Taking Sides: Jimi Hendrix vs. Nirvana

Jimi

Nirvana are a context band. It's a band that only really matters to us who were there. It's been years since I last heard Nirvana being overplayed anywhere. Their sound is too raw for soundtracks, advertising, even your casual rock pub. The kids don't care about Nirvana. I don't know... maybe they're not pop enough. Nirvana was a cathartic band for generation x. Hard to get a kick out of their music when you don't really identify with their message.

They don't really care about Hendrix either, but... I guess he's got 'rhythm'.

P sure the kids still care about Nirvana. I see plenty of teenage mosher types wearing the hoodies.

Well I also see kids with Misfits or Che Guevara t-shirts but that doesn't mean they really know them.

Well sure, if you mean 'kids don't like Nirvana the way I think they should like them' then yeah. But I don't think Nirvana fans of today see themselves as being all that different from Nirvana fans of yore.

If anything I think that young Nirvana fans today are closer in spirit to what you want, compared with Nirvana fans of 10 years ago. Nirvana are no longer the 'go to angry rock pick for disaffected youth', so are probably liked more by kids who see themselves as the discerning consumer of alt rock (i.e. not my chemical romance or whatever).

Both of these still mean way more to me than I probably should admit...but, Nirvana has a better average, so them...

I'm kidding a little bit there... speaking from my own perspective. In Mexico the teenage mosher types can be seen wearing either 'classic rock' shirts (the doors, guns n roses, led zeppelin...) or any of their current emoish bands that I know nothing about (avenged sevenfold, black dahlia murder...)
In Spain asides those two types I see lots of support for local bands and strangely they seem to have a current crush on psychobilly.

No Nirvana shirts to be seen on the horizon. I think it's pretty much that... there's always a niche band for angst-ridden kids and it feels more right when it's actually a current band, one that feels like your secret. Nirvana isn't a secret. When you're a teen your bands are your personal brand. I get Nirvanan feels like dadrock to them. They've got a respect for the band but they'd rather have their own angsts revealed to them by someone almost as young as them. Plus they can't leave messages on their social networks about getting tickets to see them on concert. As ridiculous as that part sounds it's a pretty big deal.

Also I'm biased because I like Hendrix more. If I saw a kid with a Hendrix shirt I'd immediatly find him five times more interesting than the kid with the Nirvana shirt. And I'm sure they'd have a better sense of humor too.

I think Nirvana is still pretty big with the kids; maybe it's been a little bit diminished because of all the bands that have sprouted up in their wake--like it's not only Nirvana, it's also Korn & Deftones & whateve underground emo-alt-death-power metal bands that float their boat--but I mean even kids today, in souther Michigan at least, still see Kurt & co. that brought all that stuff into the mainstream...

as far as kids wearing T-shirts go, Nirvana = Hendrix imo (both of which are cool)

Oh yeah I wouldn't hold anything against a young Nirvana fan. I'd just prefer the Hendrix fan but that's an irrelevant hypothetical situation.

Both are great musical acts that I don't feel like I ever need to hear again, they've been so played out.

thanks John Lennon.

do you ever feel like you've heard too many Beatles songs?

Definitely agree on the social networking point. This is a big factor.

I was a half generation away from Nirvana being current (was 9 in 94), but lots of people were into them through older siblings, plus they were still a reference point for most music writers. Neither of those are probably as true for today's teens.

Anyway, I've never been into Nirvana OR Hendrix so won't vote either way.

(many xposts to moka)

I missed Nirvana (and grunge) by moments (13 when Kurt died), but Nirvana felt absolutely 100% relevant to us as teenagers growing up between 94-99.

yeah I was 13 or 14 too as well

Also I'm biased because I like Hendrix more. If I saw a kid with a Hendrix shirt I'd immediatly find him five times more interesting than the kid with the Nirvana shirt. And I'm sure they'd have a better sense of humor too.

Ironically Nirvana had a way better sense of humor than Hendrix.

Bob Marley ftw

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2599/4011666708_d80f387ef0_o.jpg

Hendrix. Don't care about who wears what shirt.

Also I'm biased because I like Hendrix more. If I saw a kid with a Hendrix shirt I'd immediatly find him five times more interesting than the kid with the Nirvana shirt. And I'm sure they'd have a better sense of humor too.

Ironically Nirvana had a way better sense of humor than Hendrix.

― billstevejim

They were provocative and cynical. It wasn't so much a sense of humor as it was a sense of detachment. They delivered the lols because they were always an underground band at heart, one which didn't mind the money or the fame, giving them a chance to expose the ridicule of the record industry everytime they could.

Either way this was a comment on the fans, not on the bands. The Nirvana fans I've met tend to be more introspective and shady, the Hendrix fans are similar to jazz fans, geeky but easy going and they smile a lot when they're outdoors.

Ironically Nirvana had a way better sense of humor than Hendrix.

I don't get this at all.

If anything, Hendrix seemed more a laff/riot to be around.

Actually, temper that..

Hendrix: "You'll never listen to surf music again! ... (wha?).. hmm, sounds like a lie to me!"

Kurt: "What are you tuning, a harp?"

Both had a sense of irony...

My very subjective and probably rather badly referenced point of view hinges on the fact I never really "got" Hendrix.

Sure I like the odd song, but on the whole he seemed like a bore who's since been adopted by other bores who champion his technical ability or the psychedelic imagery around which he's associated. I've always seen him as a necessary cog in the history of music - his influence on rock and metal in the '70s is probably quite important or something. But Jimi suffers in my mind from Jim Morrison syndrome - adulated by a certain category of fan who has bought into Jimi as an all-in-one music credential.

Not saying that all Jimi fans are like this, nor that there's necessarily anything wrong with this attitude for casual music fans. Neither am I saying that Cobain hasn't got his unabashed proscribers either. But listen to Incesticide (the album I go back to the most these days), and I hear a burning passion, wit, experimentation and intense character in the music which I just can't get from Jimi. Hendrix seems detached to me - like he spent so much time smoking dope and learning to be the ultimate guitarist that it's had a detrimental affect on his conviction. Kurt never cared about being able to play brilliantly, but he was a much more intense character on record.

Well, I never sat down and "listened" to Hendrix, but I do think he was so much better and bigger than all the people who thought him a genius, untouchable, etc, then proceeded to pick up their guitars and attempt to 'do' him.

As per all those things, it matters not what you can do, but how you do it. Crosstown Traffic uses his skills to my mind, it does not 'showcase' them over all else.

Actually having a somewhat hard time choosing myself.

My pick ended up being Jimi Hendrix. Sure, I am not fan of the blues, and I feel many of his songs would have benefited from being less bluesy. But his fantastic guitar playing and imaginative psych arrangements means his albums (particularly "Electric Ladyland" are still well worth listening to. Probably benefited from moving to England, having and English producer and taking considerable influence from the English brand of psychedelia.

From my logic, it would make more sense to go for Nirvana, who would often write really strong melodies, and who were heavily influenced by 70s powerpop and even The Beatles. But at the same time, the obvious heavy metal elements and the raunchy production, screaming and the fact that they influenced a lot of rather boring grunge music, that means I go for Jimi Hendrix overall.

Let me add that I take The Postal Service over both. :)

Is that a write-in vote?

hendrix duh

*trying with all my might to understand what the Postal Service has to do with this*

R.I.G.

I'm a little confused by the idea of teenage rock fans NOT liking Nirvana. I suppose it's because I was the right age at the time so they still feel like the absolute gateway drug into rock music and maybe they aren't any more but I'd sort of imagined there'd be 13 year-old rock fans who loved them for as long as 13 year-old rock fans continue to exist.

I thought Geir's random comment had something to do with the Postal Service being a Seattle band or something but Postal service: Tamborello - California, Giddard - Washington. So I guess it was just one of his trademark inflammatory comments.

Seattle is in Washington as well, Moka. Gibbard is from Bremerton, which is a 55-min ferry ride away from Seattle.

I like Nirvana a lot. I love Hendrix.

Neither one means that much to me, but Hendrix especially for some of the more psychedelic stuff. Since I first heard, and like, Nirvana, I've become less tolerant of shouty rock vocals. But they had some good tunes and I like some of the production touches.

I probably underrate Hendrix (he's a guitar God but why do I only hear the bass on his best recordings? Also, his blues jams bore the shit out of me) and I probably overrate Nirvana (see my contribution to the "My Chemical Romance is this generation's Nirvana" thread from several years back) so I'll be consistant and pick... Nirvana.

