Week 27: 50 Albums That Changed Music [Archive] - Audio & Video Forums

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Swish
01-15-2007, 05:29 AM
I can't believe it took this long to finally give this rock icon a mention in this list. You cannot deny its influence unless you're head is stuck in the sand, and it has to be mentioned as one of the best debut records in the history of rock. Jimi Hendrix - Are You Experienced (1967)

Looking and playing like a brother from another planet, Hendrix delivered the most dramatic debut in pop history. Marrying the blues and psychedelia, dexterity and feedback trickery, it redefined the guitar's sonic possibilities, while beyond the fretboard pyrotechnics burnt a fierce artistic vision - 'Third Stone From the Sun' made Jimi rock's first (and still best travelled) cosmonaut. Without this...countless guitarists and cock-rockers might not have been (Stevie Ray Vaughn, Lenny Kravitz, even Miles Davis owes him), but most of all, without Experienced, there'd be no Jimi experience.

Well, they got another one right, to make it what, three or four :ihih:, but I still have to laugh that they mention Lenny Kravitz, a guy who has questionable ability on guitar, as apposed to the dozens of monsters in the rock world (Eddie VH, Eric Johnson, Jeff Beck, Steve Morse....). Regardless, they chose the proper record by a proper artist, so I won't trash them on this one. I think I mentioned in another post that he was the reason I went out and bought a guitar, and countless others that I know.

Swish

nobody
01-15-2007, 07:12 AM
Never really took a liking to Jimi, but hard to argue against.

To me, this was a bad direction with individual instruments taking the lead over the songs themselves. People were more interested in Jimi and his guitar than they were what the song was like as a whole.

It kinda reminds me of jazz moving into free jazz territory, becoming steadily more about an instrument and the player than a song.

Resident Loser
01-15-2007, 07:15 AM
...no denying this records' significance...and he was amazing on stage the three or four times I saw him perform live...First time at the Singer Bowl in Flushing Meadows park and the last at MSG with Buddy Miles as opening act...Of course my best all time fave was JHE with the Soft Machine, the Chambers Brothers and Big Briother And the Holding Company featuring Janis Joplin...but I digress (or is it flashback?)

You mentioned Jeff Beck...I believe his stint in the Yardbirds (after Clapton left to join John Mayall) predated this albums' release however...As I recall in '65 Hendrix was working with the the Isely Brothers and then Curtis Knight...Then came Jimmy James And The Blue Flames...and my wife swears she saw him when she used to hang at the Cafe Wha? when she and her friends regularly went to the village...

jimHJJ(...so, I'm not really sure who may have influenced whom...)

Resident Loser
01-15-2007, 07:40 AM
...To me, this was a bad direction with individual instruments taking the lead over the songs themselves....

...first off, hard not to do in a trio scenario...especially since it's really the only melody instrument, played by a frontman like Hendrix...The dynamic involved really is the sum of it's parts...his pyrotechnics really don't stand alone and require the underpinnings of Redding and Mitchell's rhythm section (The Star-Spangled Banner notwithstanding)...So IMHO, it is the whole...Did folks go to see Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis or even just a singer like James Brown for the songs or the rest of the band? Miles Davis had a quartet, quintet and a nonet, but it was really his show...late 40s, early 50s...

jimHJJ(...there is more than some historical precedent...)

BradH
01-15-2007, 01:53 PM
...and my wife swears she saw him when she used to hang at the Cafe Wha? when she and her friends regularly went to the village...

That's where Chas Chandler "discovered" him. He invited Hendrix to come to London and, according to Chandler, Hendrix asked him only three questions: can he meet Eric Clapton, can he meet Jeff Beck and do they have Marshall amps in England. Hendrix was influenced by everybody, he was like a sponge. And I don't know how Clapton or Beck could not have been influenced by Hendrix. Sporadic performer, though. In Ft. Worth he played for 20 minutes, threw up on a spot light shooting up from the stage and left. I think he ran hot & cold like The Who.


Looking and playing like a brother from another planet...

Looking like a black Syd Barret would be more accurate. That look didn't spring from Chandler's forehead like Zeus. And I've said before, Barrett was using more feedback and freaky-styly than Townshend or Beck when Hendrix was still in the Village. It's not that Hendrix totally ripped Syd off, it's just that some props are in order. But despite Syd's use of the Zippo lighter as a slide, he wasn't a blues player at all. But this album is a solid pick. And "nobody" is right, it was a continuing trend of the emphasis of the individual rather than the ensemble in rock music. That got reversed w/ punk and new wave so all was not lost. (It ain't like Badfinger was going to explode all over your scene, anyway.) But I don't see how Hendrix or Clapton "destroyed" music or anything like that. I've never understood why the guitar as an expression of the individual is somehow illegitimate. Or any instrument for that matter. Whole lotta punk rock indoctrination in that thinking if you ask me.

