New Jimi Hendrix Album Is Last Studio Album......

[Hardrock69]

Interview by Craig Anderton At NAMM 2013:

[Terry]

I will say that Eddie Kramer does have a genuine interest and takes a great deal of care in restoring the various Hendrix vault recordings that have been released under his production auspices over the years...he even did a good job in cleaning up all the stuff that was butchered under Alan Douglas in the 1970s.

I do wonder what Hendrix would make of all the stuff released after his death, in terms of how he would have felt having that stuff released without his own input re: production and sound aspects. Kind of a moot point, because he obviously lost that ability/control when he died. I mean, I think it's a bit of a shame that Janie has control of the estate to the point where Leon got frozen out, but one smart thing she did was make sure Kramer has been consistently onboard with all of the various Experience Hendrix releases, so at least a degree of quality control has been exhibited from someone who actually worked closely with Hendrix.

[Hardrock69]

I am glad to hear this is the last studio album.

I have hundreds of hours of studio stuff. But most of it is like, 12 takes of one song....20 takes of another, etc., and they are the sort of things you can hardly tell any difference between.

[ELVIS]

That was an odd interview...

I'll pick this up only because I picked up all the other crap...

If this "new" "album" is anything like South Saturn Delta, it's gonna suck...

I don't think Jimi would be comfortable with 90% of the crap that's been released...

And don't get me wrong, I love this material and Kramer does a nice job, but it's polishing turds...

Releasing demos, jams and other personal recordings as a Jimi Hendrix "album" rubs me the wrong way, and I can only imagine how Jimi would feel...

[Terry]

That was an odd interview...

I'll pick this up only because I picked up all the other crap...

If this "new" "album" is anything like South Saturn Delta, it's gonna suck...

I don't think Jimi would be comfortable with 90% of the crap that's been released...

And don't get me wrong, I love this material and Kramer does a nice job, but it's polishing turds...

Releasing demos, jams and other personal recordings as a Jimi Hendrix "album" rubs me the wrong way, and I can only imagine how Jimi would feel...

Yeah, South Saturn Delta was pretty much scraping the bottom of a barrel that has been thoroughly scraped already...

Of all the stuff that came out after his death, excluding live recordings the only release I really enjoy is the late 90s First New Rays of The Rising Sun effort, which (if memory serves me correctly) was a compilation of the first several Hendrix albums put out in the years right after he died.

Avid Hendrix enthusiasts are doubtless glad for anything that is released, and while Janie Hendrix is obliging them by getting all this stuff out there I can't help but shake the feeling the main reason the stuff has been put out is for her to make a few more bucks off a dead man. One could forgive Al Hendrix for wanting to secure whatever legal rights/claims he could on Hendrix's estate, but Janie and her mother barely knew Hendrix.

Whatever. I mean, in the end it's not obligatory that one buy the stuff, and it's gonna be released regardless of anyone's misgivings.

[ELVIS]

I like that it's out there, with the cool artwork, and that Kramer is involved and everything, it's pretty cool...

But my favorite post-Hendrix release is The Cry of Love.

It sounds like a real album and it's sentimental to me personally...

[78/84 guy]

I am glad to hear this is the last studio album.

I have hundreds of hours of studio stuff. But most of it is like, 12 takes of one song....20 takes of another, etc., and they are the sort of things you can hardly tell any difference between.

I couldn't agree more. But I am guilty of buying this stuff. I want to hear everything this guy was thinking ! But it is getting a little crazy how much is out. At least most of this stuff isn't fucked with like Alan did in the 70's and 80's. And Eddie is involved. This one sounds the most interesting.

[Hardrock69]

They just need to continue on with live stuff now. Next major release will either be DVDs - Miami Pop Festival, or Royal Albert Hall.

Not much else out there as far as I know.

[chefcraig]

They just need to continue on with live stuff now. Next major release will either be DVDs - Miami Pop Festival, or Royal Albert Hall.

Not much else out there as far as I know.

