With occasional reflection on the perpetual absurdity/intrigue of life and society in general.

Wednesday, November 23, 2022

The Optical Files #164: The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced (1967)


It's evident from a listen to Are You Experienced (which for some reason lacks a question mark in its title) that many of the important elements were present in Jimi's sound from the very beginning. Whether because of uncertainty about their chops, or producer Chas Chandler's pop-oriented caution, the Experience wasn't yet recording 15-minute epics like they would on Electric Ladyland, but everything else about their artistry seemed to arrive fully-formed on this debut. The multi-tracked guitars, the drugged-out virtuosity, & the splendid (if a bit gimmicky) use of the stereo space. Unfortunately my CD, like every CD version of this album available from the '90s onward, adds a bunch of ill-fitting bonus tracks that make it a sub-optimal listening "experience," compared to the clean brevity of the original LP.

In my writeup on the Ultimate Experience compilation, I wrote that I was fascinated as a kid by the way Jimi's vocals & guitar sounded like wholly different entities. It's obvious here that from the very beginning, studio Experience & live Experience were 2 different beasts. True, Jimi could play rhythm & lead parts at the same time, but in the studio there was no need to. There are at least 3 layers of guitars on songs like "Love or Confusion," each sounding distinct from the next with its own dialed-in tone; Hendrix's future engineer of choice Eddie Kramer made full use of the studio tools at his disposal. On "The Wind Cries Mary" & "Are You Experienced?" (which restores the album title's missing question mark), Jimi actually solos against himself, weaving the patterns together like a luxurious Persian rug. It would have been fascinating to witness these sessions. My understanding is that Jimi typically recorded basic guitar tracks 1st, then added vocals, then went back for guitar overdubs as many times as necessary until he got what he wanted. The result is a vocal approach that separates itself wholly from the hands that are playing the leads--& a lead with its own autonomous identity, a force of nature choosing the medium of electric guitar to communicate with us primitive humans.

As I mentioned earlier, the longest song here is the 6.5 minutes of "Third Stone from the Sun," which starts with a jazz swing before settling into a hard rock groove & subsequently spinning off into a sound-effect-heavy psychedelic freakout, with Jimi's often spoken-word lyrics threading the needle between UFO & DTF: "Your mysterious mountains I wish to see closer/May I land my kinky machine?" The album-closing (or what should be the closer, anyway) title track is also expansive, to the degree that it can be in under 4 minutes, with a trippy coda where the music fades out & back in, which feels like a rehearsal for the same trick done with more impact on Axis: Bold as Love.

It's a gorgeous ending, the last few seconds of guitar like a blood rush to the head after a particularly potent bong rip, making you wonder momentarily if there's another wave coming. What should follow this is the rich silence of empty vinyl, maybe with a slight repetitive click as the needle jumps in the runout groove. Instead, what follows after a few seconds is the driving funk of "Stone Free." I have nothing against "Stone Free," but it does not belong here. I've written before about the '90s obsession with justifying the CD format by filling as much of it as possible, whether or not it made sense for the album contained thereon, but in this particularly egregious case it threatens to ruin the entire listen. It doesn't help that at least 2 of the added tracks, "51st Anniversary" & the dull-as-dishwater "Highway Chile," are the closest Jimi ever came to putting out duds.

Of the 3 Jimi Hendrix Experience album, Are You Experienced is the one I've spent the least time with. I used to think it was the album itself, but now I'm not so sure. I think it might be because the mood-spoiling bonus tracks always turned me off. Had my first exposure to the album been the vinyl version, or a CD version duplicating it, I wonder if I would have been as wowed as everybody else was back in 1967? The CD as it's existed since the 1990s doesn't allow me that chance, & I can't help but feel a bit robbed.

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