Yeah, yeah

I'm a total slacker and will not have the Soc D review up today as I haven't even started on it.  This week is kind of busy, so may not have it up by Thursday.  Will try not to make a habit of this.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced

Every so often I actually forget just how much I love Hendrix. I don't listen to commercial radio any more, so there's no constant exposure to the regular classic rock staples that formed my musical tastes; it also doesn't help that commercial radio doesn't really play any of them any more. Because of this, whenever I get the urge to go and listen to The Experience, it's always a treat to get reacquainted with Jimi's brilliance.

Hendrix first made it big in the UK in 1966. Ex-Animals bassist Chas Chandler brought Hendrix over after seeing him perform in Greenwich Village, NYC, with the intent of managing and producing the guitarist as part of a new act. Teamed with drummer Mitch Mitchell and guitarist-turned bassist Noel Redding, the Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded and released their first single, "Hey Joe" in December. As the single hit the charts in January 1967, others followed and the band began cutting their debut album.

Are You Experienced US Cover

Released on May 12 of that magical year of 1967 among the bold new experimentation of established bands like the Beatles and the Beach Boys, and amidst the first steps of future giants like the Pink Floyd, Are You Experienced might easily have been lost in the psychedelic swirl of that year's competing new music. Rather, this sonic reinvention of blues-based rock, along with the band's memorable live performances, served to cement the group's--and more specifically Hendrix's--place in the pantheon of rock legends.

As we delve into the album, I'm afraid I must make a confession, first. I do not particularly like the first track off the US edition of this album, "Purple Haze." I know, shocking, right? Probably the single most well-known of Hendrix's songs and I'm not a fan of it, and I really don't know why. Musically and thematically it's not really any different from the rest of the album. Maybe it's the overexposure or the fact that it focuses a little too much on the guitar tricks and not what the Experience could do as a trio. Or maybe it's that goddamn mondegreen, which despite the fact that Hendrix used to use it in concert himself, stopped being funny circa 1975. Regardless, every time I hear it I just want to move on to the good stuff.

Which we immediately get on the following track. "Manic Depression" is a prime example of just how tight this outfit could be. Noel Redding's bass line anchors the song with Hendrix's guitar nearly indistinguishable from it at first, and Mitch Mitchell beating around it, both of them building up to more free-form playing as the song goes on. This is kind of the core method for the group; Redding, as a the time keeper for Hendrix's more experimental guitar and Mitchel''s free-form, almost jazz-based drumming. While this relationship eventually led to Redding's disillusionment and departure from the band, it really did work and work fantastically.

The other notable element of this song is Jimi's vocal tempo. He has a unique, soulful delivery rooted in his blues background that, while melodic, occasionally has a very odd delivery to it. Lyrics split in half into sung and spoken sections, some even as an after thought. His pacing is also reminiscent of Dylan's, breaks between words and syllables that you just don't get from anyone else. It's part of the Hendrix package, which borrows from many different sources and spins it all together into something unique.

We see the another major component of his delivery style in "Hey Joe," the aforementioned first single from the Experience, one of the album's slower, bluesier tracks. Featuring the "question and answer" format, Hendrix comes off conversational on the song, at times quite bemused. His sense of humor was well-known and often quite evident in his music.

But Hendrix also shows a deeply sensitive and often spiritual side in his lyrics. Despite the copious amounts of mood-altering drugs and alcohol he was known for consuming, I'm personally of the opinion that it was not necessarily a major component of creating the music itself. Already gifted with talent and imagination, Hendrix often cited his dreams rather than any drug experience for his inspiration. And often his lyrics are a quite sobering introspection. The slow, moody "May This Be Love" with its beautiful slow rolling drums from Mitchell, speaks of love giving personal strength. The existential "I Don't Live Today," contains what may be Hendrix's most eeirly prophetic lyric in "Will I live tomorrow? Well I just can't say," considering the fact he was dead at 27.

