The Mighty Mixtape

I didn't own a tape recorder/player until early high school, when I'd ditched my turntable and all of my records . Let us take a moment of silence over the loss of those vinyl LPs. So.... I never knew the joy of recording songs off my own records to create a mixtape. But...

My first mixtapes were recorded straight off FM radio, with a nice clean stereo signal, so these were very listenable, even if i had to put up with some songs overlapping, some with Mr. DJ's voice over the intro or outro, and some abruptly chopped off.... oops, the tape ended before the song did. Still, those were my first taste of the world of home recording.

My radio mixtapes were usually the setlists that DJs or the stations programmed, but there were tapes that I'd compiled song by song, poised over the record button as I listened to an evening of music on my parents' stereo receiver. Headphones clamped on tight, blocking out my loud "jungle music" from the folks' delicate ears. Sometimes DJs would play a set of songs by a single artist... often called a "super-set", or an album side, or an entire album.... even a full day or (gasp!) a full weekend of music by one artist ..... I actually sat and recorded whole weekends of Rush and Led Zeppelin, who of course had huge catalogues that would demand days, not just hours, to play in their entirety.

Homemade mixtapes became common in the 80's, thanks

to affordable quality equipment. The 1995 novel (and 2000

movie) High Fidelity celebrated mixtape culture.

Once I'd built a reasonably sized tape collection, both radio dubs and store-bought, I began cobbling together my first TRUE mixtapes. ones that reflected my mood or intention,.... for myself, a friend, a family member, a fellow tape-trader, a girlfriend, a prospective friend or girlfriend. a music fan, a non-music fan....to introduce someone else to a new artist or type of music.

I used to borrow tapes from the public library back in the early to mid-80's, when I was a money-strapped college student. I'd play the tapes on my Walkman-style personal device, running a line into my home audio cassette deck, where I'd record a new copy of the tape. On occasion a friend and I would swap tapes, which I'd dub as well. That was a super cheap way to build up the music collection. And along the way, other friends recorded their vinyl LPs onto tape for me. Ah, those glory days... when thoughts of media piracy were non-existent. Oh, and if I still wanted to grab songs off the radio during my college days, I'd run a line out of my stereo clock radio into my cassette deck. Worked like a charm.

Back in the 80's and even into the 90's, I used many configurations of equipment to create mixtapes: double tape decks for dubbing.... Walkman to component deck.... Walkman to boombox (we called it a guetto-blaster back then, but I believe that term is considered politically incorrect nowadays - right?), and boombox to system deck, So many variations that worked just fine back then. The sound only suffered over multiple generations of a recording. And the sound quality was also a matter of personal taste or perception... I was a lot less finicky about perfection then, whereas now, I hate the sound of many MP3 sound files. There's such a loss of bottom end and things often sound thin and tinny and cold. 

But to backtrack slightly again: then along came CDs.... and even higher quality cassette tapes. With new and improved tape formulations like chromium dioxide and metal bias, plus Dolby noise reduction on the deck. tapes sounded just about as good as a CD, especially on a car stereo where automobile rumbling and rattling drowned out any little audio tape imperfections. or even at home on a quality playback deck.

Again, I recorded mixtapes for myself, mainly for the car, but sometimes for my portable player. and for others, of course. And once I got set up with a computer with a CD burner, I was away to the races. A whole new world opened up: internet access to any song I wanted, and an easy method of capturing the best possible sound... ripping from one CD to another.

Metal tape....

The cumbersome tape medium and recording process was streamlined by the sophisticated computer software. It was so much easier to slap down the perfect home-made disc of a musical set of my own concoction.

I had such great fun developing mixtapes and later mixCDs (actually called mixtapes, presumably to extend the moniker to the new medium). I don't do this so much anymore, but occasionally I'll introduce a friend to some electronic music with a mixCD. With this hobby, you spend more time with each song... listening and re-listening... is this going to flow nicely... from the previous song... and then into the next song? Maybe think about common themes in lyrics or song titles or music styles. Nice clean sequencing with a proper start and finish to each song, where you can dictate if there's a noticeable gap between songs or maybe the songs actually "touch", with just a fraction of a second between them.

