Jimi Hendrix – First Rays of the New Rising Sun (1997)

From brutallyhonestrockalbumreviews.wordpress.com

If I may, let me direct your attention to a website you really should become acquainted with if you love classic rock music: Albums That Never Were (http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/ ), created and maintained by one soniclovenoize.  Ms. or Mr. lovenoize has created a pretty remarkable site in my estimation, I have followed it for years.  It deals in counterfactual history in the world of rock music – in other words, what could have happened under different circumstances, but didn’t.  Counterfactual history generally deals with historical questions like how different World War II would have turned out if Hitler hadn’t gotten a little cocky and invaded Russia in 1942, or how much longer the war with Japan would have dragged on if the U.S. hadn’t dropped the atomic bombs, or whether Donald J. Trump might have developed any semblance of humanity and maybe not grown into the soulless gargoyle that he is if he had received an appropriate amount of attention and love from his father.  It attempts to answer the “what if” questions of history – which while wildly entertaining at times, is pretty moot all the way around, because after all, what happened happened and there is no changing it.  It is the speculative discussion of the unknowable, unanswerable, and indeterminate.

The Albums That Never Were site attempts to reconstruct albums that were never made for one reason or another.  I love the site, and check in on it from time to time to see what’s new.  Sometimes reading the history behind the reconstructions is as entertaining as the music itself.  It’s been around since 2012, and in that time it has explored questions like what Beatles albums might have been like in the early 70s if the band hadn’t disintegrated (one of my favorite reconstructions from the site, you can assemble some pretty kick butt albums by aggregating the best of the ex-Beatles solo work from the early 70s), or what John Lennon’s Rock N’ Roll album that he started with Phil Spector would have been like had Spector not run off with the tapes (forcing Lennon to completely re-record it), or what The Beach Boys’ Smile album would have really been like had it actually been completed and released in 1967, or a reconstruction of the original Dylan & the Dead album as Jerry Garcia initially put it together, or what the result would have been if The Who had been able to complete Lifehouse as originally envisioned, or a recreation of what a studio version of  Pink Floyd’s The Man and the Journey might have been like. There is some very, very cool stuff on this site, and I highly recommend spending some time there.

One of the best – and in my view most important – reconstructions is the unreleased album Jimi Hendrix was working in at the time of his death.  If you know much about Hendrix, you probably know he was spending every spare second of the last year of his life working on the follow-up to Electric Ladyland.  The guy burned up insane amounts of studio time recording and re-recording and re-recording again and again, endlessly revising and tinkering and overdubbing.  Seems that he had a really tough time getting to a point where he felt satisfied that any of the songs were done – in one case he even issued a single of “Stepping Stone” b/w “Izabella” only to decide it needed to be improved.  So he withdrew the single, pulled it completely out of stores.  

The bad news is that the endless futzing around with the songs kept him from finishing his fourth studio album before his untimely death, and created the conundrum of what it would have looked like had he lived to see it through to completion.  The good news (good for Experience Hendrix LLC. that is, NOT good for Hendrix’s discography and those of us who respect that discography) is that it meant he left behind a gazillion versions of every song he was working on when he died, providing plentiful fodder for a never-ending stream of posthumous Hendrix releases, with engineer Eddie Kramer happily helping Experience Hendrix LLC churn them out with all the gravitas and import of Transformers sequels.  In my review of Live in Maui there is an extensive discussion of what a mixed bag that has been for Hendrix’s legacy, and I won’t rehash that discussion here.  Suffice to say, all the chaotic studio recording in Hendrix’s final months created the great unknown and unknowable mystery of exactly what his fourth studio album would have been like.

One thing is absolutely certain – the songs themselves are fantastic.  They lack the neon bright psychedelia of his first three albums, and I do miss that, sure.  But the earthy funk of these songs has its own appeal too. How could you not love the charging energy of “Ezy Rider”, or the jumpy gallop of “Dolly Dagger” and “Izabella”, the gentle “May This Be Love”ish vibe of “Drifting”, and the lovely and entrancing “Angel”, the call and response of the “Everybody” in “Earth Blues”, and the hilarious “Here I come to save the day” Hendrix sings over the charging beat of “Astro Man”.  “Room Full of Mirrors” is a lot of fun with its slide guitar all over the place, and has a great message: “I used to live in a room full of mirrors/All I could see was me…”.  Hendrix must have really loved John Wesley Harding, because he lays claim to a second song off of that classic Dylan album, “Drifter’s Escape”, recasting it and breathing new life into it just as he had with “All Along the Watchtower”.  There’s the swirling mystery of “Hey Baby (New Rising Son)”, the ferocious “Into the Storm”. I love them all.  It’s a simply marvelous collection of songs, most of them complete enough for release, although no doubt Hendrix would have done more tinkering with most of them before he ever actually got them onto an album.  

