remembering jimi
Jimi Hendrix was born 65 years ago today, and shockingly, this fact does not appear on Wikipedia’s front-page ‘On This Day’ listing.
His music has and will continue to be discussed to death (NPI) but as I was in highschool when he died, allow me the following reminiscences:
1. I can’t do any better than to quote my friend Tim who upon first hearing Are You Experienced, recalled intense puzzlement, thinking “What the hell was that?”, followed by immediately replaying the album. The sound was that new.
2. I recently discovered quite by accident that prior to going to England he had a band for a few months in New York city, Jimmy James and The Blue Flames. I learned about this while researching Randy California, after listening to an old Spirit CD and wondering how he got that name. Turns out there were two Randys in the Jimmy James band and to distinguish between them Jimi called them Randy California and Randy Texas. The moniker stuck (and when Are You Experienced came out, 15-year-old RC was surprised to learn Jimi’s last name wasn’t James).
3. I gave away my copy of ‘Hendrix in the West’ to my highschool friend and Hendrix fan Tripp Anderson way back when; I hope you got lots of listens out of that disk Tripp! Regards whereever you are.
4. Who would have guessed that I’d end up living in Hendrix’s hometown umpteen years later?
November 27th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
My experience with Jimi Hendrix was a rock concert in Miami beach convention center in 71-72? We waited outside in line for a very long time. We were one of the early arrivers so we were pretty much first in line. It was hotter than hell and humid so it was probably in the summer. Anyhow, we were transcending environments while waiting and sweating. So we waited and waited and more people came and more people came and to our realization we were basically pressed up against the glass walls to the entrance while not enjoying the enviromental transcendance. I could wipe an inch of schmucky oil off my forehead!. So we finally got in. I was soaked and wired and colors were a flyin! and uhh …. uhh,. He showed up on stage played fro 45 minutes and then left!. We looked at each other and said WTF! We left and I came back to earth. Approxiamtely 6 mos later he passed away. But when I hear him today he was it! The other end of the environmental transcendance that I didn’t reach that night!