[troutman]

With my penultimate pick in the draft, troutman's K-Tel Sound Explosion selects in the album category, ELECTRIC LADYLAND, by The Jimi Hendrix Experience:



"If I don't meet you no more in this world, then I'll meet you in the next one, and don't be late, don't be late".

This one melts my mind. I wonder what direction he was headed next - we get a hint with the songs he was developing for First Rays of the New Rising Sun. I think he would have moved from blues to experimental jazz fusion.

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p...0:fifqxq85ldje

Jimi Hendrix's third and final album with the original Experience found him taking his funk and psychedelic sounds to the absolute limit. The result was not only one of the best rock albums of the era, but also Hendrix's original musical vision at its absolute apex. When revisionist rock critics refer to him as the maker of a generation's mightiest dope music, this is the album they're referring to.

But Electric Ladyland is so much more than just background music for chemical intake. Kudos to engineer Eddie Kramer (who supervised the remastering of the original two-track stereo masters for this 1997 reissue on MCA) for taking Hendrix's visions of a soundscape behind his music and giving it all context, experimenting with odd mic techniques, echo, backward tape, flanging, and chorusing, all new techniques at the time, at least the way they're used here. What Hendrix sonically achieved on this record expanded the concept of what could be gotten out of a modern recording studio in much the same manner as Phil Spector had done a decade before with his Wall of Sound. As an album this influential (and as far as influencing a generation of players and beyond, this was his ultimate statement for many), the highlights speak for themselves: "Crosstown Traffic," his reinterpretation of Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower," "Burning of the Midnight Lamp," the spacy "1983...(A Merman I Should Turn to Be)," and "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)," a landmark in Hendrix's playing. With this double set (now on one compact disc), Hendrix once again pushed the concept album to new horizons.

Written and recorded as a single, "Burning of the Midnight Lamp" is, in hindsight, one of Jimi Hendrix's more interesting records of his early career. A wildly imaginative, psychedelic lyric is the basis here, but musically it's even more striking. The main instrument is harpsichord, and, performed by Hendrix, it is turned from a chamber instrument into a rock rhythm instrument; and his performance on the keyboard — his only official recording credit — is quite interesting. A wah-wah guitar and some odd string arrangement touches offset this.

The dreamy song "Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)," taken from the concept album Electric Ladyland, is Hendrix's ode to the women who inspired him. Though often referred to as groupies, Hendrix preferred the term "Electric Ladies" and dedicated his album to them. Later Hendrix would dub his recording studio Electric Lady. A more soulful ballad than his usual hard, blues-rock affairs, Hendrix sings a high falsetto harmony with himself on the "magic carpet ride" of a song. Not dissimilar in structure and tone to his better-known and well-loved "Little Wing," there's a dreamlike quality to Hendrix's fluid and always excellent playing, matching his evocative lyrics that refer to angels and flying. It's crystal clear what he's putting across and he does it in just about two minutes.

"Crosstown Traffic" is an example of Jimi Hendrix's ability to write and perform a conventional pop song, albeit with some unusual effects. The lyric is an extended simile that criticizes an obtuse woman who is "just like crosstown traffic, so hard to get through to you." The song has a bouncy tune and a catchy chorus, and would be an ordinary, pleasant pop tune except for the elaborate arrangement and production, which finds Hendrix playing a kazoo to double some of the guitar parts and singing through a Pultec filter.

A great slice of blues/ psychedelia, "Gypsy Eyes" is based on a standard, ancient blues field holler, with Jimi Hendrix creating some great synergy between his vocal and the lead guitar riff. In fact, the song is loaded with a collection of riffs, and Hendrix neatly compiles them together in one song. Utilizing the recording studio as an instrument, Hendrix's overdubbing technique reaches an early peak here, as the multiple guitar parts swirl around each other in spectacular fashion. In addition, the flanging/phasing effects are also a part of the arrangement, and by proxy the song itself.

"Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" is both one of Jimi Hendrix's best-known and influential songs and, at the same time, one of his most confusing, with the title being rendered several different ways. There are two similarly named tracks listed on the Jimi Hendrix Experience's third album, Electric Ladyland, "Voodoo Chile," a 15-minute recording that took up most of the first side of the first disc on the original double-LP release, and "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)," a five-plus-minute song that ends the album. That's right, the first one is spelled "Chile" with an "e," and the second "Child" with a "d." This is the way Hendrix himself spelled the titles in his handwritten credits for the album, which were reproduced in the CD booklet of the 1997 reissue. Both tracks feature what is essentially the same composition musically, a blues progression with a chorus in which Hendrix declares himself to be a voodoo chile (or child).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Ladyland

http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/...edium=CDreview

http://www.popmatters.com/music/revi...ctricmft.shtml

For me, though, Electric Ladyland is far more than just an album. Over time, it has become an invigorating life force, one that courses through my veins with regularity. It represents hope and purpose and inspiration, and is a bittersweet reminder of that brilliant flashing comet known as James Marshall Hendrix.







VH1 Classic Albums:

http://dvd.ign.com/articles/037/037268p1.html

Eddie Kramer, who was Hendrix's engineer for "Electric Ladyland," picks the master tapes apart, explains Jimi's techniques, singles out interesting sounds and tracks, and talks about the process of making the album. His remembrances are augented by those of surviving Jimi Hendrix Experience members Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell, Band of Gypsys drummer Buddy Miles, keyboardist Steve Winwood, bassist Jack Casady (all of whom played on the album), Hendrix's manager Chas Chandler, and a few (very few) interview clips with Hendrix from the time of the recording.