I remember making a tape of slow and sultry music for my girlfriend in the 80's. There were songs from Roxy Music's Avalon album on there, some Alan Parsons, Cheap Trick's shmaltzy ballads of that era, and stuff along those lines - light, melodic and gently rhythmic.

I had a few excellent heavy metal mixtapes, too. For some reason, it took a lot more work to assemble the perfect metal mix. I guess I came close with my early 90's tape containing Killer Dwarves, Voivod, Lee Aaron, Megadeth, Testament, and Suicidal Tendencies. That got a lot of playing time in my car back then. 

When my daughter was old enough, I bought her her very own boombox and gave to her with that a few mixtapes of my own invention. She already knew what she liked in music, since I shared with her my own tastes from my large CD collection. So I made up compilations of her favourites: Beatles, Monkees, Diana Krall, 80's music, and classics (and some lesser known gems) of the pop and rock genres. To this day, she thanks me for exposing her to such a wide range of great music from an early age. Things like Lindsey Buckingham, Beach Boys, Shuffle Demons, Bangles, and Police.

The first mixtapes were bootleg 8-track

tapes sold at truck stops and flea markets

in the late 60's and 70's (note that the Elvis

8-track pictured is not a mixtape)

During the mid-to-late 90's I found some like-minded tape-traders on the internet and we swapped compilations by snail mail. This is how I discovered some weird and wonderful progressive rock and electronic music. I remember checking out Porcupine Tree and Spock's Beard on a trader friend's tape. And in return, I offered some Ozric Tentacles and Grid.

I made a handful of really good electronic music mixes, both on tape and CD: a super chillin' tape (and later on CD) featuring the likes of Chicane, Air, Brian Eno, David Sylvian, and FSOL; a few supercharged dance party ones with the likes of BT, Orbital and Empirion; and a more esoteric collection of weirdness with Eat Static, 808 State, and Fluke's appliances-making-music. 

I suppose my best work was a full tape of instrumental James Bond movie music, culled from my many different CDs of Bond scores, and assembled as a soundtrack to a day in the life of a spy. Quiet, tense music for code-breaking; frantic, exciting car chase music; then some shrill and thrilling dynamics for a shoot-out in the secret underground lair. I'm really pleased with the sequencing on that one... the successful blending of old and new Bond music.... very dramatic and intense and ..... very, very cool. I've been dying to re-do that set on CD - someday. 

The mixtape hobby is still a thing these days. Whether it's in a physical form like a tape or CD... even a USB stick, or in completely digital form as a playlist on YouTube or iTunes, the mixtape as a share-able bit of one's musical personality lives on.

A Crippling Urge to Dance

I work in a retail store that plays background music all day, every day. For ages, the mostly mindless current Top 40 crap in heavy rotation - I usually hear the same playlist a few times during my shift - has been driving me, and some other employees, quite mad. 

Very recently, though, the powers that be have switched over to an all-80's music station. I believe this is satellite radio that we're pulling in, so if the selection was there all this time, then I seriously wonder why there's been almost no variation over the years. Anyway, on with my story:

Hearing all of that 80's music, both the good and the bad - but mostly good, I think, has got me trippin'. There are so many terrific tunes from that era that I am convinced that pop and rock music was so much better then than now, and I'm not just saying that because I'm a biased old fart. Even the most commercial music then was crafted with more imagination and daring. Everybody had their own sound, both instrumentally and vocally. Of course, there were and are always exceptions, but just listen to a playlist of today's dance-pop. Nearly all of it sounds the same, with interchangeable vocalists. Everybody sounds the same... the same producers, same gee-wiz electronic studio toys, the same-sounding vocals.... tweaked with those same gadgets. This applies to some degree to whatever passes for rock nowadays, too. Maybe a bit edgier or heavier, but come on! And the art of songwriting seems to be suppressed in favour of the flavour of the week. Just plunk your singer into this song template and away you go to the bank. Not that I understand why so many people buy so much same-sounding music. 

