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Disc one is a studio recordings ~ featuring "Izabella" and "Stepping Stone" (original Band of Gypsys single version) ~ "Highway Chile", "All Along The Watchtower", "Spanish Castle Magic" and "Stone Free" (all alternate versions) ~ these bonus and alternate takes are priceless ~ sharing the God-given-talent of this legendary artist.

Disc two are the "live" performances ~ featuring "Foxey Lady" (never before released) ~ "Fire", "Hey Joe", "Red House", "Freedom", "Wild Thing" (all unavailable versions) ~ thanks to some knowledgeable people in the music business ~ still feel you've heard it all for the first ~ and you have.

A lot of credit goes to ~ Janie Hendrix & John McDermott (compilation producers) ~ Eddie Kramer (mixing/engineer) ~ George Marino (mastered) ~ MCA (Universal Music) and Experience Hendrix as we journey back to the "free soul" and "pure rock" of an artist/musician who made the difference ~ JIMI HENDRIX!

Total Time: Disc One 69:36 on 18 Tracks & Disc Two 76:58 on 12 Tracks...UTV Records 088 112 603 2...(2001)


A Better "Best Of"   May 10, 2001
 39 out of 40 found this review helpful

While the terms "previously unreleased" or "previously unavailable" are a bit overused (only one track on this set ["Foxy Lady" from Maui, 1970] was never legitimately released), this is a fine collection for anyone who missed previous Hendrix releases now deleted, or for those who chose not to pony up the $... for the Jimi Hendrix Experience boxed set released late last year.

Two studio tracks from the boxed set are included: "Spanish Castle Magic", while labeled an "alternate take", was actually recorded 2 years after the Axis: Bold As Love sessions as a recorded rehearsal for the Royal Albert Hall shows. "Highway Chile" is the superior studio mix of the song. Before the boxed set, the song was only available in mono or enhanced mono.

While some may quibble that this is the second (or arguably third) "best of Hendrix" album released by Experience Hendrix/MCA in only 5 years, the Hendrix Family cleverly acknowledged that there are two distinct types of Hendrix fans. There are those who appreciate the technical brilliance of his studio work and find his live material too chaotic. Then there are those who appreciate the rawness and spontaneity of live Hendrix, and who find the studio recordings too, I don't know...airbrushed, or something. So they arranged the package accordingly - Disc 1 is all studio, and Disc 2 is all live.

The mostly eloquent and appreciative liner essay by MTV's Kurt Loder(!) was interesting to me. It seems that Loder was an Army grunt stationed in Germany just as Hendrix was breaking out, and that he caught some of his early European shows. Who'd a' thunk it? I found it interesting that when he said, and I'm paraphrasing, "By 1969, Hendrix sounded played out". I know what he meant, but by then, Jimi Hendrix was the most notorious single musician on the planet. Even when he didn't deliver a new album that year, Hendrix shattered concert attendance records in the US and UK on the strength of another "best of" album called Smash Hits.

As someone who has followed Jimi's music and career since 1967, it was odd for me to see a Jimi Hendrix TV commercial. They've used his music to sell cars and Pop Tarts for years, but I'd never seen a TV commercial to sell Jimi Hendrix recordings. Jimi's had an interesting relationship with American television. He got the "thumbs-down" from Ed Sullivan, and Johnny Carson was "vacationing" on the night Hendrix was scheduled to appear on the "Tonight" show, so he delegated the hosting task to Flip Wilson, a popular African-American comedian of that time. Hendrix' most memorable TV appearance in the US was on a summer replacement talk show hosted by Dick Cavett. Jimi complained serially about being "cellophaned" and sold. And whaddya know - now he's a commercial!

The fact is that if a Jimi Hendrix were to come along today in the current corporation-managed, focus-grouped, shallow, fickle, trifling, video-driven, greedy, __________ (fill in the blanks) music industry, he wouldn't have gotten anywhere near a record deal. Let's face it. In that regard, the late Chas Chandler truly captured lightning in a bottle back in 1966 when he persuaded Hendrix to come to England and become a big star. This double set is a fine introduction to a great period in exploratory music that ended way too soon.

As Jimi suggested in his song ironically entitled, "I Don't Live Today", "...Are you experienced? Get experienced!"


