“Oh, Move Over POLLER, And Let Jimi Take Over!” – ILX Artist Poll #101 – Jimi Hendrix – Voting Thread

Purple Monkey Dishwasher Haze

i left "manic depression" off my ballot, well i couldn't put _every_ hendrix song on

the hell with "tax free" though, that goddamn lord of the rings record is bullshit

I was having such trouble I finally just cut my ballot at 20 and was going to submit it this morning, but work got in they way. Now I am reading about Power of Soul upthread and regretting I left it off.

Hendrix may be a top-5 artist for me primarily off the three Experience studio albums and this, which I got new for my 19th birthday. The 1969 disk is my favorite live Hendrix show - absolutely smoking Hey Joe, Spanish Castle Magic (with Sunshine of Your Love instrumental), and the best Voodoo Child (Slight Return). Plus my favorite live stage banter of all time: Fan: [Yells song requests.] Hendrix: Yeah, we'll get to all that. When I ask for toilet paper, THAT's when you come rolling out.

Having said that, listening to the new Band of Gypsys and has been a revelation. I love how straight forward and taut the whole thing is and there are so many great performances.

Like that 13 minute Stone Free that leads off the last set on Songs for Groovy Children is fucking awesome. The last few minutes are ragged glory.

spanish castle magic is heavy in a cool way. but it feels in family with manic depression, and i prefer the lyrics and vocals on manic. fuck traveling by dragonfly.

i suppose we all must confront and accept the frequent...grooviness of jimi's lyrics

Time constraints will prevent me from participating, but please allow me to say that "Stone Free" is all-time great.

I love Jimi's lyrics and his singing. To me he has the best unorthodox timing in rock other than possibly Dylan. Dragonflies are cool, man.

dragonflies are fine. i don't know about travel-by-dragonfly, though. would be cooler if it was a make of motorcycle or something. i'm going to pretend it's a make of motorcycle.

i do sound like the aliens from that i think you should leave with tim robinson sketch there

I love all of his lyrical grooviness, especially "I'm gonna wave my freak flag high!" as a statement of purpose.

elevated freak flags, sure. that's all wonderful. but a dragonfly as mode of transportation? and giving a trip estimate as if you are the rand mcnally of dragonfly travel?

shitting on dragonflies, aside from, you know, reminding me of the best fucking fleetwood mac song, reminds me of the rollins band changing the lyrics to "four sticks" because rollins couldn't handle "when the owls cry in the night"

IF YOU'RE NOT COOL ENOUGH TO SING ABOUT OWLS, DON'T MESS WITH THE SONG, MAN!

i like jimi's singing, though i can see why he was a little insecure about his singing voice. his lyrics weren't very poetically adept, but they were sincere, and that's all i really need. the guitar says what his words can't, anyway.

I also love every cover that he made his own. Like, Hey Joe was every band's go to cover song until he covered it and made it an embarrassment for anyone else to cover it.

please let me be clear: i am not shitting on dragonflies. i am shitting on the idea of putting a saddle on a dragonfly, with stirrups, and riding the dragonfly to a music club. and then once you are on this supernatural dragonfly, that could fly at any speed imaginable to you, it only goes at a speed of 'very far away' over 'about a half a day'.

be cooler if it was a make of motorcycle or something. i'm going to pretend it's a make of motorcycle.

B-b-but Dragonfly IS a make of motorcycle.

fuck yes, THANK YOU. accepting this as jimi's intended meaning from here on.

Apparently, Hendrix favoured a Harley, though, so idk. I didn't think that much about the lyrics, then when I did, I figured he probably meant the motorcycle, but I think I actually like the image if he meant the insect.

oh yeah, there are motorcycles!

Jimi riding an actual dragonfly is the coolest. He's Hendrix, he can ride whatever the fuck he wants to: dragonflies, motorcycles, magic carpets, Marshall stacks, your mom.

i promise you it isn't the coolest

if you asked how far away something was and person replied "should take about a half a day if you travel by my...dragonfly" you would groan and leave

"oh fuck, now there's a groovy image. but seriously, how far by train or car? or can i walk?"

or "fine, the place is closed. i get it, buddy. dick."

half a day is pretty good time if you're traveling to a spanish castle by dragonfly

Where are they starting from?

very far away

which could mean swarthmore, pennsylvania or just like gig harbor, washington

if you are going to write a word problem into your lyric, please leave us with a number of variables equal to or less than the number of equations, jimi

Whatever, maaaan. . . .

Lol:

http://static.highexistence.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/spanish-castle-magic-4-web.jpg

I mean, in terms of lyrical content, tbh, the stuff about foxy ladies and moving over Rover and "are you experienced" seems no less silly to me than the fantastical psychedelic imagery. It's really just about the feel with the music.

