Saturday, February 16, 2008

Jimi Hendrix's Machine Gun

Evil man make me kill you,
Evil man make you kill me,
Evil man make me kill you
Even though we're only families apart.
--Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix was a genius. He revolutionized electric guitar playing. He may not have had the blinding speed and advanced compositional knowledge that many of today's guitar greats have, but you can bet your house that virtually every electric guitarist who came after him owes a huge debt to him.

Some people say that the legendary solo below is the greatest electric guitar solo ever captured, and I'm not sure I'd disagree. It's called Machine Gun and was recorded in a concert appearance at the Fillmore East in New York City with the group Band of Gypsys on New Year's Eve in 1969.

It's electrifying, in more ways than one--a performance for the ages.

Jimi Hendrix plays Machine Gun

1 comment:

Unknown said...

This is great. This is one of my favourite music recordings ever and it's good to see most of it in this youtube video. Hendrix's musical expresion here is so intensely at the centre of the moment.

The message is unfortunately still applicable today. Hopefully someday humanity will understand the source of (some people do now), avoid (although foreful control seems to icrease it) and divert in safe ways it's animal nature