Search - Power of Soul-Tribute to Jimi Hendrix :: Power of Soul-Tribute to Jimi Hendrix

Both powerful and souful--my first and probably only Hendrix

R. Kyle | USA | 02/12/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I don't generally buy various artist tribute CDs, but the disk was on half-price and the lineup of artists covering Jimi was too good to pass up. I'm especially impressed that this is a multiracial, multinational, and multigenerational cast, which really makes up Jimi's fanbase. Two complaints: I know Prince's thing is Purple, but change the title of the song to Purple House--sorry, it just loses something there. And, I'd really have loved to see Angelique Kidjo on this CD doing her version of "VooDoo Child.""

Step back y'all: this here American music; mighty mighty Ame

C. Scanlon | among us humans | 08/21/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"And you will believe that Prince can rule.



Only thing wrong with his Purple House is he pull his punches on the punch line. The joke was Jimi would, after getting out of three months of prison, and more for bad behavior, and finding his baby gone, go visit her sister instead. Good joke. You don't know is it a tribal thing, just go to her sister, or his way of getting back for cutting out on him after only three months.



Of course the deeper joke is that he might have gotten three months in prison (plus ten percent for bad behavior) because he was caught with his baby's sister, so of course not only does he lose his baby but also probably down the road her sister as well. Deeply of course this theme of loss of home echoes the early loss of his mother, but that's behind a lot of the Hendrix opus. So altering the lyrics from "her sister" to "somebody" just looses the whole juice.



Prince, the little man who did Dirty Minds and Come and the rest, all of a sudden as a Jehovah Witness after counselling has to change this great punchline from "her sister" to "Somebody". How white is that? Okay, so it is a dactyl like Her sister, but it loses the jimi juice.



Otherwise Prince delivers better than most of the rest of the musicians on these disks. And good to hear him play straight blues guitar, and do it royal, burning blues guitar, BIG, as it should, with the real LARRY GRAHAM on bass. Come one, admit it. He kills it. Hear it again. Best thing he EVER did.



And make sure you get a copy with the bonus disk NOT mentioned anywhere on the cover, just to get Seal's version of Wind Cries Mary. He's that skinny guy with a scar who used to sing Touched by a Rose on the Leno show, and he does this song, a little bit Las Vegas loungey, heavy on piano, but hey NONE of these covers will match the originals. Nothing can ever come close to the two track originals. But Seal hits it, in the heart, deep, though, except for the same lyric thing. He changes a crucial possessive pronoun from the plural to the singular. That killed it, in a bad way. But he pulls it off. Listen to it with someone you love, and an English major to explain the poetic images, which are strong, and the color symbolism. The footprints dressed in red are right out of the march to Valley Forge.



There is much to praise here, and especially the late great Stevie Ray Vaughn. I only wish the Iceman Albert Collins live versions of Third Stone I used to hear in clubs got recorded; it's the only thing that can touch Stevie Ray, who really wipes out Little Wing as well in front of a live audience. He does it right, all the way, no stops, no holds barred. He kills it. Hear it, at least once, cause that might be all you can take. Of course Johnny Winter's old band backs him up. Johnny was a friend of Jimi's when Johnny first hit NYC.



And Chaka Khan, the only woman really featured here, really did not need a back up lead guitar trying to find a space on Little Wing. She wipes him off the planet. Maybe that's why it's the only young white guitarist on the block, put up against CHAKA KHAN who kills him in a steel cage slap down. Chaka Khan. Just cut her loose and she gets over. Chaka Khan is an enormous natural force, like Godzilla's mom. Like Jimi. This is American music. Step back.



The Sting song sounds like he's a young kid without that worn out trademark hollow strained sting voice yet, backing up John McLaughlin, the one you always wanted to have heard recorded with Hendrix, aside frmo Nine to the Universe, but who here is okay and efficient but not all that great really, except for some trademark McLaughlin Inner RIsing Flame runs. But you won't find better sounds, even among McLaughlin's own records.