"Are you talking to me?" Mr. Big Suit from Talking Heads

I now hear over the store speakers a lot songs I loved back in the day, like Van Halen's Unchained, Jump, Panama, and The Cradle Will Rock. I will never tire of that stuff; in fact, it really pumps me up when one of those gems comes on. We don't hear too much in the way of hard rock like that, though some other favourites sort of along those lines are New World Man and Limelight by Rush, and Changes and Owner of a Lonely Heart by Yes. Some of the embarrassing stuff like Whitesnake's Here I Go Again shows up now and then, but I don't worry much about it. Hey, I sort of liked it back in the day. Not so much now.

Leaning into the pop genre, we've got several appearances by The Police, including Canary in a Coalmine and Driven to Tears (from their Zenyatta Mondatta album), Spirits in the Material World, Hungry for You, and One World (from 1981's Ghost in the Machine), and then all the Synchronicity album's hits. Great, timeless music by one of my all-time favourite bands. 

And even though I hated - hated - Michael Jackson during the 80's, I can now appreciate some of his music. Songs like Bad, Billie Jean, and Beat It, among others, are quite good. They simply fell outside my sphere of listening at the time. My friends and I mocked him relentlessly, and of course, the spoof versions of his songs by comedy musician Weird Al made that even more fun. Nowadays, I'm more likely to zing off a line from a Weird Al spoof while attempting to moonwalk. Same story for Madonna.... hated, now like, and spoof. 

Beam me up, Scotty! One of

the Seagulls' flock.

Ah, and then there's The Talking Heads, with a bunch of fun and inventive tracks like Once In a Lifetime, And She Was, and Life During Wartime. When these are playing, I am compelled to slip into singer David Byrne's wacky dance moves. The same as it ever was.

Then there's the New Wave-y material, some of which I did like in the 80's... like Flock of Seagulls (Space Age Love Song) and Gary Numan (Cars). I found Numan's album The Pleasure Principle so curious and catchy that I actually bought it when it first hit the record stores. A real oddity at the time... and a bit ahead of its time, too. But I loved something about it... those futuristic synth-heavy melodies. 

The New Wave movement also brought us Talk Talk, Simple Minds, Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, Joy Division, Icicle Works, Split Enz, New Order, Men Without Hats, Devo, The Smiths, Tears for Fears, Cutting Crew, Depeche Mode, and the B-52's. I enjoyed some of those guys back in the day, though I wasn't a major fan at all. Too dance-y. Absolutely none of that stuff was in my music (tape) collection. I was immersed in metal and progressive rock at the time. But in the late 90's I learned to love some of the 80's music that I had ignored (or tried to ignore) during that decade. And now I whistle while I work, along with the steady stream of those artists' hits.

Hairstyles the girls would kill for, by the Platinum Blondes

When rock and pop hit the blender during the 1980's, we got light but more rocking classics from Scandal, Styx, Bangles, GoGo's, Joan Jett, The Fixx, The Romantics, Platinum Blonde, Duran Duran, Men at Work, Quarterflash, Pat Benatar, U2, and The Tubes. Oh, and I mustn't forget Billy Idol and Huey Lewis, who I favoured for a spell. I hear memorable songs by all of these folks over the speakers at work. 

For one reason or another, I actually attended concerts by a few of those bands back then: Joan Jett, The Spoons, English Beat, Talking Heads, The Tubes, Flock of Seagulls, and The Police. It was at the monumental Police Picnic of '82 that I saw many of those guys. But as I said before, I was more focused on haunting the Toronto area clubs and large venues to watch metal and rock bands in action, guys (and one gal) like Rush, Yes, Triumph, Scorpions, Lee Aaron, Kickaxe, Helix, Frank Soda, David Wilcox, and Kim Mitchell. 

The 80's was a helluva lot of fun for me. I was in my late teens, a huge music fan, and as I entered my 20's, I found I had even more resources to see live bands. And now every day at work, when I hear these cool old songs, I'm reminded of those more carefree times.