Hendrix was an original; he actually invented something. Nirvana didn't. Hendrix was also way funkier, a more interesting singer than Cobain, a way more interesting guitar player (and I always thought Cobain was pretty good), and a more interesting (partly because more direct -- well, at least in stuff like "Crosstown Traffic" and "Foxy Lady" anyway) songwriter. And where Nirvana's music could be pretty, Jimi's could be beautiful. I like them both, am not a huge fan of either. Still, I don't see how this is even a fair contest.

Won't say anything about Paul Revere & The Raiders or the Sonics (who were Portland and Tacoma anyway.) Heart, though...

Nirvana didn't (arguable)...

Well, maybe they invented something that Husker Du, the Replacements, Squirrel Bait, Soul Asylum, Scratch Acid, Dinosaur Jr., Die Kreuzen, Green River, and countless other '80s bands had already invented, if that counts. (Or, to be nicer, maybe they invented some new combination of those bands' sounds. But if that's true, then pretty much every band invents something, by synthesizing what previous bands had done before.)

..which is what Hendrix did, took those elements and added a showbiz performance slant, albeit disguised.

I agree Nirvana didn't invent something. But they repackaged things in a way that, unlike The Pixies, The Wipers, Vaselines, Meat Puppets, Husker Du, and Melvins, sold records and had a cultural impact.

Some people (including xhuxk, based on the thread I linked to earlier) dismiss the cultural impact. I disagree with that completely and feel there is evidence that shows it to be incorrect.

Others realize the cultural impact but say that doesn't mean the music is any good. Which I disagree with, but that is a far more subjective thing.

on a base level i like and listen to nirvana more often

but it's kinda hard not to vote hendrix

The thing about Nirvana is that nowadays the collective idea of Nirvana is actually a lot worse than Nirvana themselves.

I succumb to this strange notion that Nirvana were a kind of watered-down punk/metal hybrid obsessed with miserablism and navel-gazing. This is a retcon really - something that's been drummed into us by grunge naysayers of the time ("it sounds like someone mumbling in a corner and then screaming when he's been hit on the head, hur hur") and some of Kurt's post-grunge mimicists (Gavin Rossdale, Puddle Of Mudd etc).

The truth is Nirvana had a thousand times the raw energy of any of the bands that came before or after. I mean, the Pixies etc are great bands, but as far as immediacy is concerned Nirvana beat them hands down.

I honestly think Hendrix is one of the greatest artists in the rock idiom...but I vote Nirvana purely bcz I think Bleach/Nevermind/In Utero is just a better run of albums than Are You Experienced/Axis Bold as Love/Electric Ladyland...

I think that critics nowadays underrate both of these bands (though I think Hendrix is more underrated; one of the things I love most about S. Reynolds is his unabashed Hendrix fandom) but I think the Hendrix cult tends to overrate Jimi somewhat, whereas I think Nirvana is pretty accurately rated by its cult...

also dog latin otm about the raw energy of Nirvana, and yet that's only half the story; tell me two live albums more divergent than Unplugged in NYC & Muddy Banks of Wishkah...

so tempted to post a Red House... Hendrix was a master natural musician and completely effortless in his flow, his style is so amazing because he doesn't play licks or shred scales, but constantly surprises, invents, wails, and sings as if he's got a direct connection to the Muse. this is what astounded his contemporaries - you can tell where Clapton or Page or any other rock guitarists got their steez, but Jimi just opened up and blew like Coltrane in a rock'n'roll band.

and unlike most virtuosos, he was able to pack in all that power into 3-minute pop songs that, like Nirvana, re-defined what rock music was supposed to sound like and be about

ehhhh, Hendrix had his share of licks. But I'd still vote him ahead of Nirvana.

Some of Nirvana's jokes...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6bEKuAbssg

the intro of this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_p0pU9jhkc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbgKEjNBHqM

Hendrix might have been unintentionally funny when he was all spaced out but I've never really heard him say anything funny.. He seems pretty serious most of the time.. like he did that song "Machine Gun," which is kind of serious subject matter.. Whereas Nirvana did a song called "Moist Vagina" where he screamed the word "marijuana" over and over again for half of the song...

Hendrix had a really dry, absurd sense of humor, would say really strange and purposefully confusing things to interviewers and audience. and c'mon, there was SO much humor and playfulness in his albums, from the lyrics to the arranging to just the way he'd play guitar had comedic undertones.

"Their sound is too raw for soundtracks, advertising, even your casual rock pub."

I'm pro-vana but I liked Dana Carvey lip-syncing to Foxy Lady in Wayne's World better than Clive Owen shooting people while skydiving to 'Breed'

Seattle is in Washington as well, Moka. Gibbard is from Bremerton, which is a 55-min ferry ride away from Seattle.

― ellj versus deej (Drugs A. Money)

Oooooh, I'm an idiot. Then I guess this means my inital prediction was right and Geir was actually talking about bands from Seattle. Sorry about that.

Clive Owen shooting people while skydiving to 'Breed'

This happened?

Jimi and Kurdt, 2 bros jammin and lol'in in Heavin

it happened in the movie Shoot Em Up (xpost)

that movie is full of awesome scenes set to songs like "The Ace of Spades" and "Kickstart My Heart"

Did they ever use the Hendrix version in Battlestar Galactica? I could see that ruining Hendrix for an entire generation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPrjyLhmcWI

I agree Nirvana didn't invent something

I'd argue they did. Sure, grunge was a combination of other styles, but so were virtually all styles before it as well. Hendrix himself based his music heavily on the blues combined with English psychedelia, so he did no more than fuse styles either. Which is what virtually all popular music innovators have always done.

i don't get why we're arguing who was funnier... are we judging the winner based on sense of humor or something?

(oh well, nirvana wins either way)

I would say that Hendrix is objectively better, more original, and more important.

But I never saw him play. And I don't listen to his music THAT much.

Nirvana hit me hard at the right age. I saw them several times during the Bleach days. There was a time (prior to Geffen and all that) that they were my favorite band.

So, I vote Nirvana. And I would still wear my Nirvana t-shirt if it didn't look like a dress on me.

Jimi, for calling Noel Redding Bob Dylan's grandmother.

oh good grief.

nirvana.

hendrix by a zillion million miles

Maybe wld vote Nirvana if THEY ever opened for The Monkees.

I listened to *a lot* of Jimi Hendrix at age 13.
I never rly listened to Nirvana.

^^^basically this haha

I listened to a lot of Nirvana for a few months in 1993-1994, I think. Or maybe it was 1991-1992, but I think I heard Nevermind pretty late after it had come out.

The Hendrix album I had was just a best-of, too, that I checked out from the library (on cassette) and copied. I wld listen to any of those songs any day w/pleasure. I have absolutely no interest in branching out into actual Hendrix albums. I tried listenning to "Band of Gypsys" once and I was like what am I thinking?

Also Devo's cover of "Are You Experienced?" is so great!

Speaking of covers (and Devo!): every single song I ever liked by Nirvana turned out to be a cover. They would be more fun to record shop w/than listen to imo.

I remember when I was trying to play guitar, my friend taught me the riff to "Come As You Are" and then said, "How did people ever learn to play the guitar before Nirvana?" (not to make "guitar riffs for beginners" a rubric here, I just thought it was amusing.)

nirvana captured my early law school angst and overall rage/discontent. also, they were tight and had a knack for pop melodies underneath all the anger. and they absolutely glowed live. (never liked hendrix, buta to be fair, i kind of dislike most u.s./u.k. 60s music).

"buta" means my keyboard has a sticky "a" key, which is screwing up everything.a

Blimey, there's a word for everything thesedays.

Abbbottt OTM. Hendrix doesn't appear to have released truly classic albums and is generally remembered for individual tracks - Crosstown Traffic, Wind Cries Mary, Watchtower, Purple Haze etc. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - some of the greatest bands in the world weren't "albums" bands (ABBA for example); but Nirvana definitely were an albums band, and even had the power to make Unplugged an absolutely unique and essential part of their catalogue. In fact, I wonder if they'd be viewed differently were it not for that album - almost certainly.

How did people learn guitar before Nirvana anyway? I know for the first 5 or 6 years of playing, nearly everything I did when noodling about sounded like a Nirvana song.

Hendrix doesn't appear to have released truly classic albums and is generally remembered for individual tracks

This is so wrong. First three albums are all classic, Electric Ladyland especially.

Like did Nirvana ever conceive of anything at all like side three of Electric Ladyland?

Side four of "Muddy Banks of Wishkah" ?

