search & destroy: the posthumous Jimi Hendrix catalog

...and also slapping Hendrix's name on anything even tangentially related
http://www.guitarworld.com/files/imagecache/featured-node/Dunlop_JH70.jpg

you know you want one
http://www.entertainmentearth.com/images/AUTOIMAGES/VN34170lg.jpg

^^Does it come with a thermos?

http://www.artofmusiclv.com/images/products/WJH008/default.png
sold separately.

Someone should manufacture an "If 6 Was 9" plastic finger.

(xpost)
To be fair, those "Limited Edition" effect pedals have a more than tangential connection. The three smaller ones are recreations (functionally speaking) of devices that were used by Hendrix back in the day. Two of them (the Fuzz Face and the Octavio) have circuits that are component-for-component accurate.

my friend used this in our high school band
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSSgTdZ1dLo9u5DNwBVgeoToMbqMoX6ARRIyIAywO7E-Bz1SDlq
we made fun of him for it.

If jimi had lived on through the 80s, The Jimi Hendrix System would have been a great group name for him.

yeahhh totally. maybe w/ ian wallace on drums and john paul jones on bass.

yeah checked out the new one on spotify today. i've never delved much into the posthumous hendrix outside of this four-sided mix thing someone made that i think you posted about tyler

but this is good. it sounds like jimi hendrix songs i've never heard. i guess i thought it would be more scraps or snippets of studio jams or really bootleggy at this point. but it *sounds* really polished like a studio album.

yeah, i'm enjoying this a lot more than i thought i would any more studio scraps in 2013.

Haven't heard this, probably never will, but I was just looking at Billboard's album chart online, the kind of thing you do at 1:30 in the morning, and I found it somewhat amazing to see him at #2. I realize that chart doesn't mean today what it once did--it may not mean anything anymore for all I know--but it was disorienting nonetheless.

eh album sales down but a #2 album on the Billboard 200 is still a pretty solid indication that's probably the 2nd most popular new release of that week

First Rays of the New Rising Sun = his best work, IMO.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41GU8wHR8XL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

Hey Millenials: Back in the 1990s album covers really were this terrible and nobody realized it.

Nah, that sleeve has always been recognised as being more than a bit naff. It's still the worst thing about the release.

TS: That Cover vs. Voodoo Soup

http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_500/MI0002/402/MI0002402601.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

lols that rising sun cover is so crappy

Voodoo soup cover is great though

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/56/Jimi_Hendrix_-The_Cry_Of_Love.jpg

this was one of my first Hendrix purchases (poss after Electric Ladyland, my first Hendrix) and I still have no idea what the sleeve is supposed to be - a tree? a flock of birds?

a loose coalition of pubes?

Voodoo Soup cover is by Moebius and is great, though the original image has been cropped and recoloured in unsympathetic ways. Moebius drew Hendrix a number of times - love this one too:

https://i0.wp.com/grafiktrafik.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/tumblr_mtqul65xEQ1qz9b3ko1_1280.jpg

Also love this Druillet cover:

http://jpdubs.hautetfort.com/media/02/01/261148281.jpg

"Pali Gap" is one of my all-time favourites. I've got it on Rainbow Bridge but I'm pretty sure it's on some of these other posthumous comps as well. Just an unbelievable slow-burner (and a perfect warm-up song to DJ ime)

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xz9fh_jimi-hendrix-pali-gap_music

Hey Millenials: Back in the 1990s album covers really were this terrible and nobody realized it.

Heh, yeah this is always one that comes to mind whenever I think of mid/late-'90s style sleeve design that's aged terribly (another is John Fahey's Return of the Repressed).

Actually Hendrix is served pretty poorly by his album covers:

AYE - boring (US version is a bit better I guess)
Axis - pretty tacky
Electric Ladyland - sexist original, replaced by another boring one

AYE - boring (US version is a bit better I guess)

UK version is solid but looks more like a single cover. US version is totally classic imo and it's in a distinguished tradition of rock covers i.e.

http://www.beatlesinterviews.org/al6.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/Are_You_Experienced_-_US_cover-edit.jpg/480px-Are_You_Experienced_-_US_cover-edit.jpg https://images.genius.com/07797fca78f4184f9509c3fca3cb0448.500x500x1.jpg

etc

Axis - pretty tacky

dead to me

was pretty impressed to learn that hendrix himself hated the uk cover on grounds of sexism.

probably my favorite hendrix cover is the "john peel voodoo doll" cover of band of gypsys.

The first Ray's cover, whether the pink or blue one, sucks, but a lot of the posthumous artwork sucks, esp the stuff on the dagger label.

I kinda love the moebius painting on the cover of Voodoo Soup

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/jan/13/jimi-hendrix-family-dispute-escalates-over-use-of-name-for-music-school

listening to first Rays for the first time in a very long while, it does strike me how bsamey and leaden a lot of the rockers are. He seemed to be really running dry or just tired at this point. I know they had to make an album according to his notes but who knows if this is what he would have gone with. Still, 7 keepers isnt bad.

My favorite take on First Rays is the John Scannell remix:

https://web.archive.org/web/20120325214917/http://letamancomeinanddothepopcorn.blogspot.com/2008/09/first-rays-mix.html

I never found any of the other versions very satisfying -- not Cry Of Love, not the 1997 First Rays, and especially not Voodoo Soup (with a hapless drum overdub by the Knack's Bruce Gary that constantly drifts in and out of tempo). But the Scannell remix feels like canon to me.

