BCB 100 - Jimi Hendrix

[Snarfyguy]

I fucking hate Band of Gypsies with every fibre of my being.
It is lazy, noisy, tuneless, ego-wank noodling.

And you are absolutely right.

Well, really!

*walks over to armchair furthest away from everybody, sits huffing and puffing, sips tea*

I have to weigh in with those guys. Compared to Mitch Mitchell, Buddy Miles just cannot play the drums. That album's a mess.

Good call on Tax Free from the Winterland album, Angshu. That's a really spectacular piece.

[Bungo the Mungo]

I fucking hate Band of Gypsies with every fibre of my being.
It is lazy, noisy, tuneless, ego-wank noodling.

And you are absolutely right.

Well, really!

*walks over to armchair furthest away from everybody, sits huffing and puffing, sips tea*

I have to weigh in with those guys. Compared to Mitch Mitchell, Buddy Miles just cannot play the drums. That album's a mess.

Weird. I read very positive reviews on some websites, friends recommend it, I listen and enjoy it (it's no classic, of course, but groovy and moody and dark and all) and come here, honestly expecting agreement.

Hm.

[Quaco]

I fucking hate Band of Gypsies with every fibre of my being.
It is lazy, noisy, tuneless, ego-wank noodling.

And you are absolutely right.

Well, really!

*walks over to armchair furthest away from everybody, sits huffing and puffing, sips tea*

I have to weigh in with those guys. Compared to Mitch Mitchell, Buddy Miles just cannot play the drums. That album's a mess.

Weird. I read very positive reviews on some websites, friends recommend it, I listen and enjoy it (it's no classic, of course, but groovy and moody and dark and all) and come here, honestly expecting agreement.

Hm.

Enjoy the fact that you like it. It's our loss for not liking it, even if we find apparently objective arguments for disliking it.

[Guy E]

While it's true that the Band Of Gypsies album is a mess, there seems to be a perception that he was artistically finished. But his final recorded album, First Rays Of A New Rising Sun, shows that he was changing direction to a funkier, harder-edged sound. No sloppy blues jams here, just real strong songs like "Angel", "Isabella", "Freedom", "Ezy Rider", "Room Full Of Mirrors", "Dolly Dagger", and "Earth Blues". Originally, this projected double album was torn apart after Hendix's death, and released posthuminously as Cry Of Love while other cuts appeared on War Heroes and the Rainbow Bridge soundtrack. But now that the double album has been assembled by Eddie Kramer in its intended form, it's one of my favorite Hendrix LPs.

I agree that his final recordings had a strength of vision equal to the Experience. But the First Rays of the New Rising Sun CD isn't exactly what Jimi had planned. This is the sequence he'd written down for the first three sides:

Dolly Dagger
Night Bird Flying
Room Full of Mirrors
Belly Button Window
Freedom

Ezy Ryder
Astro Man
Drifting
Straight Ahead

Drifter's Escape
Beginnings
Come Down Hard on Me
Cherokee Mist
Angel

I've given some thought to what Side Four might have been, but take your pick from the following (and then some):

Midnight Lightning, Earth Blues, Pali Gap, Hey Baby (New Rising Sun), Lover Man, Bleeding Heart, Bleeding Heart (Blues In C Sharp), Hear My Train a Comin', Look Over Yonder, Izabella, Stepping Stone, In From the Storm, Valleys of Neptune.

*****

Favorite album: First Rays of the New Rising Sun
Favorite song: 1983... (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)

[kath]

album: axis: bold as love
song: little wing

of course, little wing is in my top-five-classic-rock-songs-ever-written category.

[Nicky Loves Fuzz]

ALBUM: Are You Experienced

SONG: House Burning Down

[Count Machuki]

I take it we're supposed to be excited about this, an entire album worth of unreleased stuff, mostly recorded in the final days of the original Experience, post-Electric Ladyland. And I suppose some of it's good, and it's led off by a fantastic version of "Stone Free" that probably eclipses any out there, but the new songs are a bit undercooked, and- well, not to get all Hoffmanesque about it, but a bit of remixing has gone into it, and Mitchell's drums have been so compressed in spots as to...well, not sound very much like Mitchell. Why we needed this version of "Fire" is definitely beyond me- the drumming sounds very stiff and uninspired compared to...well, you know...

So now that the family has taken over, the bootleggers have been stumped. But is the family doing any better of a job? We're still getting endless new releases, still seeing unfinished works touted as "great lost performances." Let's face it- the guy had a four-year career, basically. And in that career he released pretty much everything he cared to. Am I being unfair here, or is this the unmistakable sound of a barrell being scraped?

It really is a fabulous "Stone Free" though, mind you.

Absolutely spot on in fact one of the reviews I read said that this album is ok and the material on it would make for a great boxed set of outtakes but to be trumpeted as some sort of lost legendary recording is misleading. I have loads and loads of great outtake material and I love what I have but if you have Are You Experienced, Axis Bold As Love, Electric Ladyland, Band of Gypsys and Cry of Love then you really do have the best of Jimi Hendrix.
Not counting the live stuff and there has been some great official stuff come out such as Monterey, Live At The Fillmore. Woodstock and the Isle Of Wight not to mention the numerous bootlegs this album is no better or no worse that the likes of Midnight Lightning, Loose Ends, Crash Landing or Voodoo Soup. As interetsing as the Beatles Anthology releases but nothing that you wouldn't expedct to hear fom recordings of Jim Hendrix in the studio going through various takes of already released material.

[pcqgod]

album: Axis: Bold as Love
song: Burning of the midnight lamp