PhilPaine.com

This was, believe it or not, the first album I ever owned. I grew up in a non-musi­cal fam­i­ly, and apart from what­ev­er turned up on the radio or tele­vi­sion, my expo­sure to music was very lim­it­ed. When I acquired a (kit-built) turntable and ampli­fi­er, I ran out and bought the first thing that appealed to me. Hav­ing noth­ing to go on, I picked Jimi Hen­drix’s Are You Expe­ri­enced? for no oth­er rea­son than that I liked the cov­er. Small won­der: the jack­et was designed by pio­neer psy­che­del­ic pho­tog­ra­ph­er Karl Fer­ris, whom Hen­drix had select­ed because he was “doing with pho­tog­ra­phy what I’m doing with music — going far out beyond the lim­its and blow­ing minds”. A lot of six­ties psy­che­del­ic art looks pret­ty cheesy, now, but Fer­ris’ work remains fresh and vig­or­ous. I pity cur­rent youth, who lis­ten to the psy­che­del­ic clas­sics bro­ken up into iso­lat­ed tracks, and must squint to see the album art reduced to twelve cen­time­tre squares. Are You Expe­ri­enced? was an expe­ri­ence, not just a jum­ble of songs. Blast­ing into my naive upbring­ing, the raunchy gui­tar and sug­ges­tive lyrics opened up a won­der­ful world of sin, exper­i­men­ta­tion and delight to me. From the open­ing chords of “Pur­ple Haze” to the last fuzzy blast of “Are You Expe­ri­enced?”, I was hyp­no­tized, and dri­ven to find more music that would pump hor­mones through my body, a quest that has nev­er end­ed since. The sci­ence fic­tion ele­ments in “Third Stone From the Sun” were an added delight.

Can Are You Expe­ri­enced? per­form the same func­tion today, in this insipid, fear-rid­den, cen­sored and bar­barous time? God knows, we need some sort of anthem of free­dom. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, no music from the past, no mat­ter how splen­did, can per­form this func­tion. Is there anoth­er Jimi out there, strug­gling to be heard in the cacoph­o­ny of the accept­able, con­ven­tion­al, and safe? I hope so.