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November 11, 2005
Music for running, part III
I've been listening to some old music. 1968 was in a way the apex of what Hendrix seems to have left in terms of studio work. And I don't think it's because he didn't get perhaps even better. Granted, Axis: Bold As Love includes music that still sounds good even after the hippies cut off all their hair, got married, eventually had grandchildren, and now watch that little stock ticker at the bottom of the CNN window. Even most of the tunes that didn't become classics, unlike the title song, If 6 Was 9, or Little Wing, tunes like Spanish Castle Magic, Castles Made of Sand, or One Rainy Wish come off as masterpieces of casual brilliance. But it sounds like this guy could walk in the room, tune the guitar, and more than half the time come up with something you'd still want to listen to again and again more than 35 years later. As though he didn't have to work at it at all.
Great for easy jogs and short outings like this morning.
So what's disappointing about Electric Ladyland must not really be Hendrix. I've concluded that by that time these guys were taking drugs long before finishing the job, mixing down to the master in a kind of purple haze that led away from tightly scoped content into a world of slack-jawed awe where even recording hiss sounds prophetic. Case in point: 62 seconds of mildly interesting tape noise called Moon, Turn The Tides... gently, gently away. Yes, he's a Voodoo Chile and a merman, but you wish you had a better recording than this one made on somebody's portable cassette recorder left to run in the back of the garage. And they claim the version I bought is remastered (presumably by someone sober and focused).
Posted by Mark at November 11, 2005 05:32 PM
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