In 2003, Rolling Stone published its 100 Greatest Guitarists issue.
No surprise, topping the list was Jimi Hendrix, and Pete Townsend wrote a gorgeous tribute, a reflection on that lightening flash made flesh for not quite 28 years.
I found this YouTube upload of an MTV production sometime ago, and have long thought to do an entry on it. It’s not a great video on it’s own, but what the MTV crew managed to do was capture so much of what made Jimi special, and what made him an icon for the era: the creativity, the destruction, the raw sexuality, the power, the rebellion, the poetry, the skewed beauty attached to a new musical form tethered to the black blues, while simultaneously reaching for melody and dissonance.
“Are You Experienced” is my favorite Hendrix tune, for it captures all of these strange and beautiful qualities, or as Pete Townsend writes, “What he played was fucking loud but also incredibly lyrical and expert. . . It was a high form of eroticism, almost spiritual in quality. . . . He made the electric guitar beautiful. It had always been dangerous, . . . Jimi made it beautiful and made it OK to make it beautiful.”
“Are You Experienced” reflects all these things, and this little video offers some of Jimi’s most magical moments.
Are You Experienced?
If you can just get your mind together
Uh-then come on across to me
Well hold hands and then well watch the sunrise
From the bottom of the sea.
But first, are you experienced?
Uh-have you ever been experienced-uh?
Well, I have.
(Well) I know, I know, youll probably scream and cry
That your little world wont let you go
But who in your measly little world, (-uh)
Are you tryin to prove to that you’re
Made out of gold and-uh, cant be sold.
So-uh, are you experienced?
Have you ever been experienced? (-uh)
Well, I have.
Uh, let me prove it to you, yeah.
Trumpets and violins I can-uh, hear in the distance
I think they’re callin’ our name
Maybe now you cant hear them,
But you will, ha-ha, if you just
Take hold of my hand.
Ohhh, but are you experienced?
Have you ever been experienced?
There’s a man who’s been out sailing
In a decade full of dreams
And he takes her to a schooner
And he treats her like a queen
Bearing beads from California
With their amber stones and green
He has called her from the harbor
He has kissed her with his freedom
He has heard her off to starboard
In the breaking and the breathing
Of the water weeds
While she was busy being free
There’s a man who’s climbed a mountain
And he’s calling out her name
And he hopes her heart can hear three thousand miles
He calls again
He can think her there beside him
He can miss her just the same
He has missed her in the forest
While he showed her all the flowers
And the branches sang the chorus
As he climbed the scaley towers
Of a forest tree
While she was somewhere being free
There’s a man who’s sent a letter
And he’s waiting for reply
He has asked her of her travels
Since the day they said goodbye
He writes, “Wish you were beside me
We can make it if we try”
He has seen her at the office
With her name on all his papers
Through the sharing of the profits
He will find it hard to shake her
From his memory
And she’s so busy being free
There’s a lady in the city
And she thinks she loves them all
There’s the one who’s thinking of her
There’s the one who sometimes calls
There’s the one who writes her letters
With his facts and figures scrawl
She has brought them to her senses
They have laughed inside her laughter
Now she rallies her defenses
For she fears that one will ask her
For eternity
And she’s so busy being free
There’s a man who sends her medals
He is bleeding from the war
There’s a jouster and a jester and a man who owns a store
There’s a drummer and a dreamer
And you know there may be more
She will love them when she sees them
They will lose her if they follow
And she only means to please them
And her heart is full and hollow
Like a cactus tree
While she’s so busy being free
Like a cactus tree
Being free
There is a story that I frequently remember, when my life is moving slower than I would like.
Jermaine Jackson tells this story, and I heard him tell it around the time I was doing work in ‘write it down, and make it happen.’
Michael Jackson wrote a note to himself that read, “I will record the best-selling album of all time,” and he placed this on his bathroom mirror, where he read it every morning.
With time, Michael eventually released that album. “Thriller” remains to this day the best selling album of all time, the closest runners up lagging behind by over 45,000,000 albums. No other recording artist or groups comes close.
Unfortunately, the YouTube video I originally posted was pulled. I had two update choices: a live performance with an introductory note that I’d prefer not to see, or the official MJ YouTube upload that includes no video of Michael. I decided to embed the former with its personal dedication, but I’ve included a link to the latter. Both have their merits, for reasons that seem to me obvious.
