The Genius of Jimi Hendrix

Discussion of Joseph Campbell's work with an emphasis on the personal creative impulse as well as the sociological role of the artist in today's global community.

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Stone_Giant
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The Genius of Jimi Hendrix

Post by Stone_Giant »

This Topic is a spin off from “Famous Shamans I have known and Loved” over in Mythology and Religion.

Music is extremely important to me, always has been. It’s abilty to lift one's mood and soothe the soul is without parallel. Maybe books, great visual art or film come close but non are as readily available or as easy to access as music. Just plug in to your music player or wack a disk on the car CD/Radio and you are flying.

In this post I’d like to pay homage to Jimi Hendrix. A groundbreaking musician who redefined the the musical vocabulary of the electric guitar. His flamboyant style really upset the authorities, and as a black man/natural outsider, suddenly we 50’s kids had a new champion. However, he could so easily have become a short lived, briefly fashionable phenomenon if it wasn’t for one thing – his brilliant and xenomorphic musical virtuosity.

First off, I’d like to comment on Rainbow Bridge, a film which is very much part of the 60’s in both style and content. The film is about Pat Hartley's "spiritual awakening" via a visit to the 'Rainbow Bridge' planetary meditation cult.

Hendrix was featured for 17 mins of the film but there is other footage focussing on just about the complete concert he performed. It was his penultimate performance and he is on fine form. Mitch Mitchell is backing him once again along with Billy Cox on bass.

The location is Maui, and Jimi played two sets, the latter being for me the more interesting. I love it when he picks up the flying V and and plays some really tasteful laid back instrumental grooves. Is this a hint of a future direction?

I often wonder what Jimi would be playing now if he was still with us. Would he have been re-energised by punk? He was master of raw screaming emotional music long before the punk ethos tried to kickstart a roots revival of the basic tenets of rocknroll, so who knows? I think one of his contemporaries, Jeff Beck, points the way he might have gone. He has never stood still in his search for musical inspiration, absorbing new forms and collaborating with younger musicians when appropriate, I think Jimi would have done the same.

On the other hand, was he really a child of his time and not meant outlast the psychedelic era that surely shaped much of his music? The concert footage also contains a sequence where he is talking to Pat Hartley and Chuck Wein. He is obviously out of his skull and launches into an incredible ramble, much of which I don’t catch but it features a story about Cleopatra amongst other things. The non-stop stream of consciousness stuff he comes out with is either genius poetry or whacked-out deep and meaningless verbosity, either way it gives a glimpse into the maelstrom of creativity that was the mind of Jimi Hendrix, a man who moved modern music forward with quantum-like effect.

Anyway - please feel free to contribute your stories and ideas about James Marshalll Hendrix, a personal Shaman of mine and many others, who reaches us and heals us still, through the power and greatness of his music.

Regards, Stone_Giant
Want to wash away my sins, in the presence of my friends. (Arcade Fire)

ALOberhoulser
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Post by ALOberhoulser »

Image
Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.
~Max Planck

Clemsy
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Post by Clemsy »

Hey Stone Giant!

When I was 11-12, somewhere around there, my oldest brother turned me on to music that would have a lifelong impact. The artists in particular who stand out are Simon and Garfunkel (everything they did), Arlo Guthrie (I can still perform Alice's Restaurant word for word) and Hendrix' Bold as Love.

Listening to that album with headphones rearranged my brain. I can't think of any other album that is able to take you so many different places with so much power. It's whimsical, sexy, amusing, spiritually stirring, philosophical, existential,... if I had it in front of me right now I could probably keep going.

Here's an anecdote: When I was 17 i was a counselor in a summer camp in Harrison State Park in NY. One of the cooks, his name was Abu, lived in Greenwich Village. He told me one day that he and Jimi had been friends and that he'd tripped many times with him.

Said he was one of the nicest, kindest people you could ever meet..

That's how I want to think of him.
Last edited by Clemsy on Sat May 11, 2013 6:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

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Post by Clemsy »

I was inspired to do some Youtubing and found this:

Jimi Hendrix: Axis Bold As Love Documentary

And THIS
My life was never the same again.
Eric Clapton after hearing Jimi for the first time.
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

ALOberhoulser
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Post by ALOberhoulser »

I love the mellow stuff - Jimi Hendrix - Angel

beautiful tune & great lyrics!! 8)

and another obscure piece - Jimi Hendrix - Indian Song

I love the thundering floor toms keeping time - I guess the subtitle was Cherokee Mist; it was on a posthumous album.

