Are You ExPOLLienced

The only Jimi I've ever really needed. "Manic Depression" still gets my #1 vote, as it did in our Jimi poll a few months back.

Went with Manic Depression but that was brutal.

can I get a version with less braggoddoccio

The sublime guitar intro to "Love or Confusion."

manic d is good but i’m not sold on the two note riff

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Fire. But I don't like the Experienced records nearly as much as Band of Gypsys or literally any live show from 1969/1970. He was a good songwriter, but I'd rather hear him improvise for...ever, than hear Hey Joe or any of the hits again, which I love. "Good songwriter" feels like a slight, but he's definitely not a great songwriter. I should revisit, not only for the songs but the production, which always struck me as cool but dated, like the third track on Younger Than Yesterday, that fucking stupid alien high pitched voice bit the Byrds inserted into an otherwise catchy pop song. I mean, then again, this is comparing--and I know this is a different record--the fantastic production of "Cross Town Traffic" with the superhuman playing on "Machine Gun."

I agree with you in theory, but having just revisited Band of Gypsys, I still can't get over how problematic Billy Cox and Buddy Miles's contributions tend to be (and I'm not just talking about the comically overambitious vocal work, although that is by far the worst offender). Hendrix undoubtedly had the right idea when he hired them on and I, too, am more taken with his improvisational skills than I am with his songwriting, but so much of the resulting material is painfully hypothetical, drowning in a sea of 'what ifs?' On balance, Are You Experienced is a 'safer' record when viewed from the vantage point of what was still in the offing at the time, but even if you replace it in the context of 1967 – not just any year for music, mind you – it pwns 99% of the competition (especially Sgt. fucking Pepper). More importantly, I don't have any serious reservations about a single one of its songs, all the more so if we stick to the original US edition (I agree with Hendrix that 'Red House' should've been included, though).

I don't either, I like the record. I don't think it comes close to Sgt. Pepper but it's obviously cream. And again I'm only mild on it knowing what he was capable of in another realm. I hear Cox/Miles complaints all the time I get it, certainly for the scatting, but I think their playing really serves Jimi through most of the record, especially all the way through Machine Gun. but I never minded the scatting that much. I get it though lol

Idk unlike sgt pepper, I don’t have to skip any bullshit on this album, even with all the bonus tracks.

This poll is cruelty of the highest order but I chose Highway Chile because that riff is so goddamn hot

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woah that is unexpected.

possibly a crime, even

I didn't vote before the deadline! Add another vote for "Third Stone".

Good thing after much internal debate I voted for "Hey Joe."

glad you did

Hey Joe is fantastic

Highway Chili

(Slight Return)

In revisiting this album, I think I was most struck by the impression of someone not only pioneering a genre, but expanding on it in all the different ways that these individual songs do. I think this album does posit Hendrix as a great songwriter, whether or not he was able to keep proving that time and again over the few years he had left in this world.