Sunday 2 December 2018

Jimi Hendrix - Straight Ahead



Self made compilation

Disc 1: Hendrix Approved Mixes

01 Ezy Ryder
02 Freedom
03 Message To Love
04 Drifter's Escape
05 Come Down Hard On Me
06 Earth Blues
07 Dolly Dagger
08 Night Bird Flying
09 Straight Ahead
10 Astro Man
11 Room Full of Mirrors
12 In From The Storm
13 Belly Button Window

Disc 2: Posthumous Masters

01 Bleeding Heart
02 Izabella
03 Valleys Of Neptune
04 Stepping Stone
05 Drifting
06 Pali Gap
07 Beginning
08 Angel
09 Power of Soul
10 Cherokee Mist
11 Hey Baby


Jimi Hendrix may not seem entirely suitable for this blog, but there is a reason behind this post.

I fell in love with the music of Hendrix in my early teens. While at school, I collected the three Jimi Hendrix Experience albums as well as the live Band of Gypsys LP. 

I read a couple of biographies and was fascinated to learn Hendrix had an astonishing amount of unreleased material. Shortly after, during a stop at a service station on a school trip in 1993, I bought my first Hendrix bootleg. It was also the first bootleg of any artist I owned. I suppose that purchase would lead to me constructing this blog and my love of rare, secret, unreleased and hard to find music also began there.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience broke up in April 1969. From then until Hendrix's death in September 1970 he recorded material for what would of been his fourth studio album.

Hours and hours of songs in various stages have been on posthumous albums over the years, most notably on 'The Cry Of Love', 'Rainbow Bridge' and 'War Heroes'. Those three albums were compiled and mixed by engineer Eddie Kramer and long time drummer Mitch Mitchell and released shortly after Hendrix's death.

Since then, more tracks have came to light, including several mixes by Hendrix himself, making some of the versions finished masters. These songs were spread across many releases, some easier to find than others and details could be sketchy.

Hendrix was tantalisingly close to completing his vision. Although no definitive tracklisting or album title exists, the finished album would certainly have been a double, if not a triple (as some handwritten notes suggest). Prospective album titles included 'The First Rays Of The New Rising Sun', 'People, Hell & Angels' and 'Strate Ahead'.

This compilation is an attempt to collect together both the songs that Hendrix had signed off as final mixes, as well as the other songs that were under consideration. These songs are complete for the most part, with only the final mix being done without Hendrix's supervision. Some did require further overdubs, but I have not included songs for which only a backing track or demo version exist.

This music is truly psychedelic; blues, soul, pop, funk, psychedelia, heavy, beautiful, experimental and completely unique.


7 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.mediafire.com/file/r3mp075mz9ghj5o/ilif256-JmHndrx-Strghthd.zip/file

Hernán Music said...

muchas gracias!! saludos desde Argentina

The Thus said...

Nice one, i have only one word to say.... Old Is Gold...

zipper said...

Looks good...cheers!

Christian said...

Hmm, would love to hear this. However, "Permission denied". Any idea?

Christian said...

Scratch that, my second attempt worked. 🤟🏼

goinsidemyhead said...

If one of those lizard people hiding amongst us never heard of Hendrix except for all the adulation on the interglobal he/she would wonder what all the fuss was about after listening to these tracks...yikes!