25 October 2013

25th October - The Jimi Hendrix Experience's Electric Ladyland


Artist – Album: The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland 
Released: 25th October 1968
Sounds Like: Electrical Dylan d (it’s a rubbish anagram!)

Defining cool is not an easy thing to do:

Marge: Am I cool, kids?
Bart and Lisa: No.
Marge: Good. I'm glad. And that's what makes me cool—not caring, right?
Bart and Lisa: No.
Marge: Well, how the hell do you be cool? I feel like we've tried everything here.
Homer: Wait, Marge. Maybe if you're truly cool, you don't need to be told you're cool.
Bart: Well, sure you do.
Lisa: How else would you know?...

The closest anybody ever came to embodying cool was Jimi Hendrix. His recording engineers and bandmates may have disagreed, as they struggled with the hanger-ons and the titanic consumption of drugs, but the flamboyant guitar-God was the coolest of them all and this album just so happens to find him at the very peak of his powers. From the groovy ‘Crosstown Traffic’ (the only Hendrix recording to not feature a guitar solo) to the apocalyptic Dylan cover ‘All Along the Watchtower’ (my vote for the greatest cover song of all time), Hendrix and his Experience come out all guns blazing in one of the most free-wheeling, experimental albums of the 60s. A stoned cold classic.

Albumaday... rating: 9/10

1.       …And the Gods Made Love – 1:21
2.       Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland) – 2:11
3.       Crosstown Traffic – 2:25
4.       Voodoo Chile – 15:00
5.       Little Miss Strange – 2:52
6.       Long Hot Summer Night – 3:27
7.       Come On (Part 1) – 4:09
8.       Gypsy Eyes – 3:43
9.       Burning of the Midnight Lamp – 3:39
10.   Rainy Day, Dream Away – 3:42
11.   1983… (A Merman I Should Turn to Be) – 13:39
12.   Moon, Turn the Tides… Gently Gently Away – 1:02
13.   Still Raining, Still Dreaming – 4:25
14.   House Burning Down – 4:33
15.   All Along the Watchtower – 4:01
16.   Voodoo Child (Slight Return) – 5:12

Listen to ‘Burning of the Midnight Lamp’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smNJQZxZMeA
Also released on 25th October:
1974: Bob Marley & The Wailers – Natty Dread

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