Or, All Hail Our Chicken Overlords!
The LP cover of Are You Experienced? has always foxed me a little* how did Jimi Hendrix find two such musically accomplished midgets to form his band? why wasn’t more made of this gimmick then/now? did the non Hendrixians ride little tricycles around on stage while he was playing? why did they go with the Dracula cape pic when everyone involved just seems so ill-at-ease with it? As a cover it is equally iconic and simultaneously a bit crap, just how I like my art.
But, there’s more, The Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded music too, as well as being London’s 1967 go-to chaps for an awkward photo session. They did that pretty well.
Not being a subtle sort I love the way ‘Foxy Lady’ struts up and grabs the listener by the lapels of love. Hendrix in full-on Mr Loverman mode, half cute, half faux menacing over that primitive bump and grind rhythm. I never get tired of this, ‘Coming to getcha!’, indeed.
I like ‘Manic Depression’ even more and again this one is all about the rhythm for me, it really didn’t sound like anything else ever had. Hendrix’s solo which takes off sideways and then just soars without any regard for anything else that may be happening in the song is a sliver of beauty, but Redding and Mitchell are the stars of this one.
Are You Experienced? then slips effortlessly into the blues on ‘Red House’, but such is Hendrix’s incendiary playing that it still sounds like the future to me. Spoiler Alert: his woman done him wrong. Plus, Jimi gets 1537 bonus points for use of the word ‘yonder’ which is one of my favourites and seriously underused in the canon of popular music.
All of Are You Experienced? is great but let’s give you some personal highlights instead of a wearisome track-by-track affair.
The one-two spaced-out meal of ‘Love Or Confusion’ and ‘I Don’t Live Today’** is just so strange and cosmic and again just perfectly underpinned by Mitchell and Redding.
The libidinous revving ‘Fire’ is just great, especially once Rover moved over and let Jimi take over^.
Freefalling with Jimi stoned immaculate through the rings of Saturn on ‘3rd Stone From The Sun’ is a lot of fun. I rather like Jimi’s fun explanation to a journalist that the song was about:
a visiting space alien who, upon evaluation of the human species, decides that people are not fit to rule Earth, destroys their civilization, and places the planet in the care of chickens.
The backwards instrumentation of the title cut still sounds futuristic, 55 cynical years later. It sounds percussive, martial even, almost hip-hoppian in affect. Colour me impressed, colour me experienced, colour me gone.
I struggle to write about Hendrix, he was virtually a religious icon in my house; I am slightly surprised that I wasn’t named Jimi by my dad. There is something so incredibly effortless about his playing, nothing ever sounds like it was sweated over, forced or difficult; instantly recognizable. He was quite good at the whole music thing, no, really he was.
Listening to Are You Experienced? today I am struck by just how important the two little guys on the LP cover were. So many of the tracks here are carried and shaped by their often complex rhythms and not solely by that famous stoned drawl or guitar pyrotechnics. I would like to think our chicken overlords might have spared them back in the day.
Sometimes when you go back to music of this era it is difficult to appreciate it for more than historical kicks, everything has been so widely built on, or ripped off since. Are You Experienced? absolutely defined elements of that whole era and the odd trite nanosecond aside, still sounds like a destination far ahead of us in space and time.
You can tell my copy of Are You Experienced? is a valuable original 1967 release, rather than a cheap 1985 re-release, by the fact that it has a prominently displayed barcode and shows catalogue numbers for the cassette and CD versions of the album? man, that cat was so far ahead of his time!
1138 Down.
*not the rather garish US version, which I have always felt was rather infradig.
**sometimes my fave Hendrix track ever.
^good job he did in my opinion.
I’ve been listening to a fair bit of Hendrix over the last few months. I go through stages like that… think it was the result of that recent Los Angeles Forum release that put me in the mood.
Anyhoo, yes to all of this.
I have a nagging memory that the midgets were bought back for the rear of Electric Ladyland… not the version with a plethora of nipple, mind.
I’ve been on a bit of a Hendrix dive lately – this and Blues have been in the car for most of the last fortnight – and it’s impossible to find fault with this. I’ve tried in vain to use my thumb in the same way he did but only ended up with a sore wrist rather than re-writing the guitar rule book.
I have no idea why the little fellas aren’t mentioned more often Tony. It’s an injustice, I say.
I get what you’re saying about the Hendrix thumb, that’s the problem with epoch-making unearthly geniuses they’re a bit difficult to copy.
Belongs to the musical world cultural heritage!
I was unaware you blimey blokes had a different cover for this one. If I were to say I dig the infradig one, would I come off nationalistic?
It’s just kind of blind patriotism that gives your great nation a bad rep Vic.
I just like using the word infradig as often as I can because I only found out what it meant about a year ago.
Thinking maybe I should look it up… (and yeah, ‘great’ like the Lusitania was a ‘great ship’ as it headed into the abyss)
Some of the first music a young cheese eating CB was listening to. Thanks to an older brother who had some good vinyl (not so good after I got messing around with it)
No! Crimes against vinyl!
It did not go unpunished, believe me. What was my excuse before I took a few lumps ? ‘I didn’t know!!”. In a real whiney little brother voice. Did it stop me? Of course not.
I love the debut, but the third one is my favorite. Still, this is absolutely loaded.
It’s all good Matt. You can make a good argument for the Smash Hits album being his best too, weirdly.
Its kind of like The Beatles where he can leave off all these amazing singles and still make a killer album.
So many bands left singles off the albums back then to avoid exploiting fans. Wow!
Feel like Hendrix and The Beatles were the two who could do it without weakening the albums – might have been others too?
Do you think this was the heaviest stuff going in 67? I think so, who else had a guitar sound like that back then?
I agree. There were various garage bands that had heavy rhythms, but nothing that had the full package like our Jimi did.
I listened to Axis this morning and Spanish Castle Magic isn’t far off being a Sabbath song. And that was 67 too I think! Bands didn’t hang about back then.
There’s an argument that was why so many bands released so many great LPs back then, practice.
That he did! 🙂
Hendrix was a legend, an icon and a god all rolled into one.
Damn my stupid mouse fingers. He revolutionized guitar playing and people are still wanting to be him half a century on.
Perfectly put. The man just looked incredible too, he had it all.
Ex-paratrooper too, I always think that’s a cool fact.
Had no idea ..wow! Always get educated at this site. Hendrix as you and Scott pointed out was way ahead of the curve when you get right down to it.