Probably the most beautiful song on the album follows these two. "The Wind Cries Mary," is 3:21 of pure emotional bliss. It's amazingly restrained compared to the rest of the album but it finds its strength in not being a wailing, feedback-laden heavy rock track. The lyrics are magnificent in their Dylan-esque imagery. I could almost expect them to have come straight off Highway 61 Revisited. Coupled with the equally magnificent "Little Wing" off Axis: Bold As Love, this is my favorite look into Jimi's more soulful side.

We punch it up again with Redding's bass thumping its way through the tongue-in-cheek "Fire," featuring more of Jimi's energetic solo guitar, before moving on to the jazz-influenced jam session of "3rd Stone From the Sun." Probably the most free-form song on the album, it's a precursor to some of the longer works on the Experience's final album Electric Ladyland. But as free-form as the song is, the band still operates as a unit, once more with Noel Redding's solid bass time-keeping giving Hendrix and Mitchel something to work around until the song's feedback-laden conclusion.

"Foxy Lady" is, much like "Purple Haze," one of the band's song's I'm not too enamored with. In this case I think it's more the start-stop chord work that Hendrix uses, as well as the over exposure of the song. It is notable, however, for its use of feedback in the beginning and toward the end of the song. It is a well-used, well-controlled feedback and not a straight-up ear-splitting screech, showing just what he could use a guitar for beyond its traditional sound.

Likewise, the final track on the US version is in itself a journey in sonic experimentation. Artists had used back masking, that is reverse tape effects, prior to this point but primarily for vocals and a few instrumentals (as on the Beatles Revolver) but not nearly to the extent as seen in "Are You Experienced?" The entire song, asking one to step beyond their comfort zone, alternates between forward and backward guitar and drums with Redding's bass anchor seemingly the only constant. It's distinctive and makes for one of the most unmistakable intros ever in music.

Later editions of the album, possible through the advent of the Compact Disc, include those tracks from the UK edition that were not present on the US pressing, usually in the form of bonus tracks. These include the rollicking "Stone Free," and the delta blues-based "Red House."

Rarely will you find such an Earth-shattering debut as Are You Experienced. Taking a little of what had been done before, Jimi and the Experience redefined what music was and could be. The band's influence was felt as early as the end of 1967, for instance, with the release of the Eric Clapton-Jack Bruce-Ginger Baker supergroup Cream's second album, Disraeli Gears. Helping to pioneer the power-trio format in rock, their initial work was more traditional British interpretation of American rhythm and blues. But after the release of Are You Experienced, Cream, whom Hendrix had jammed with in fall of '66, took a definitely more psychedelic and experimental bent. The Jimi Hendrix Experience had arrived, and nothing would ever be the same again.

Next time, we set the Way Back Machine for 1990, and SoCal punk outfit Social Distortion's self-titled major label debut.

Traffic - John Barleycorn Must Die

John Barleycorn Must Die represents a second coming for Traffic. Disbanded a few months after the second departure of guitarist Dave Mason in 1969, the group may not have come back together were it not for the collapse of the Steve Winwood-Eric Clapton supergroup, Blind Faith. Subsequently, Winwood laid down a few tracks for a prospective solo project, produced by the eventually legendary Guy Stevens and titled Mad Shadows. Winwood, wishing to work with more like-minded musicians, parted company with Steven and invited drummer Jim Capaldi and wind instrumentalist Chris Wood to join him in the studio. Thus was Traffic reborn.

The album resembles in many ways the tracks on the group's eponymous second album that were written without the involvement of Dave Mason, reflecting Winwood, Capaldi, and Wood's interest in mixing more traditional jazz with rock, rather than the bluesier and more psychedelic rock of Mason's direction. In fact, the album is quite remarkable due to an utter lack of guitar for the first three tracks. Propelled by the piano and Hammond organ of the multi-instrumentalist Winwood, John Barleycorn opens with the instrumental track "Glad." Immediately, each member of the group gets to establish themselves and their roles in the group clearly and in a most spirited manner.

