Jimi Hendrix
Band Of Gypsys

THE REVIEW

Last album released under the name Hendrix while he was still alive. The rest of the stuff you find on sale in stores, at Upim, at rest stops, at the discount store, and maybe even at the deli on your street corner, are all bootlegs, greatest hits, posthumous tributes, and yadda yadda... Of the official albums released at the time, this is the last one, if we exclude (when our hero was already dead) "The Cry Of Love" released in 1971 by Eddie Kramer and Mitch Mitchell who decided to continue where Jimi had left half of the material for the next album after this "Band Of Gypsys."

The lineup is no longer the classic "Experience" (with Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding), but alongside Jimi, we find Buddy Miles on drums and Billy Cox on bass. The preamble to the release of this record wasn't ideal, as it was almost a coercion for the artist, fueled by the idea of wanting to see Jimi in an all-black trio at all costs and putting some order due to some legal troubles. So, the premise for a stylistic sell-out was all there, but it fell gloriously apart as soon as this excellent vinyl was released, born in the other half of the psychedelic dream: Fillmore East, New York. Blues embedded in soul atmospheres built on guitar parts with typical and ingenious Hendrixian madness, all perfectly blended with the prevailing climate of the time, made of student protests and hippie culture, the specter of the Vietnam War, and the difficult U.S. political situation. And it's in this scenario that by setting the needle (today we'd say "pressing play") on that circular thing, out come the notes of the unforgettable "Who Knows," "Power To Love," and "Message Of Love," leading to the mythological wah-wah of "Changes."

But the true essence of this album is "Machine Gun," a structurally extraordinary piece, and imbued with all the stylistic influences of the time, forged, however, with the distorted handwriting of a Hendrix making you fully experience the psychedelic blues permeated by the Vietnam nightmare ("Machine gun, tearin' my body all apart...") with the piercing and heartbreaking guitar, and the sustained rhythm of the drums mimicking a machine gun for almost the entire track. I fondly recall a live version of this song that I listened to obsessively when I was a kid and still couldn't do shit on the guitar. I was shocked right from the initial riff, not to mention the solo and the incredible effect Jimi created in the finale where with his instrument he reproduces sounds of bombs being dropped, sirens, death, and destruction. Something unique and probably unrepeatable. Here Jimi draws on all his abilities, to (perhaps unconsciously) mark an era of which he was certainly both a protagonist and a cameo. Everything is written, and everything will happen, like a voodoo ritual, like the bonfire of the Stratocaster on stage, a marked fate and a groove left for posterity. "Only death makes you immortal," as he himself said. To each their own free interpretation.