This was the bootleg I had on cassette @ 14 yrs old - Jimi Hendrix ‎– Rare Hendrix

Evidently he was the guitarist for other acts in 65 & 66 on this "bootleg" - still great!
Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.
~Max Planck

Stone_Giant
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Post by Stone_Giant »

Clemsy -- how yer doin'?
Cool documentary. Brilliant insights into a seminal album. Eddie Kramer - "....the transcendant mastery of the music waiting within the sleeve." Niiiice!

As a result of Al's espousal of my original Hendrix post on the other thread I have been motivated to revisit Jimi's canon. I realised I'd never actually owed my own copy of Electric Ladyland on vinyl,(though I do have Axis and Hendrix in the West still). My CD collection is limited to greatest hits compilations plus I have several mp3 songs - though mostly lowbit rate. Anyway, I ordered a brand new cd of E.L. which came last week and it is now permanently playing in the car.

Apart from brilliant blues playing, you can hear how Jimi's music is evolving on it , some parts even sound like a chorus of bagpipes! And then next he is squeezing the sounds of seagulls crying out of his guitar. What he did for the evolution of the electric guitar is immeasurable.

Regards, Stone_Giant
Want to wash away my sins, in the presence of my friends. (Arcade Fire)

ALOberhoulser
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Post by ALOberhoulser »

Bob Dylan's version - Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?

Hendrix version - The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window

I'd love to know how/why Jimi chose "Watchtower" , "Rolling Stone" & this to add his "twist"to Dylan -did the two of them ever really hang out?
Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.
~Max Planck

Stone_Giant
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Post by Stone_Giant »

I think Watchtower might have appealed to Jimi because he must have begun to feel the impact of his growing fame at that point in his career. The music moguls of the time were still of the idea that their star performers were simply cash-cows, to be milked for all they could deliver.

Watchtower seems to be all about disillusioment with fame, and other people cashing in on your creativity while paying you peanuts - this must have really appealed to Jimi. The fact that it is strongly poetic with excellent imagery - a classic Dylan put down - must have appealed to him also.

"Please Crawl out your window" is just a great song, melodically and lyrically, which appears to be one of Bob's personal-political songs; a lament as to why one of his female friends is romantically attached to some self-aggrandising dork. Something we can all probably relate to, especially if we fancy the woman in question ourselves.

Just looking at Jimi's own lyrics, he obviously has a poetical leaning and so maybe it isn't so strange why he would be attracted to the works of the Master.

As for hanging out, well they were contemporaries so its a definite maybe.. Oh to be a fly on the wall at that meeting.

Regards,

Stone_Giant
Want to wash away my sins, in the presence of my friends. (Arcade Fire)

ALOberhoulser
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Post by ALOberhoulser »

maybe in NYC, they met once or twice? Greenwich Village's Cafe Wha? Building Up for Sale at $11.5M
Tuesday, May 21, 2013, by Sara Polsky

Many a famous figure in the worlds of music and comedy has appeared at Greenwich Village's Cafe Wha?, where Allen Ginsberg allegedly drank and Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix performed. And as of today the building in which the club sits, at the corner of MacDougal Street and Minetta Lane, is on the market for $11.5 million.
8)
Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.
~Max Planck

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Post by Clemsy »

Here ya go...

Jimi and Bob Dylan: A Cosmic Friendship

Really badly written, but informative.
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

ALOberhoulser
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Post by ALOberhoulser »

Though Dylan and Hendrix probably did not spend more than a couple of hours together in their entire lives, they admired and respected each other.
...from your link - wow!!

Can you imagine the millions that were influenced by them both - I knew of Jimi long before I heard(listened to Dylan) - worlds collide today with everything Bob Dylan does!
Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.
~Max Planck

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Post by ALOberhoulser »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsHPEhmZX0Y]
James Marshall Hendrix - Drifter's Escape (audio w/ lyrics)
Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.
~Max Planck

ALOberhoulser
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Post by ALOberhoulser »

Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.
~Max Planck

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Post by JamesN. »

Hey everyone.

Stone Giant; I thought you, Clemsy, and Al would enjoy this. It is an ( American Masters ) special done on " Jimi Hendrix " for PBS that just blew me away. For those of us who lived through this period I think it really captures the essence of the times and the impact that he had. 8)

I hope you enjoy it
. :)


http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters ... omin/2756/
What do I know? - Michael de Montaigne

ALOberhoulser
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Post by ALOberhoulser »

I recorded it & already watched it twice James - so much I didn't know(and great stories too)!!
Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.
~Max Planck

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