Although I must admit, I find a couple of these songs were far superior in their live versions.  The live version of  “Izabella” from the first Fillmore East show is far superior to the studio version.  The studio version of  “Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)” would probably have been filled out a lot more had Hendrix lived to complete it, as it is it’s a mere skeletal shadow of the mindblowingly exotic version on Live at Berkeley.  But on the whole, these are terrific songs, truly worthy of their place alongside Hendrix’s other classics.

But because he died before completing the album, no one is exactly sure how all of these songs would have eventually fit together.  There have been several attempts to reconstruct it, and they are by no means equal.  So the question of the day is this – which posthumous version of the album Jimi Hendrix was working on at the time of his death best represents the album he would have released had he declined the invitation to join the 27 Club?  There are four major contenders:

• The Cry of Love.  Released in March 1971, this was the granddaddy of all Hendrix posthumous releases. Probably not really intended to be a recreation of what Hendrix would have released, for reasons we will explore shortly.
• Voodoo Soup.  Wherein Alan Douglas decided to puke all over the Hendrix legacy one last time in 1995 before it was ceded to the Hendrix family for them to puke on occasionally.  To be fair, though, The Cry of Love, Rainbow Bridge, and War Heroes were all out of print at the time, so at least the songs on Voodoo Soup were unavailable at the time it was released.  But why I would want to be fair to the likes of Alan Douglas is truly beyond me, he was a soulless parasite.
• First Rays of the New Rising Sun.  Probably the first true attempt to recreate Hendrix’s final studio album, this was Experience Hendrix’s first posthumous Hendrix release in 1997.  And in my estimation it got them off to a great start, although it didn’t take long for them to succumb to many of the same temptations the much-pilloried Alan Douglas succumbed to when he had his time trawling through Hendrix’s vaults.  But for their first few releases, they respected the integrity of Jimi’s art, and so it was with this release.
• First Rays of the New Rising Sun (soniclovenoize reconstruction).  This is the version our good friend soniclovenoize put together that is referenced above, most recently upgraded in 2014.

The songs on each of these versions are fantastic – while he was lacking in the kind of artistic discipline needed to see the album through to completion in the last year of his life, Hendrix had not lost his touch for stellar songwriting, and his playing remained as phenomenal as ever.  True, I miss the imaginative psychedelia of his first three albums, their otherworldly aura, the songs about kissing the sky and using a machine to transform into a merman and seeing UFOs as somebody’s house is burning down down down down.  Hendrix transitioned to a much more earthy, feet-on-the-ground approach to songwriting in the last year of his life, and while I loved his earlier artistry as a psychedelic troubadour, I also firmly believe that artists need to evolve and change, there is a real danger to getting stuck in a rut and doing the same thing all the time.  So his move to a funkier approach to his music is all right by me.  Earlier in 1970 he had released Band of Gypsys, an album I have always loved, and while Hendrix himself regarded it as a contractual obligation album in the truest sense, it undeniably pointed in the funky direction his next studio album would take.

So you have Hendrix classics like “Dolly Dagger”, “Night Bird Flying”, “Angel”, “Freedom”, “Earth Blues”, and “Ezy Rider”, truly essential songs to the man’s discography.  Songs that need to be heard by anyone with even a passing interest in the greatest guitarist who ever lived.  Songs that need an album to call home – and what album best provides that home?  I propose we take a look at a couple of different characteristics of these different albums and try to sort out which of these options comes closest to realizing the vision Hendrix had for what would have been his fourth studio album. 

For starters…

Which Has the Best Album Cover?  Elsewhere I have discussed the importance of an album cover to the appreciation of the music within, so I propose we use this as a starting point.  And if album covers alone were the determinant of quality, I think there is a clear winner and a couple of clear losers: 

• The Cry of Love.  Personally, I think the cover is perfect, absolutely perfect:

As an artistic statement, there’s something about it that seems so apropos for a recently departed genius – it coveys a sense of sadness, loss, and sorrow.  It is moody and ephemeral, spiritual even, as though Hendrix is looking down on us from Heaven as we listen to the last songs he would ever record.  If album covers could weep, this one would.  While it was created after Jimi’s death and he had nothing to do with it, I will always think it is the best cover for an album of the music he was working on at the time he died.  And there could not be a greater contrast between this and our next entry…

• Voodoo Soup.  I mean, what the holy hell is this?

