Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy...
It's over. That's the Trifecta.
I must remark on the passing of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. It was the greatest power trio in rock and roll. Slapped together by Chas Chandler. It featured the greatest rock guitarist ever hatched. He was a lefty who played his Stratocaster guitar backwards, strings reversed. He'd play the thing behind his head, with his tongue, his teeth. He made it all look so damn fluid and easy. The guitar was an extension of his being. It was his one trusted friend.
Hendrix started in the USA on the Chitlin Circuit. He honed his chops playing with Little Richard and James Brown. He was kicked out of one band after another because he'd end up upstaging the bandleaders.
Anyway, this master trickster, part Cherokee, a boundary-crosser, ventured to London and got matched up with two lilly-white Englishmen. Noel Redding on bass, Mitch Mitchell on drums. With a little help, all three sported excellently improbable Afros.
The rest as they say is history. Hendrix flamed out first. Early. Redding next. And then finally, recently, Mitchell. What an amazing trio. Check this clip out. The Experience plays for German Youth in 1967. Watch the Kinders try to dance to Purple Haze.
It's almost like some psychedelic alien band touched down on planet earth to show the humans what kind of music they played in another galaxy. What a psychedelically joyous noise.