Hendrix is definitely tied in with the whole Seattle thing for me. I think I first heard him on the Singles soundtrack. Pearl Cream ws obviously more influenced by him, but i might have had hendrix and nirvana on opposite sides of a c90 b/c hey, power trios! Although the classic power trio that most visually resembles Nirvana is James Gang - check it out. Went with Nirvana. I love, love. love some Hendrix, but not his bluesy stuff or noodly jams. I can hang with every last Nirvana song except Mexian Seafood.

dog lating, he "doesn't appear to have" this and is "generally remembered for" that? is this like, u haven't heard his albums but u really really want to vote nirvana in a way that seems justified?

amazed at the nirvana love in general. bleach is a classic record now? ok.

Are there any edits of 1983 a Merman I'd Turn To Be without the widdly guitar stuff in the middle?

Bleach is a great record.

Hendrix was considerably more innovative and trail-blazing, but his sound was often too sloppy and unfocused for my taste. I think Kurt may have been a better songwriter as well.

Shit gets awful widdly underwater, what can I say? You cannot have mermen w/o the widdle, that is their very essence. xp

Just thinking abt Hendrix though makes me want to stick a tenstrip under my headband.

If they were both transported through time and space to 80's Minneapolis, Hendrix would be Prince and Nirvana would be Husker Du.

Bleach isn't a classic album. Nevermind is. In Utero is. Unplugged is.

These are defining albums of the '90s right here - the pregnant angel, the swimming baby with the dollar - I would argue that Nevermind epitomises 90s rock as it dominated American rock music for nigh-on 5-10 years.

I don't think even Electric Ladyland comes close in its iconography. Maybe it's the generation I grew up in, but I don't really know people who stick on a whole Hendrix album, save his greatest hits whereas Nevermind's still on rotation.

Hendrix is a fantastic guitarist, but I honestly don't see how his legacy stretched far beyond his influence in that capacity. He's a musician's musician, and this doesn't interest me a whole lot. I always found his voicy kind of thuddy and uninteresting too - he seemed happier speaking through his instrument whereas it was Kurt's vocal expressionism that propelled Nirvana up and above their contemporaries and made them much more than another three chord punk band.

And the other thing Nirvana don't get much credit for is their range - Incesticide is testament to that.

Hendrix is a fantastic guitarist, but I honestly don't see how his legacy stretched far beyond his influence in that capacity.

Well, you've got things like the use of effects pedals and feedback, his influence on psychedelic music, heavy metal, jazz fusion and funk (especially pfunk), you've got his studio experiments and tape fuckery, you've got his political and social importance as a black person in pop, and also obviously he was one of the great icons of the whole hippy movement.

Hendrix doesn't appear to have released truly classic albums and is generally remembered for individual tracks

Not that this means jackshit in our world but "All three of the band's studio albums, Are You Experienced (1967), Axis: Bold as Love (1967) and Electric Ladyland (1968), were featured in the Rolling Stone list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, at positions 15, 82 and 54 respectively.".

yeah so many of the posts about Hendrix in this thread are just so batshit insane that i don't think i can begin to respond to them.

^^this.

He's a musician's musician

He kind of isn't really... unless, you know, Coltrane could also be described as a "musician's musician"

Ha, I was in no way to try to say anything generalizable outside myself abt either band –– I think best ofs for big canon dueds like Jimi, they are for housewives & little girls, right?

That is the received wisdom on them?

Eh, some people just want the hits and that's okay too.

My friend had a t-shirt that you could press some button and it played like a tiny beepy version of Purple Haze. Maybe that was the ultimate packaging of his music.

Is there a "Best of Nirvana" album?

Yeah it came out abt 8 years ago.

Hendrix is a fantastic guitarist, but I honestly don't see how his legacy stretched far beyond his influence in that capacity.

This is so so wrong. I find it difficult to imagine Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, heavy metal, Sonic Youth/My Bloody Valentine/noize, for that matter PRINCE developing in the same way without Hendrix.

Add Miles Davis and Funkadelic to that list.

otm, which is part of why people can't see the forest for the trees as he basically invented the lexicon for Hard Rock

or trees for forest

re: kids hearing Nirvana - we have an 'Everything that Rocks' radio station around here that still plays Nirvana all the time (and Bush and Spacehog and AC/DC, playlist is stuck in 1995). looks like the format is officially 'Active Rock' (classic rock w/ the occasional new stuff as little as there is these days), not Classic Rock or Mainstream Rock. guess North America still wants to Rock.

Hendrix is a fantastic guitarist, but I honestly don't see how his legacy stretched far beyond his influence in that capacity.

This is so so wrong. I find it difficult to imagine Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, heavy metal, Sonic Youth/My Bloody Valentine/noize, for that matter PRINCE developing in the same way without Hendrix.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, 8 February 2011 13:27 (27 minutes ago) Bookmark

Which is what I'm agreeing on. As musician he's obviously influenced a million guitarists. Nirvana influenced a bunch of shitty bands, but their legacy is arguably a wider phenomenon. Nirvana's whole attitude was what made them a breath of fresh air and such a big source of inspiration for teenagers of around my age at the time.

Plus it's not as if Hendrix invented Zeppelin and Sabbath etc, nor was he the only outspoken black rockstar of his time (see Arthur Lee for example).

I'm going to put down a caveat at this point that I'm in no way as familiar with Hendrix's work than Nirvana's, and my opinion may well change were I to dig deeper; but I've always been put off doing this because of: A Hendrix's songwriting and delivery - just doesn't tickle my circuits in the right way; and B, because of so many people telling me he was the most important musician of all time because he played guitar behind his back with only his teeth etc... Probably completely unjustified prejudices these, but yeah.

As musician he's obviously influenced a million guitarists

And a shitload more non-guitarists

nor was he the only outspoken black rockstar of his time (see Arthur Lee for example).

"Star" implies a level of fame which Arthur (unfortunately) never came close to achieving

because of so many people telling me he was the most important musician of all time because he played guitar behind his back with only his teeth etc

Now you're just being silly and/or trolling

he played guitar behind his back with only his teeth

It's a heck of a trick tho.

it's irrational, but i remember telling me all about that when i was a kid, and just remember thinking, "so what? that's sport, not music".

*my dad telling me all about it

that's talking to yourself also.

xpost TiMING!

xpost ...and then all the guitarists and teachers banging on about "real blooos" and ramming Clapton and Hendrix and shit down my throat, without really justifying why this made for great music.

(realise I'm getting a bit Lex-ish here btw). I mean, I think Nirvana displayed a panoply of emotional depth in their music whilst also playing incredibly catchy songs delivered with a rare and rawful passion. Hendrix invented hard rock.

Both Hendrix and Cobain died at 27, so I guess that's another point of comparison. Both accomplished a lot in a short time.

To me, Hendrix is the obvious answer. It's hard from the perspective of 2011 to appreciate how different his sound was from everything else coming out in 1967-70 (not a period of music noted for lack of innovation). The Coltrane comparison is apt.

Hendrix's transformation of electric guitar was so extreme he tends to be under-appreciated as a singer and songwriter. Consider how he owns "All Along the Watchtower" and other covers, and the success of other artists covering his material. I love Cobain's voice and a lot of Nirvana songs, but I don't think Hendrix really suffers by comparison in those areas.

OK, so it's a slow day at work, but you obv. have no idea what you're talking about, amusing and all that but nonetheless (xp)

I remember when I was trying to play guitar, my friend taught me the riff to "Come As You Are" and then said, "How did people ever learn to play the guitar before Nirvana?"

Where is Alex in NYC when you need him?

Just out of interest, would the Hendrix fans say he was the most important artist of his generation?

Hendrix only has two real 1-4-5 blooz tracks afaik, Red House and Voodoo Chile

and no, best musician imo but not Important Artist (would be prob be Dylan or Lennon)

no, and nirvana certainly weren't either

xpost

Just out of interest, would the Hendrix fans say he was the most important artist of his generation?

I thought it was music not sport?

Was Hendrix more or less important that James Brown?

No-one is more important than James Brown.

No JB, no Hendrix.

I think Hendrix's gravity in the music world was greater than Nirvana's even in the short term - like, while Nirvana helped popularize the aesthetic of an underground rock music scene and gave some rock fans of its generation a feeling of a Beatles Moment, Jimi Hendrix emerged in the middle of an already burgeoning rock scene and completely turned upside-down the public conception of the rock guitar solo, masterfully tied together the most important popular musical themes of the era - rock, R&B, jazz, blues, psychedelia, funk - his influence can be heard in all these kinds of music, unlike Nirvana whose influence is pretty much limited to rock & post-grunge top 40 stuff.

this song is just the jam though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGqPzrNypzw

crut otm

i can get behind that.

