May as well stick some Jimi on myself.
Electric Ladyland.
After Rainbow Bridge, that is the ultimate Hendrix, in my view.
Monterrey, yes. I can't agree with you on Rainbow Bridge, however I used to have a rather shitty sounding soundboard bootleg of Jimi playing at Woodstock that was absolutely incredible.
FWIW, My uncle saw Jimi play one of his first dates upon returning to the US in 1968 at the Lewiston Armory in Lewiston, Maine. He and Noel were using a Sound City backline. Also, if you've seen the picture of Jimi's shadow on a backline of really trashed looking Marshall cabinets, my stepdad was at that show, which was in New Haven, Ct. --He said that they had this sort of brightly colored maze of fabric tubes in front of the stage that you could crawl around in.
Also, I believe that I've mentioned it before, but I'll mention it again, I think that the Hendrix Family remasters of all his old releases sounds horrible. They cleaned the recordings up to the point where all the recordings sound sterile and lifeless.
I agree that some of the remasters have less life than the original yinyl, but I often find that to be the case. The efforts to sterilize old music is often a waste of time, in my view. Some of the life is always removed in an effort to improve recordings that were done seat-of-the-pants, the old way.
The biggest problem I have with the sound of the Hendrix Family efforts is that they actually re-mixed many of the songs, without Jimi's presence. Yes, Kramer got studio mixing credits, but Jimi was always there. However, I am glad to see that the family can finally, after twenty eight years of court battles, get some monetary relief, which they alone are due.
Except for the most modern new releases of previously unreleased material, which has been mostly concerts and practice sessions, I always prefer the original Hendrix vinyl sound. That also goes for absolutely everything that I have had the chance to compare vinyl to digi. Even my digitized vinyl rips sound better than the over compressed, "cleaned-up" CD releases.
What I enjoy most about
Rainbow Bridge is that it gives an inkling into the jazz directions that his musical interests were taking. If you have heard
Morning Symphony Ideas, there is even more of the jazz influences starting to show. The multi-tracking nightmares that they were exploring were to be made all that much easier at Electric Lady Studios were the first sessions shook the recording industry. It was a peak into the future of recording. Unfortunately, Jimi barely got to use his dream studio. It was an all tube studio in those days.
I forgot to mention ... Check out
The Rainbow Bridge Concert: The Early Show. It's hip, dude.
