Jimi Hendrix Both Sides of the Sky - new album coming March 9, 2018

How could they be anything else but session outtakes and demos, Jimi has been dead a long time.

 

Many "audiophile" pressings come in the loose sealed wrap like this album -- MFSL, Audio Fidelity, etc. It's not that unusual.

 

"The Brand New Jimi Hendrix Studio Album"

 

According to what I've read (for what it's worth), Hendrix had some reservations about releasing the studio tracks of what had already appeared on the BOG live album, to go with his already reserved opinion of the live album, as a whole. This left two fully realized orphaned songs, and who knows what he would have done with "Who Knows" and "Machine Gun," since a proper take of both eluded him in the studio.

To me, both "Message of Love" and "Power of Soul" are great songs, but they sound out of place against really quality tracks like "Freedom" and "Drifting," from roughly the same era. For the life of me, I can't figure out why he dragged the songs back out and gave them a proper mix, unless he was just taking inventory. Then again, if he really planned on putting these two songs on his next LP, they might have sounded a little more "together" in the context of the album with the same mastering applied throughout. As it is, we have different mastering of single songs, with different mastering engineers, which doesn't give a feeling of cohesiveness.

I, for one, think "Message of Love" is out of the running because it doesn't have a guitar solo, proper. Is there any other Hendrix song that doesn't have a solo, or a solo-like motif? I can't think of one off the top of my head, but there may be.

 

Glad I was wrong also...

Well..yeah...like in the last posted article/interview ...
'Built thematically around the times and places where the music was recorded — not to mention the personnel Hendrix was working with — Kramer and McDermott say their main goal was to create albums worthy of Hendrix’s legendary status.
“The thing is, these are fully realized performances,” McDermott says....'
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not sure what he means by 'fully realized performances'...

 

Has it ever been figured out where that solo on the edited version came from? It might be from an unrelated session but it sounds like it fits well enough. The annoying thing is neither version sounds complete without the missing piece of the other. I edited it together but when the solo comes in is so jarring, nothing smooths it over.

He definitely was not going to use either Message or Power for the next album, but maybe they might have turned up on his idea of the Rainbow Bridge soundtrack or some later album.

 

yes, I have always thought of them as the great Band Of Gypsys single after Izabella we never got.

So this new version is the so called mix that Jimi approved to be released,. right ? (obviously the Douglas mix is a mess so lets forget that one) so what mix is the EH single vinyl B side, a Kramer original mix etc or a new mix created for that EH Single, and so then which mix is on SSD and why do we have all these multiple mixes anyway essentially of the same performance ?

I just want an answer to which is the most 'authentic mix' so I can have that for my best of playlists etc (and my fantasy BOG Single) and not have to worry about the others, I suspect the EH Vinyl B side must be the most 'legit' because it is the most rare at this point in time and not released on Cd ? And there fore why was this not used on the BSOTS new album?, is the BSOTS version of POS an edit of that EH Single B Side or a totally different mix again ? Its so bloody confusing !!

 

The B side is a mix Jimi & Bob Hughes did on Feb 3. The BSOTS version was mixed by Jimi and Eddie on Aug 22. I would defer to that as the go to mix, though I like that little pre-echo guitar at the start of the B side mix. I have no idea why the version on SSD is what it is, missing pieces and all. Maybe at the time it was all they had and recovered the other mixes later. To me that version is now null and void.

 

This is what the album is. Theres no live concert tracks. Every track from the album was recorded in a studio...and its new.

 

from the South Saturn Delta LP booklet



Message To Love...from the West Coast Seattle Boy booklet

 

Not to my knowledge. The only thing I'm sure about is that the guitar solo on Message To Love is flown-in and placed over a copy of the backing track.

The middle eight ('I am what I am...') is chopped out, and in it's place two sections from elsewhere in the song are copied and pasted in. First there's the first half of Verse 3, followed by the guitar interlude from after the first verse. The guitar solo is pasted on top of these two edited sections. After that, it edits back to the start of Verse 3 again (this time with the vocals mixed in). The guitar solo 'fits' well enough, but it was never recorded over that backing track.

My guess is that Kramer mixed both songs from edited copies of the multitracks made during the production of Crash Landing, and not from the original unedited multitracks. Whether those original multis are now lost (or weren't available in 1997), I don't know. But I believe Alan Douglas must have assembled his versions from copies of the multis (and not the originals), due to the editing required. And then Kramer used tapes from this 1975 process for his 1997 mixes of the two songs, IMO.

Power Of Soul, though much longer than the Crash Landing version and in the right order, has two parts edited out in exactly the same places as the Crash Landing mix (one part in each of the two verses - the part where it changes key up to 'Come on back to Earth my friend...' in the first verse, and the '...So easy and so slack...' part at the end of the second verse).

From what I remember, the Crash Landing boots of the Douglas rough edits/mixes have a version of Power Of Soul in this exact edit (as well as a full-length version, and the final more edited and chopped-up version with extra choruses spliced in).