And you can only imagine how rough that material might be. Even after significantly cleaning up the Berkley and Isle of Wight footage, the releases were still limited by the primitive technology (both film and audio) available at the time. This coupled with a stoned camera operator ("Dude, dig how far out his shoe is!") leads me (sadly) not to expect all that much. And I wish there was more than a security tape available for the Band Of Gypsies.

Speaking of them, I hope an official release of The Baggy's Rehearsal Sessions would finally become available. In may ways, I preferred those sessions more than the album itself.

[Hardrock69]

Actually, ask and ye shall receive. It IS released on the Experience Hendrix LLC bootleg imprint, Dagger Records.

http://www.daggerrecords.com/disc5.html

Jimi Hendrix: The Baggy's Rehearsal Sessions represents the fifth release by Dagger Records, the official bootleg label created by Experience Hendrix. This edition offers the fruits of the guitarist's spirited rehearsals fronting the Band Of Gypsys as they prepared for their four unforgettable Fillmore East concerts.

These unpolished, direct to two-track recordings were made over the course of two long December 1969 evenings. Hendrix had just returned from Toronto, Canada where he had been acquitted in a jury trial for narcotic possession. The verdict had lifted an enormous burden from the guitarist's shoulders. With the court case and all of its possible ramifications now behind him, Hendrix redirected his energy toward preparations for the recording of a live album at the Fillmore East with bassist Billy Cox and drummer Buddy Miles. "We rehearsed at a place called Baggy's in New York," explains Cox. "It was located down by Chinatown. We were there prior to Christmas and then a little after, practicing and rehearsing. We were working up a set with the songs we were going to perform for the [Fillmore East] concert. Then we realized that we had to do four shows and we used quite a few of those numbers in each of the shows."

Baggy's Studios was a nondescript Manhattan rehearsal facility opened by former Soft Machine road manager Tom Edmonston. Baggy's was by no means a recording studio designed to compete with the likes of the Record Plant. Baggy's had no control room; its purpose was to provide a space for artists to rehearse without restriction and at full volume for as much time as they required. This was a simple, yet effective rehearsal facility geared to those such as Hendrix who had no other convenient space to prepare for a live event or concert tour. "Baggy's had two floors," remembers Cox. "It was essentially warehouse space. We worked in the large room downstairs. It was a pretty simple set up. There were rugs on the floor and the walls were padded and soundproofed. " While commonplace now, the concept of a dedicated rehearsal room for rock acts [as opposed to vacant halls or theaters] had only begun to take hold in 1969. Cox explains. "The recording studio was exclusively used for creating and coming up with something new and different. This was something else. Previous to that time, whenever Jimi wanted to rehearse something he would call me up and I would come over to his apartment and we would play through some small amps. Rehearsal space did not exist as we know it today." Perhaps most importantly, Baggy's rental rates were a fraction of the cost of similar time at the Record Plant. With Hendrix's finances hamstrung by the construction cost overruns of his own Electric Lady Studios and the continuing PPX litigation, this was an important consideration.

The twelve recordings that make up this collection were originally made at 7 « i.p.s. on a two-track reel to reel tape machine. "It seemed like Jimi and I always had a recorder running there," recalls Cox. "It was like every move we were making there was being taped by somebody!" For Hendrix, these recordings served as a convenient tool to measure the group's progress throughout the rehearsals. Gene McFadden, a member of Hendrix's road crew, organized the group's equipment and installed a sound system from which a feed was patched into the tape recorder. Hendrix loaded a full spool of tape and essentially left the machine to run. Each song was recorded live with no overdubs or other such attempts to finish or even polish them.

By all accounts, Baggy's served its purpose well. Over the course of several marathon sessions at the facility, the Band Of Gypsys made marked progress rounding such budding prospects as "Earth Blues", "Power Of Soul", and "Message To Love" into form. "Jimi enjoyed his time there," remembers Edmonston. "He called me the midnight social worker. He and Billy Cox were great guys all around."

