

[LadyHitchhiker]

Hottest man to ever walk the planet...

Don't tell my husband I said that... LOL...

[alinda]

I can relate to that, when I was in jr high, I dressed like Jimi, all the time
I used to emulate most everthing I heard about him...pathitic, but true.
http://eer-music.com/EER_MUSIC_REVIEWS_03/JIMI_HENDRIX2.jpg

[LadyHitchhiker]

I had him shelacked all over my walls in my bedroom... I dressed like him, I sang his songs; I had a little cabinet in my bookshelf set up with a shrine to him...

[alinda]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/graphics/2008/01/27/sv_jimihendrix.jpg

[alinda]

http://www.jackfeenyreviews.com/jhpic.jpg

[obscurejude]

What a great thread. I'm 99% sure that I'm getting something on my right arm dedicated to Jimi. I just haven't quite made up my mind, although I have a few ideas.

[alinda]

I loved all of it....often immitated, never duplicated!

[LadyHitchhiker]

I loved it all but
Astroman was one of my understated favorites

[jayson]

Some of my faves:

Remember (I hate that so few people I know have heard this one)


Glad that one not only made your list, but sits at the top of it. It is definitely one of my favs as well, and I agree, is one of his more under-appreciated songs. One of the things that always comes up when my friends and I talk about Jimi [and that's a lot] is how under-rated he is as a songwriter. Whenever the subject of Jimi comes up [on tv, in documentaries, in general] it almost always revolves around how great a guitar player he was. Of course, it goes without saying that he is the best there's ever been [and likely the best there ever will be] but there is almost no discussion of what a great songwriter he was. They are completely different and almost unrelated skills, yet few ever give Jimi credit for the songwriting.

My biggest wish musically has always been that Jimi had lived even for just another year or two past 1970. His friendship with Miles Davis was just beginning to blossom and the two of them were in the early stages of playing together. I'd have love to have heard that realized. I am lucky enough to have a copy of the sessions Jimi did with modal-jazz organist Larry Young [who played with Miles] at the Record Plant in 1969. This more than anything else shows the direction Jimi was headed in the last period of his life. It is unlike any other Jimi you've heard and some of the coolest most exploratory playing of his career [yes, I know that is saying a lot]. Think "Machine Gun" only even more experimental and free. To my ears it sounds much more influenced by guys like Coltrane than by any other guitar player. Miles got the most out of some of the greatest guitar players in the world [John McLaughlin, Sonny Sharrock, John Scofield, Mike Stern]. What he could have gotten out of Jimi remains, for me, the biggest unrealized mystery in all of music.

Thanks for starting this thread Liz. I could discuss Jimi for hours without getting tired of it.

[obscurejude]

I agree with Jimi being underrated as a songwriter. I think that's why Bold as Love is probably his least known album. The chord shapes, melodies, harmonies in the songs, to quote John Mayer, "are as colorful as the album design." I just got this album about a month ago and I've already worn it out.

[Darkthoughts]

Manic Depression is one of my all time favourite songs :cool:

[Jimmy]

I so thought this thread was about me. :(

(Hendrix is a god to me, though.)

[alinda]

Hey Jimmy ...you are a god to me:D

[LadyHitchhiker]

Here's an article about Jimi (http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/20947527/page/3):

[LadyHitchhiker]

Thanks for starting this thread Liz. I could discuss Jimi for hours without getting tired of it.

This is exactly why I started it because I could talk about him for hours... :D

[LadyHitchhiker]

And again here:

"12 "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)"
The Jimi Hendrix Experience (1968)

This is Hendrix's magnum opus: one magisterial explosion after another, storming through a catalog of molten blues. Hendrix improvised the wah-wah riff while a TV crew filmed his band. "We weren't thinking of what we were playing," he said."

AND

"49 "Machine Gun"
Jimi Hendrix (1970)

Perhaps the greatest live document of Hendrix in full flight, this anti-war blues is little more than a skeletal march, but Hendrix fills the spaces with simulated gunfire, moaning notes and kamikaze dives. Dedicated to "soldiers that are fighting in Chicago and Milwaukee and New York," as well as Vietnam, it's the sound of a nation at war with itself."

[alinda]

Wah wah wah waaaaah , Wah wah wa waaaaah!

[LadyHitchhiker]

:lol:

[alinda]

www.jimihendrix.com

http://www.jimihendrix.com/images/home/splash_axis.jpg

[LadyHitchhiker]

I told my dad before he died that if Jimi hadn't passed on, and he was still kicking I would be one of his groupies. My dad's eyes got really big... :lol:

[jayson]

"Machine Gun" is definitely a great example of Jimi at the height of his powers. As a guitar player myself I am always amazed at the sounds he was able to coax out of that guitar in 1969/70. A lot of those sounds are a bit easier to make now, but a great deal of that is due to advancements in effects technology many of which revolve around trying to get Jimi's sound. To say he was ahead of his time is a massive understatement. He was an extraordinary innovator.