You’d have to be a complete moron to ever buy an album with a cover like that.  All kidding aside, it’s simply awful – but then it’s the kind of awful we’d all come to expect from Alan Douglas over the years.  Jimi eating soup?  You’re an idiot Douglas.

• First Rays of the New Rising Sun.   I don’t know, I guess I think this one is okayish:

I mean, certainly not as artistically striking as The Cry of Love, and maybe a touch on the cheesy side.  I dig the purple – always love me some purple – but I don’t know, it veers dangerously close to tacky.  But probably not as tacky as this next one…

• First Rays of the New Rising Sun (soniclovenoize reconstruction).  Now, let’s be reasonable, soniclovenoize is not a professional, and doesn’t have professional graphic designers at her or his disposal.  It’s not bad for what they had to work with.  And to be fair it is based on a drawing Jimi made the night before he died that is assumed to be his idea for an album cover, so unlike any of the others, it does represent Jimi’s vision.

Now obviously it wouldn’t have really turned out exactly like that, and I’d like to think Jimi would have re-thought having Hitler on his album cover (or some record executive would have made him re-think it).  But let’s not be too hard on our friend, it is a faithful attempt to reproduce what Jimi had in mind, and it’s a hell of a lot better than a horrid picture of Jimi eating soup.

And the Winner for Best Album Cover is:  The Cry of Love by a country mile, although First Rays of the New Rising Sun (soniclovenoize reconstruction) is the only one that made any attempt to have a cover that reflected what Hendrix had in mind.

Which has the Best Song Selection?  You might think that each has mostly the same songs, but there are some important differences between them.

• The Cry of Love.  Hard core Hendrix fans who were around in 1971 generally have fond memories of The Cry of Love, but of our four options, this is the stingiest.  A miserly ten tracks are all we get due to the decision to make it a single album, thanks to the time constraints of two sides of vinyl.  Of course, all ten songs are great, no question.  But the song selection on The Cry of Love was also hobbled by the rather greedy decision to hold back some  of the best tracks, “Dolly Dagger”,  “Room Full of Mirrors”, “Izabella” and “Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)” for future releases.  There is no question Hendrix intended these songs to be on the album, and clearly this was a decision aimed at increasing future revenue, not producing the best approximation of what Hendrix wanted.  It was a completely commercial decision, not an artistic one, and I see it as a serious betrayal of what Hendrix had planned.  Thus The Cry of Love falls hopelessly short in terms of song selection.
• Voodoo Soup.  Alan Douglas didn’t do too bad on this score, fourteen songs, and most of the best ones.  Oddly enough, however, “Dolly Dagger” was not included, an unforgivable omission in my book. “Izabella” is missing as well, so that’s a couple of pretty big knocks against the album, but those are the only glaring omissions really.  For some odd reason Douglas also included “Peace in Mississippi”, he seems to be the only person on the planet who thought Hendrix would have included the song on the album.  So it’s better than The Cry of Love, but it still falls short.
• First Rays of the New Rising Sun.  A huge improvement over its predecessors, 17 tracks and nary a glaring omission to boot.  Whatever other criticisms are aimed at the album, song selection is not generally one of them, only “Pali Gap” is occasionally mentioned as a missing track.  Most fans seem fairly well satisfied with the songs that were included on the album.
• First Rays of the New Rising Sun (soniclovenoize reconstruction).  Mostly the same as the original First Rays, although it jettisons “My Friend” (and many question whether Hendrix considered it a contender for the album anyway), and adds “Drifter’s Escape” and “Bleeding Heart”, which is a plus in my book, considering that with the former song Hendrix almost pulled off another “All Along the Watchtower”.  

And the Winner for Best Song Selection is:  First Rays of the New Rising Sun (soniclovenoize reconstruction) by a whisker, but its namesake isn’t too far behind really. “Drifter’s Escape” makes all the difference, it really is a remarkable improvement on the Bob Dylan original.

But What Album has the Best Versions and Sequencing of Songs?  Here’s where it gets pretty tricky – there were only finalized versions for a few songs, and some would experience remixes by Eddie Kramer after Hendrix’s death even if Hendrix had already done a mix with him.  “Dolly Dagger” and “Night Bird Flying” had approved final mixes and were being prepared as a single release, so no real mystery with those.  “Straight Ahead” and “Ezy Rider” also appear to have had final mixes made during Hendrix’s lifetime.  Before leaving the U.S. for the last time Hendrix and Eddie Kramer also prepared possibly final mixes of “Room Full of Mirrors”, “Earth Blues”, “Drifter’s Escape”, “Astro Man”, “Freedom”, “In From The Storm” and “Belly Button Window.”  But it is not clear that Hendrix considered these final mixes, and some were subject to posthumous remixing, and in some cases even had overdubs (most egregiously by Alan Douglas, but Eddie Kramer did some tinkering as well).  I don’t actually mind the posthumously recorded drums on “Angel”, it’s a song that deserved to be completed and released, and while I have no doubt there is a lot more Hendrix would have done with it had he lived a little longer, it is so gentle and lovely, so gorgeous, I am glad Kramer and Mitch Mitchell managed to get it into releasable shape.  I’m cool with the drums added after Jimi slipped his mortal coil, Mitch did some great work on the skins with it.

