![\"Jimi](\"https:\/\/theboisebeat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Jimi-Hendrix.jpg\")
Jimi Hendrix was a workaholic. If there was any question about how much gas that guy had in the tank, consider the fact that, forty-seven years after the end of life and following countless posthumous releases, we can still have a \u201cnew\u201d Hendrix studio album appear in 2018, with ten of its thirteen tracks previously unreleased, and find it necessary, essential listening.<\/p>\n
Both Sides Of The Sky <\/strong>is a thrilling piece of work, offering new insights into Jimi’s capabilities, and more important, a consistently engaging album.<\/p>\n Credit producers Janie Hendrix, Eddie Kramer and John McDermott for having a keen for which of these tracks, recorded in the two year span from January, 1968 to February, 1970, would fit together as a coherent album. There\u2019s a lot of straight-ahead blues here, including collaborations with Johnny Winter and his old Chitlin Circuit partner Lonnie Youngblood, and covers of Guitar Slim\u2019s \u201cThings I Used To Do\u201d and Muddy Waters\u2019 \u201cMannish Boy\u201d.<\/p>\n But the blues gets turned upside down when Jimi sings it – what comes out is swagger rather than heartache or misery. \u201cHear My Train A Comin’,” the one song here with the Experience backing him, sounds like a blunt \u201cfuck you\u201d to his old town and all the people in it, especially his girlfriend. Likewise, the high-velocity studio takes with the Band of Gypsys taking on \u201cStepping Stone\u201d and \u201cLover Man\u201d \u2013 this guy\u2019s not down in the mouth, he\u2019s super bad. Considering the speed and devastation he\u2019s bringing to these performances, you could call it \u201chis punk album\u201d as easily as \u201chis blues album\u201d.<\/p>\n The Stills appearances are fascinating. The two worked together often throughout this period, with many of the results still unreleased, others having surfaced on People, Hell and Angels. On these two songs, recorded on the same day in September of 1969, Jimi is content to play sideman to Stills. They\u2019re trying out his arrangement of Joni Mitchell\u2019s \u201cWoodstock\u201d with Hendrix on bass. Not surprisingly, Jimi plays the bass like a lead guitarist would, finding harmonics nobody else would think to look for. Here\u2019s also a worthwhile Stills original called \u201c$20 Fine\u201d, on which Hendrix overdubs layers of guitars. It\u2019s interesting to think about Buddy Miles and Mitch Mitchell both hanging out in the studio on the same day, as was apparently the case. Did they sit there and brood , wondering which one would be called into the room next? Or did they play ping-pong together between takes?<\/p>\n One of my favorite things here is the extended studio take of \u201cPower Of Soul\u201d by the Band of Gypsys, which has a more natural flow than the edited version that appeared on the outtakes collection South Saturn Delta<\/strong>. Frankly, it\u2019s a great enough track that it deserves to get reissued once again, probably the best of the Band of Gypsys studio recordings.\u00a0 We know that Funkadelic was highly influenced by Hendrix, but with the high harmonies on the chorus, spaced-out timing of the vocal line, and the stomping, spaced-out groove achieved on this, one might wonder if that influence went both ways.<\/p>\n There are a few instrumentals that feel unfinished, yet the playing on them is so lovely, they\u2019re not unwelcome in the mix. \u201cCherokee Mist\u201d sounds like a spontaneous jam with Mitch Mitchell, later overdubbed with a psychedelic sitar. \u201cJungle\u201d, a duet with Buddy Miles, could be a sketch, laying down the musical outline of an idea that was never fleshed out. The take of \u201cSweet Angel\u201d is absent the vocal, with Jimi\u2019s prominent vibraphone track taking the melody during the chorus, and the result is gorgeous. Even these incomplete tracks have magical moments, thanks to his constantly compelling performances.<\/p>\n Of all the major studio collections released since the Hendrix estate took over his archives, I would place Both Sides Of The Sky<\/strong> at nearly the top of the heap, second only to First Rays Of The New Rising Sun<\/strong>. That collection felt like a finished Jimi Hendrix album, worth a place alongside the albums he released in his lifetime. This new one, like the rest that have followed, is simply a dip into the well of previously unissued material, but it’s a particularly satisfying one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jimi Hendrix was a workaholic. If there was any question about how much gas that guy had in the tank, consider the fact that, forty-seven years after the end of life and following countless posthumous releases, we can still have a \u201cnew\u201d Hendrix studio album appear in 2018, with ten of its thirteen tracks previously […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[891,288,890,537],"class_list":["post-2780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-music","category-uncategorized","tag-album","tag-bob-lee","tag-both-sides-of-the-sky","tag-jimi-hendrix"],"yoast_head":"\n