3-LockBox
01-15-2007, 02:12 PM
Yes, this is another slam-dunk. And it was England who embraced Hendrix at first, not America. But the Guardian puts Lenny Kravitz in the same context as Hendrix? Well, they couldn't not say something stupid, could they...



To me, this was a bad direction with individual instruments taking the lead over the songs themselves. People were more interested in Jimi and his guitar than they were what the song was like as a whole.

Hasn't this always been the case throughout popular music, dating back to jazz? People didn't go see Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, or Glenn Miller to watch an ensemble as much as they wanted to see the band leaders play their horn. Jazz and bluegrass has always featured individual solos. I think that's what seperated jazz from rag.

As far as Hendrix's influence on other guitarists, it did encourage a whole slew of posers; still does, but then again, he wasn't even first to do that. Little Richard, Jerry Lee, and Chuck Berry did that ten years prior to Hendrix.

MindGoneHaywire
01-15-2007, 03:06 PM
I understand what nobody is saying here & agree on the general point. But...this album isn't the one to apply that line of reasoning towards, in my estimation. It transcends quibbles about how appreciating music & discussing that appreciation too often involves list-making of the 'best drummer' variety. Wankery in rock deserves plenty of scorn, but in the end a lot of can be traced back to bands like the Who, and in spite of what's been turned out by bands they influenced that I don't like, a lot of what they did I look at as being quite worthy although they did a lot of things I'm not all that into. Or more than quite worthy, as good as anything else, ever.

I thought there could've been slightly better picks than Live At The Apollo & the Stevie Wonder album, but this list needed him & James Brown on it, and I didn't have much time, so it wasn't worth quibbling about. But this one I don't think you can argue with.

RL:

>Did folks go to see Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis or even just a singer like James Brown for the songs or the rest of the band?

I think where nobody is coming from is a general disdain for 'best guitarist' type lists, and I agree with him, although, as I said, this is one rec that's good enough to overlook that nonsense. But as for yr point here...I assume you've seen those 'best guitarist' and 'best drummer' lists, in mags like RS & Guitar Player, and on boards like this, of course. Ever see 'best frontman' or 'best songwriter?' Those aren't considered, and the discussions are generally dominated by who's the best guitar player. I think the cult of the guitar hero is complete BS, I just don't tar & feather Hendrix with my feelings on that. Nor Dick Dale. But...

>Miles Davis had a quartet, quintet and a nonet, but it was really his show...l

Rock ain't jazz, and the cult of the individual musician, as Darius wisely put it some years ago, makes sense in jazz. In rock, I think it mostly sucks, because it's seen as correlating automatically with 'good music.'

Punks pointing at the bloated excesses of classic, dinosaur, arena rock have better targets than this rec. Hendrix was that good, and so is this rec.

BradH
01-15-2007, 06:18 PM
Wankery in rock deserves plenty of scorn, but in the end a lot of can be traced back to bands like the Who....

It's the Yardbirds, I tell ya. What was cool about the Who, though, was their "rave ups" took off & landed using an R&B base instead of the blues. (They were posing as mods after all.) But, yeah, it was the beginning of "jamming" or "wankery" or "improv" or whatever you want to call it.


I think the cult of the guitar hero is complete BS, I just don't tar & feather Hendrix with my feelings on that.

I don't think it's complete BS. Did anybody really go see the Yardbirds because of Relf or McCarty instead of Clapton or Beck? They really were great guitarists. Beck particularly, imo. The problem I have w/ the guitar hero thing is it's skewed toward a certain type of playing. Somebody on this board mentioned a few weeks ago that Johnny Ramone couldn't do what Yngwie Malmsteen did. It's true, but if Malmsteen tried to do what Johnny Ramone did his arm would fall off. And you won't see fantastic acoustic rhythm guitarists like Stephen Stills on any "best of" list, either. Progheads know Ian Anderson was an outstanding acoustic guitarist but he was never on any "best of" guitar list.


Rock ain't jazz, and the cult of the individual musician, as Darius wisely put it some years ago, makes sense in jazz.

If rock is improvisatory then it makes sense in rock, too.


And it was England who embraced Hendrix at first, not America.

But Hendrix wasn't doing the same thing in the Village as he later did in London. His "coming out" gig was at the Marquee. I maintain it was as much Chandler's vision as Hendrix's. Otherwise, he would've exploded on the NY scene.

SlumpBuster
01-15-2007, 08:32 PM
Hendrix famously opened for the Monkees when they were trying so earnestly to get some cred. So... without Hendrix, no Monkee's Head.

Dusty Chalk
01-15-2007, 11:48 PM
I think it's pretty much a given that I would agree with this selection, but still thought I'd post to say so.

Where's Les Paul and Mary Ford on the list? I just read a nice little write-up on the making of "How High the Moon" that really puts him on the forefront of non-representational recording.

Resident Loser
01-16-2007, 06:29 AM
...a guitarist, I may be somewhat biased...

The guitar (like the piano), can be both a satisfying solo instrument and also suited to ensemble playing...

The guitar is an instrument for the masses...it's so easy to learn the rudiments, yet so difficult to actually master (after 40yrs. I'm still learning)...

The guitar has the advantage of being very portable. Despite the advances in electronics, you rarely see folks like Edgar Winter cavorting about with keyboard in tow...

Take the instruments' popularity, and the contemporaneous Volkswagen Beetle-type of ubiquity and it's hard not to have it become an icon and have exceptional players of it attain iconic status...Like baseball, it's sorta' like "Gee, I can do that"...You don't see many people play air-Sousaphone...

As stated earlier, a rhythm section is required for the type of performance Hendrix was most noted for...Bass and drums, while important in that trio setting, are not really, of and by themselves, suited for solo work...to be a bit more precise, to have a musical enterprise built around them. With apologies to Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich et al, drum solos wear thin...as does the bass (no apology to Stanley Clarke or other bassists-cum-frustrated guitarists). And I make no excuses for self-involved, endless guitar solos...Excess rules apparently, and there is a segment of the listening audience (perhaps juke-box heroes themselves) who eat it up...simply supply and demand.

Les Paul and Mary Ford...Paul was an innovator...besides the solid-bodied electric guitar (or was it Leo Fender?), he has practically, single-handedly, provided the groundwork for modern recording...Was it Mary Ford's vocals...or was it the fact that his use of double-tracking gave it a new sound?...Was it Les' lightning fast solos...or was it playing with tape speeds and overdubs that caught the listeners ear?

WARNING! SELF-INDULGENT HYPERBOLE FOLLOWS:I can't really come up with one LP&MF album that might be spotlighted as being influential within the confines of this LIST, but without him there might very well not be a list at all or popular music as we have come to know it...

jimHJJ(...the conundrum being, is that good thing or a bad thing?...)

Troy
01-16-2007, 09:41 AM
This Hendrix pick is a no brainer. Changed the face of rock.

nobody
01-16-2007, 10:59 AM
Thought I’d just toss out a few things…

First, I’m not really trying to make any sort of qualitative judgment against music that is more focused on individual musicians, it’s just the sort of thing that personally I tend not to listen to as much.

Also, while jazz is much more musician based, I think even there it can be taken too far, again for my tastes. There is a big difference between a band leader dishing out solos in the context of a structured song and the stuff where the song pretty much totally disappears and it’s just a guy playing his horn with no context for ten minutes at a stretch. For me, that just gets into something that may be interesting for another horn player to marvel at, but it doesn’t really make for anything I wanna listen to.

And, just one more thing, I would like to point out that it seems to me that in rock the focus always goes strictly to the guitar and it’s developed this thing over time where the guitar rules all. I’m not so sure that’s really so healthy. I mean, music based on synths or with a piano as lead instrument or any other ideas people wanna develop can be lost in the shuffle with the insistence that rock is all about the guitars. Well, that would be news to Little Richard and Jerry Lee to name a couple. And, I’d like to think a musical form born of rebellion and shaking things up wouldn’t have become so stiff and formulaic that you’re not invited to the party unless you stick to the assigned format.

PeruvianSkies
01-16-2007, 08:06 PM
Ok simply put...there has yet to be another Jimi Hendrix...he didn't just make guitar sounds....he made a whole new artform with sounds that defy the instrument. Nowadays it's easy to get sampled effects and process the heck out of your guitar, but Hendrix knew the guitar upsidedown, insideout, and backwards to the point that few few people have ever understood the instrumetns or it's capabilities. His few albums are legendary and his music lives on and will continue so.

Dusty Chalk
01-16-2007, 10:53 PM
Plus, it was all in service to The Song -- he managed to do it all without eschewing pop sensibilities (yes, at the time, he would have been considered "pop").