Aug 262008
 

There were a lot of obscure soul singles on which Hendrix played, including cuts for Little Richard and The Isley Brothers. In the room showing short films, some of these songs were played. Jimi’s guitar playing was unmistakable–not too far removed from the style of guitar playing on Impressions and Don Covay singles of that time but with much more power than Curtis Mayfield on the Impressions records and greater authority than anything the guitar players other than Hendrix (who played on a Covay single I don’t know) would play on Covay’s records. It was hard to fathom that such a force was toiling as a sideman through the mid-60s, but as one of his peers during his pre-fame years noted, Jimi was not well accepted in the African American community. Weird to think that the divide was being established in the mid-60s, from both ends of the racial spectrum.

The pre-fame walls in this first room I’d entered were fascinating. As I moved into his well-known years, there were still cool things to see, such as the color film for the Are You Experienced? album cover. When I got back the end of the line, with those “Merman”-type lyrics and the diminishing Look, I took a seat on the couch in front of the video monitor and simply dug the stream of live clips that was playing.

In the room with the short films, one Jimi’s peers – it might have been Robert Wyatt or Eric Burdon – noted that it seemed he wasn’t even holding a guitar, that the music just came out of his body. Right on! Everyone talked about how musical he was, how he could pick up any instrument and make it sing. Jeff Beck said that after seeing him play in a London club for the first time he had to think about finding a new way to make a living. There was a clip of a Hendrix and the Experience playing “Stone Free” to a small audience of British kids when he first hit the UK. The kids are sitting around what looks like a small club or studio, their jaws hitting the floor. Here’s the clip!

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  7 Responses to “Trippin’: Science Fiction’s Got Nothing on This Experience”

  1. dbuskirk

    “That whole guitar-smashing/amp-humping routine of Jimi’s, as slightly embarrassing and calculated it would seem when artists following his footsteps would try it, seemed sincere and even necessary for the evolution of rock when Pete Townshend and then Hendrix did it”

    Was Cobain brave or foolish for attempting to walk with giants?

  2. Mr. Moderator

    Cobain was brave for many other things, in my opinion, but his guitar-smashing/amp-humping routine seemed no more powerful than what any of us might have done out of a desire to be part of that tradition. What do you think?

  3. dbuskirk

    I’m truly ambivalent but I did think it was funny how indignant people were about that SNL appearance, often making a big show of re-enacting how bored they were by it. Even if their reactions were more nuanced, they seemed just as peeved as my parents would be.

    On the other hand, the whole tradition has a privileged, “carpenter disrespectful to his tools” quality that bugs the grandson of the Depression in me.

    Still, if he was only aiming to get himself in the footnotes of rock history, Cobain must be pleased somewhere that no discussion on the politics of guitar-smashing can be held without mentioning his name.

    -db
    (just finishing up his vacation and getting into the swing of things….)

  4. BigSteve

    Yeah I’m not really interested in science fiction, so I forgot all about that part of the museum. It’s true that the inside is not as out there as the exterior of the building. It seems like there’s a lot of wasted space, like they haven’t quite figured out yet all of what’s going in there.

    One thing that exhibit does in reinforce the once-in-a-lifetime aspect of Hendrix. Even with all the artifacts of his upbringing and apprenticeship, he still seems to have come out of nowhere. Genius is always a quality that cannot be adequately explained, but Hendrix is a special case.

  5. diskojoe

    That EMF building is ugly as all heck. It looks like a melted Visible V-8 Engine model kit.

  6. Jim said “…Hendrix (who played on a Covay single I don’t know)”

    I say: What Covey track did he play on besides Mercy Mercy? Do you recall the name?

  7. Mr. Moderator

    I don’t recall the name. I’ve been meaning to look it up.

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