Hendrix appears to have had some ideas about sequencing as well – there is an incomplete track list he apparently made just before departing for Europe for the last time that laid out the track order for sides 1 and 2 of the album, with much of sides 3 and 4 left blank.  But only one of our releases under consideration paid any attention to it.

• The Cry of Love.  The example of “Angel” described above is pretty much the limit of the work done on these songs included on this album after Hendrix checked out, some overdubs on “Drifting”, but on the whole the songs were relatively the same from when Jimi last mixed them.  Sure, several of them no doubt would have been tinkered with more, but they were probably as close to what Hendrix had in mind as you could get.  However, no attempt was made to follow the order Hendrix had laid out, partly because no attempt was made to create the double album he’d had in mind.  I figure it was likely manager Michael Jeffery who decided to scale back to a single album, and save more songs for future releases, it seems a very Michael Jeffery “I don’t give two craps about Jimi’s art” sort of decision.  Hendrix always meant for it to be a double album, that’s indisputable.  But the decision to hold back some of the best material for future releases put paid to that approach.
• Voodoo Soup.  Does the flow of the songs even mean anything to a hack like Alan Douglas?  This release was a mess anyway,  Alan Douglas of course had to be Alan Douglas and have contemporary musicians record new parts, just as he had done with all of his other misconceived Hendrix posthumous releases.  The guy no business being anywhere near any of Hendrix’s tapes.  And he sure as hell wasn’t worried about what Hendrix thought about the song sequencing. Piss off Alan.
• First Rays of the New Rising Sun.  With some exceptions, this release used the mixes from The Cry of Love and Rainbow Bridge and War Heroes, and in that respect was pretty close to the mixes Hendrix himself oversaw most of the time.  There was some noise about the song sequence on the album, but song sequencing was a minor gripe for fans compared to the outrage about the mastering of the 1997 release, the CD of which was brickwalled per the custom of the time.  However, I have a rip of the 2010 vinyl reissue that doesn’t have that problem, and it sounds pretty fantastic to my ears.  Inexplicably, no attention was paid to Hendrix’s last track list, and there were a few fans who complained about the song order on this one, particularly because it opened with two songs that sounded so similar, “Freedom” and “Izabella”.  And they snipped off the first few seconds of “Ezy Rider”, which really is a shame, it had a great intro.
• First Rays of the New Rising Sun (soniclovenoize reconstruction).  Soniclovenoize deserves a lot of credit on this score – this is the only release to prioritize vintage mixes Hendrix was personally involved with.  Actually, this release eschews its namesake completely –  instead drawing from the fantastic 2014 remasters of The Cry of Love and Rainbow Bridge and a variety of other sources to ensure posthumous mixes are avoided to the full extent possible.  Soniclovenoize even uses a needledrop of the withdrawn ”Stepping Stone”/“Izabella” single, instead of the mixes done after Hendrix’s death on Rainbow Bridge and War Heroes.  The approach on this reconstruction is to use the last mix  Hendrix himself was present for whenever possible.  Due to the brickwalling issue mentioned above, nothing from First Rays of the New Rising Sun is used in the reconstruction.  A lot of thought went into the versions used in this reconstruction, so I think we have to say that…

Best Versions and Sequence of the Songs:  First Rays of the New Rising Sun (soniclovenoize reconstruction), no question. 

Finally, Which Best Reflects Hendrix’s Vision for the Album?  I mean, that’s really the 64 dollar question, isn’t it?  Here’s the thing – Hendrix was pretty clear the album was supposed to be a double album, he even mentioned a triple album at one point – as a single lp, The Cry of Love, while a fantastic album, falls well short of what Hendrix had envisioned.  Voodoo Soup was just a final Alan Douglas cash-in, and doesn’t really deserve serious consideration anyway.  First Rays of the New Rising Sun was an honest, good-faith effort at creating the album that Hendrix intended, and if Experience Hendrix had shown the same level of honesty and good faith with all of their subsequent releases I’d have nothing bad to say about them. 

