<http://schema.org/reviewBody>
"&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=\"../../../music/artists/jimi-hendrix\"&gt;Jimi Hendrix&lt;/a&gt; was a curious mixture of instinctive genius and crippling perfectionism. The guitarist took two years to make three landmark studio LPs &amp;#x2014; &lt;em&gt;Are You Experienced?&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=\"../../../music/albumreviews/axis-bold-as-love-19680406\"&gt;&lt;em&gt;Axis: Bold as Love&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=\"../../../music/albumreviews/electric-ladyland-19681109\"&gt;&lt;em&gt;Electric Ladyland&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, a blizzard of magic &amp;#x2014; then spent two more trying to complete a fourth, still unfinished at his death in September 1970. But his legacy also includes thirty years of bootlegs, a long shelf of archival releases, and now &lt;em&gt;The Jimi Hendrix Experience&lt;/em&gt;, a four-CD windfall of stage and studio rarities, most previously unissued. And in all of this music, you hear marvelous details of Hendrix&amp;apos;s working life, his daily pursuit of electric salvation. The official masterpieces were his dreams come true; the fifty-six performances in this box, the Rolls Royce of posthumous Hendrix sets, tell us about the man inside the dreams.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;wm:embed type=\"related\"&gt;&lt;/wm:embed&gt;&lt;p&gt;For one thing, he was very funny. During his guitar break in a 1970 studio blast of &amp;quot;Lover Man,&amp;quot; Hendrix suddenly jets into &amp;quot;Flight of the Bumble Bee.&amp;quot; In a version of &amp;quot;Purple Haze,&amp;quot; recorded in May 1969 at one of his last shows with the original Experience &amp;#x2014; bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell &amp;#x2014; Hendrix impishly misquotes the song&amp;apos;s signature lyric: &amp;quot; &amp;apos;Scuse me while I kiss that guy.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;A child of the R&amp;amp;B-revue grind, Hendrix was also a disciplined showman. On the eve of two February &amp;apos;69 dates at the Royal Albert Hall in London that were to be recorded and filmed, he took the Experience into the studio for a rigorous night&amp;apos;s rehearsal. In fact, the two tracks here from that session are hotter than the Albert Hall tapes &amp;#x2014; the Experience at their most jubilant and explosive. &amp;quot;Spanish Castle Magic&amp;quot; is a glorious blowout, wide open in ardor and attack. And the Experience turn the blues prayer &amp;quot;Hear My Train a Comin&amp;apos; &amp;quot; into a cleansing roar of redemption. Hendrix&amp;apos;s playing glows with righteous impatience; Mitchell rolls across his kit like a runaway iron horse.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;Hendrix&amp;apos;s competing impulses &amp;#x2014; his restless spirit and almost lunatic passion for the minutiae of record making &amp;#x2014; run riot, and sometimes into each other, all over &lt;em&gt;The Jimi Hendrix Experience&lt;/em&gt;. Early and alternate takes of &amp;quot;Hey Joe,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Foxy Lady,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Little Wing&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;If 6 Was 9&amp;quot; show Hendrix, and his vision, evolving in clarity and poise. You also hear weird detours and halfway turns, evidence of his unraveling momentum in 1969 and &amp;apos;70: a radical rerecording of &amp;quot;Stone Free,&amp;quot; with florid guitar overdubs; studio work by Hendrix&amp;apos;s aborted funk-rock experiment, &lt;a href=\"../../../music/albumreviews/band-of-gypsys-19700528\"&gt;&lt;em&gt;Band of Gypsys&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;And because Hendrix was the kind of recording artist for whom the tape never stopped rolling, there are private moments which he no doubt expected to remain that way. A May &amp;apos;67 snippet of &amp;quot;Burning of the Midnight Lamp&amp;quot; finds Hendrix in the throes of discovery, pounding on the harpsichord that would be the final arrangement&amp;apos;s masterstroke. &amp;quot;It&amp;apos;s Too Bad&amp;quot; is a confessional epic, a February &amp;apos;69 jam written on the spot about the troubles of Hendrix&amp;apos;s brother Leon that also reveals much about Jimi&amp;apos;s own feelings of isolation and dislocation at the height of stardom.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;In addition to its unreleased treasures, &lt;em&gt;The Jimi Hendrix Experience&lt;/em&gt; restores to print crucial gems buried on long-deleted Seventies packages like &lt;em&gt;Loose Ends&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Hendrix in the West&lt;/em&gt;. But the real power of this box is not in its collector&amp;apos;s-item quotient. It is in the cumulative effect of its narrative, its vivid telling of a remarkable life in motion. Great art demands fierce labor, and the true lesson of this music is that Jimi Hendrix was, ultimately, a working man.&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/the-jimi-hendrix-experience-20000928>