The Director's Chair

The average movie-goer, or even movie "fan" - by the loosest definition possible, may never think about what goes on behind the camera. The making of the film. The lighting, camera-work, sound, musical score composition, set design and construction, storyboards, or the screenplay (script). Just scan the end credits of any movie and you'll see hundreds, even thousands, of jobs involved in the making of a picture. Things that are crucial to the creation and completion of a movie, yet aren't immediately obvious to the viewer in the cinema - or in their living room home theatre. 

Just about everybody who's ever watched movies can name some favourite actors, even some famous actors who aren't favourites. Eastwood, Schwarzenegger, Heston, Fonda (any one of them), Hanks, Bogart, Brando, Nicholson, Hoffman, Cruise, De Niro, Hackman, Hopkins, Pacino, Gable, Connery, Cagney, Chaplin, Pitt. And the ladies: Fonda, Streisand, Hepburn (both), Bacall, Garbo, Streep, Bullock, Roberts, Kidman, Dench, Loren, Leigh, Johansson, Jolie, Monroe, and Witherspoon. Everybody knows some movie star names.

But how about the head honcho of the whole production? The director. He or she manages the whole shebang, sometimes at arm's length, allowing the technicians and actors to practise their craft undisturbed; sometimes micromanaging every detail... in which case the director is often referred to as an auteur. An auteur strongly exerts his or her personal influence and artistic control over the making of movies. The auteur's films reflect his or her own personal vision. And the auteur often performs more than one role in the creation of a movie - directing, producing, writing, and even acting. Maybe more.

For example - and perhaps the best example of all - look at the 1980 movie The Shining. The film strays from Stephen King's original novel, with a re-written story that establishes a tone and visual imagery that are not exactly King. Auteur director Stanley Kubrick took this tale into his hands and molded it into a masterpiece that did not satisfy King or every movie-goer who saw it, but he did create something that was uniquely and entirely Kubrick. His style, his co-written screenplay, his use of striking visuals, expressive music, emphatic lighting, camera-work, set design, the actors... all of it... screamed Stanley. A perfectionist to the end, he would labour over his pictures for years. Kubrick also got behind the camera and inserted himself into the actors' space to demonstrate exactly what he wanted from everyone. Though highly lauded, he was so passionate about his work that his often insensitive methods drove his employees to near-nervous breakdowns. But you can't deny the unforgettable results in his pictures. Consider just a few examples in from his impressive filmography: Paths of Glory, Lolita, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange. 

A Kubrick bio and a Preminger auto-bio off my bookshelf

Alfred Hitchcock, too, was an auteur director, imprinting his style deeply into his films. Not only did Hitch pioneer unique technical methods (like a camera that glided smoothly, simulating the viewer's voyeuristic gaze), but he also invented or adapted stylistic devices that became synonymous with his name. Even from early silents like The Lodger, we see how he framed camera shots to unnerve the audience. The master of suspense... and tension and terror and anxiety and empathy. Hitch employed complete silence to maximum effect, too. He had favourite themes that he used in his films, often revealing his idiosyncratic personality. Fugitives, blonde women, violence, plot decoys, and twist endings. Psychology and sexuality were key elements in his pictures, playing on every viewer's weaknesses. Oh, and you can't forget Hitchcock's whimsical touches, like his tiny cameo appearances in his movies. His massive filmography includes mystery classics like The 39 Steps, Spellbound, Rear Window, and North By Northwest. 

A couple of great guides to the master, Hitch

Terrence Malick's output as director has been sporadic, though he's developed more films in recent years. His work as screenwriter dominated his early career, though as a director he took huge strides as time passed. Malick's auteurism was first evident in 1973's Badlands, about a fugitive on the run, starring young Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. Story is secondary to slow-paced, detailed character studies in a sprawling setting. And with Days of Heaven, Malick's lingering camera shots, sumptuous colour and nuanced sound entrance the viewer with the sweeping vistas and rustic lifestyles of the Texas Panhandle. More recently, Tree of Life stunned and puzzled audiences the world over, not least because of its lack of traditional storytelling. The blindingly beautiful visuals are almost too much to absorb or even comprehend, yet the warmer and more emotional tone that slowly develops helps make sense of this enigmatic and experiential movie. 