“Indian music is like a river or stream that has come down to us through time, bringing nurture to man’s soul. From the past masters, this music flowed to my father and through him to me. I want to keep this stream flowing. I don’t want it to die. It must spread all over the world.”
I start up in the north
I grow from special seed
I sprinkle it with sensibility
From French and Hungarian snow
I linger in the sprouting
Until my engine’s full.
Then I move across the sea
To European bliss
To language of poets
As I cut the cord of home
I kiss my mother’s mother
Look to the horizon.
Wide eyed, new ground
Humbled by my new surroundings . . .
I am a citizen of the planet
My president is Kwan Yin
My frontier is on an airplane
My prison’s homes for rehabilitating.
Then I fly back to my nest
I fly back with my nuclear
But everything is different
So I wait
My yearn for home is broadened
Patriotism expanded
By callings from beyond.
So I pack my things
Nothing precious
All things sacred.
I am a citizen of the planet
My laws are all of attraction
My punishments are consequences
Separating from source the original sin.
I am a citizen of the planet
Democracy’s kids are sovereign
Where the teachers are the sages
And pedestals filled with every parent.
And so the next few years are blurry
The next decade’s a flurry
Of smells and tastes unknown
Threads sewn straight through this fabric
Through fields of every color
One culture to another.
And I come alive
And I get giddy
And I am taken and globally naturalized.
I am a citizen of the planet
From simple roots through high vision
I am guarded by the angels
And my body guides the direction I go in.
I am a citizen of the planet
My favorite pastime edge stretching
Besotten with human condition
These ideals are born from my deepest within.
Quan Yin: Anonymous, 14th Century Japanese Painting
Today I downloaded Sinéad O’Connor’s “Theology” from iTunes.
So far, I am mesmerized, but I’ve not listened to it through.
I briefly checked YouTube for links to send friends of some of the songs I’m enjoying (Psalm 33 and Something Beautiful), and I stumbled on this recent interpretation of Prince’s song.
No need to explain why I immediately posted as my YouTube find of the week.
The cello is my favorite instrument. I love its sonority, expressiveness, the emotional depths it attains when in the right hands.
Mstislav Rostropovich’s mastery of it, and his performance of Bach’s Cello Suites, go places few instrumentalists ever reach. Bach’s composition is one of the world’s greatest, and Rostropovich’s performance perhaps the most nuanced ever given. In a single lifetime, I could never tire of listening to Rostropovich play this cycle.
Rostropovich once said that no cellist should attempt to play the Cello Suites until they are at least sixty, as they lack the emotional wherewithal necessary to interpret the work. He carries all the emotional wherewithal and more into his performance.
This YouTube find of the week I find lovely for many reasons, the first being just watching the master play. Second, the sound quality is exceptionally clear. I assume this is in part because he is playing in a Romanesque Cathedral, its heavy stone walls and asp providing the perfect resonance for the cello and the intimacy of this composition in particular.
There are quite of few uploads on YouTube of Rostropovich performing parts of Bach’s cello suites; this one is a bit longer than most, coming in at a little over four minutes.
I very much enjoy the opening shots, which the other videos seem to omit.
Mstislav Rostropovich, Bach Cello Suite No. 3, Prelude.
How about getting off of these antibiotics.
How about stopping eating when I’m filled up.
How about them transparent dangling carrots.
How about that ever elusive kudo.
Thank you India.
Thank you terror.
Thank you disillusionment.
Thank you frailty.
Thank you consequence.
Thank you, thank you silence.
How about me not blaming you for everything.
How about me enjoying the moment for once.
How about how good it feels to finally forgive you.
How about grieving it all one at a time.
Thank you India.
Thank you terror.
Thank you disillusionment.
Thank you frailty.
Thank you consequence.
Thank you, thank you silence.
The moment I let go of it was
The moment I got more than I could handle.
The moment I jumped off of it was
The moment I touched down.
How about no longer being masochistic.
How about remembering your divinity.
How about unabashedly bawling your eyes out.
How about not equating death with stopping.
Thank you India.
Thank you Providence.
Thank you disillusionment.
Thank you nothingness.
Thank you clarity.
Thank you thank you silence.
“Indian music is like a river or stream that has come down to us through time, bringing nurture to man’s soul. From the past masters, this music flowed to my father and through him to me. I want to keep this stream flowing. I don’t want it to die. It must spread all over the world.” 