Throughout The Baggy's Rehearsals Sessions, Hendrix can be heard tinkering with both arrangements and lyrics, enthusiastically refining these bright examples of his new musical direction. What these raw, unmixed tapes make clear is the enthusiasm the trio shared for this new music and the opportunity before them to bring it to life onstage. Even at their peak of unity, the original Jimi Hendrix Experience never rehearsed in such a fashion. This is by no means a knock on either Mitch Mitchell or Noel Redding, whose extraordinary interaction with Hendrix took form in a different fashion; instead it speaks to the shared cultural and musical heritage Hendrix, Cox, and Miles shared. "Our music was spread [across] a wide spectrum," recalls Buddy Miles. "You had rockers, you had R&B, soul, and most definitely blues. For instance, when we played 'Stop' by Howard Tate, the original version and the way that it was produced was most definitely uptown rhythm and blues, with a New York sound, but we kind of dissected it, which was cool. That's one of the things about the Band of Gypsys that I loved, because we could kind of like make our own baby--blues baby, rock baby, pop baby, and put them all together man, and come up with this formula. It was like a soulful fragment."

As groundbreaking as Electric Ladyland had seemed, Jimi's new material represented another bold step forward by the guitarist. Jimi had evolved as a guitarist, capable of more sophisticated lead and rhythm patterns. These new songs were more serious in tone, in keeping with Hendrix's desire to pare down his songs to deliver maximum impact. In addition, complex songs such as "Power Of Soul" and "Burning Desire" incorporated intricate time and tempo changes that showcased the lively synergy between Cox and Hendrix. "Truthfully, Billy Cox was a bear of a thinker, because to play Jimi's music--and no discredit to Noel Redding or anything like that--but I could understand the fact that he needed somebody to think like he did," explains Buddy Miles. "If you really listen to Jimi's music, there are a lot of time changes and different time signatures in the man's music. That was part of what made it so great. I remember when we were into about the third or fourth days of rehearsals, we had already gone through half of the Band of Gypsys songs we were going to play. From there, it was really about improvisation. What Jimi really wanted from Billy and I was not just to back him up but be a security blanket. We also could fuse our ideas, that's the reason why on little or nothing, Billy and myself came up with certain riffs that were really easy riffs, like for instance "Message To Love", dah dah dah, du du du du dadda, yeah oooh yeah oooh. It kind of sounded like the Beatles in a way, but the little curly cues and intricate things were very important. They were an asset to what we were doing. Jimi was like that too, he gave us music that we could take and pick apart and say 'Listen to that riff or listen to this riff. That's really cool."

Prior to this release, a few excerpts from Jimi's rehearsals at Baggy's have been commercially issued. "Burning Desire" and "Hoochie Coochie Man" first appeared overseas in 1973 as part of the long since deleted Loose Ends compilation. In recent years, the Baggy's recording of Jimi's yuletide medley of "Little Drummer Boy", "Silent Night", and "Auld Lang Syne" has been issued as the popular CD single Merry Christmas And A Happy New Year. The Baggy's Studio Rehearsals also features early versions of many of the songs later to be included as part of Band Of Gypsys or Live At The Fillmore East.

Throughout this collection, Hendrix, Cox, and Miles seem completely at ease and in fine spirits. Their laughing and joking punctuate a number of the songs, ranging from good- natured imitations of Muddy Waters in "Hoochie Coochie Man" to the humor of popular comedians they enjoyed like Moms Mabley and Pigmeat Markham at the close of "Message To Love". Even Hendrix himself is not spared the needle, as Miles and Cox chide their famous bandleader with his own celebrated line from "Third Stone From The Sun", '.and you'll never hear surf music again,' at the close of a raucous workout of 'Ezy Ryder'.