Roman Polanski is among my favourite movie directors even though I am not crazy about all of his work. His vaguely, but sometimes overtly, disturbing and unsettling films are heavy in atmosphere. From his early masterpiece of madness Repulsion to Rosemary's Baby and Macbeth, Polanski worked with horror in all its forms, prying into the recesses of our minds, not handing us bloody monsters, but rather our own personal deeply buried psychological terrors. He was adept at tapping into the uncomfortable areas in one's subconscious, even in crime thrillers like Chinatown and Frantic. Returning to something more steeped in gothic overtones, Polanksi brought mental breakdown, the supernatural, and procedural adventure to The Ninth Gate (1999); here, he again demonstrated his handiwork with mood and exceptional character development. More recently, with The Ghost Writer and Carnage, he showed us that his Chinatown chops weren't gone (with the former), and his taut writing flavoured with emotion - even humour, was strong as ever (with the latter). 

Polanski's Chinatown, in glorious widescreen

- on VHS?

There were, and are, so many great auteur directors in the history of cinema. I've only touched on a few favourites here, but some other notables, even if they are not quite to my taste (like Von Trier) - though I can still respect their talents, are: Otto Preminger, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Tim Burton, Woody Allen, David Lynch, and Lars Von Trier.

Aaaaand.... action!

The Joys of Movie Collecting... and Upgrading

Back in the mid-90's, I tentatively began my movie collecting hobby. The very first thing I bought - naturally - was the Star Wars trilogy (episodes IV-VI) in a VHS box set. I played those tapes to death and kept buying and re-buying those movies, as videotape special editions and later as DVDs of various versions. I doubt I will ever upgrade to Blu-ray because I much prefer the original theatrical versions of the films on the DVDs I own. I hate George Lucas's tinkering on later editions, with awkward Jabba scenes and an unnecessarily busy Mos Eisley spaceport. 

Then I joined Columbia House and picked up some of their VHS "Collector's Editions" of stuff like The Twilight Zone, The Monkees, The World of Sid and Marty Krofft, and The Flintstones. Then movies like The Shining and Alien crept into my little collection. Until this time, I had only been recording and saving movies off TV, but at this point I felt like this was becoming a new past-time. Or obsession. But I didn't know that then.

Silent sci-fi classic Metropolis (1927) was among

my first purchases for my videotape collection

Just a couple of years later, I met a fellow movie fan, actually a huge horror movie fan, to be more precise. I had already built a modest set of films, largely populated by stuff from the sci-fi and horror genres. This guy directed me toward even more, and better, movies from the past. That was when I really got serious. This was the late 90's, when the internet was becoming a much more usable and valuable tool for shopping and research. So I started to dig back in time for films of both renown and obscurity. And that's where the fun really began. My buddy and I took turns hosting monthly horror movie nights, where we'd fire up the nachos and beer and stay up 'til all hours of the night watching fright flicks. Terrific fun!

As I slid into the 2000's, I saw that the clunky VHS medium was on its deathbed. I began buying DVDs of my favourite movies, gradually selling off my videotapes. But I still had a long way to go if I was to replace every tape - I owned several hundred by this time. I did my best, shopping around town and ordering off the internet. I even purchased hard-to-find DVDs from foreign countries, which required that I set myself up with a multi-region DVD player. No problem. I also invested in the Universal Monsters Legacy Collection, nice sets that covered all the main milestones, like the Dracula, Frankenstein, and Creature From the Black Lagoon series. This satisfied my love of the old horror classics.

Once bitten by the Hammer Films bug (or bat), I scoured

the planet for VHS horror treats like Kiss of the Vampire

Then a couple of years ago, I acquired a VHS-to-DVD recorder. That was handy for recording uncut movies off TV onto DVD, still a great source for some things that weren't even available for home video yet. I also got busy with the enormous task of transferring my tape collection to DVD. Sometimes I'd spend whole evenings, even whole weekends, on the conversion work. The process made me look long and hard at my collection; did I really want to keep all of those movies? Were they all worth the time and effort? The answer was: almost all, but not quite.

