Hendrix - Band of Gypsys

This album rules, but I've just realized I haven't listened to it in years. I will listen soon and then vote. If memory serves, I'll be voting for "Machine Gun".

Machine Gun is the standout, although the whole first side is great

Maybe it hasn't been polled because everyone would vote for "Machine Gun"?

Anyway, I think that this, along with the live "Dazed and Confused", was an early introduction to noisy guitar improv. Maybe still my favourite Hendrix.

This will be one of the most one-sided polls ever, yeah. And rightly so

Not that there's anything wrong with the other tracks but 'Machine Gun' is about as classic as it gets. Possibly my favourite thing by him as well.

A poll pitting Hendrix's 'Machine Gun' vs. Brötzmann's would've been more interesting imho.

Machine Gun vs Maggot Brain

sounds like a zombie movie

Which one would you choose if someone were pointing a machine gun at you?

Both supposedly definitive works of electric guitar art. I wonder what can be added to the canon...

yeah i mean this is definitely machine gun

a poll of songs named machine gun would RULE. not just brotzmann, throw in the commodores, portishead, the riptides, slowdive, janko nilovic, and jerry's kids. though honestly i'd only expect the first three and hendrix to get votes.

Which one would you choose if someone were pointing a machine gun at you?

― pomenitul

who knows?

pat benatar's 'hit me with your best shot' is the logical next choice obv xxp

Another vote for 'Machine Gun' here, although this album is far from my favourite Hendrix.

really love how hard-drivin message of love is, and the riff to "who knows" is as good as anything else on the album

was my favorite hendrix album for a long time, maybe still. it's the most jammy. no silly song structures to get in the way.

great album, machine gun certainly stands out, but everything ranges from solid to really great. if i weren't to vote for machine gun, it would be either who knows or power of love.

power of love was definitely a mistake on the record sleeve, right? he sings "power of soul" approximately 100 times but "power of love" zero

*the title "power of love"

Giving this all a listen now. Been about 15/20 years since I last heard it

Power To Love makes one hell of an entrance doesn't it? No shade on Redding (ok, some) but this bassist is sick

hendrix was smart to keep billy cox around. he was also smart to bring mitch mitchell back on drums.

*howls of anguish at what might have been*

(more than any other musician ever tbh)

machine gun

i had revisited this album a few years ago and found it a little disappointing apart from machine gun tbh

i don't really like buddy miles as a vocalist that much

voted for "Who Knows," the first solo made me want to play guitar. "Machine Gun" is obviously the masterpiece, absolutely stunning & devastating from beginning to end, I think I agree with Trey Anastasio (yikes!) that the screaming high note at ~4 minutes is the most intense note ever played on an electric guitar. but "Who Knows" was my way in.

Buddy Miles p much ruins this album for me

but Machine Gun is a masterpiece

voted 'Power to Love'. it has my favorite grooves and solos. definitely a listen to the whole album kind of album, though.

Just pulled it out. The LP sounds so good! I was actually reminded of how much I enjoy side 2.

I actually like Miles's vocals on this record but tbh I'm not really a fan of Hendrix's own voice.

*record scratch*

I'm not really a fan of Hendrix's own voice

Neither was he.

Listening to this for the first time in decades, had completely forgotten all the doodly-scatting in "Who Knows."

I love Hendrix' voice, and I'm not even much of a Hendrix fan.

woop boop boo boop boo
boop boo boooooo ba booop
beeeeee oooohoooo

dit dit dit dooo
a dit dit dit dooo
wooo dit dit a dita doo daahhhhhhh

lol

isn't there a story about jimi cutting most of that stuff in the studio? and there's still so much.

Eddie Kramer:

Mixing the Band of Gypsys album was a challenge. It was like Jimi was really almost pressured into doing it. Hearing Buddy's [vamping or musical improvisation] seemed to bother him. We were sitting there and he was like. 'Oh man, I wish Buddy would shut the fuck up.' He would listen to him and say, 'Can we cut some of those parts out?' I ended up editing a lot of Buddy's quote unquote 'jamming', where he would go off and sing a lot.[80]

Supposedly 10 minutes of Buddy's scatting in "We Gotta Live Together" was cut.

if only jimi had lived. he would have heard chris frantz on Stop Making Sense's 'Genius of Love' and realize what he had.

"Buddy Miiiiiiiiiles, Buddy Miiiiiiiiles!"

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ICN-CbWsbz4/maxresdefault.jpg

If I'm remembering correctly Band of Gypsies was kind of a big deal when it came out on CD, as it had been out of print for years on LP.

the murk of hendrix records in the latter alan douglas days was something else. rainbow bridge was only on bootleg, there were old tapes of "nine to the universe" still floating about, before "the ultimate experience" the best-known comp was "the essential jimi hendrix" with that weird-ass version of "gloria", every other hendrix record was another truck-stop reissue of the curtis knight stuff or a copy of "high, live and dirty", there was something called the "jimi hendrix reference library" with records called "fuzz and wah-wah", "octavia and univibe", and one record with like eight versions of "red house". and that's not even getting into the bootlegs!

That long jam "Young/Hendrix" from one the West Coast Seattle Boy box set is pretty hot with Buddy Miles on drums, Dave Holland on bass and Larry Young on organ. There are definitely sections you could hear in your mind how a certain trumpet player might have rode on the rhythms.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Man, I like Buddy Miles as a drummer way more than Mitch Mitchell, and I like his voice too. But uh well I've never actually heard this album...just the Live at the Fillmore East record with this lineup, which I listened to a ton. I can't imagine that any fan of this band wouldn't love that live album.