Amazing Studio/Live Collection   May 19, 2001
 17 out of 19 found this review helpful

Has any artist been more shoddily treated than Jimi Hendrix when it when it comes to posthumously released CDs? Fortunately with the formation of the production company Experience Hendrix by surviving relatives, Hendrix's releases have vastly improved from the days of LPs like Crash Landing and Midnight Lightning. This latest 2-CD release is another welcome addition to the Hendrix catalog, including both familiar studio versions of classic songs like "Purple Haze," "The Wind Cries Mary," and "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)," along with alternate takes like "All Along the Watchtower," "Highway Chile" and "Stone Free." The last two taken for last year's excellent Jimi Hendrix box set.

Which raises the issue, how much of this material will be new to the die-hard fan. The quick answer is, probably not much. Only one song is listed as "previously unreleased," the live version of "Foxey Lady" taken from a 1970 concert in Maui less than two months before Hendrix's untimely death at 27. Five tracks from the live disc are listed as "previously unavailable," including "Fire," "Hey Joe" (both from a 1968 Winterland concert), "Red House," "Freedom" (from an Isle of Wight concert) and a nearly eight-minute version of "Wild Thing" from 1967's Monterey Pop Festival. Except for the three tracks just mentioned, all of the live material comes from 1969 and 1970. While liner notes author Kurt Loder sees this period as an era of decline--"the group seemed alarmingly played out," he writes--these live tracks leave the listener with the question "What if...?" Unfortunately, that question will stay unanswered. The best we can hope for is the continued release of quality Hendrix material like this for the next generation to discover and enjoy. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED


Mediocre Best of Release   November 25, 2006
 11 out of 14 found this review helpful

Now, if you are a huge Jimi fan - and I am - please read the review before clicking the "not helpful" button.

First of all, the digipak packaging for this release is by far the worst I have seen. The manufacturer's plastic pegs wear down (they don't break) and eventually the discs won't stay on the spindles. The plastic just "feels" really really cheap - like it was vacu-formed. The booklet is glued into the packaging so even if you want to change the CD box, you can't. Experience Hendrix should have looked at the digipaks that Impulse used for their John Coltrane remasters or those used by ABKO for the Rolling Stones remastes. I cannot stress enough just how lousy this packaging is, perhaps the worst I've seen in all my years collecting CDs. Even the paper in the booklet feels flimsy. It's clear that they put this package together on the cheap like a KTEL or Ronco release.

Disc one has a good selection though if this is truly a best of collection aimed at a new generation of buyers, I don't know why the track selection includes alternate takes rather than the masters of some of Hendrix's better works like All Along the Watchtower and Spanish Castle Magic. Now, that said, I find them interesting but there is a reason they are alternate takes. Jimi was a perfectionist in the studio and these alternate takes don't represent his best work. So again, for that new generation of buyers that this package claims to be aimed at, this seems wrong headed to me.

Disc two has a great selection of Jimi live; however, I can't for the life of me understand why they are not presented in chronological sequence the way the studio stuff is. My only guess is that when you hear the stuff from late spring and summer of 1970 it is very clear that Jimi was tired of the rock star thing. His singing is really pretty terrible in these later tunes. His playing, though pretty wild is also very noisy and sloppy. Maybe it's out of sequence in order to diminish the impact of these sub-par (with respect to Jimi's other live work) performances? I used to have an Lp when I was a young man called 'In the West" that seemed a far better representation of Jimi's live work. Actually, the photo on the cover for this set looks very similar and might even be the same photo from "In the West" To be quite honest, I have not found another Hendrix live release that is anywhere close to as satisfying as "Band of Gypsys", one of the great live recordings of that era.

If you are interested in Jimi, what you really want to do is buy the remastered CDs in this order:

1. Are You Experienced
2. Axis Bold as Love
3. Electric Ladyland
4. Band of Gypsys (always bugs me that the plural of Gypsy is spelled incorrectly on this release!)
5. First Rays of the New Rising Sun
6. Live at Fillmore East with the Band of Gypsys (outtakes from BOG)
7. South Saturn Delta.
8. Live at the BBC

Then move on to some of the other stuff like Jimi Plays Berkley and Live at the Fillmore.

Personally, I believe this 2 disc set is a dis-service to this remarkably gifted artist's legacy but I've been listening to Jimi since 1969 so maybe I'm just not getting the marketing angle.


Don't Egg Them On!   May 15, 2001
 9 out of 16 found this review helpful

DON'T FALL FOR THIS ONE - there is at most one previously unreleased cut on this CD. They must think that Hendrix fans are not very bright. Please send a message to the recording industry that this mockery is not acceptable - DON'T BUY IT!!!