Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Jimi! and a difficult interview

Coupla cool things up this day before the Turkey. One is my piece on Electric Ladyland, for PopMatters, two-week-long celebration of 1968.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Electric Ladyland
Electric Ladyland was recorded at the very peak of Jimi Hendrix’s recording and playing powers, in a series of marathon, late-night, drug and alcohol fueled sessions, with guests including Steve Winwood, Dave Mason, Jack Casady coming in, and a steady escalation of conflict between long-time Experience bass player Noel Redding and Hendrix himself. This volatile climate of hedonism, interpersonal conflict and obsessive perfectionism—Dave Mason is said to have done 20 tracks of the acoustic guitar part on “All Along the Watchtower” before Hendrix let him go—produced one of the landmark albums in guitar rock.


More

"All Along the Watchtower"


The other is what I hope will be my last-ever email interview...with James Johnson of Wilderness. Awesome album...complete asshole.

It's in Copper Press, and there's a PDF file of the whole issue...very nicely put together, I might add. Here's a link.

5 comments:

robp said...

Hey, you found a use for Joe Satriani. Well done.

jenniferpkelly said...

Oh, tell me you don't have a secret weakness for "Surfin' with the Alien"...I know I do.

Ian said...

Nicely done - as I've mentioned elsewhere I don't really like Hendrix as a whole, but certainly I appreciate his "Crosstown Traffic"/"Voodoo Chile"/"All Along the Watchtower" side. You actually made me a bit curious to check out that album - hell, as long as it doesn't have goddamned "Castles Made of Sand" on it, it can't be THAT bad.

Ian said...

Also, that guy from Wilderness seems to have his head lodged pretty firmly up his ass. What's wrong with communicating clearly, again?

jenniferpkelly said...

I love this album, just freaking love it, but I really like Jimi Hendrix in general...

The Wilderness guy, I dunno, it's a really good album. I don't want to stop anyone from appreciating his work.

Still, I have discovered that "The artist will only do email interviews" is almost always code for "The artist is a real asshole."