Our 20 for 2020 album on Monday morning at 9 was the album that asked the musical question, “Are You Experienced?” When this debut album by Jimi Hendrix and the Experience dropped in 1967 (about 40 years before people started using the word “dropped” as a synonym for “was released”), music fans were stunned, the say the least. This was an album that sounded like nothing anyone had ever heard before.
Jimi synthesized rock and the blues in ways so new and so original you could have been excused for thinking he was from another planet. According to music journalist Charles Shaar Murray, the album “completely changed notions of what a guitar could sound like, or indeed, what music could sound like”. Even Leo Fender was probably left wondering what instrument was making those amazing sounds.
Are You Experienced? came in at number 18 on our WAPL 20 for 2020 poll. It scored a little higher on Rolling Stones list on their 500 Greatest Albums of all time, coming in at 15.
And, in 2005, it was one of fifty additions to the National Recording Registry as one of the sound recordings that “are culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States.” Other additions that year included President Coolidge’s second inauguration speech, the first official transatlantic
telephone conversation, Fats’ Domino’s “Blueberry Hill”, Bob Hope’s Command Performance radio show from Armed Forces radio, Frank Zappa’s Were Only in it for the Money, Stevie Wonder’s Song’s in the Key of Life, Firesign Theater’s Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers.
However, there’s a strange local connection as well. One of the other 49 recordings put on the Library on Congress for preservation that year…a recording of the old foghorn from the shore of Lake Michigan in Kewaunee.
The old foghorn is cool. But for my money, I think I’ve rather rock out to “Hey Joe” or “Purple Haze”.
Now, ‘scuz me while I kiss this guy”. Ahh, maybe I heard that wrong. – Rick McNeal-