Man, I like Buddy Miles as a drummer way more than Mitch Mitchell

― change display name (Jordan)

what

'Machine Gun' is so fucking rad.

i like meg white as a drummer way more than max roach

They got different styles. Buddy has that big R&B fat backbeat style wheras Mitch Mitchell likes to throw in Elvin Jones jazz licks and do all sorts of doubling up on the patterns.

i mean, i guess you could put it that way. i just feel like hendrix, as a guitar player, got a lot of benefit from having a drummer who could listen to him and support him, and not as much benefit from a drummer who would just play snare rolls irregardless of what hendrix was doing.

Oh I thought you were being sarcastic about the Meg White thing, but I guess not?

Yeah Buddy Miles has that pocket & a big sound. I was definitely influenced here by my first drum teacher, who was a big Bonham and James Brown guy and put me on to the Fillmore record. I hadn't really enjoyed a Hendrix record before, haven't re-evaluated this opinion since.

i just wrote like three different posts and erased them all

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

too close.

should repeat w no machine gun

That long jam "Young/Hendrix" from one the West Coast Seattle Boy box set is pretty hot with Buddy Miles on drums, Dave Holland on bass and Larry Young on organ. There are definitely sections you could hear in your mind how a certain trumpet player might have rode on the rhythms.

I interviewed Dave Holland the other week and asked him about playing with Hendrix, among many, many other things.

crush my fucking skull

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uDv6HBvmVQ

that flamenco intro. good lord

All four Fillmore East sets are being released as a 5CD set in November.

https://www.superdeluxeedition.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/cdbox-768x532.jpg

I always heard that a big chunk of this stuff was unreleasable because of equipment problems. Did they fix it all? I'm definitely curious to hear this.

Both 5CD and 8LP vinyl box sets contain the four shows in full. The audio has been newly mixed (by Eddie Kramer) and restored in sequence without edits. In total there is over two dozen tracks that have either never before been released commercially or have been newly pressed and newly remixed. All audio was mastered by Grammy-winning engineer Bernie Grundman.

The package comes with a booklet with unseen photos and remembrances from bassist Billy Cox and sleeve notes courtesy of Nelson George.

12/31/69 1st Set:

CD 1

1) Power Of Soul
2) Lover Man
3) Hear My Train A Comin’
4) Changes
5) Izabella
6) Machine Gun
7) Stop
8) Ezy Ryder
9) Bleeding Heart
10) Earth Blues
11) Burning Desire

12/31/69 2nd Set:

CD 2

1) Auld Lang Syne%
2) Who Knows%
3) Fire
4) Ezy Ryder*
5) Machine Gun%
6) Stone Free
7) Changes*
8) Message To Love*
9) Stop*
10) Foxey Lady

1/1/70 1st Set:

CD 3

1) Who Knows
2) Machine Gun
3) Changes+
4) Power Of Soul%
5) Stepping Stone%
6) Foxey Lady+
7) Stop%
8) Earth Blues+
9) Burning Desire%

1/1/70 2nd Set:

CD 4

1) Stone Free%
2) Power Of Soul#
3) Changes#
4) Message To Love#
5) Machine Gun%
6) Lover Man*
7) Steal Away*
8) Earth Blues%

CD 5

1) Voodoo Child (Slight Return)%
2) We Gotta Live Together#
3) Wild Thing%
4) Hey Joe*
5) Purple Haze*

*previously unreleased
+ first time on CD/LP/streaming (previously only available as part of concert film)
# longer, unedited versions of previously released material, and newly remixed
% back in print on CD/LP for the first time in a decade, and newly remixed

Is all of Buddy's scatting getting restored?

I guess that "restored in sequence without edits" part is more of a threat than a promise.

SOLD

Came across this relatively recently uploaded clip last night, just unbelievable

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3w8SMavasQ

Ffuuuuuuuck

Tempted to get this. But it's a toss between this and the winterland set.

get this

still can't believe flappy bird included 'machine gun' in the options, making the poll much less interesting

Message of Love would be my choice after Machine Gun.

after machine gun, its Message of Love, Changes, then a tie for We Gotta Live Together and Power to Love, with who knows far, far, far beneath them. how did that get picked for the opener?

The Winterland shows were consistently better. Get that.

The Fillmore/Band of Gypsys set is worth getting if you're diehard Hendrix fan, but it's very uneven. Neither set is actually "complete" which understandably has pissed off certain collectors, but I'm not a completist and having heard what's missing, it's not a big loss honestly.

(I was referring to the box sets, but if you meant the single disc live releases, I would still prefer Live at Winterland, but Band of Gypsys might be better for the casual fan since it was programmed to be all new songs rather than live versions of previously released songs.)

I was referring to the box sets too.
From what I did hear of the Fillmore shows, the best and most interesting songs were actually seeing how this band tackled the experience songs.

Def gave them a very diff slant.

N/m ordered the electric ladyland 50th deluxe instead lol

I honestly would've made the case for Who Knows before like 2 years ago

I assumed, beneath Machine Gun, that and Changes would win. Rest of the record is great but it's a blur in my mind.

and yeah the Fillmore set is great if you want an aborted, completely out of tune Machine Gun as example of how Hendrix dealt with instrumental disaster (extremely well)

some of this stuff is so good, i cant believe that the proper BOG album included the songs that it did. i know he was prob saving a lot of the better material for the studio album, and didnt care what was being put out there to fulfill an old contract but this period and lineup should have been better represented than a six track album where two songs feature buddy miles singing lead. cant say that the band or the material doesnt have its limitations, but its no wonder really that it was seen as a poor setup after the experience - most people never would have gotten to hear lover man, stepping stone, burning desire, or a couple of others.