Search - The Jimi Hendrix Experience :: Electric Ladyland

A really cool album

Joker | Michigan | 02/26/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Electric Ladyland By The Jimi Hendrix Experience is right up there with Are You Experienced?. This album has a little bit of everything - straight up hard rock, blues, jazz, etc. The song Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland) is mellow, then the classic Top 40-ish Crosstown Traffic follows, clocking in at 2:25. Then what's next? The 15-minute Voodoo Chile! This is one thing I like about this album - it's all over the place but retains that Jimi Hendrix feel throughout. The group got some help on some songs by such musicians as Steve Winwood, Jack Cassidy, Buddy Miles, Al Kooper, and others. Bassist Noel Redding sings the song Little Miss Strange. Bob Dylan wrote the song All Along The Watchtower and this group's cover of it is outstanding.



Personal favorites of mine are Gypsy Eyes, Burning Of The Midnight Lamp, House Burning Down, All Along The Watchtower, Long Hot Summer Night, and Voodoo Chile.



If you wanna rock Hendrix style, then this is your album. A winner all around and very highly recommended."

A Testament To One Of Rock''s Biggest Losses

Craig Connell | Lockport, NY USA | 03/01/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This two-disc 1968 recording is a classic. It has to be signature work of Hendrix' short-but-brilliant career. First as an album and then as this CD, I've spent 40 years listening to these songs, I especially never get tired of hearing "1983...(I Should Turn To Be), All Along The Watchtower and Voodoo Child." The last two have been attempted and done well by such great guitarists as Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton, but nobody - repeat nobody - does them like Jimi Hendrix.



A shame we'll never know what kind of innovative sounds this man could have produced with his guitar had he not overdosed on drugs at the age of 27.

This was one of the biggest losses ever to rock music and this CD is a testament to that."

So Far Ahead, It Keeps Coming Back Again & Again, Better &

Edward Z. Rosenthal | Collingswood, NJ, USA | 04/15/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It's f***ing ridiculous to be writing anything 'bout this album now, 40+ years after its release, but I couldn't help myself. I've listened to "Electric Ladyland" at least once every month of every year since I first bought the double LP in 1976 as a high school freshman. Music can be credited with changing lives - soothing the afflicted, uniting enemies, expanding consciousness - but nothing else that music does is as profound as it's sublime ability to transport the imagination. Jimi was a veteran of infinite mental voyages and here he charged himself with the noble task of ensuring that he left no one behind on this, his most ambitious sojourn. And just to make absolutely sure that his gracious desire is fulfilled, this remarkable pack of psychic escape pods keeps returning to Earth again and again, collecting eager pilgrims, who are then blissfully hurled inward into the cosmic center of a radiantly spectacular universe.



I take this cool ride every month. Somehow, I find each new trip more fantastic, more thrilling than the last. It's not like I'm obsessive/compulsive - I'm not - but this album draws me to its transcendent sounds with an irresistible force unlike anything else I've ever experienced. Heroin might be equally gripping - I wouldn't know - but an opiate merely renders it's victim listless and weakened, while "Electric Ladyland" is an adrenaline charged transfusion of the most potent psychic stimulant ever concocted. It ignites my most dormant creative instincts, inflames my every passion, incinerates my every last doubt. It only makes me stronger. Roooaaarrr!!!....



I feel I could write multiple lengthy volumes - without straining for fresh new thoughts - on the song pair of "1983... (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)" and "Moon, Turn the Tides...Gently Gently Away." These, of course, are not quite true songs, but more so elegant mental vehicles to transport us to his very own magical inner world, where we are then free to intently explore and marvel at the most sublimely ephemeral of his so-very-delicate notions. Gossamer wisps of fleeting whims drift past on fragile currents of lilting rhythms. The sheer translucence of these diaphanous musical apparitions is staggering. Horribly gorgeous.



I do want to say a few words about the monumentally grand pair "Voodoo Chile" and "Voodoo Child (Slight Return), which Jimi has described as a sort of modern National Anthem for the country's then newly awakened, budding consciousness. It moves me more profoundly, more deeply, more soulfully than anything else I've ever heard. It's such a sophisticated assault on every musical level, marshaling his every conceivable skill and instinct in the service of National Rebirth. It's orchestrated chaos and mayhem - a sonic weapon he later used to obliterate our old, exhausted, trifling National Anthem in an iconic performance at Woodstock - conjuring up the hideous spectres of our collective heritage. An awful lot of really bad stuff needed to be exorcised from our burdened souls and Hendrix had anointed himself Supreme Electric Shaman. He chases the Daemons from the darkest, deepest recesses of our troubled being with pulsating, throbbing spasms of rhythmic fire. The antiseptic furnace of his pure molten truth scours and saves us. As any true medicine man must do, he loses himself entirely, so that we may find ourselves. It's the only true miracle I'm aware of in modern times.



I just want to state that "All Along The Watchtower" is unquestionably, absolutely the finest cover song ever recorded. No one else comes close to Jimi's stupendous achievement, elevating Dylan's already lofty creation to stratospheric heights of soaring grace and thunderous power. The opening bars are worthy of Beethoven. So many others have vainly attempted and pathetically failed to duplicate Jimi's awesome feat, horribly embarrassing themselves. The fools.



In the spirit of full disclosure I'll state that I hate the song "Little Miss Strange." It's a Noel Redding travesty that Jimi included just to pacify the unfortunate dimwit. More's the Greatness of Hendrix! Ha! As utterly horrible as is Noel's turd, is the splendid magnificence of everything else on this sacred treasury of divine tones. "Crosstown Traffic", "Rainy Day, Dream Away", "Still Raining, Still Dreaming", "Come On (Let the Good Times Roll)", "Gypsy Eyes", and the rest all deserve a full page comment each. There's so much depth and detail to the production and engineering that it gets me dizzy.



Finally, if you haven't listened to, enjoyed, experienced "Electric Ladyland" in more than a few weeks then you are truly the most masochistic, depraved, oblivious parasite ever to slither across this wretched orb."