Beyond the good humor, there is much to be relished from a musical standpoint. Hendrix soars over a superb "Power Of Soul", weaving his spellbinding rhythm and lead parts around Cox's rock solid underpinning. Two versions of "Earth Blues" bear witness to this song's promise-perhaps even more convincingly than its unfinished studio counterpart now featured at part of First Rays Of The New Rising Sun. The Baggy's Studio Rehearsals also reveal that "Changes" and "We Gotta Live Together", two original compositions by Buddy Miles, were early candidates for the Fillmore East set list. Miles powers through the upbeat "Changes" in his trademark style, honing the arrangement made famous by Band Of Gypsys. A fragment of the infectious "We Gotta Live Together" was preserved when an unknown tape operator snapped on the recording device near the song's close. "Baggy's Jam", like so many other impromptu explorations by the trio, is an unexpected treat, building in intensity as Hendrix incorporates of host of fertile riffs and rhythm patterns. A second, vigorous rendition of "Burning Desire brings the disc to a close.

Taken together with Band Of Gypsys and Live At The Fillmore East, The Baggy's Studio Rehearsals offers Hendrix fans a more detailed view of the evolution of one of Hendrix most lasting achievements. Enjoy!

Preview Page:

http://www.daggerrecords.com/disc5music.html

[FORD]

I am glad to hear this is the last studio album.

I have hundreds of hours of studio stuff. But most of it is like, 12 takes of one song....20 takes of another, etc., and they are the sort of things you can hardly tell any difference between.

Yeah, it's like The Beatles "Let It Be" sessions..... Three weeks of recording, and 80 hours of tape (which is all available on bootlegs) and it still took a year & a half and three producers before they managed to pull an album out of it.

The rest of those 80 hours? It's mostly just other takes of those same songs, along with a few other tunes that would end up on Abbey Road and various solo albums, and some really bad cover songs that the band would do first thing in the morning, just to wake up. It's interesting listening for a Beatles fan, but EMI records wouldn't touch 90% of this with a 10 foot pole no matter how desperate they were for another Beatles cash cow.

[chefcraig]

Too fuckin' cool, and genuine thanks to Hardrock69 for the enlightenment, as well as the effort.

Thumbs up, friend!

[Hardrock69]

No worries. Hell, I have at least 15 DVDs of Hendrix stuff as well, lol.

Being a big fan, and understanding about Bootleg World, I have accumulated a lot of stuff.

[Hardrock69]

And I have the Let It Be sessions.....82 CDs...ALL the recording done during the entire month of January 1969. I have only listened to a fraction of the stuff. Got it all in FLAC, direct from the master reels.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/13/arts/critic-s-notebook-let-it-be-said-beatles-tapes-are-a-trove-if-familiar.html

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; Let It Be Said Beatles Tapes Are a Trove, If Familiar
By ALLAN KOZINN
Published: January 13, 2003

To read the statements made by British and Dutch officials after the arrest of a group of bootleggers in suburbs of London and Amsterdam on Friday, one would think that the police had apprehended a band of thieves who for the last three decades had been sitting on a vast trove of long-lost master tapes from Beatles recording sessions. There is an element of truth in what they say, but also a good measure of exaggeration. Whether the seizure of these tapes should be regarded as good news -- and for that matter whether it will have any effect on the thriving trade in Beatles bootlegs -- is another matter.

What the police seized was a collection of 500 to 550 reels of tape, each running about 16 minutes. They were recorded during the sessions for the Beatles' ''Let It Be'' album -- originally to be called ''Get Back'' -- from Jan. 2 to Jan. 31, 1969. But they are not the multitrack session masters from which the album was made. Those are safely in EMI's archives. Instead, they are monaural recordings made on a pair of Nagra tape recorders for reference purposes by a film crew that was documenting the sessions for a proposed television documentary. When the television plan was scuttled, the film was released theatrically as ''Let It Be.''

It is unquestionably an important collection. Unlike normal session tapes, which usually include only performances, the Nagra reels, as these tapes are known, run continuously and capture everything: rehearsals, discussions, arguments, clowning and loose jams on Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry classics as well as older Beatles tunes and oddities like the theme from ''The Third Man,'' all in addition to the nose-to-the-grindstone work of making an album. No other set of Beatles sessions is so thoroughly documented.

These tapes are well known to collectors. Instantly recognizable because the film crew is regularly heard announcing slate and roll numbers, the material was the source for some of the first Beatles bootlegs in the early 1970's. Until the early 90's the trend in Beatles bootlegging was to compile collections of the most interesting performances and discussions. More recently, bootleg labels began releasing these tapes more systematically: unedited, in chronological order and with reel numbers and recording dates fully documented.