But when all is said and done, one option stands head and shoulders above the others in terms of intentionally attempting to recreate the double album Hendrix had in mind, with the song order he’d personally specified, with the mixes Hendrix himself was involved with to the full extent possible.  First Rays of the New Rising Sun (soniclovenoize reconstruction) comes closest of all to what we know of Jimi’s plans for his fourth studio album.

If you have any interest whatsoever in Jimi Hendrix, you really need to hear the songs he was readying for the album he was working on when he died.  You’ve got a lot of options on where to find them really, but in my book the soniclovenoize reconstruction is hands down the best.

Jimi Hendrix First Rays Of The New Rising Sun (1997)

From amazon.com

Review I bought this album awhile ago, and unfortunately, the first review I wrote was somehow lost in the system. Since I have a poor at best memory, I had to just hunker down, listen to the CD again and do a proper review….

While definitely not the best Hendrix album, it is probably the best posthumous one (that’s in print, at least), as far as studio work goes. Jimi had an obsession with capturing his ideas on record, and this just further exemplifies that obsession. While I’d obviously get his official recordings (AYE, A:BAS, EL, and BOG) and probably a live record or two (Woodstock, Fillmore East), this does prove to be an excellent record for the person who just can’t get enough Jimi…

Much more polished than “South Saturn Delta,” the release that followed “First Rays…”, this album was meant to compile the material that was to end up on Jimi’s fourth studio effort of the same name. While Jimi originally planned to keep recording and produce a second LP to go with the first, his death unfortunately cut that plan short, and record producers were forced to spread out what had been completed over three posthumous, now out of print releases (Rainbow Bridge, Cry of Love, and War Heroes).

What we have now on “First Rays Of The New Rising Sun,” is an attempt to compile the available material onto one disc, in an order as close to Jimi’s original wishes as possible. Unfortunately, any claims that the CD was produced directly from Jimi’s notes is a half-truth at best. No one could have possibly known Jimi’s plans, especially considering Jimi’s distinct style. He knew of a broad range of music, and so tracks may have been altered to give some a bluesy feel, or a jazzy feel.

Despite this, “First Rays of The New Rising Sun,” is still an incredible album, and still worth picking up if you are an intense Jimi-phile like me. Although some tracks weren’t mixed by Hendrix himself, and at least two tracks weren’t the masters that Jimi had been working at, they still provide fantastic insight into one of the most creative minds of the twentieth century. Intensely beautiful tracks like “Belly Button Window,” “Angel” and “Drifting” are separated by heavy rockers like “Ezy Rider” and mild blues/rock tracks like “Dolly Dagger,” and “Izabella.” Throughout, the album retains a sense of “togetherness,” with a feel that most of the songs fit where they are on the CD. It definitely is an intense listening experience, one that cannot totally be felt by just casual listening while performing other tasks. No, instead, invest in a good pair of headphones, turn out the lights and lay still as you take everything in…

While not being perfect, “First Rays” is probably the best of the posthumous Jimi releases, and definitely worth the time and money it may cost you. Even the liner notes are fantastic, including many rare photos, and almost 25 pages of fantastic track descriptions and essays.

If you fancy yourself a Jimi fan, than this record is for you. If you respect Jimi’s work, than this is for you. Get it, it’s probably one of my top 15 favourite CDs…

*(one warning though): If you have a multi-speaker surround sound system, then you might want to invest in a smaller unit. The mixes are sometimes fuzzy or tinny, and sometimes only are audible from a single speaker. Other than that, I don’t have any real complaints.

Review I think it’s important to understand that this is the closest thing to what Jimi had intended to release in 1971 as the follow-up to the seminal Electric Ladyland album of 1968…

Having said that I have to say that I think this is the most impressive material of his career. These are the tightest batch of songs he recorded in that none of them are too long and all have tremendous hooks and content. The performances here are considerably better than past recordings due in part to the fact these are musicians who have played and toured together for successive years and are literally at the top of their game. And it shows!!!

Hendrix’s vocals are more controlled and less gimmicky and he displays a lot more vocal range in general than before. His guitar parts are more structured and intricate. His solos less sloppy and more developed. His overall aura more tightly defined. And let’s face it. Noel Redding wasn’t the most impressive bass player (he was actually a guitar player by trade) and hearing Billy Cox on bass here makes you realize that Hendrix’s material is far more fluid and soulful w/ him in the mix.

Also, the production quality of the overall sound is better than his previous efforts. So much of it was recorded at his newly built Electric Lady Studios the Summer of 1970 and the fact that they were able to utilize the most state-of-the-art and up to date recording equipment is obvious when you hear the results.

It may be silly to say since Jimi Hendrix has become a bigger rock star since his death, but had he lived and kicked-off the decade w/ this release he would have owned the 70’s. Zeppelin? Sure they were huge then but he would have been THE rock star defining the decade, I’m sure of it.