Just noticed Hendrix on this year's Chevrolet's superbowl commercial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEzWNj2LHMY

There's a couple of errors: if it's supposed to be woodstock that wasn't the outfit he used. The bass player was Billy Cox and not Noel Redding (who seems to be depicted there).
Hendrix definitely used Marshall amps so they got that one right.

I'm such a geek.

Was Hendrix more or less important that James Brown?

http://d21uwzfkfy2yiv.cloudfront.net/wild_man_fischer_evening_with_wild_man_fischer-2XS6332-1238965631.jpeg

Maybe it's Monterey Pop tho... in which case Noel Redding was performing. Still not Hendrix's outfit for the show. Or is it?

Glad to see Tiny Tim getting a decent rating up there.

What about Donovan tho! As important as "Elvis"!

Ricky Nelson wuz robbed.

The Monkees better than Mozart. WTF is Kabian?

Fabian, man.

Also, what, no Solomon burke? (He found Fischer first, named him Wild Man Fischer...)

and then all the guitarists and teachers banging on about "real blooos"

That'd be like blaming Paul McCartney for Geir Hongro

gotta start somewhere...

so many of the posts about Hendrix in this thread are just so batshit insane

Yeah, the idea that Hendrix's influence is limited to "hard rock" or guitar solos (or that, even if it was, that wouldn't in itself dwarf any influence that Nirvana have had on later music) is just comical; ditto the idea that all he did was fuse blues and British (why British, anyway?) psych.

grunge was a combination of other styles, but so were virtually all styles before it as well.

Nirvana didn't invent "grunge", either. Not even close. In Seattle alone, they were like the third generation of the stuff.

FTR, I do know I'm being extremely subjective about championing Nirvana over Hendrix, but y'know, it's my generation. Nirvana aren't even one of my favourite bands, but I'd be a very very different person if they'd never existed.

Nirvana are 'my generation' too but I still listened to Hendrix more in the early '90s and now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xT2KRZz4G0s

I remember when I was trying to play guitar, my friend taught me the riff to "Come As You Are" and then said, "How did people ever learn to play the guitar before Nirvana?"

haha, so true... but before that there was "smoke on the water"!

nirvana is great, and sure they had the impact, but then when you start digging and little bit you find pixies, husker, etc, as others have said. when you start digging back from hendrix you get... albert king? the yardbirds? much bigger leap forward imo. and while i got into hendrix as a teenage guitar noodler, over time other aspects like his use of the studio and his control over noise and effects have made him worth returning to for me.

not sure who i pick in TS: mitch+noel vs dave+krist though

smoke otw otm

Will have more to say later but this video is kind of fun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo5Tm9YLJXU

this for me is hendrix in a walk. he's the only "guitar god" i've ever been even slightly interested in, and actually it is because of his sense of humor--he was freakishly talented enough early that he could spend what stupidly short time he had thinking of cool things, funny things, weird things, to do with the basic materials of his proficiency. i think he was into psychedelia (the music, anyway; i'm sure the drugs got him into the rest of it) because he liked sound, and liked doing interesting things with sound, and that's why he's Important and eric clapton, say, is a brief technical footnote: because when i listen to electric ladyland, which i actually do a lot, though not necessarily in full (oh well), i'm not just listening to a performance but entering a space designed by a guy who's really excited about sound and about what he can get a guitar to do with a little work. i think better than any musician, and possibly better than any writer, hendrix embodies what actually was promising and pretty about the 60s before it was buried under all that self-satisfaction: this hugely loud and aggressive and sexual sound turning itself to a kind of tender, probing curiosity. when i was a kid i was this huge and pretty boring dylanhead, but even then i knew the hendrix "watchtower" was doing Something Else Entirely; it's one of the most sonically beautiful songs i've ever heard.

nirvana's good too though! i wasn't around for them really but i spent a lot of senior year of high school jogging to nevermind. which is actually kind of an intense communion to have with an album.

oh as for the blues thing: one of the things i like about robert johnson is that he is almost always in this utterly weird hinterland where he sounds like he can only just barely keep control of his guitar, an impression he manages to create without actually being sloppy. that's what hendrix is heir to, most completely in "the star-spangled banner" (which is a kind of proof of concept): he sounds like he's riding the guitar, not playing it. but he's actually just playing it.

was gonna say that "the star-spangled banner" alone would win this for jimi

wow, those were two good posts, difficult listening hour.

yes

yes very otm! he was a sculptor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSL6JMyv-YY

I like Nirvana a lot, more than most of ilm I used to think, but this isn't even close. For songwriting alone, Hendrix wrote and recorded (or at leasts demo'd) about twice as many songs as Cobain did over a shorter span of time, and I'd say he's got a higher percentage of good ones. Better rhythm section(s) too.

xpost ...and then all the guitarists and teachers banging on about "real blooos" and ramming Clapton and Hendrix and shit down my throat, without really justifying why this made for great music.

― Bernard V. O'Hare (dog latin), Tuesday, February 8, 2011 8:13 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

but hendrix isn't "real blues" at all, he's like crazy afro spaceman acid blues!

to be fair that's what clapton was up to as well, but he wasn't as good at it

cream never really gets "out there" enuff....their big jamz are kinda boring, i like their pop singles the best by far

Yeah, they are more of a riffs band.

can all the people attempting to make even vaguely credible sounding comparisons without... having fucking actually listened to both artists(??) in a taking sides - fuck off, go do that for a couple of weeks, play the records (inc. albums) LOUD and take a breather.

then come back and avoid spewing seventeen shades of utter horsehit all over the internet?

TA.

just remember to roll the bass off, as instructed

wait ignore me... now I logged in I can't see stupid fucking idiot polls anymore. It's for the best. "I Love Polls" and in-built ignore function 2011 please (I'm not dignifying this place to fanny-fuck around in my precious spare time with a greasey monkey and hand edit text files. SOZ).

SB'd you for thinking your time is precious.

i used to have a denim jacket with a swirly abstract lol60s picture of hendrix on the back, and i have no idea what happened to it and i miss it. probably a little old for it now i guess.

there are ppl that haven't heard nirvana and hendrix?

lex

nevermind was the album that made fifteen year old me start listening to modern rock music instead of only listening to prince/zeppelin/and a helluva lot of hendrix. kurt's probably the most important rock star of my generation, though i preferred eddie vedder at the time (and perhaps still). and nirvana are an incredibly important band to me, something i sometimes forget, before finding myself impossibly moved while watching livetonightsoldout, or the reading dvd, or 1991:the year punk rock broke.

and to be honest, i don't often go in for taking sides really - my moods are fluid, my mind changes from moment to moment.

but oh wow, my awe for jimi hendrix is without limit. to me he's like stevie wonder (and how i treasure the mp3 i have of them jamming i was made to love her together (i think that's them, with stevie on the drums, but who knows?)): just so much genius invention, albeit charting on a very different path. so much brilliance, so much joy in the sense of creation, in songwriting, in tearing apart those songs in live performance and finding new stuff in there every time.

electric ladyland literally changed my life - the first classic rock record that ever blew my mind, a record that entirely infested the summer a friend of my dad taped it for me. i didn't think about side 3 and its concept until working as a sub on a magazine about hendrix a few months back, and it totally blew my mind.

he wasn't a guitarist, he had this sound in him, and the guitar was how he channelled it. it was fucking magic. i get real upset sometimes, thinking about him dying so young, being so talented, with all that promise. he prompts mawkish shit such as this paragraph from me with such ease i can't ever deny it.

bieber fans xpost

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTI3MKpOjgY I dig this, herbie + kurdt kobain melodies sort of = vince guiraldi style piano

i had an awesome hendrix tee i bought at a shop on a seaside pier when i was fourteen. at the time my parents had just split up, and a friend of my dad's would help me out with the housework, and took a bunch of ironing home. the hendrix tee disappeared, and a few weeks later her boyfriend (who would later dub me cassette copies of his groundhogs lps) popped over our house wearing it.

this for me is hendrix in a walk. he's the only "guitar god" i've ever been even slightly interested in, and actually it is because of his sense of humor--he was freakishly talented enough early that he could spend what stupidly short time he had thinking of cool things, funny things, weird things, to do with the basic materials of his proficiency. i think he was into psychedelia (the music, anyway; i'm sure the drugs got him into the rest of it) because he liked sound, and liked doing interesting things with sound, and that's why he's Important and eric clapton, say, is a brief technical footnote: because when i listen to electric ladyland, which i actually do a lot, though not necessarily in full (oh well), i'm not just listening to a performance but entering a space designed by a guy who's really excited about sound and about what he can get a guitar to do with a little work. i think better than any musician, and possibly better than any writer, hendrix embodies what actually was promising and pretty about the 60s before it was buried under all that self-satisfaction: this hugely loud and aggressive and sexual sound turning itself to a kind of tender, probing curiosity. when i was a kid i was this huge and pretty boring dylanhead, but even then i knew the hendrix "watchtower" was doing Something Else Entirely; it's one of the most sonically beautiful songs i've ever heard.

nirvana's good too though! i wasn't around for them really but i spent a lot of senior year of high school jogging to nevermind. which is actually kind of an intense communion to have with an album.