Still too far many of those plodders like Isabella, dolly dagger, freedom, etc. Yue best songs I think from FROTRS are in from the storm, angel, drifting, belly button window, hey baby new rising sun, beginnings, my friend. The rest mines a very repetitive seam.

the new live in Hawaii live album is really great

Theres a rainbow bridge thread for it...he was still so amazing live. Just a shame all the axis and ladyland songs barely got played.

Izabella is a monster at Woodstock. That new LIve In Hawaii LP is the bomb.

yeah listening to the Hawaii shows now — totally smokes.

some of the sounds on voodoo child ... i guess the dude could really play guitar, haha.

i actually like some of the off-kilter drum overdubs ... gives it an almost royal trux vibe.

The first Ray's cover, whether the pink or blue one, sucks, but a lot of the posthumous artwork sucks, esp the stuff on the dagger label.

I like this one. I wish it was used for First Rays...:

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_4LrAkzfpSmM/S7IfssaNfWI/AAAAAAAAI6M/pdoqWLc7f3Q/s1600/Jimi+Hendrix+-+%281968%29+The+Electric+Church.jpg

I think the thing missing from dolly, Isabella, etc, is the melodies just arent nearly as strong as what he was writing before. I know theure a bot different as theres a funkier feel to them, but they're not quite funky enough to compensate. Even power of soul and message to love are stronger songs. I'm going to assume he just wasnt done yet with most of what has come out after his death...

*a lot different

I'd agree with that (and that's a lot of what I feel about Band Of Gypsys too). He was definitely in a transitional mode.

What a fucking loss.

There are few rock deaths where I genuinely think, beyond the human tragedy, we lost *so* much music that might have happened.

Also weird that these songs also sound a bit over worked, or over produced even? I know he loved doing far too many takes, but they lack vitality. Partly that might just be him adapting to the new decade, idk, ir just what was happening to lots of 60s acts, but they are a bit flat to me. But yeah, cant imagine anyone seeing these as definitive. I dont think he knew what he was doing next. Tragic we will never find out. I think he needed a new chas Chandler maybe, someone to help steer him along. Tempted to read the chas book he wrote now.

Listening to a lot of the recent releases, they really are mostly just rehearsal tapes. Its sort of interesting and disappointing to hear a lot of this stuff. Hendrix was capable of more. Pretty fucked up that we will never know what exactly. I think he had lots of rock musician identity issues, but not 100% sure if it would have worked for him to be in a mahavishnu orchestra type jazz rock band either.

Absolutely. In terms of great lost work, Jimi is probably at the top of the list, simply because he was recording so much at the time of his death and mapping out so many new directions that he never had the chance to really explore. So much promising music, gone. Otis Redding would be a close second. He recorded so much right before his death, partly because he was stuck at home recovering his voice and wound up writing so much. Unlike Jimi his posthumous legacy has been curated with far more care, and a lot of it is not only held in equal regard but even more popular than his previous LP's.

I wish I could add Kurt Cobain but he was such a mess, mentally and probably physically, that it may have been too debilitating. Buddy Holly was only 22, and he was still writing some gems, but I'm not sure if he would've continued that long as a recording artist, and it's impossible to say how he would've fared as a producer over the course of the '60s. Same with Sam Cooke - his last records like "A Change Is Gonna Come" were easily his best and breaking new ground, but he actually wasn't recording a whole lot during his final months. It's possible he was planning to become more of a producer/label owner than anything else.

Don't forget the Gil Evans collaboration that was planned but never came to pass.

Presumably THIS would have been the cover. Wild.

https://www.matiklarweinart.com/images/gallery/jimi-hendrix-1970.jpg

Evans did go on to record a Hendrix tribute instead. It's good...maybe a little forced without the natural fire I would have hoped, but still good.

Theres also the less enticing, maybe just plain cynical possibility that he might not have found any satisfying direction to pursue... but I'd like to think he would have found a way to draw it all together.

If Hendrix had lived even a few months longer, it would have been a boon for his legacy, because at least he would have finished a new record, and we could know what of that output he considered wheat and chaff.
Otis Redding is different because he was recording completed songs live with a band, without a lot of post-production (other than seagull sounds), so anything he did is going to sound more complete than Hendrix jamming on a riff with guest musicians, trying to figure out what he wants to do.

Reinvestigating this stuff has clarified that Hendrix only made three studio albums. Four if you include the different uk/us are you experienced versions. Everything else is just off cuts. Def weird to see ppl earlier in this thread saying first rays is the one they will be recommending newbies.

My favorite take on First Rays is the John Scannell remix:

https://web.archive.org/web/20120325214917/http://letamancomeinanddothepopcorn.blogspot.com/2008/09/first-rays-mix.html

I never found any of the other versions very satisfying -- not Cry Of Love, not the 1997 First Rays, and especially not Voodoo Soup (with a hapless drum overdub by the Knack's Bruce Gary that constantly drifts in and out of tempo). But the Scannell remix feels like canon to me.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Thursday, January 21, 2021 11:26 AM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'd like to hear this but the links on that wayback machine capture are rapidshare... has it been reposted elsewhere?

I'd like to hear it too, though tbh the studio versions of a lot of those songs dont seem good enough.

Strongly recommend checking out stepping stone and loverman from the Fillmore east shows on spotify. If he wanted to really change his sound, post-experience, these are really great, scaled back examples of how it could have gone.