There's a lot of overdubbing on John Barleycorn, a necessity considering Winwood's playing sometimes as many as three instruments on a track, plus providing vocals. His lyrics are serviceable but not particularly memorable, but Winwood's voice definitely is. Coming from the British R&B scene, which he joined at an early age as the vocalist for the Spencer Davis group, Winwood's voice is melodic and soulful, skillfully woven through the jazz-inspired noodlings of much of the album.

Despite the almost free-form jamming of the first three tracks of the album, it rarely loses focus. Winwood and Wood often play their melodies around each other, but it's Capaldi's steady, perky percussion that gives them an anchor. These are clearly three musicians who are comfortable working with each other and know what each is capable of; perhaps this is the reason why Winwood decided to turn his solo foray into a full-blown Traffic project.

Remember I said there's no guitar on the first three tracks of the album? Well, it finally returns at the midpoint of the album, but even here it's still nowhere near as prevalent as one might expect on what is ostensibly a rock album from 1970. On "Stranger to Himself," the only one of the Guy Stevens-produced songs on the original album, the guitar serves mostly as a counterpoint to Winwood's piano. It's a similar sound on the album closer, "Every Mother's Son," though it is stronger at points. The longer song's much more instrumentally complex, with the return of the Hammond. It dominates the middle of the album, with the guitar and piano blended seemlessly in the background. Oddly, Chris Wood is entirely absent from this track as his sax or flute is prominent on most of the rest of the album. Even so, it fits musically with most of John Barleycorn, save the preceding track.

"John Barleycorn" is as much of a departure from the rest of the album as the album itself is from the psychedelia-influenced days of Mr. Fantasy, the band's first album. It's a striking arrangement of a traditional English folk song. Often, because of it, John Barleycorn Must Die is categorized as a folk-rock album, something I take issue with because it's not a folk rock album. It's a jazz-fusion progressive rock album that just happens to feature a folk song. But it's such a prominent song in Traffic's category, and with good reason.

A personification of the barley crop, the song tells of how the titular John Barleycorn suffers indignity and death, yet in doing so provides both a necessary staple and luxury for medieval English life. A few versions cite the cruel treatment as revenge for being laid low by drink created from barley, but in the arrangement used by Traffic, it is John Barleycorn who has his revenge upon those who had tortured and killed him, as he "proved the strongest man at last."

I'll admit, I bought the album primarily for this song, as "John Barleycorn" has long been one of my favorite Traffic songs. As much as I love the musical complexity of the rest of the album, I can't get over how starkly different this track is in its minimalism. Probably the most complex thing on it is Winwood and Capaldi's harmony; the acoustic guitar is not overly complex, the only percussion is Capaldi's tambourine, and Winwood's otherwise omnipresent piano now fulfills the same counterpoint to the guitar that the it had been served by on other songs. Accentuating this is Wood's trilling flute. You can almost see the three of them sitting around a fire out in the English countryside performing this for the very farmers and millers about to subject John Barleycorn to his indignities. I hesitate to use the word "haunting," but it really is to a degree, almost performed as a funeral dirge. By comparison, the folk-rock outfit Fairport Convention does it as a much more upbeat drinking song, Jethro Tull does it well as, well, a Jethro Tull song. Traffic's version is certainly one of the better known.

My copy of the album is the 2001 US re-release that includes two additional tracks, "I Just Want You to Know" and "Sittin' Here Thinkin' of My Love," the only track from the Mad Shadows sessions to not be released on the original album. Both fit thematically and musically with the rest of the album. Unfortunately, the US re-release got shorted a few live tracks recorded in November of 1970 at the Filmore East.

And here we come to the end of another review. Join me next time as I stay in the days of crushed velvet jackets, frilly shirts, and bell-bottom trousers as I take a look at the earth-shattering debut of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced.