Here's the start of "Double Album" Week!
Title: Electric Ladyland
Artist: The Jimi Hendrix Experience
Label: Track/Polydor (UK)/Reprise (US)/MCA
Year: 1968
Songs: …And The Gods Made Love/Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland)/Crosstown Traffic/Voodoo Chile/Little Miss Strange*/Long Hot Summer Night/Come On (Let The Good Times Roll)**/Gypsy Eyes/Burning Of The Midnight Lamp/Rainy Day, Dream Away/1983…(A Merman I Should turn To Be)/Moon, Turn The Tides…gently gently away/Still Raining, Still Dreaming/House Burning Down/All Along The Watchtower***/Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
Written by: Jimi Hendrix, except *by Noel Redding, **by Earl King and ***by Bob Dylan (Arranged by Jimi Hendrix)
Produced And Directed by: Jimi Hendrix
Thoughts: As one of the greatest albums of all time, you expect a lot from Jimi Hendrix, Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding and this album certainly delivers. With most double albums, you can pick out a song or two that the artist could have dropped, but here…you simply can’t. Jimi gives us sixteen mesmerizing tracks and, yes, that includes the two instrumental interludes. Everything, including the 15-minute “Voodoo Chile” and the 13-minute “1983”, all seem to build up to the last two tracks on the album, “All Along The Watchtower” and “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)”. By the time you get to them you feel how truly special they are. “All Along The Watchtower” takes the classic Dylan country track (from John Wesley Harding) and takes it to new heights, simply by extending the song to five minutes (Dylan’s original only lasts 2:34) and Jimi’s guitar assault. “Voodoo Child” feels like the birth of a whole new genre of music, that being hard rock. It’s probably the hardest song up until that point in 1968. This album is another one you need to hear…now.
Rating: 10/10
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