I actually have the audio from all four New Year's sets that Band of Gypsys did in 1969-70 at the Fillmore. The Band of Gypsys album was culled from highlights of these four shows. Listening to all four of them exemplifies how much experimentation Jimi was doing with "Machine Gun." There are similarities between the versions obviously, but they are also very different from one another.

[alinda]

One of the BIGGEST disagreements (heck, it was a major battle) that
occured when I was a teen was about Jimi. You see my bedroom ceiling was such that it slopped over my bed (it was in a remodeled attic), any way I had this poster hanging right over my bed, I was very much in love with Jimi at the time....and my step father who rarely came to my room happens by and being a racist (EEEEEEEE) he flipped out using way foul language, and tore it from the ceiling. needless to say I stormed out of the room, the house, and eventually the state and ran away.I hated him that day, and couldnt imagine my MOM's marriage to him as being anything at all, (she's responsible for most of my non racist ideals. )I eventually returned home sometime but it was never the same there for me. (thanks for listening)
and now back to our musical commentary on "the BEST guitarest EVER!!

[LadyHitchhiker]

My parents kind of frowned about my worshipping of him (even though they had listened to him) but they figured with him being dead that he probably couldn't get me in that much trouble. :rofl:

[obscurejude]

Thank you for sharing that Alinda. We forget how far we've come as a nation in that regard. The 60's wasn't that long ago and my generation has a habit of forgetting. We need to remember... Just a couple of weeks ago I was doing some reading on Jimi and there was a lot of controversy surrounding his skin color, and the fact that he dated white women more often than not. Imagine the pre baby boomer generation seeing a black man who was also anit-war in the limelight. I think that was the major reason that Jimi succeeded in the U.K. before America. They were hungry for black musicians who had a background in blues (Rolling Stones, Cream, etc...), and America really wasn't.

[alinda]

Yeah, untill we heard he was eating acid.....then it was ooooh wooow mannn, he's coooool.
http://ammaryasir.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/haight-hippie.jpg

[LadyHitchhiker]

My mom told me he used to wear acid in his headband.. and shoot it up into his temples... I don't know if that's true or not.

[alinda]

Speaking for myself, any and as much as possible was the most popular choices..:lol:

[jayson]

Thank you for sharing that Alinda. We forget how far we've come as a nation in that regard. The 60's wasn't that long ago and my generation has a habit of forgetting. We need to remember... Just a couple of weeks ago I was doing some reading on Jimi and there was a lot of controversy surrounding his skin color, and the fact that he dated white women more often than not. Imagine the pre baby boomer generation seeing a black man who was also anit-war in the limelight. I think that was the major reason that Jimi succeeded in the U.K. before America. They were hungry for black musicians who had a background in blues (Rolling Stones, Cream, etc...), and America really wasn't.

You bring up a VERY interesting point Ryan [as you usually do]. I think a lot of this is reflected in how little interest American radio had in Jimi's work with Band of Gypsys. Here you have a black guitar player whose popular and known music was played almost exclusively with white English musicians now making music with two other black musicians, both of whom are firmly rooted in R&B and funk music.

Band of Gypsys brought out a whole other side of Jimi's playing, harkening back to his days on the so-called "Chitlin' Circuit" prior to his fame. No longer rooted in the odd time signatures of his Experience records, Band of Gypsys was Jimi's exploration of what he called "Earth Music" which was really his developments in the genre of Funk [real Funk, music that was "on the one"]. Buddy Miles was the quintessential funk drummer, pounding out the steady backbeat like a jackhammer. As for bassist Billy Cox, no offense to Noel Redding, but Cox was a much more suitable bass player for Jimi. The two of them played together when they were in the Army in the early sixties and had a shared appreciation of American R&B music. Cox and Hendrix weaved lines in an out of one another's playing like they were born to play together.

Despite the beauty of this music, it was not getting any airplay in America. White radio stations wouldn't play it because it was too "black." Black radio stations wouldn't play it because the program directors thought of Jimi as an artist geared towards white listeners. To me it remains some of Jimi's most compelling music. There is a DVD called "Hendrix: Band of Gypsys" that highlights this period of his playing that I highly recommend to everyone that loves Jimi. It puts the whole Band of Gypsys period in its proper perspective.

[Brice]

I don't know...see, I think this is sorta' urban myth. If he could take acid and not trip hard through the entire show he wasn't getting very good acid....and somehow I suspect Jimi had connections at least as good as the average hippie.

[alinda]

he could have looked out & saw me, and said " hey baby, got any good acid?"
I would have given him all he needed!!

[Jimmy]

Hey Jimmy ...you are a god to me:D

Aw, I'm not even close to being as good as Mr. Hendrix. Thanks though.

[alinda]

YO! Do you take good care of my NUTS? Of course you do so adoration stands thank you very much ! :couple:

[Jimmy]

YO! Do you take good care of my NUTS? Of course you do so adoration stands thank you very much ! :couple:

No reason to thank me, she takes care of me too. :couple:

[LadyHitchhiker]

he could have looked out & saw me, and said " hey baby, got any good acid?"
I would have given him all he needed!!

:rofl: I had no idea, Linda... :lol: