Sunset On Mars

Just wow.

The first Jimi Hendrix Experience album is one of the few 60s albums that I still sometimes pull out and listen to from start to finish. As well as the heavy blues and riff rock Hendrix was able to do so much more, out there and otherworldly songs with backwards sounding guitar and drones and a haze that could only really have come from somewhere else entirely.

Love Or Confusion

Eventually

Every six months or so I feel the need for some Jimi Hendrix. People are making a lot out of various records from 1967 being fifty years old this year and some of them sound fifty years old in a way, but Jimi’s stuff doesn’t. In 1967 The Jimi Hendrix experience released two albums, the debut Are You Experienced and then a follow up Axis: Bold As Love. Axis is a step on from the burning hot debut, an exploration of sound and the studio, of Jimi’s development as a writer and of psychedelia. Many of the songs on Axis have a confidence to unfold more slowly, to unwind a little. Castles Made Of Sand has long been a favourite of mine- a backwards guitar part, a lazy guitar riff, a laid back groove and Jimi’s vocals about impermanence and all things being temporary.

‘And so castles made of sand
Fall to the sea
Eventually’

Castles Made Of Sand

Move Over Rover

As a bonus extra to the earlier Hendrix post here’s Billy Childish and The Buff Medways ripping through Fire (off Are You Experienced?). Garage style, no overdubs.

Fire

What a great hat. I believe it’s known as a Gorblimey hat. Want one. Where did you get that hat Mr Childish?

I Stand Up Next To A Mountain

I heard this on the telly the other day and was struck by it’s brilliance. Then I realised how long it was since I listened to any Jimi Hendrix other than inadvertently. I had a big Hendrix phase about, ooh, twenty three years ago. He was all the rage among the 60s heads in the late 80s, although now I suspect now he’s just another dead rock star. I never ventured far beyond the records done by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and then mainly just the first two albums (Are You Experienced? and Axis: Bold as Love and a compilation of singles and B-sides called Smash Hits) and to be fair Electric Lady land was never my favourite but this song is a stunner. I think it’s because of the wah-wah.

Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)