In a lot of these cuts, you're hearing the best work ever from these artists, including the Artist Formerly and presently Known as Prince. Or I just miss the original still, long years, long many years, far more than he ever lived among us.



I always regretted Mr. Jimi wasn't around to play with Stanley Clarke, the piccollo bassist who would finally have matched Jimi's demands and talent, with all due respect to Mr. Billy Cox, who did a far better job (and for no money ever) as COMPOSER and bass player than ever admitted. But here on Spanish Castle Magic Stanley remains invisible, and Carlos Santana, who during his Lost Period after the death of Jimi tried to tour with Buddy Miles and recorded together, here only does a cover band version with Stanley of Spanish Castle. It would have been better to let Stanley and Carlos rip and fly on Six Turned out to Be Nine, and lose the living color vocalist, please bury him into the mix! As it is we get a competent, professional, uninspired cover band playing a Hendrix tune, not Carlos and Stanley burning down the house.



And check out the great job by Nils Rogers, of Chic and many other great things you never heard, including as Producer for Aretha Franklin.



Eric Clapton, a close friend of Mr. Jimi, who in the movie talks about getting stuck with a left handed strat he had bought for Jimi only to find him dead, kills Midnight Lamp. He does it. He delivers, from the heart, from the real deep heart. Best Clapton you are ever going to find, because he does Hendrix note for note. After all, Layla was all Dwayne Allman and keyboards, wasn't it now. This Midnight Lamp really does it and desserves a few listens before digging out the original, whose mix Hendrix never liked, as muddy, as the Warner engineers mixed out the room effects as always. I heard excellent one bootleg version done in Sweden, but that vinyl is long dead.



Hear Clapton again. It really is all heart, deep throated heart. And real guitar, not mechanical technique. Makes you think where did he get all that pain from, and then you remember his baby boy somehow walked out of a high rise Manhattan window while under the care (or not) of a some nanny. That'll do it. Clapton really does touch the almighty here.



Clapton hits it, but the only one cut you will play over and over again, is Bootzilla. Like in the early eighties, when you'd slip a P-Funk Knee Deep 45 on the turntable and leave the changer arm up for it to replay all night long, just to be able to ARISE in the morning and face the horror and terror of the Reagan regime, so will you set the CD player to REPEAT for this one cut. It delivers. The music critics back then in the eighties and late seventies tried to compare his new voice to the groovy, humanist mumbling of Jimi, ("The name's Bootsy, baby")and you can almost hear that here, but it is so smooth, so high (for a space bass player and yes that trademark Space Bass squirms to life here with the hook in the second movement while the guys are mumbling who's gonna play what), so benevolent, so loving and kind, and yet with an air of menace hidden buried somewhere deep beneath. After all he is singing "gonna shoot down some of your airplanes, baby" Chicka chicka Boom Boom. With such a kind and courteous air. It kills. And thanks bootsy for making those lines intelligible for the first time. Now I get the joke about "don't want your nose to grow". I always figured it was "don't want nobody to know." but it's a black Cherokee thang, I hope we understand, some kind of underground revolutionary shuffling thing with some hidden thought of a mighty weapon that we Irish can feel after our own centuries of Penal Laws and slavery to the same masters. Of course then he pays back by going only half intelligible on the whole jellyfish thing that's really good- really great lyrics and a warning - cause sometimes the wind ain't right. But Bootsilla makes it clear why this tune was often called Paper Airplanes in the studio while fooling around with it.



Sometimes the wind ain't right. Makes you remember how much Jimi's lyrics leaned on his training as a paratrooper, all the sky stuff and flying and everything else. Last thing a paratrooper might do before jumping off a plane in the pre-computer, pre-high tech chute days, is kiss the sky and say good-bye, gonna die now. And when the wind ain't right, you might wind up hanging by your chute from a tree, a great target for any sniper. That's where Jimi came from, too.



