In re Hendrix: Although I believe Electric Ladyland is the premiere rock album of the last 50 years, and without peer, my opinion is based solely on the emotive feelings derived from Hendrix's experiments in fusion, etc. After reading the postings to the primary posted question , I would suggest loading the Polydor diskette of EL, and listening closely, with eyes shut, to "1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)", and "Moon, Turn The Tides...Gently, Gently Away". Never in my contemporary listening experience have I encountered anything remotely near to the effect and genius of Hendrix's successful attempt to create colors, seas, underwater aurae, and gentility, using a guitar and pedals as tools. He was an original, without predecessor, much in the same way Stephen Crane 'triumphantly achieved his art with a technique absolutely his own and a perfect fullness of power. . . without predecessor. . . a perfect artist and interpreter of the surfaces of life' (Edward Garnett, 1920, "Stephen Crane and His Work"). If you are able to appreciate these two recommended masterpieces, I suggest you then read Crane's "The Open Boat" and ask yourself, how was he capable of trimphantly constructing a perfect short story at age 26 (he died at 28) when, according to H.G. Wells and Garnett, among others, peers such as James and Tolstoy were still attempting to to develop their expression. Hendrix was a ONER. Such individuals appear once or twice a century. There is no rational explanation for their rapid and brilliant development. As a great 20th century lyric poet once said, The Crane was "Son of the sovereign Sun indeed,/Courier of the Moon." Hendrix's talent was lunar. His early disappearance was no different than those of Crane, Keats, and Rimbaud. Thank you, if you have read this posting to the end.