These tapes have also been the subject of two books: ''Get Back: The Unauthorized Chronicle of the Beatles' 'Let It Be' Disaster,'' by Doug Sulpy and Ray Schweighardt (St. Martin's, 1994), and ''The 910's Guide to the Beatles' Outtakes: The Complete 'Get Back' Sessions,'' a comprehensive catalog of the material by Mr. Sulpy (The 910, 2002).

As originally proposed, the idea for ''Let It Be'' was elegantly simple. Having completed the White Album a few months earlier, the Beatles were to convene at the Twickenham film studios in London to rehearse an album's worth of new songs. The rehearsals would be filmed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, an expatriate American who had directed their promotional clips for ''Paperback Writer'' and ''Rain'' in 1966, as would the highlight of the project, a concert at which the Beatles would perform their new material.

What the plan did not take into account were the increasingly fractious relations among three of the four Beatles. John Lennon, more interested in his collaborations with Yoko Ono than in the Beatles, wanted either to involve her in the band or to distance himself from it. He brought a handful of songs to the sessions, and is heard in a few hilarious monologues (including one about how masturbation ''doesn't make you go blind, only very shortsighted'') but is often passive and uninvolved.

George Harrison, by then a prolific songwriter, was disgruntled about his paltry representation on the Beatles' albums, which were always dominated by the music of Lennon and Paul McCartney. He was also uninterested in performing in concert, and irritated by what he regarded as Mr. McCartney's condescension in telling him what to play. At one point Harrison walked out, effectively (if temporarily) quitting the band, leaving the others to pursue a series of aggressive but fascinating jams with Ms. Ono vocalizing. Mr. McCartney is at times almost despondent about his partners' lack of interest and cooperation. Only Ringo Starr seems to be taking the sessions in stride.

In the end Harrison returned, but only after being guaranteed that his songs would receive greater consideration, and that there would be no more talk of a concert. The project was completed with a series of performances filmed at the group's new Apple studios, and on the rooftop of their London offices.

What makes these tapes crucial to Beatles biographers and musicians interested in studying the band's working process is that they capture it all. The rehearsals often begin with one of the Beatles playing a new song while calling out the chord progression to the others. The group joins in and works through the changes, and ideas for arrangements slowly accrue. Some songs -- ''Two of Us,'' ''One After 909'' and ''Get Back,'' for example -- are tried as everything from sizzling, fast-tempo rockers to country-influenced ballads.

The process of lyric writing unfolds before the listener's ears as well. In one session for ''Get Back,'' Mr. McCartney stops during a run-through and says, ''I've got it -- Jo Jo left his home in Tucson, Arizona.'' Lennon asks, ''Is Tucson in Arizona?'' Mr. McCartney replies, ''Yeah, it's where they make 'High Chaparral.' ''

There is also a good deal of material that, even for the Beatles-obsessed, can be hard slogging -- hours and hours and hours of ''The Long and Winding Road,'' for example. And the discussions, which often last several reels at a stretch, range from the amusingly loopy to the contentious. Several are about the proposed concert. Among the plans suggested are playing in an amphitheater in North Africa, or on a cruise ship on the Mediterranean. When Harrison quits, Mr. Lindsay-Hogg suggests going on with the show and saying that Harrison is ill, to which Lennon replies, ''If he's not back by Tuesday, we'll call Eric Clapton.'' One reel captures a lunch meeting at which the group airs its problems in some detail.

Had these illuminating tapes not already found their way onto the collectors' market, their seizure would be unfortunate, because it is unlikely that Apple, the Beatles' company, will ever sanction their legitimate release. Apple has even tried to stifle scholarly discussion of them. When Mr. Sulpy and Mr. Schweighardt were at work on their first book, they naïvely sent Apple a sample chapter and sought permission to hear the studio recordings. Apple responded by threatening legal action.

[ELVIS]

I have accumulated a lot of stuff.