Thursday Music Link
Unusually, the Youtube comments on this one are basically entirely accurate. I can play the first forty seconds of this.
Drivin' South - Jimi Hendrix Experience
Consumer alert: There are other versions recorded around the same time for other Radio One shows which appear on compilation albums, but this one is definitely the best. Also a real gem for connoisseurs of utterly pedestrian bass playing, to whom Noel Redding has long been an idol.
Probably my favourite track from the Radio 1 album, fwiw. There's a lot of crap Hendrix live stuff around, but this is great.
ReplyDeleteThe first comment is bang on - it'd be fun to play "invisible jukebox" on someone with that track (Well, it could be... sounds a bit like... is it - oh, right, it's him.)
ReplyDeleteThe bass is rather fine, I think. Jaco at the back of all that would be disastrous. "Don't start improvising for God's sake", in the immortal words of Mark E. Smith.
Ah, a fellow connoisseur.
ReplyDeleteIt's not so much the lack of creativity that irritates me about Noel Redding as the lack of any variation at all. Guaranteed, at any given moment, he will be playing the root note of the chord, or the main guitar riff one octave down. Later Band of Gypsies Hendrix has a lot of problems, but the bass guitar is oceans better.
All thought Mitch Mitchell remains the definitive Hendrix drummer.
ReplyDeleteYes, definitely. What's particularly galling is that JHE would have sounded (although not looked, admittedly) considerably better if Chas Chandler, whose playing with the Animals was considerably better than workmanlike, had done it himself.
ReplyDeleteYou could probably work that point re: Chandler into a general thing about the Animals being under-rated, and important 'enablers' in the Brit blues boom. Bonus points for working in some way of slagging off Clapton ...
ReplyDeleteThere's definitely a genre - I think defined by a sort of ahead-of-the-beat drumbeat - running through the Animals, Sonics, Motorhead etc that always seems to be on the margins of rock music and shouldn't be. But try as I might, I can't convince Last FM to play anything but fucking reggae.
ReplyDeleteThere's a load of really good freakbeat out there, that gets under-played on the radio.
ReplyDeletee.g.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzXFmXcnK2M
Is Mitch Mitchell considered a good thing, or a bad thing. Its years since I've listened to much Hendrix, but on that track he's really struggling to keep up.
ReplyDeleteGood thing IMO - "struggling to keep up" is basically constitutive of the sound of acid rock drumming. And would also make a good title for Ringo Starr's autobiography.
ReplyDeleteThe jazzy, dragging-behind the beat tom-fills that Mitch Mitchell does are a key part of the JHE sound for me, too, that and the sense of swing he brings to it.
ReplyDeleteI'm not talking about being behind the beat, or ahead of it. More just not keeping up with where Hendrix is going musically. He's trying, bless him, but he's not really up to it. I wonder what Ginger Baker playing with Hendrix would have sounded like. Or Elvin Jones.
ReplyDeleteI have to say I'm really pleased with last.fm, but the reggae bias is doing my head in. It seems to pick out good and interesting reggae with impressive reliability - it has yet to play Bob Marley at me - but it does seem to converge on the reggae.
ReplyDeleteThey seem to have a truly huge amount of old rocksteady and skinhead stuff, so perhaps it's a sampling issue.
It does do a good job of scratching my French house itch, and I've managed to train it out of playing Northside or the Inspiral Carpets. Current state: here.
Ginger Baker? I shudder to think. Not a fan. Pretty sure I'd choose Mitchell over Baker every time.
ReplyDeleteElvin Jones would have been interesting, though. Or Jack DeJohnette, maybe. You could probably compile a decent list.
To be honest I don't really know Ginger Baker, other than the fact I saw him play a few times at the Vortex and he had an interesting balance of rock/jazz/improv going on. Cream make me feel physically ill, so if all his stuff from that period is like that, perhaps not.
ReplyDeleteBilly Cobham and Billy Hart also. Think they were happy where they were though. Steve Shelley if you had a time machine.