My now much larger DVD library was bursting at the seams. But I wasn't entirely happy with some of the transferred versions; they were only as good as the tape source, which was often un-remastered and un-restored... AKA grainy, dirty and noisy. Sometimes a new DVD edition, all slick and cleaned up in both the audio and video departments, came along. But...

I've yet to upgrade to Blu-ray on this title, but for now

this tape (and its VHS-to-DVD transfer) of the 1922

gem Nosferatu tape  will have to do

Enter the Blu-ray. I held off on this format for a while, at least until prices became so low that there was no arguing the point. Even a player became an inexpensive addition to my system. Most of my first Blu-rays have been replacements for those spotty DVD transfers, but I've also aimed to pick up movies I've never owned before, both old and new releases. 

I'm pleased with my little - but growing - Blu-ray collection, but I continue to trim the fat from my DVD library. Some of those dubbed DVDs just weren't cutting it on my new flatscreen TV so... out they went. I gave some away and tossed the rest. Not a difficult process. 

But yesterday I took an even bigger step: I brutally tore through my old VHS tape collection and posted an ad to sell the bulk of the movies. I hung onto just a few, which actually command a pretty high price, even in used condition, on the market. If those "collectibles" ever sell, great, but if not, I'd like to keep those few around for my Time Capsule of old technology... along with a few vinyl records, 8-track tapes, and audio cassettes. 

It's a good feeling to clear out "junk" that hogs space in my home, that I haven't touched in years. It's also a little sad parting with the things that were my first acquisitions as I built up a serious hobby. But hey, at least I've now got cleaner versions of those oldies on video disc. And I will hang onto the DVDs and Blu-rays for as long as possible, because once the future Skynet falls and the streaming and digital movies go kaput, I'll still have my physical copies with me in my little bunker (power generator included). 

It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958) may not be

as famous as it 'ought to be, but it is actually extremely

similar to Alien, released a couple of decades later

Monster Storage Wars

Scrounging through the recesses of my closets, I uncovered a few old goodies that I'd forgotten about. For one, and I thought this was long gone, there was the Universal Monsters cookie box. The box is empty, since I had the munchies one night and they were the only sweet snacks I had in my place. Not all that tasty, though. It's been a while, but I believe the cookies bore the likenesses of Frankenstein monster, Creature From the Black Lagoon, Wolf Man, Dracula, and Bride of Frankenstein. The box is still in fine condition, so I suppose I'll hang onto it. Back into the cupboard you go, Frankie.

Then there was the slipcase from the VHS tape set of the Creature From the Black Lagoon movies. The tapes are gone, sold off when I upgraded to the Legacy Collection DVD set. But I wanted to hang onto this nifty little box, which shows colourful images from each of the movies. I've no idea what I'll ever do with it, but I can't toss this out just yet. 

Next up is not something I pulled from storage, but has instead been proudly displayed on my wall for close to twenty years, a framed sheet of collectible Classic Movie Monsters (the Universal ones) postage stamps, nicely mounted and framed. A friend of a friend picked up a few of these in the States back in 1996, and my buddy sold me one. Really unique and sharp, with "banner" images of the four top horror actors from the old movies (Lugosi, Chaney Jr, Karloff, and Chaney Sr.), then the twenty stamps showing the best of those actors' creepy characters: Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein creature, The Mummy, and The Wolf Man. One of my prize possessions.

Top Jimi, Really?

Why, oh why does this thing

keep going out of tune?

I am going to stir things up today. Normally I write about favourite stuff that I can easily gush about, but seeing as this is the first day of 2015, I'd like to make waves and tromp into less agreeable territory.

Jimi Hendrix. You've all heard of him, right? Even if you know nothing more about him, that name rings a bell. Innovative rock guitarist, psychedelic 60's, Woodstock, burning guitars. Some of those things might mean something to you, the uninitiated, too. 

