Are You Experienced?

Certain Songs #786: The Jimi Hendrix Experience – “Are You Experienced?”

February 10, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Are You Experienced
Year: 1967

First off, let me answer the question. Yes, I have been experienced. Let me prove it to you.

:: Plays long backwards guitar solo ::

Picking up the gauntlet that The Beatles had just laid down with “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “Rain,” but amping the volume to 11, the title track to Are You Experienced formally invokes the drug trips Jimi’s asking about in the lyrics.

Certain Songs #785: The Jimi Hendrix Experience – “Third Stone From The Sun”

February 9, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Are You Experienced
Year: 1967

Every other song on Are You Experienced had some kind of precedent in the past.

There were tight pop songs like “Foxy Lady” and “Purple Haze.” There were the hard-rocking pop songs like “Foxy Lady” or “Fire,” there were the bluesy songs like “Manic Depression” or “The Wind Cries Mary,” there was the psychedelia of “Love or Confusion” and the title track. And, of course, there was the mandated-by-law cover of “Hey Joe.”

Except for “Third Stone From The Sun.” It was pretty much unprecedented.

Certain Songs #784: The Jimi Hendrix Experience – “Fire”

February 8, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Are You Experienced
Year: 1967

Of course, if the Jimi Hendrix Experience had just been a flash guitarist and a couple of other dudes, then they would have been, oh I dunno, Ten Years After. And had they been three ego-driven virtuosos, they would have been Cream.

Now I know that a whole bunch of y’all love Cream more than I do, and some of you might even love Ten Years After, but none of their records were even a patch on what The Jimi Hendrix Experience pulled off on Are You Experienced, which remains one of the greatest debuts in the history of music. (Did I mention that?)

Certain Songs #783: The Jimi Hendrix Experience – “Purple Haze”

February 7, 2017 by Jim Connelly

Album: Are You Experienced
Year: 1967

How do I even deal with Jimi Hendrix?

I mean, he was a complete game-changer, an absolutely incandescent comet who redefined heavy rock ‘n’ roll guitar and then up and died before he could get old and boring. And so many words have been spilled about him that I’m sure I don’t have a whole lot new to add.

Except this confession: I’ve always felt that I never quite got Jimi Hendrix the way that everybody else did, and while I appreciate his guitar wizardry, it never spoke to me the way that some of his less-skilled contemporaries — like Pete Townshend and Jimmy Page — did.