Jimi Hendrix Experience Electric Ladyland (50th Anniversary Edition) 4-CD Box EH/Sony Nov. 9

That's the best part of the concert afaic - especially AYE, VC, RH. I usually skip over SOYL and SSB/PH when I listen to Jimi boots (too played out imo).

 

Wondered the same thing up thread somewhere. It goes from kind of ok to wow, what’d they do to the tape?

 

Between this set and the Badfinger mess I'm being cured of Reissue Fever!

 

After buying this box I bought myself a good sounding bootleg as a companion to add some more sessions and jams. This gives a better picture of how the record was created. Maybe I remove the live record from the set and add the bootleg instead.

 

This is exactly my take too. I find the first few songs to be quite nice but then the Sound Quality takes a definite turn for the worse.

I think EH wanted to put something in this box for everyone. IE

1. Demos to show the earliest prototypes
2. A newly discovered live show for the hardcore Jimi heads that seek these kinds of things out
3. Session tapes
4. Original ELL album with a BG mastering
5. Lossess newly mix 5.1 and a lossles 2.0 original mix
6. Makng of ELL


Thus having something for everyone in the box. As far as the live show goes if they only included the pre Fire tracks (which sound better) everyone would have complained it wasnt a full show (Im glad they chose to include it all as for live shows I prefer the raw tapes)so they are kind of damned if they do damned if they dont there.

The result of all the inclusions for all types of fans though comes off as a lack of focus in the package and those are the complaints. I think most would agree this box did not need to be all things to all types of fans and instead should have been 2 or 3 session type CDs and the original and new 5.1 mix in the best sound possible. Simple. Done.

 

Yeah -- but the live show just doesn't really have any gravity within the context of the original LP. This is an anniversary release of an album. So they've included a (sub-par) recording whose relationship to the material being "celebrated" is that it was performed around the same time of the album's release? It doesn't really make a lot of sense. It was a misguided decision from its conception.

 

The Bowl tape is valuable for collectors but has no business being in a box set like this. It's unprecedented, isn't it? I can't recall a similar situation with a musical legend legacy artist.

Unfortunately the slightly clearer presentation (as opposed to the audience tape) made me realize this isn't a top tier Hendrix concert. The band sounds distracted and the playing suffers, probably due to the security concerns, and I would say there are multiple better live versions of all songs. Little Wing is valuable to have as he quit playing that soon after, but the rest is rather pedestrian.

 

Midnight Lightning.
To be fair however if EH continue down the path they've been taking especially with the Electric Let Down Land box, the truly awful Send My Love To Linda edit and Frankensteining of tracks there may soon come a time when we need to reevaluate the Douglas era and see it in a different light.

 

Yup. That's the way that I hear it, as well.

The timing of the new source surfacing was poor, unfortunately -- it seems that EH couldn't help themselves.

 

I reckon that time started years ago.. EH & Kramer are butchers.

 

What is this Badfinger mess you speak of?

 

"Badfinger" & "Wish You Were Here" Expanded Editions 11/02/18

 

Just now finished plowing through this. Optical discs, not vinyl.

The 2.0 remasters, redbook and hi-res, are squashed as noted. Maybe not to Audiophile Hyperbole levels, but it isn't what I'd call "right." And if you think it's not deliberate, I've got a (rainbow) bridge for sale. Got a hunch there's a good Grundman remaster underneath label-imposed compression. That will (or won't) be confirmed at SACD time. But I'll never spin these 50ths again, so...

One and done.

The outtakes met my low expectations. I appreciate collector / historian concerns, but these do nothing for me, so...

One and done.

The live disc, same deal. I understand how important boots are to many, but this is unlistenable to me. OK performance I guess, but I can't sit still and listen to crowd behavior. And least not in low-fi. So...

One and done.

The booklet is pretty terrible. Despite a laminated hardcover, the subpar layout and design screams Low Bidder. I'll be filing this with the laserdiscs . Never to be seen again. For all eternity.






But that surround mix, She's So Fine...