For decades Hendrix's music has been hailed as among the most influential ever. He still regularly tops Top Guitarist Of All Time lists. But I never understood that. Sure, I heard some of his tunes on the radio back in my young days, stuff like Hey Joe, Crosstown Traffic, Purple Haze, and so on. To my ears, the music was fine, but it never blew my mind. I even shelled out for a double-album "best of" set to give myself a chance to appreciate Hendrix. But even that didn't grab me. 

For one thing, the radio overkill on the few songs I mentioned above is a problem. Stations have largely ignored better song choices, with their minds set on profits from the "big hits". Sadly, the commercial side wins out over the artistic side in the business. Business. And I got bored of hearing those same few songs over and over.

After years of not listening to that double-album set, I ditched it. Too much dust collecting on it. After maybe a decade and a half, I again thought I'd give Hendrix a go, and picked up the "Ultimate Experience" collection, a compact representation of his best known songs, plus a few tasty treats. The Star Spangled Banner stands out among the bunch, and I will tell you why: it is because it is a recording of a live performance. And I think that is the key. Hendrix was at his best onstage. The man fed off the audience, and the audience off him; the excited energy that he felt and harnessed, then released through his instrument in concert far exceeded his studio recordings. 

For me, something is clearly missing on Hendrix's studio albums. The sound is dry, flat and often lifeless. Even the most rocking of his songs can come across as listless. But I guess that's just me. Star Spangled Banner on that Ultimate Experience CD is another story.... somehow the electricity of that concert moment was captured on tape, and I feel each crisp attack on guitar strings. I even get a bit of a shiver down my spine when Hendrix hits high tremulous notes. So the guy's music is not entirely lost on me. 

From my bookshelf... loaded with

great paintings of Jimi

The one other Hendrix album in my collection is Live At Winterland, a document of his 1968 concert performances in San Francisco. This disc was highly recommended on a live album list I saw long ago, and I felt I owed it to myself to investigate Jimi's talents on the stage. 

On Winterland there is a whole new vibe to the music. Hendrix simply tears it up, reaching further into the stratosphere with his Stratocaster... the slightly imperfect meshing of drums, bass and guitar actually gives greater atmosphere to the recording. More breathing room, airiness, something tangible (or intangible?) upon which that spark flies from amplifier through the recording process to my speakers and ears at home. 

Songs like Fire and Foxy Lady truly come to life on the Winterland record. Hendrix gave Sunshine of Your Love, a Cream song, a nice kick in the pants with his trademark sound and style. Here, his solos sing with urgency, spontaneity, and vitality. 

I think that the studio was unkind to Hendrix. Something about the compressed, leaden sound, and even the structure of the process and environment must have affected the way Jimi played there. Sure, he had the artistic and technical side of guitar to his advantage, but the headphones, stool, glass booth, whatever... had to have robbed him of some of that fire that we hear in live shows. I know the man also loved the audio engineering side, stretching his talents, but I'll take his live efforts over his studio output any day.

I wasn't of the 60's generation. I was born then, but wasn't old enough to appreciate anything at the time, so I didn't grow up with Jimi's music in context... you know, Vietnam, the MLK and Kennedy assassinations, the Manson murders, the moon walk, and Woodstock. That may make a difference. But then again, guitarists and music fans my age and younger have loved Hendrix albums. 

I needed something besides the "liveliness" of concert recordings, too. Only a few songs, studio or otherwise, stood out for me in Hendrix's catalogue: Fire (the live version preferably, which I actually played on guitar for a while), Spanish Castle Magic (pulsing with a blistering live aura), and The Wind Cries Mary and Little Wing (both delicately beautiful, jazzy compositions). 

I can certainly respect Jimi and acknowledge his contribution to innovations in guitar and rock music. I suspect that his songwriting may be part of my issue, but definitely the representation of his music on recorded media fails to satisfy the rock fan in me. I get a bigger charge from other music of that era; artists like Cream, Beatles, Doors, Floyd, CCR, even the Beach Boys.