It is the 40th Anniversary of Jimi Hendrix’s death and with an album of unreleased material on the horizon and all I might as well shuffle me some Jimi and try and keep the review to no more than a sentence…
Purple Haze – What is most interesting is how much of a pop song this rock standard is.
Castles Made Of Sand – Killer solo, less than 30 seconds, but it anchors the entire song.
Manic Depression – Is it blues or rock? The riff seems to hanging downwards—
Burning Of The Midnight Lamp – Here Hendrix seems to be hangin hard on a lick which opens the song before reversing itself and working its way into a bridge.
Day Tripper – From the BBC Sessions and it is dead easy to see why Hendrix loves Lennon’s riffarama and what is really odd is it sounds as though Hendrix coulda written it himself.
Crosstown Traffic – Two and a half minutes and could be Jimi’s greatest song “So hard to get through to you”? What a brillian metaphor.
Woodstock Improvisation – Single handedly justifies three days of mud, rain and bad acid trips.
Message Of Love – The reason why it seems like an evolution into jazz is purely because of the drumming.
Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band – The reason why Hendrix was cool enough to play the hits of the day is not simply because he used to be in Little Richards band and knows from hits but because he knew he could transform anything he touched till it became his.
Come On (Let The Good Times Roll) – The reason why Hendrix is such a rock star is because when he played the blues, he still played rock.