 

For those who don’t have a 5.1 set up, it’s still interesting to listen to. Different parts are enhanced and I ended up hearing a number of things I didn’t know were there. Of course I’m missing out on the full effect of all the sound motion, maybe someday when I get my surround sound equipment out of storage.

On some level I can understand why they do the compression on the regular discs so it may be more useful on all platforms, I guess. But there was no reason to compress the Blu-Ray version of the stereo mix, especially when it’s advertised as such.

 

Exactly. Baffling.

 

Just finished listening to it on the headphones and all the observations others have noted are spot on. As a concert it's so-so. Some numbers are really good, others don't come together or fall apart. And the pool situation really detracted from the latter half of the show, along with whatever happened to the recording.

Introduction-Oddly enough the best sounding track on the album!
Are You Experienced-OK version, sound holds up pretty well
Voodoo Child-One of the numbers that never comes together due to Jimi's tuning problems (which he flat out admits).
Red House-Very good version of his 1968 incarnation of the song
Foxy Lady & Fire-Not great, but not perfunctory versions of these are hampered by the tape change
Hey Joe-Again ok version but the tape situation gets worse
Sunshine of Your Love-The band gets so distracted they lose themselves in the song and cut it a little short.
I Don't Live Today-Wish they'd done at least one version at Winterland so we'd have a decent sounding version from this era. Oh well.
Little Wing-This starts off sounding like it's going to be a stellar sounding version, then the idiots in the pool mess things up and Jimi has to start over and the opportunity for a truly great rendition is replaced by just a pretty good one.
Star Spangled Banner (This is America)/Purple Haze-By this point the tape has devolved into little than a slightly better sounding audience tape. Performance is again just OK and for those keeping track at home, the tape runs out right as Jimi hits the final note (will have to go get the audience tape again for the finish).

Overall the concert is little more than a general template for the sets he'd do a month later at Winterland. No need to restate where this belongs, etc.

 

I visited Olympic Studio in Barnes, West London yesterday. Or rather, had a drink in their cantine and check out the lobby.
It's a movie theatre now, the studios are gone now, although Chris Kimsey has a small studio in the cellar.
It was a cool to check out that place where so much great music was created. It's an half hour train ride from Waterloo station, so there must have been a lot of taxi going out there with lubricated or high musicians.

 

Its on my list to get out to it one night for food & a movie. Mind you the whole way through the film I would dreaming about all the great music put down on tape in the very room I am sat in.

 

Great idea; I'm not sure why I didn't think of that, I went during the day. Barnes is a nice place and I'm sure they have some good restaurants, I found a nice pub close by.
It's hard to grasp really; the best Stones albums, much of the first three Hendrix albums, so much classic music.
Apparently there were record label offices in the late 60s/70s on the same road.

 

It’s got a gorgeous history it’s seems sad to think now but at least it’s still in use and was not pulled down for housing.

 

Yeah. A couple bought it expressly to avoid it being pulled down for housing, and they now run the cinema. As the building housed a cinema before it became a studio that was a pretty good decision. It can probably be restored to a museum if there's enough public interest in the future.
A sad story is how when Virgin bought the studio in 1987, the Japanese designer declared the studio unfit for recording (!) and tore out the old equipment and the business woman driving the takeover ordered all the master tapes to be trashed (!). They were emptied into a dumpster, from where people picked them up and in some cases produced bootlegs. At least most of the Hendrix tapes seem to have survived as Experience Hendrix have them now.

 

Wow I did not know this story, tragic.

 

A small correction - apparently Chas Chandler had the Hendrix Olympic tapes in his possession.
But who know what happened to the rest of the tapes.

 

The only Hendrix album I have in both Stereo and Mono is Axis.

All the others are in Stereo.

 

I know this isn't directly related to this thread, but I just read in an online article that Hendrix was the number 8 selling artist on vinyl in 2018 with 119,000 copies. This includes ANY vinyl title of his. I wonder how many of those were this EL 50th set?