With George Clinton producing, this is the best cut on the whole set, and rewards repeated listening. Old George does it in his usual symphonic manner, with about six separate movements, well structured, starting with a really a strong guitar intro to establish the theme, a funk declaration of Jimi, then a women's chorus to get things rolling, then a buddy miles style fatback drum to get cranking after a little discussion over the squirmy guitar hook of Power of Soul, and then just cranking and cranking like fifty great people wandered into the same room and thought sometimes about the same song and sometimes not, all feeling like you just wandered into someone's real nice house rent party that's really blowing the roof off the sucker and with real southern soul food on the stove steaming but things might get kind of hairy around sun up when folks get tired and cranky but for now it's just a party, baby, with real talented people idly contributing some noise. HEar it again and again and you too will see. This is free soul music. Ain't nothing but a party.



And George is the only one to work in Buddy Miles slamming fat back drum stylings - just sit back and slam it on time everytime, with a power driver break. It kills, and sounds like that original. Too bad Jimi's manager/damager fired Mr. Buddy. Jimi had some good fun there for once, after all. Got to go hear it some more. Got more to tell you but I just want to hear it again. Music to sleep on.



Reminds me of some folks I once knew and loved. Funds from this disk go to the American Negro College Fund. Wish some could go to Billy Cox and Buddy Miles, Jimi's best band, too briefly. Black was not yet commercial enough. A lot of things were not possible to take for granted back then. Hard to believe Mr. Jimi's been dead much longer now than he was ever alive, but he's living. He's living, if you can call that living. I know that you will. Hear it again.



(But I went back to listen to those original four shows from the Fillmore New Year's Eve 1970, and Bootsy got the words not only wrong but GLORIOUSLY wrong. Letting the nose grow indicates pride and arrogance, by the way, not lies, at least among Southern Black folk. Jimi is singing something else again, and says Shoot down those airplanes, especially the ones that are flying too low, to bring people back "UP" to Earth, back up to him, to get them back into reality, but not as the Boot says about carressing. Jimi gave up that kind of talk back with the first album, and in 1970 is trying to write some songs with another kind of message, traumatized as he was with the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. And so we find Message to Love and Earth Blues as well in that concert, and jimi saying these were some songs that weren't finished yet, that they were working on, but his manager fired Buddy Miles and kept Jimi touring before they could get finished. Oh well. These concerts by the way Jimi did not know were being recorded, and he never would have approved their recording, as he was basically trying out some songs with his friends, not in final form but fulfilling a contract to show up. He really never would have approved the reason they were recorded: to be given to Ed Chalpin, who'd made him sign years earlier an exclusive contract on a cocktail napkin for a dollar years earlier and this was Warner's way of making him go away. Jimi died the day he was to face the same issue with Chalpin in the London courts. Instead of which some incompetent British ambulance attendents choked him to death. "hey, he isn't coughing anymore")



Got to hear some more. Make me stand up my weary bones one more time again. Let me find the originals, most lost forever. That kid singing like falling asleep over May this be love is okay, but not as good as Jimi. And anything with Sheldon Reynolds on it, well, turn the other way for awhile. The thing with Maurice White is interesting for about the first chorus, then it goes south. Let's play Stevie Ray one more time instead. Rip it up. Can you hear that? I knew that you could.



They should have had the Stevie Raye Voodoo Chile Revisited instead of this weak EWF imitation; that has to be a strong declaration of power, not saccharine. And notice nobody had the bones to stand up and play Machine Gun, Hear my train a-Comin', 6 wuz 9, Up from the skies, Belly Button Window, Earth Blues, etc.



This is American music, baby. Step up."

Great guitar playing for the best guitar player

Carmen Lopez Fernandez | Spain, Europe | 12/17/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I found this is a very remarkable tribute album, with some astonishing guitar playing by some of the most worldwide renowned axes. If I had to try one rendition, I think my choice were "The Wind Cries Mary", credited to Sting, but shining thanks to the stellar participation of John McLaughlin. Anyway, that's not the only one, as the CD as a whole is really well done and enjoyable. One of the best tribute albums to the genius of Jimi Hendrix, and one of the best overall, period."