Anyway, if anyone's interested and hasn't read it, I thought this article (full PDF available at the link) was really good as an in-depth examination of Hendrix's interpretation of "The Star-Spangled Banner", how it developed over the multiple performances over about a year, and how it reflected his own changing feelings towards the war and military: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-society-for-american-music/article/this-is-america-jimi-hendrixs-star-spangled-banner-journey-as-psychedelic-citizenship/0029FB312D1A8A9C61C0345C6DB59525#

XP I always felt that aspect of his lyrics/music was a by-product of playing Chitlin' Circuit R & B for so long. He went from playing with Little Richard to becoming the Psychedelic Little Richard!

Thanks for the article on "The Star-Spangled Banner". Still working my way through but it's very interesting.

Sorry if this was discussed already but: are we counting "1983" & "Moon Turn the Tides" as the same track?

It hasn't been discussed, but folks so far have only voted for the latter tied to the former, so I'm letting count as one. I don't know if anyone would vote for MTTT by itself.

Voted

Does anyone have a track list and the accompanying breakdown for the John Scannell remix/reconstruction of First Rays?

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

Many thanks, Kate. I've listened to it for years, but haven't sat down and differentiated all the pieces, since they all run together.

yeah it's _the_ absolute cornerstone of my jimi listening

voted

xp I didn't realize how different this Scannell version of First Rays is from the version C. Grisso/McCain linked up thread. The latter seems much more historically accurate/realistic. The Scannell version varies from Jimi's supposed tracklisting, includes many songs that likely weren't going to be included at all, and is radically edited/mixed to create transitions and reprises that obviously Jimi never contemplated, but the Scannell version flows so well and is such a fun listen, it really does feel like the successor to Electric Ladyland.

I love that Scannell mix.

that's what i love about the scannell "first rays", it's not trying to recreate jimi's "vision" for the record, which in the period of time he was making these recordings was diffuse, muddled, shot through with intense pain and suffering. it's a more radical re-envisioning than that, more like what brian wilson (or, uh, darian or whoever) did with "smile" in 2004, taking a bunch of fragments weaving them together in a way that jimi honestly never managed. the official "first rays" is far closer to what jimi was thinking, and it's just not as good. there's too many mid-tempo funk numbers that i just have a really hard time telling apart, and it's to the good that scannell, having given himself a fairly arbitrary 80 minute limit, is willing to cut to the bone. a lot of the songs from the latter half of the '97 EH release just isn't there - "straight ahead", "earth blues", "in from the storm", all gone, "room full of mirrors" (which is a fantastic song) and "astro man" (which maybe isn't) cut to the bone, with the side benefit of excising the homophobic slur from the latter (jimi's relation to queerness being a sort of ongoing sensitive spot for me)

and what's left is is linked by much stranger, more offbeat choices, with _way_ more buddy than i had thought i could tolerate. power of soul and message to love and the buddy version of "stepping stone" and fucking "burning desire" of all things! not songs that i would've considered essential representations of hendrix but thrown in among oddities like "trashman" and "south saturn delta"... well, i could gush about this mix all day, and have done so at embarrassing length before.

if some kind soul wants to ILXmail me a working DL link for that New Rays mix, I would greatly appreciate it!

So First Rays is The Cry of Love + other material from those sessions?

As a kid, the albums I had mostly boiled down to what I could tape from my friend's older brother, which meant Smash Hits, Electric Ladyland, Band of Gypsys, and Cry of Love. At least half of AYE is on the Smash Hits comp, I think, but, weirdly, I ended up way less familiar with Axis (never heard this until my 20s) than with Band of Gypsys (probably still my favourite) and Cry of Love. I still don't really connect with Axis that much at all, compared to the others. I don't think anything from it ended up on my ballot.

about to send my ballot. the one I regret having to cut is "Still Raining, Still Dreaming": that second record of Electric Ladyland is so intense, and this song is a key to it, but fits better there than as a track on its own imo.

here's a dopey observation that is probably wrong: people make a big deal about how Music From Big Pink was a turning point in rock, how artists followed the Band in going back to basics, four track, down home sound. but I feel like one year early, Jimi's first album must have made so many artists realize how much the game had advanced, how far out those sounds were---I mean you can read Miles Davis on Jimi, but that kinda makes the point I want to make: that rock artists (as opposed to jazzbos) saw that they couldn't do what Jimi was doing and so had to change what they were doing. it's the start of prog. (think of that tour of the UK with Jimi, the Pink Floyd, the Nice, the Move)(and, well, the Amen Corner.)

to be specific: it's said that Clapton quit Cream after hearing the Band, but maybe he realized by 68 that he'd never be as bold as love?