― difficult listening hour

Yeah this pretty much sums what I love about Hendrix. I'd probably make more emphasis on the 'sexual', sensorial overload I feel with his music. One of the few rock acts I've heard that truly knows how to hit primal.

I've listened a bunch to both but have problems with each as well. Listening to Nirvana is like poking an open wound to me, it's just really unpleasant at this point. And where I can appreciate Hendrix on the groundbreaking/technical level I've never really connected with his stuff emotionally or viscerally. a lot of it seems kinda silly and corny, I have a hard time putting all the racial/sexual politics embedded in his public persona aside.

I have a hard time putting all the racial/sexual politics embedded in his public persona aside.

― lmao reminisces about his days in southern china (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, February 8, 2011

waht

And yes, I'm voting Hendrix of course, but safe from common birthplace and the fact they were representative icons of their movement I fail to see why we should be having a fight between them. There's not that much of a common ground. I can't vote objectively.

I have a hard time putting all the racial/sexual politics embedded in his public persona aside.

― lmao reminisces about his days in southern china (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, February 8, 2011

waht

― zvookster

Do you mean you have problems about him being black and making some seriously sexy music? I don't even understand.

Or him being linked to the black panthers and maybe not supporting gay rights?

As far as I know he refused to join the black panthers (although he once referred to 'voodoo child' as the black panthers anthem... maybe a joke)

eh I just mean I have trouble seeing past the cultural baggage of his act, kinda like how Miles Davis had issues with Louis Armstrong's constant hamming/bugeyed smiling/shuffling routine while still acknowledging his massive gifts as an artist and his central role in jazz. Like, I get why Hendrix is such a huge deal for rock n roll, it's pretty obvious how much he reshaped guitar playing for the genre. At the same time I see a guy who really consistently played into white culture's fixation/fetishization of black male sexuality and the "wild untamed bluesman" archetype with his chitlin circuit schtick - the adoration heaped on him by his white audience at the time and by legions of Guitar Player magazine readers afterwards has this creepy tinge to it that I kind of don't want to go anywhere near. It sorta clouds what was really great about him for me.

Man, fuck context. Just enjoy the music.

And yes, I'm voting Hendrix of course, but safe from common birthplace and the fact they were representative icons of their movement I fail to see why we should be having a fight between them. There's not that much of a common ground. I can't vote objectively.

That would arguably be the case with most TS polls here lately. I picked them for the Seattle connection (the two biggest names from Seattle), but there was also the icons thing. And Kurt and Jimi both died way too young at 27.

Also: his music being sexual has nothing to do with him being black. It's sexual because he was so commited, so entranced with it you can feel a real human being breathing and living inside it. You don't even have to be good at something, show someone how much of yourself you're willing to pour into the things you love and they'll find you sexy (or maybe just weird if its some sort of beta-hobby like collecting stamps or playing role games).
When I first heard Hendrix I wasn't even aware he was black. These 'cultural baggage' idea you have about him had never crossed my mind.

In brief: passionate men and women are inherently sexy.

Hendrix was such an anomaly in so many ways, within his genre, within his race, that I kind of feel like you can't fault him for any weird baggage that came with that, and I really can't fathom any way he dealt with it particularly badly or in a way that made his music less enjoyable.

He was just a man who loved sound and who had the ability to express himself through it. In many ways he embodies the spirit of rock music. It wouldn't have mattered an inch if he had been white instead of black. And he really wasn't even that good as a guitar player, his love for sound was usually ahead of his abilities. He was constantly playing (and singing) off key, he had an history of making insane amounts of takes of one song to get just the precise sound he wanted... his band (who were perhaps much more proficient musicians) had trouble keeping up with him... these are not usual traits for a truly gifted, technical guitarist.

And I need to get some sleep... I don't know why there's even a need to discuss these things.

eh I just mean I have trouble seeing past the cultural baggage of his act, kinda like how Miles Davis had issues with Louis Armstrong's constant hamming/bugeyed smiling/shuffling routine while still acknowledging his massive gifts as an artist and his central role in jazz. Like, I get why Hendrix is such a huge deal for rock n roll, it's pretty obvious how much he reshaped guitar playing for the genre. At the same time I see a guy who really consistently played into white culture's fixation/fetishization of black male sexuality and the "wild untamed bluesman" archetype with his chitlin circuit schtick - the adoration heaped on him by his white audience at the time and by legions of Guitar Player magazine readers afterwards has this creepy tinge to it that I kind of don't want to go anywhere near. It sorta clouds what was really great about him for me.

― lmao reminisces about his days in southern china (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, February 8, 2011

yr one crazy dude

imo

lol otm

Damn this is tough. I just had a look at my Last.fm stats, and they're both in my top 8. Some points in no particular order:

Saying Nirvana were the third wave of grunge or copying such and such is really missing the point. I watched the Hype! documentary a few weeks ago (the whole thing is up on YouTube). You see all these decent enough bands that you'd happily go see live, and after half an hour your brain is adjusted to a certain level of quality in terms of performance and sound and hooks and so on, and then BAM! there's the Nirvana bit and it's blindingly obvious that they're a massive step up in quality. It's clear that they thought a lot about how all the different parts of the songs worked together - there's no dead weight or so-so, aimless, or dragging bits.

Dunno if it applies everywhere, but purely going on suburban Irish kids, younger cousins of mine etc.

Soundgarden and Pearl Jam must have listened to quite a bit of Hendrix - both Hands All Over and Evenflow sound a lot like drop D versions of Voodoo Child to me.

The chords in Nirvana songs are nuts - this may seem like an academic point, but it's a major reason why they don't sound like other grunge bands. They're not really drawing from usual hard rock type progressions (like Pearl Jam do heavily), or normal major scale stuff done loud (like most punk bands). They'll have notes left out, and then the vocal melody or bass bit 'completes' the chord, often to major where you'd expect minor, etc. I think both Sonic Youth and the Meat Puppets may have influenced them on this one.

Talk of Hendrix being not great technically is just bizarre - he was way ahead of his contemporaries technically. When the other 60's blues guys played fast, they tended to either play one lick over and over, or maybe have a little bit they'd learned off in advance (Alvin Lee is definitely guilty of this). Hendrix was doing insane stuff, making it up as he was going along, never doing it exactly the same way twice, that sounds great even when you slow it down. He didn't have a clean, precise Pat Martino picking style, but that wouldn't be a desirable thing in a rock guitarist anyway - all the adjacent strings being hit and feeding back etc. helps it sound fuller and blurs the line between lead and rhythm further. Anyway, Page was a much sloppier player (no bad thing in his case either).

His whole Curtis Mayfield on acid (the only valid use of the phrase "on acid") rhythm style is a thing of beauty and has never really been bettered. Check out the turnaround at the end of the first chorus in Bold As Love, or pretty much all of Castles Made Of Sand.

I'm not Clapton at all at all - he sounds like he's constantly on the verge of running out of ideas whenever he plays. I'd take Rory Gallagher, Peter Green, or Mick Taylor over him any day. None of them are Jimi Hendrix, however.

I just mean I have trouble seeing past the cultural baggage of his act

The baggage is all yours, sir.

Dunno if it applies everywhere, but purely going on suburban Irish kids, younger cousins of mine etc.

", Nirvana are as big as ever", I meant to add at the end of that sentence. My brain was still melted from listening to Jimi Plays Berkeley.

Hendrix. Main connection to me is they died too soon, and I'd seriously love to have heard what they made as they got older, especially Cobain, who really seemed like he was just getting started.

Like how the guy who invented the OCTAVIA in the youtube that Sund4r posted plays "Can't Explain" to demonstrate.

