Christ, I haven’t listened to, like, a single song from this, in maybe 15-20 years!! Does it hold up? I sure do hope so! Let’s dig out the CD and FIND OUT!

1)”Purple Haze” - I wonder how many people spooked when they first heard the opening guitar march. I’m saying this because I’ve read anecdotes about people freaking out when they first heard Little Richard do “Tutti Frutti” and the “....A WOP BOP ALUBOP A WOP BAM ROOM” scared them with its volume. There’s also the matter of the “help me!…help me!” break after the first minute where I completely forgot there’s a bunch of disembodied voices in the background spouting stuff I can’t make out. I guess this is my way of digging into an overplayed hit song a bit. It’s still a great song though!

2)”Manic Depression” - Interesting clunkabunk drumming from Mitch Mitchell (whom I have an odd tendency to forget about) and an amusingly lazy vocal delivery from Jimi make this one enough of a keeper. Hell the drums are distracting from the guitar! Pretty good song.

3)”Hey Joe” - The first song on the album that I actually got into when I heard the CD back in…2000, I think? 1999? It was a 90s CD version that had different cover art and a tracklisting that started with this at track 1 and the title track as track 17. The stark mood is only made weirder by the backing vocals, which barely sound like human beings are doing them, let alone Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell. I’d forgotten how odd this song sounds. Classic!

4)”Love Or Confusion” - You know, I don’t think I’ve ever liked this one that much. It’s usually made out to be one of the classics, but I find myself drifting away mentally during the verses a bit, though Jimi still comes up with an appropriately hazy guitar tone. The song also starts to spin its wheels before the end, which I’m not much into even if these songs aren’t very long.

5)”May This Be Love” _ Okay, it’s his first-ever stab at a “pretty” song, and that’s important (his pretty songs were almost always good, dammit! Hendrix doesn’t get enough credit for that!) and the little guitar scrapes are cute, but I think that he nailed this mood a lot better on most of Axis: Bold As Love, particularly “One Rainy Wish,” a song that seems to get overlooked. So while this isn’t bad I’ve never had that much use for it.

6)”I Don’t Live Today” - The weakest song on the album, IMO–I’ve never liked this one much, not even the raw drumming tone, or the somewhat interestingly bleak lyrics which do not seem to match such a raw song. The melody seems to be beating about one chord into the ground really hard.

7)”The Wind Cries Mary” - This is still fairly good, I’d say. In the hands of a lesser artist the titular refrain and gentle guitar line might have come out self-parodic.

8)”Fire” - You’ve got energy and you’ve got a great guitar line for sure, but the first thing I’m always going to think of when I think of this song is Noel Redding’s hilariously nasally, twerpy background vocals, which I’m guessing were not recorded at the same time he played that kick-ass bassline (and it’s the best bassline on the album.) One of the highlights, duh.

9)”Third Stone From The Sun” - I’d completely forgotten all about this song over the years, which is stunning considering it more or less blew me away the first time I heard it. I really don’t know how I forgot about it! It’s a little bit repetitive, I s’pose, and I sort of forget where it actually goes during that 7 minute run time, but damn does the rhythm section nail it and the simultaneously spacey yet energetic mood of the thing was pretty cool to hear again after all this time. As with “Purple Haze” I really wish I could have been there in 1967 to hear people react to this when it came out. I wish there were more freakouts like this on the album!

10)”Foxey Lady” - Sort of Jimi’s “You Shook Me All Night Long,” a hit song that isn’t actually bad of itself but has been so ruined by overplay and parody (Wayne’s World, the Cure) that I don’t much listen to it while it’s playing. Not the song’s fault, really!

11)”Are You Experienced?” - The second song I got into on the album, this has long been my pick for both the best (and most “psychedelic,” I’d argue) song here and the best Hendrix song overall. It’s not quite as powerful to me as it would’ve been in high school (if I’d done a top 50 songs back then, this would have easily made the cut) but the eerie backwards drums, sublime guitar noises, ominous yet beautiful piano line, and the weird chord the band goes into right before Jimi asks if you’re experienced, would, I hope, all coalesce into enough of an effect that I won’t be dethroning it and naming “Wait Until Tomorrow” mu favprote Hendrix tune. A song to watch the sun go down to if there ever was one…

BONUS TRACKS (and yeah, I consider the first 11 only to be the proper album)

12)”Stone Free” - Alright, we got a nice cowbell in there for a little change of mood, but I wish they didn’t hammer you over the head with that chorus. The guitar line is a bit middling. I don’t know if I still care for this song all that much, I remember liking it a lot more when I was a kid.

13)”51st Anniversary” - The lyrics are the weirdest and most interesting to be found anywhere on this album (about an aging couple that hate each other, a weird subject for Jimi), and yet another marching intro, too. The song dissipates a bit as it’s going along for me, but I think I’d keep this one just to be generous.

14)”Highway Chile” - Mmmph. A “heavy” tune, I guess you could call it. I don’t think it does what it’s doing any better than the actual plain old album tracks. I don’t think I’d keep this one. Funny story, I thought it was pronounced “chili” at first

15)”Can You See Me” - Generic “guitar goes UP, guitar goes DOWN” guitar line. I guess Hendrix can make even guitar riffs like these have some energy at least, but I still don’t get much out of this song.

16)”Remember” - Generic “strutting” guitar line. I’m glad I’m not counting the bonus tracks in terms of the “final grade.” Not a fan of this one.

17)”Red House” - This is the best of the bonust tracks; I’m not blown away by this song but it’s the bluesiest thing on the disc and conjures up a sort of “the South in the 1930s” image/atmosphere that’s kind of cool. Maybe someone should do a lo-fi version. Is Liz Phair available?

FINAL VERDICT: 4 or 4 1/2 stars out of 5, but only on the basis of the first 11 songs. Should have revisited its best tracks more often than I have, and I will be doing so in the future. But really, I’ve always preferred Axis: Bold As Love as the big Hendrix “masterpiece” and by now I’d probably prefer Electric Ladyland as well.
Also I am refamiliarizing myself with these songs for next year when I do a bunch of his live albums. I am to this date pretty much only familiar with the three Experience discs, and I honestly don’t think about Jimi Hendrix that much, even though he was obviously great!