So in both cases, the most authentic version of each song are the ones mixed by Hendrix. Though these mixes do have rough spots (hence why they were edited in 1975) which may lead one to prefer the 1997 mixes as a more enjoyable compromise. I like them all

And I do agree with you - these studio versions of the two songs have always gone together for me, almost like a lost BOG's single.

 

Angel doesn't have a solo, it needs a lot of work imo. It's a nice tune but it's so unfinished it's a wonder how it made the album, MTL is far more complete.

 

The July 1 session is the highlight of the 1970 sessions for me. The songs sound great when sequenced together.

Plenty of overdubs? I hear one guitar overdub (the background part behind the main lead [I got this the wrong way round earlier in the thread]} and some of the percussion. I'll say it again - these have the exact same sound as the Dolly Dagger overdubs, so could just be the product of the letting the tape run into Pali Gap when overdubbing Dolly Dagger. Either way, the results are great though.

 

Actually he only signed off on four of the well over a dozen (maybe closer to two dozen) of the tracks he made (mostly rough) mixes of from IIRC Aug 20-24, 1970. Even 2 of those 4 may not have actually been set in stone (especially if Chas had come back on board to help him finish the album) though the other two probably were as they were also mastered for a single release.

The vast majority of those supposed "final" mixes were only final as in "Jimi's final work towards finishing the album before he died", but they were certainly not meant as such. They were intended as just rough mixes to gauge his progress/take stock of what/how many nearly finished tracks he had, aside from the four mixes he deemed as "final mixes" before he left for the European tour.

So calling "Power Of Soul" finished/polished is your guess/assumption, and as far as "signed off by Hendrix" it clearly wasn't!

However, due to his death its the closest he/we got.

 

Yes, Power Of Soul (and Message To Love on WCSB) is definitely a rough mix rather than an attempt at a polished final mix.

 

Ok...'signed off' was a poor choice of words...what I meant was 'mixed by Hendrix'...Hendrix must have wanted Power of Soul and Message to Love since he pulled them out after 6 months....like I posted before...they could have easily done a studio BOG LP to buy time(I have no idea how long that European tour was supposed to last)..that would've still be somewhat current....then worked on the June '70 and afterwards tracks for the 'Rising Sun LP.
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as far as a rough mix....I don't know what more he could have added....there is so much going on in that track that the basic rhythm backing track is almost lost behind all the over dubs.
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there are at least 3 or 4 different mixes of 'Stepping Stone' but they all are the exact same song.

 

I think that both Power Of Soul and Message To Love would have required more recording work, namely new vocals (or at least vocal repairs) to replace the tentative vocals on parts of those songs. The edited mixes only solve the problem by omitting those sections.

 

They definitely still needed work (the vocal fixes most prominently). From all the stuff Jimi was mixing at the end of August, the only things we know for sure were locked down were Dolly & Night Bird. I'd say Ezy Ryder was pretty much done as well (Straight Ahead I go back and forth on, they played it at the party so I lean towards done). Everything else still needed work, a little to a lot.

 

yep, so its between the EH Somewhere vinyl and BSOTS for me then i will listen to both later and try and decide what is best

 

I guess the management (and maybe Hendrix) felt no value in a BOG album and it would not sell enough also i guess Miles would get his cut etc and so hit the road in Europe for maximum $$

 

Two problems - the Band Of Gypsys had already split up, and there wasn't really enough tracks for an album anyway.

 

I'm the total opposite. "Straight Ahead" sounds in no way done to me, unless it was Jimi's plan to keep the song bare bones. That's what, two guitars on the track? I know it was played at the party, but I chalk that up to Jimi just being excited about the song, in general.

I could totally be wrong, though. A song like that can only be viewed in context of what never happened: album #4. So, your guess is as good as mine.

Yeah, I just so happened to play all three versions last night, multiple times, for this very reason. There's a lot going on in all three. I'll just chose the BSotS version, since at least Jimi had his hand in it, and it's mastered by Grundman. Might as well, since they all go down the same path. Give or take, the vinyl and BSotS sound the same. The SSD gets disqualified because of the mastering, but it's still a fine mix.

 

The way that Pali Gap starts is an overdub (the little scratchy guitar sounds and guitar intro before the band comes in). That leads me to believe that Hendrix had the songs split before the overdubs, but probably did the overdubs for both Dolly Dagger and Pali Gap at the same session. I'm betting the middle section we haven't heard doesn't have the percussion and extra guitar.

 

Maybe, but it would be a simple post-production operation to begin the mix with the guitar overdub* only, and then fade the band in.

*EDIT: In fact, I'm pretty sure that the opening guitar is the live guitar (the one that's driving the jam). The other (more wobbly) guitar is the overdub, mainly playing behind the other one but coming forward for a while later on when the main guitar lays back for a while.

 

True about "Angel." "51st Anniversary" doesn't have a solo, either, I just recalled.

(today is evidently my 4th anniversary here. May the 4th be with you.)