March 3, 2013
A new hit song by Jimi Hendrix
Feeling constrained by the limitations of the Jimi Hendrix Experience trio (which included drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding), the guitarist had already started working with an eclectic group of musicians.
They included the Buffalo Springfield’s Stephen Stills, drummer Buddy Miles, saxophonist Lonnie Youngblood and bassist Billy Cox, with whom Hendrix had served in the U.S. military.
The resulting sessions, culled from 1968 and 1969, form the basis of “People, Hell and Angels,” co-produced by Janie Hendrix, original engineer and mixer Eddie Kramer and long-time Hendrix historian John McDermott. (via Reuters)
I’ve never been at ease with the music industry’s practice of rendering deceased artists’ bones to feed audiences and make a quick buck. Alternatively, if Hendrix’s “Somewhere” track is any indication, fans may be getting a rare postscripted chance to hear a gifted artist doing exceptional work.
Jimi Hendrix, much like every other revolutionary figure in art, has been studied, copied, and rehashed more or less to a state of numb caricature that misrepresents the original spark that caused all of the fuss in the first place. It’s difficult to put the man’s most inspired works into the context of their own moment in time, in which an artist is set in contrast to whatever trends prevail.
Is history made during the instant in which an event occurs, or through the retelling of stories passed from one generation to the next?
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You know, it won’t be all that long, really, before Jimi Hendrix has become a figure lost to living memory.
Not to bring you down or anything.
I think a lot about the inaccessibility of what’s past.
Very cool to be able to access music from Jimi Hendrix so many years after his death. I like “Somewhere” and I also liked “Earth Blues” after listening to it on soundcloud. I’ll be interested to hear the rest of People, Hell & Angels.
At least we have the permanence of the Internet. More durable than breakfast cereal dried to the bowl’s bottom.
Sheila, you think a lot about permanence. So do I, differently.
I’m not sure what i meant by that.
Cannot wait to hear this record on Tuesday! http://smarturl.it/HendrixTrain
You know, it won’t be all that long, really, before Jimi Hendrix has become a figure lost to living memory.
Was listening to NPR some other when and heard a reporter wind up a story on North Korea with (paraphrasing)…”North Korea and South Korea were once a single country until an internecine struggle in the early 1950s left the country divided…”
Good to know, good to know.
Yep, Doc. It all fades away.