I've never seen Hype!; really have no interest in seeing in it, but Feile Kuti's comment above made me curious. Here's what Wiki told me:

Hype! includes interviews and performances from bands (primarily oriented with the Sub Pop Records axis) such as TAD, Mudhoney, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Coffin Break, The Gits, Love Battery, Flop, The Melvins, Mono Men, The Supersuckers, Zipgun, Seaweed, Pearl Jam, 7 Year Bitch, Hovercraft, Gas Huffer and Fastbacks

In other words, none of the bands that Nirvana actually sounded like they ripping off/synthesizing/whatever when they came along (well, the Melvins maybe, but they always basically seemed like a joke how-slow-can-you-go band in the '80s anyway, and though Cobain was apparently a big fan they're certainly not a band I thought of when I first heard Nirvana; I'm kind of curious what '80s Soundgarden songs show up in the movie, but not nearly interested enough to sit through the rest of those middling bands -- besides, Soundgarden were a much different strain of sound than Nirvana too, more a Zeppelin/Sabbath hybrid) -- given that stacked deck, it really doesn't surprise me Nirvana seemed like a giant evolutionary leap (especially since the movie apparently has them playing what's far and away their best song, for supposedly the first time. But outside of "Teen Spirit," which obviously is as great a rock song as that era produced, Nirvana have certainly never sounded to me like a huge leap over their '80s predecessors, from Flipper on up.)

from what i conclude, the latter wouldnt exist without the former, one played guitar solos and rocked, one didnt do guitar solos and rocked, and theyre both dead

i think they both did what they should have - kurt cobain outsold michael jackson by having a laugh and jimi hendrix proved instruments can be used for a lot more than what they are made for -in the process having a whale of a time, making awesome records and smashing everything up in sight

moral being they are both important in their own ways and neither's better than the other.

Sorry to split hairs, but both did guitar solos, though one's were a lot shorter than the other's.

Well what Cobain did was more of a guitar refrain based on the vocal melodies, they barely qualify as solos.

"But outside of "Teen Spirit," which obviously is as great a rock song as that era produced, Nirvana have certainly never sounded to me like a huge leap over their '80s predecessors, from Flipper on up."

I do think it's fair to say that they sounded a whole hell of a lot better than most of the other bands on Sub Pop which I think was basically the point.

Cobain could play a nice crunchy noise-solo when the (teen) spirit moved him - like maybe once or twice per LP. Like "In Bloom" or "Serve The Servants"

In Bloom solo rules, very Hendrix

The soloing on Love Buzz is pretty wild.

t wouldn't have mattered an inch if he had been white instead of black. And he really wasn't even that good as a guitar player, his love for sound was usually ahead of his abilities.

think both of these points are wrong fwiw

haaa, "not even that good as a guitar player." wow. i mean, who are we comparing him to here?

Pat Martino?

Guy had amnesia and still plays faster than anybody else.

he's no Zakk Wylde amirite

you should check this guy out: joe satriani he's amazing

I just wanna say that this thread manages to be both ILM at its best and ILM at its worst. No mean feat.

I always find it bizarre when people claim that central facets of a performer's identity (gender, race, background, etc.) are immaterial to their work as a musician.

noone really said that, just that it doesn't always have to be 'baggage' if the music is great for reasons that for the most part transcend those things

best part of hype:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9b8YSozvRw

megan jasper v. anthony burgess for fictional teen slang champion?

hey shakey just who in your measly little world are you trying to prove that you're made out of gold and can't be sold?

some junkie burnout

drunk. "are you experienced."

NOT NECESSARILY STONED, BUT...

BEAUTIFULLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

Still voting for Hendrix (whose music I played possibly more than anyone's throughout 2010), but this thread has motivated me to play In Utero for the first time in forever. (lol ILM)

i played nevermind this morning, too.

It's motivated me to listen to In Utero for the first time ever ever. Vocals tend to be rock's biggest weak point and Nirvana is just another example. I mean it, maaaaaan.

Love Hendrix. LOVE HENDRIX. Hope this thread leads to complete ILM cred resuscitation. Wrote tons of amazing songs: Castles Made of Sand, Manic Depression, Burning of the Midnight Lamp, Angel, Love or Confusion, Wind Cries Mary, Little Wing. Drew from and synthesized lots of things from the era to amazing effect, but at the same time I think he was also a victim of the era and all its excess. The album format was only a couple years old when he made his best music, and I don't feel like he ever mastered it; lots of dreck and filler. Anyone jamming out to Wait Til Tomorrow? Rainy Day Dream Away? House Burning Down? Long Hot Summer Night?

Axis: Bold as Love is like the Goo of the 60s: play-by-the-rules weaksauce from folks who were tearing year face off a year ago (in SY's case, make that 2 years). It has a couple of Jimi's best songs on it, but even a lot of the 'standout' tracks--Spanish Castle Magic, If 6 Was 9, the title track--are pretty meh.

Hendrix the icon is supremely important, useful, pervasive, awesome. The music comes close but never quite lives up to it.

i didn't smoke pot in high school and i remember vividly that the closest i ever came was when jimi hendrix told me to. prolly should have listened.

tearing year face off

Lol Blackberry autocorrect

Axis: Bold as Love is like the Goo of the 60s: play-by-the-rules weaksauce

disagree,sir: axis is jimi playing a different game to are you experienced- more lyrical, prettier, gentler, more playful- and proving himself just as adept at that.

also, i'd second most drubbing of clapton in this thread, but have always loved his verson of little wing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLPHz8KT9No

Just noticed that there's a bit of album cover symmetry going on with the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Nirvana (shame the order is out):

Are You Experienced? & Bleach - Band photo

Axis: Bold As Love & In Utero - Weird heavenly beings

Electric Ladyland & Nevermind - Nakedness

Drugs A. Money's assertion about axis: bold as love is a trip. What "weaksauce" watered-down rules were they playing by? Who among all the weak and watered-down pop acts of the late 60's were the Experienxe kowtowing to? Did he borrow his mighty use of the flanger from the Mamas and the Papas? Or was it the ufo interview?

Voted Jimi: inventive songwriter, great player, visionary producer.
Also 1983, many years ago, was the soundtrack of a long, beautiful summer.

the version of territoriqal pissings where kurt plays the star spangled banner just came up on shuffle.

axis is jimi playing a different game to are you experienced- more lyrical, prettier, gentler, more playful- and proving himself just as adept at that.

I remember wanting Axis to be this. I loved "Castles" and "Little Wing" from the Ultimate Experience comp that was going around when I was in high school but when I finally got it (I was probably 22 or 23) it just sounded like an album full of the second-rate cuts on Are You Experienced.

Nonsense. It's more soul and funk influenced than AYE, that's my memory of it anyway.

^I've been listening to it again and that's actually what I'm hearing tbh...maybe I was a bit harsh on it.

xp otm, Axis is Jimi opening up his sound beyond the acid-aggro of the debut. It's like 'ok, now that you're Experienced, let's see where it can take us'. his rhythm playing is phenomenal, and even a track as lite-weight as 'Up From The Skies' has those perfect wah-embellishments ping-ponging across the stereo. love the way his solo carves it up, subtle and sublime

http://www.youtubcom/watch?v=fbS87xDtBzs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbS87xDtBzs

Also 1983, many years ago, was the soundtrack of a long, beautiful summer.

1983 was a long beautiful summer here too. However, the music in the UK hitlists was mostly brilliant that summer, so my soundtrack to the summer of 1983 was Radio Lux. The roots of my musical anglophilia are exactly there, that summer. :)

I think it's the Hendrix track "1983" that's being referred to there, Geir!

hahaha

Ah OK :)

he wasn't a guitarist, he had this sound in him, and the guitar was how he channelled it. it was fucking magic.

― I'd rather climb into the saddle of my Ford Mustang and sink spurs (stevie), Tuesday, 8 February 2011 22:01 (2 days ago)

this is such mawkish mystificatory crap and makes me sympathize with shakey's bad faith political disquiet

i really like both of these

preferred nirvana as a kid, though i disliked their fans.....though i don't know which /classic rock/ staple doesn't need to be saved from their more egregious fans

a very good friend was hugely into hendrix and i liked him, but only really loved the star spangled banner....latterly have come to appresh the more geir-friendly melodic stuff

My favourite Hendrix, from a position of only really knowing the famous stuff, is Crosstown Traffic. His sound is coiled tight and funky in that one, and the better for it IMO.

Axis is better than I thought it was, but it still is flawed...If 6 was 9 is alright, but it's pretty ungainly, the type of hippie bullshit you'd never let Jefferson Airplane get away with in a million years. I was going to say the same about Bold as Love, but the magnificent outro redeems it. Spanish Castle Magic is a leaden retread of his great '67 rockers, and Wait til Tomorrow and Little Miss Lover fit right in w the "secondary tracks from AYE" diss I made upthread even though WuT is better than I remembered.