Just have a listen to “Freedom” w/ it’s locked-in beat, searing, white hot guitar licks, and Jimi’s soulful vocal delivery. THAT is rock n’ roll. “Izabella” continues right where “Freedom” leaves off and that’s a good thing because “Freedom” seems way too short. “Dolly Dagger” and “Ezy Rider” are just pure ear candy. “Stepping Stone” has some of the hottest guitar licks ever recorded. Period. Just listen to the outro solo. “My Friend” is a pleasant surprise w/ it’s Dylan-esque vocals and overall vibe. “In From The Storm” slams you over the head from the first notes of the guitar riff w/ it’s dramatic hard rock delivery. The CD ends w/ the mellow blues of “Belly Button Window” and it’s incredibly creative and sensitive lyrics from the perspective of drummer Mitch Mitchell’s then unborn child.

I realize this was originally compiled and released in CD form back in 1997, but this is the first I’m hearing it and I have to say I’m completely blown away….

Jimi Hendrix First Rays Of The New Rising Sun (1997)

From starling.rinet.ru

Hendrix novices should be very careful when it comes to Hendrix postmortem releases: everybody knows there’s at least half a hundred of them, and most are either pathetic rip-offs or lousy live recordings (one of the few most nasty of these is the infamous New York ’68 jam session with a, er, ‘pixilated’ Jim Morrison mostly spitting out obscene copulation metaphors, if you get my drift. Strange enough, it’s available under at least a dozen different titles. Avoid it like plague).

However, since Jimi’s family finally took control over his legacy, things seem to start getting better, and we might hope for a decent, straightened out catalogue appearing soon with all the rip-offs deleted and gone for eternity. So far, most of the interesting stuff that, according to Prindle, Jimi recorded in Heaven and fed-exed down on Earth, has re-surfaced on two of these re-issues: First Rays Of The New Rising Sun and South Saturn Delta (reviewed below).

This concrete album replaces the earlier issued and generally better known Cry Of Love released in March 1971 – the album that Hendrix didn’t have enough time to record, rather like Janis’ Pearl, along with some lesser known tracks. So you might easily dub it ‘the great lost fourth Hendrix album’.

Unfortunately, while I’m not going to argue with the ‘lost’ thing, calling it ‘great’ seems quite an arrogant task to me. ‘Cuz it’s not great at all, in fact, it’s even worse than Electric Ladyland. No, it doesn’t have any fourteen-minute jams – most of the songs are three or four minutes long. And it doesn’t have any dated gimmickry: no buckets of water for the amps that time. But somehow these songs never thrill me as much as his 1967 albums. Say what you want, and I’ll say what I want (again): Jimi’s terrible lack of songwriting ability comes through once again.

Moreover, these songs are as rambling and unsecure as never before: the time was pressing hard on Jimi, and his problems didn’t translate well onto music. Call me crazy, but I think he was in a somewhat Barrett-ish state at the time: stoned nearly out of his mind, personal affairs a mess, the Experience annihilated and musically and artistically exhausted. God only knows what he would go on to make… anyway, let us not digress any more. There are some good compositions on here.

Sometimes Jimi’s tortured soul steps on the surface and he lets go with a blazing, confessional ballad (‘Angel’) that rivals ‘Little Wing’ as his most emotional piece of writing. Sometimes he gets an interesting technical idea – the unique guitar tone on ‘Room Full Of Mirrors’ turns it into a head-spinning psychedelic experience. Sometimes he delivers a scorching blues tune with precise and thought out, Creamy licks that we’re not grown to expect of him (‘Freedom’). Finally, there’s a fantastic riffing excercise (the instrumental ‘Beginnings’). But that’s about it.

Most of the other tracks fall into three categories. First of all, there’s a lot of aimless guitar wanking on uninspired bluesrock tunes like ‘Dolly Dagger’ or ‘Earth Blues’. They’re all fairly impressive from a technical level, but for how long did Jimi expect he could impress us? Nothing can be more impressive than ‘Foxy Lady’! Creatively speaking, they’re all weak. His lyrics are maybe getting more poetic, but I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a flaw.

It seems obvious he was trying to step off the psychedelic hippie train, but it seemed to be moving too fast for him. So he ends up sounding like a cross between Marty Balin and Jim Morrison, with a slight touch of Syd Barrett again (the stupid cosmic song ‘Astro Man’). To be honest with you, his derivative mystical lines do not impress me in the least: while he was always trying to present himself as the ‘intelligent’ one, I never found any signs of real ‘intelligence’ in Jimi’s lyrics. Pretension, yes, sometimes. But he was mostly ripping off other people, just as well as other people were trying to rip off his songwriting.