However, the album is still backloaded w great stuff: besides Castles and Bold as Love, there is You Got Me Floatin which is a sizzling rocker. And One Rainy Wish is an awesome little slice of rippling majestic beauty. Used to be fairly confident that this was my least favorite Hendrix album; not so sure anymore.

However I still vote Nirvana: Nevermind and In Utero are really that unfuckwithable. Only bum track out of those two albums is "Stay Away", and though he messes with a small musical vocabulary and reuses chord patterns, the songs are not just 'mere' rewrites of each other

Axis is a little light on "songcraft", perhaps, but it's so, so awesome just to listen to and let float through you and take in Jimi's playing. It's really light and funky and open and delicious. Its brevity is a big plus, too.

Hendrix is the only "guitar hero" my wife has any time for at all, which I always think is interesting. I like Nirvana plenty, and sometimes you can't beat letting rip with Milk It, for instance, but I'd pick Hendrix at a push any day.

Out of Axis, I quite like Up From The Skies - a little ditty with a vague Sun Ra aftertaste.

xp if I still smoked pot I'd probably rate Axis even higher...

Up from the Skies is indeed grate, but this was the discovery of the day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT4ehrIH4zk

1983 was a long beautiful summer here too. However, the music in the UK hitlists was mostly brilliant that summer, so my soundtrack to the summer of 1983 was Radio Lux. The roots of my musical anglophilia are exactly there, that summer. :)

― You're Twistin' My Melody Man! (Geir Hongro), Thursday, February 10, 2011 10:19 AM (41 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Oh, you card.

I can be wrong here, but maybe a song like Little Miss Lover can sound like a bit funk-by-numbers today, I'm not sure in 1968 it was the same.

And they also said it's impossible for a man to live and breathe under water, forever, was their main complaint

that song means a lot to me

thinking back, I wasn't as into Axis at first - had it on a 2-Fer cassette w/ Are You Experienced which I played much more. it wasn't until I heard it in the right SET and SETTING that it totally opened up, and 'One Rainy Wish' was one of the revelatory tracks. got to remember he was also writing synesthetically for the tripping listener, sounds as colors shaping acid hallucinations. i know some of you will call bullshit on that one - all music does that on acid - but this is Jimi Hendrix in 1967/8

xp to Marco what, 1983 or Little Miss Lover? (you're kinda right btw about LML, I didn't think of it as Exhibit A of Hendrix as forgotten funk-uncle, only as an album track on par with, say, I Don't Live Today)

Drew from and synthesized lots of things from the era to amazing effect, but at the same time I think he was also a victim of the era and all its excess. The album format was only a couple years old when he made his best music, and I don't feel like he ever mastered it; lots of dreck and filler. Anyone jamming out to Wait Til Tomorrow? Rainy Day Dream Away? House Burning Down? Long Hot Summer Night?

none of those are favorites but i really have no problem w/ any of those songs or consider them lowlights of the Hendrix catalog.

i grew up with Ladyland and of course know all the songs on Experienced by heart, but it wasn't until i went through a phase of listening to all 3 albums a lot a couple years ago that i realized Axis might be my favorite, just has a really sharp, killer sound and a very satisfying mix of songs i'm familiar with but not sick of or desensitized to.

yeah I was picking on Electric Ladyland bcz it's the only one I had on hand, but I really like that album

also those Experience albums sound as much like real albums that perfectly realize the potential of the artform as much as anything of that era, don't really feel like there are any filler or lightweight or indulgent songs bringing them down any more than most Beatles albums tbh.

although i say that as someone who does like way more albums from the early 70s than the late 60s and does agree that artists were still grappling with the format a little at that point

something that is happening bcz of this thread, is I'm realizing that a lot of Hendrix that I had dismissed as dreck is revealing its own unique charms...being an alt-rock brat meant that I wanted my wild wooly rock and roll with hooks, which may not always be immediately forthcoming with JH...

I'd love to see someone poll Hendrix v. Prince Maybe I will after this one...

xxp Beatles I think helped to invent the album format but didn't really make a good album until Abbey Road, but that's bcz they always fell prey to McCarney's smarmisms. Paul didn't stop being annoying until I think halfway through The White Album...

(plz Geir let me off the hook for this one)

"xp to Marco what, 1983 or Little Miss Lover?"

I was thinking of Little Miss Lover - but yes, certainly Axis is a little inferior to AYE and Ladyland, still I quite like it for its overall feeling.

About the Nirvana vs Hendrix thing: I love Cobain but listening to the Experience for the first time, at least to me, was mind-boggling: alien, colourful, hallucinatory music.
Jimi and the Velvet Underground were the first 60's artists I listened to, they're still among my absolute faves.

ps I'd like an obviously-impossible-for-me Hendrix vs Sun Ra poll too!

i don't know if we really need to go doing polls of every possible pairing of eccentric black geniuses of modern music or anything

You know, for actual discourse, this is far and away Geir's most successfull poll!

drain you is such a great song! i haven't heard it in ages, so good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkqjx6Gsh0U

kurdt's voice -- esp his scream -- is totally Robin Zander of Cheap Trick

kurtdt had a real way with pop hooks, you even got the feeling he felt bad for it or something but he couldn't help it...there was a whole lot of cheap trick and john lennon songwriting in his DNA, which is maybe why nirvana ages better than like uh...the u-men or whatever

YO BABY BLAH BLAH BLAH WHAT A POISON AP-PLE

fuckin love this song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk8YTQtbwQ8&feature=related

^^intro bassline on this is almost like power pop

GRANDMA TAKE ME HOME GRANDMA TAKE ME HOME GRANDMA TAKE ME HOME
GRANDMA TAKE ME HOME GRANDMA TAKE ME HOME GRANDMA TAKE ME HOME
GRANDMA TAKE ME HOME GRANDMA TAKE ME HOME GRANDMA TAKE ME HOME
GRANDMA TAKE ME HOME GRANDMA TAKE ME HOME GRANDMA TAKE ME HOME
GRANDMA TAKE ME HOME GRANDMA TAKE ME HOME GRANDMA TAKE ME HOME
GRANDMA TAKE ME HOME GRANDMA TAKE ME HOME GRANDMA TAKE ME HOME

man i haven't actually listened to nirvana in ages, this is p fun

I was away on holiday when Nirvana first broke here, and when I got back all I had to judge it was that TOTP appearance.

I sort of liked "come as" but it wasn't until I got a second-hand copy of "Sliver" sub-pop single that I 'got' it.

i'm so tie--erd i can't SULEEEEEEEEEEEEP

Re. "Little Miss Lover": This is the song where Hendrix literally INVENTS that muted-wah "Shaft" rhythm guitar style, therefore inspiring countless thousands of songs in its wake. If there's an earlier-recorded example of that kind of playing, I've never heard it.

the guitar break on pennyroyal tea is pretty cool actually

ha man these "cannon shot" fills that grohl always leads out of a slow part back in to the loud part are such a great gimmick

to bring up an old point, Nirvana's appearance on TOTP is an excellent thing to show to ppl who insist that Kurdt was drab and had no sense of humor...

"Drain You" and "Sliver" are def in my top 5 Nirvana songs easy

I don't like "Sliver" as much as I used to; it's all about "Been a Son" for me

Nirvana's appearance on TOTP is a good example of how Kurt's sense of humor after he became famous often had a bitter and contrary edge, like doing fakeouts of the "Teen Spirit" intro at concerts just to fuck with people. i mean, he was going through some shit, it's all good, but stuff like that doesn't make him seem like a real wild and funny guy to me.

it's really kinda tripping me out right now, but yeah kurt's almost a bit of a savant, like he writes catchy shit all the time, listening to negative creep...like he's clearly trying to write an abrasive punk tune but it's still catchy and kinda poppy, like he couldn't help it

a great pop song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNYBzSZawGo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eS5EMYb5hQ

^ not the best sound, but this is by far my favourite Nirvana youtube.

very ape's main riff is kinda like stoner kids trying to play devo

yeah it's a shame Nirvana became such a monolithic iconic thing, because just taken as a band they did do some really neat fun stuff and synthesized a lot of different ideas and influences into something very distinct.

^agree with the last two posts wholeheartedly

My favorite from the "With The Lights Out" box, wish they had had a chance to record this as a band:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3-s0QEXZSk

(on the Neg Creep video, do Everman's stacks say Nirvana on them? how could they afford to get specialized equipment?)

they put a 50 cent bumper sticker over the amp logo?

what?

thread inspires me to listen to Hendrix all day today

man i haven't actually listened to nirvana in ages, this is p fun

― pajamagram sam (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 10 February 2011 16:50 (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

This is always my reaction when I stick on Nirvana. They get too easily dismissed: 'Yeah yeah, I know Nirvana, "Teen Spirit", "Polly wanna cracker", "Leonard Cohen afterworld". I know it, they're pretty good.'