Next, the second category is ‘Bad Ballads’. ‘Drifting’, for instance, which just drags for three and a half minutes and tries to sound exalted but just manages to sound phoney, or the overlong title track. Finally, the third category includes a Dylan rip-off: ‘My Friend’ is a feeble imitation of a) Dylan’s singing; b) Dylan’s lyrics; c) Dylan’s arrangements (the drunken company noises remind one of ‘Rainy Day Women’). It’s amusing, but hardly essential for anybody but those whose only aim in life is to prove that Hendrix was a better songwriter than Dylan (fancy that).

So no, I’m not impressed. I do admit that I can’t call the album ‘bad’ in a plain sense of the word. The playing is good, and the decent songs I’ve named above are enough to redeem it. But it’s a serious letdown compared to Jimi’s ‘classic’ works, and had he continued in that blues-o-mystical direction, I’m sure he’d have ruined his career in less than a couple of years. Now wait, maybe the problem is… yes… YES that’s where the rub lies. The album is too long, you see? It’s like seventy damn minutes! Scoop out all the filler and you’ll get a nice little record stuffed with delicacies like ‘Room Full Of Mirrors’ or ‘Angel’.

I respect Jimi as much as anybody, but he never deserved a double album – and he put out one before his death and one after his death. What a silly trick of fortune.

Jimi Hendrix First Rays Of The New Rising Sun (1997)

From sfloman.com

We can only guess what Jimi would’ve officially released had he not died, but with the help of the Hendrix estate, who in the 1990s got the rights to his back catalogue and sought to rectify past wrongs with regards to the many dubious posthumous releases bearing his name (most spearheaded by producer Alan Douglas), this is as close as we’re likely to get to what Jimi envisioned his next album being at the time of his passing.

Most of the material here was previously on The Cry Of Love and Rainbow Bridge, both originally released in 1971 but now out of print, but by most accounts this remastered 17-track edition is closer to what he had intended, which was to release another ambitious double album a la Electric Ladyland. At the time, Jimi was beset by a myriad of problems, including the previously remarked upon legal hassles with Chalpin, the stress of building his own Electric Lady studio (for which he incurred the wrath of the local Mafia!), pressure from the black power movement to make his music more black (which he was gradually doing) and political, and of course the drug problem that killed him.

He was also unsure of his musical direction (you can only totally reinvent music once, after all), so he surrounded himself with the people he felt most comfortable with – Mitchell who he had a phenomenal musical rapport with, Cox who was a serviceable bassist but more importantly was his old Army buddy from before he even hit the chitlin’ circuit, and Eddie Kramer, who again engineered – and worked on what was for him comparatively straightforward songs for the most part.

Of course, the songs released on this album are far more straightforward than what the actual release likely would’ve been after Jimi the weirdo producer got through with them, but what we have here is generally earthier and more r&b/funk-based than usual, with shorter songs and Jimi’s voice sounding more melodic and further up in the mix than usual.

And while some of the material here is unremarkable, sounds promising but is clearly unfinished, or is flat-out forgettable (“Stepping Stone,” “Astro Man”), I find the majority of this album to be extremely enjoyable for what it is, even if it’s a far cry from the three classic Experience albums. That said, the album would’ve benefited from being briefer, and when I play it I often program the 12 or so tracks that I really like rather than listen to all of it.

As for highlights, “Freedom” is a funky, rocking anthem with lashing guitars, and “Izabella” contains worldly rhythms, catchy chants, and more cutting guitar. Indeed, he may not be breaking any barriers here, but Hendrix remains one heckuva guitar player, as evidenced on funky hard rockers with fiery fretworks such as “Dolly Dagger” and “Ezy Rider,” the former inspired by groupie girlfriend Devon White, the latter by the cult movie.

“Room Full Of Mirrors” is a propulsive hard rocker with a liquidy, luminous guitar tone (Ernie Isley was likely taking notes), the obviously unfinished but still worthy “Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)” likewise hits hard and has an impressive guitar solo, “Earth Blues” is loose, funky, fast-paced, and explosive and is enhanced by catchy female backing chants (in addition to Jimi’s guitar exploits, naturally), and “In From The Storm,” despite its blatant rip-off of the Jeff Beck Group’s “Rice Pudding” at the very end, invents a seemingly new genre, metallic soul. On the mellower front, the dreamy ballad “Angel,” the most famous song here, is a legitimate radio classic on which it’s hard not to think of Jimi’s sad passing, and “Drifting” is another pretty Curtis Mayfield styled soft soul ballad.

I also find myself enjoying admittedly minor efforts such as “Night Bird Flying,” which is decidedly different but has some great groovy playing, and the loose, off the cuff “My Friend,” which I also have an odd affinity for due to its atypical nature. Generally speaking, when compared to his Experience albums these songs are far less “far out” and are therefore less interesting, even if the Black Panther Party was likely to be more pleased with them.

Still, though I’d rank few of these songs as classic Hendrix, on the whole I’m very pleased with this album as well; in fact, I’d say that any Jimi Hendrix collection isn’t quite complete without it.

Jimi Hendrix: First Rays Of The New Rising Sun (1997)

From Blogcritics.org

It’s been nearly 40 years since the most revolutionary guitarist of all time, Jimi Hendrix, passed away. With three landmark studio albums to his name, plus gems of unreleased material left behind, making a proper posthumous studio album with the latter has always been a tough and controversial task.

No one will ever know for sure how Hendrix himself would have sequenced, fine-tuned and what he would’ve named the follow-up to his third and final album in his lifetime, 1968’s seminal double LP Electric Ladyland. We do know however, it was meant to be a big project – a double or triple LP – that the guitarist had been working on for over two years before his death in September of 1970 at age 27.

The first few attempts at posthumous releases, The Cry of Love and Rainbow Bridge from 1971 and War Heroes from 1972 were revealing but felt incomplete. It wasn’t until 1997, when Hendrix’s trusted recording engineer Eddie Kramer and drummer Mitch Mitchell used his last handwritten notes and remastered/resequenced his last tracks on the 17-track-long First Rays of the New Rising Sun that one got a true and mostly satisfying picture of the guitarist’s ever changing musical vision at the time, which struck a more serious tone lyrically and incorporated newer sounds to his repertoire.

13 years later, the newest versions of First Rays, an mp3/digital edition available via online stores such as ScatterTunes, plus a CD+DVD edition out this spring do not exactly enhance the actual sound – not that it’s needed with all the previous remastering over the years. But the former is more convenient for the current digital music age, while the latter contains a viewing experience that does enhance and make you appreciate the audio portion a little more via a new companion 20-minute DVD documentary of the making of this “concept compilation.”

Starring Mr. Kramer (and also former Hendrix bassist Billy Cox and drummer Mitch Mitchell), the DVD gives you the fullest sense yet of how Jimi’s ideas for songs turned from sole guitar tracks and hotel room recordings to full blown full band masterpieces. It also gives insight into the changing dynamics between Jimi, bassist Billy Cox and drummer Mitch Mitchell in recording sessions. For example, they developed a sort of funky rhythmic chemistry and style for songs like “Night Bird Flying.”

The highlights come when Kramer uses his mammoth recording mixer to reveal what Jimi’s individual guitar tracks sounded like in their earliest stages. One song in particular, “Angel,” had Jimi recording all the song’s guitar, bass and drum parts back in 1967, with Kramer giving viewers a clip of what that early recording sounded like as he explained its progression from that demo to full band classic recorded at the guitarist’s then soon to be legendary Electric Lady Studios in NYC.

The aforementioned “Night Bird Flying” gains even more appreciation here as Kramer marvels over the incredible mind of Hendrix while playing the track’s four individual and sophisticated electric guitar parts one at a time, then together as they appeared on the final studio recording.

In all, these 17 tracks contain works from the Jimi Hendrix Experience and the guitarist’s follow-up power trio, the (bluesier) Band of Gypsys (featuring Buddy Miles on drums/backing vocals and Billy Cox on bass). And nearly all of it is phenomenal and shows a high level of creativity on Jimi’s part unmatched by his peers before or since.

One can forever question whether Hendrix himself would’ve included all of these song choices, especially in the forms he left them in. Hard rock instrumental gem “Beginnings,” for example has some scratchy production to it that Hendrix most likely would’ve wanted to do away with before releasing it. After all, the man was a perfectionist in the studio. But it would be a waste of time.

Whether it’s funky or outright rockin’ tracks like “Freedom,” “Izabella,” or “Ezy Ryder” (featuring Buddy Miles on drums and Traffic’s Steve Winwood and Chris Wood on backing vocals), or the softer “Angel,” there is hardly anything to quarrel with as far as quality songwriting material.

As to who needs this previously available collection is concerned, if you’re a late comer to Hendrix or a big fan but want it on your iPod/mp3 player, the digital version is for you. But if you have the 1997 CD version, you don’t necessarily need these new releases unless you are dying for more history on these landmark recordings or are a completist who has to have everything Hendrix.

Whether it’s the new digital First Rays, new DVD-enhanced CD or old, CD-only edition, it’s an essential collection for all Hendrix fans.