But then you stick In Utero on at volume and 'Serve The Servants' bursts through the wall like a flaming Boeing and you're like "Oh fuck yeah, that's why people like them!!" . It's a really simple formula that so many bands tried to replicate, but never got close to.

"I tried hard to have a father, but instead I had a dad" is an amazing line. The delivery on that song is mind bending.

Electric Ladyland > Axis: Bold As Love > Bleach > In Utero = Are You Experienced > Nevermind

None of these are in any way bad, mind you. Nice tight discographies only muddied by scads of after-death barrel scrapping and sometimes revelatory live recordings (I probably listen to Winterland, Monterey and the BBC recordings more than any of the Hendrix albums, and definitely pull out Unplugged and Reading more than the Nirvana studio albums).

yeah it's a shame Nirvana became such a monolithic iconic thing, because just taken as a band they did do some really neat fun stuff and synthesized a lot of different ideas and influences into something very distinct.

― R. L. Steen's HOOSbumps (some dude), Thursday, February 10, 2011 11:01 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah maybe this is sort of the real thing that unites hendrix and nirvana, like both come with a lot of "baggage" -- like the stuff shakey mo was all het up about and the "guitar center" muso mag stuff wrt hendrix that ppl react against, and obv nirvana and kurt being the last real rock "icons" in a way...

kurt's funny because it's like you get this sense that his ideal for nirvana was to be some late period SST band no one gave a fuck about but he wrote all these anthems in spite of that....also, when i see pix of him i'm always struck with how HANDSOME he was, even with trying to hid behind ratty ass sweaters and greasy hair....both he and hendrix had a lot of natural magnetism, but hendrix embraced his to the fullest and kurt tried to struggle against it, but they both ended up the same as dead rock icons....

Think one of my favourite Nirvanas that doesn't get mentioned much is "Hairspray". It's Incesticide's 'Tourettes' or 'Territorial Pissings' I guess.

always like how Kurt lets his melodic lines bleed into the next measure so the last word hangs around the one (not on the one but slightly ahead), like Been A Son up there or Lithium as prime example.

Hearing 'Killing Floor' off the Winterland album was the thing that sold me on Hendrix when I was a kid. Pretty straightforward song but it just goes for the jugular. xxp

but i think Hendrix's legacy, even at its most stodgy and one-dimensional, celebrates the eccentricity and diversity of his music more than in Nirvana's case -- like it's a given that Hendrix put novelty songs next to epics next to pop masterpieces and incorporated blues and funk and jazz etc. whereas talk about Nirvana tends to gloss over Devo covers and more subtle influences in favor of the larger cultural narrative.

Also, tying into the humour aspect here I guess, there's the idea that Nirvana were a really mopey depressing band. Think this is down to All Apologies and nihilism and Unplugged and Kurt shooting himself, which has kind of eclipsed a whole career of bouncy, hard-rocking stuff with killer riffs.

suicide's a bummer, no doubt

think i posted this elsewhere on ILM, but this hendrix thing is amazing: http://theheatwarps.tumblr.com/post/1129618708/saturday-will-mark-40-years-since-jimi-red-wined
an imagined double LP made up of posthumous material, which works way better than any of the officially released rarities discs I've heard. just some off the hook stuff.

xp to some dude: yeah but that's bcz of the values of the genres/subcultures they were working out of...hippies much bcz of the acid and bcz of the rebellion against American utilitarianist aesthetics that the acid brought about, caused the psychedelic counterculture to embrace stuff as different as pre-Raphaelite artists such as Beardsley (a huge influence on Hapshash, the preeminent British psych poster artist), surrealism, William Blake, Zen Buddhism, avant-garde noise electronics, and on and on and on, all of this being grouped together under the deceptively simple catch-phrase "Far out".
with Nirvana, while there is certainly a strain of postmodernism there, it's more of a sociological thing; not only underground/mainstream, but the concept of youth culture and adolescence itself. What is privileged is angst and authenticity, not creative flourishes and oddball strains that can be heard.

oh yeah you're totally right about why Hendrix's legacy is more colorful and nuanced, i was just lamenting that Nirvana's is less so

think i posted this elsewhere on ILM, but this hendrix thing is amazing: http://theheatwarps.tumblr.com/post/1129618708/saturday-will-mark-40-years-since-jimi-red-wined
an imagined double LP made up of posthumous material, which works way better than any of the officially released rarities discs I've heard. just some off the hook stuff.

― tylerw, Thursday, February 10, 2011 12:31 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

cool, need to come back to this later, i still haven't investigated much after starting this thread: search & destroy: the posthumous Jimi Hendrix catalog

i mean, listening to hendrix (i'm not like a crazy fan or anything even), i get the feeling he was pretty much capable of anything? that link i posted, he blows away everyone who was recording at the time, in terms of pure talent, imagination, fun, whatever.

'"I tried hard to have a father, but instead I had a dad" is an amazing line. The delivery on that song is mind bending.'
really? to me the song (and that lyric in particular) only works as a sarcastic take on 80s-90s therapy-speak, like deliberately ham-fisted.
for example, the line before that is, "as my bones grew they did hurt / they hurt really bad"

listening to the hendrix boot tyler just posted, damn this goes IN

right? i mean, it might be my favorite hendix album!

hmmm may have to give that a listen. traditionally I've been put-off by the endless slew of "unreleased!" hendrix stuff that gets churned out (altho I was quite fond of the Band of Gypsys album back in the day)

yeah i think this mix is precisely for those of us who never had the inclination to wade thru everything....read the description, dude put a ton of editing work into this

the album art is great too - was that gonna be the actual album art or is that some fan-made collage thing

dude said it was done by the bitches brew artist for a possible gil evans / hendrix collab that obviously never happened.

(don't know if that's true or not)

art is better than this anyway
http://thehelplessdancer.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/gil-evans-plays-the-music-of-jimi-hendrix.jpg

lol

thx for the boot link, this thing is great. The 1997 'First Rays of the New Rising Sun' is a permanent car disc and the Hendrix I listen to most these days so really excited to hear a HendrixiStan's version.

listening to this again -- really is just peak after peak.

thing about this later stuff is that it's so rhythmically complex without seeming totally prog - he makes all these changes seem pretty natural, even though they must have been a bitch to play. at least for his sidemen. anyhoo, should probably just take it over to that posthumous hendrix thread

listening to chubby checker's self-reviled psychedelic album 'chequered' at the moment, and the song 'ballad of jimi' in particular, and chubby introduces what is, tbh, a pretty awful song with a dedication to his "best friend". and my question is, were chubby and jimi really such close friends?

This "First Rays" remix is sweet.

Ironically Nirvana had a way better sense of humor than Hendrix.

^yeah, just an absolute laugh riot.

Yeah, I guess it depends on your personal sense of humour - whether you think "Territorial Pissings"'s sendup of hippie music is funnier than "Third Stone From the Sun"'s alien contemplating the destruction of surf music along with everything else on earth. (And Hendrix LIKED surf music btw.)

both those examples aren't funny but Kurt sang goofy more often than jimo

Jimo hongrox

At 14 my favourite artists were nirvana, hendrix and the cure. i think jimi was more innovative and humourous than kurt. nirvanas music seems to hit harder though. i guess growing up in the 90s helps but i would listen to nirvana before hendrix still tbh. i think its kurts voice that really does it. one of the best voices in rock.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

closer than i envisaged

lot of former 90s altrock kid i guess

i couldn't decide between them

The one major difference is that JHendrix was a UK phenomenon that got re-exported to the US.

Am I right in thinking that John Peel and the UK music press helped the likes of Nirvana and Mudhoney break through initially though?

i def bought 'nevermind' on the strength of a rave everett true review in the melody maker, back in the day. was too soft rock for my tastes tho, so i took it back to the shop.

xp - yes: http://archivedmusicpress.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/the-sub-pop-rosta-18th-march-19891.jpg

I went to see Nirvana on the strength of John Peel playing 'Big Cheese' and 'Love Buzz' the whole damn time for a month.

iirc, that ran alongside another feature specifically on Mudhoney. Ironic how Mudhoney were the ones picked for stardom from the outset & subsequently got short shrift in the ensuing Seattle feeding frenzy.

xp

Let's face it, they were no Blood Circus.