Jimi Talks Sunshine... We Listen

I am currently in the process of importing a bunch of albums via CD on to my itunes. Whoa hold up...what? That's right I'll say it again in case you thought you read it wrong. I am currently in the process of importing a bunch of albums on to my itunes via CD. Dear God what an old and ancient method. Well you see Shufflers my wife recently just picked up the new David Cook and new Taking Back Sunday albums on CD and while at Best Buy today I saw that they had the new Eminem & Royce album selling for less then it is on itunes so it was kind of a no brainer. So now I'm putting a whole bunch of new songs on my itunes to transfer over to my pizzle. I'm still in the hunt to figure out my favorite albums of the 2011 thus far so I'm hoping to have that posted up in the next couple of days or so.

With it being the Fourth of July today it would have been cool if today's song had been something with the National Anthem in it. You would be surprised how many songs I own that actually have that little diddy in it. For starters a lot of versions of Pearl Jam's Yellow Ledbetter end with a shredding version of the Star Spangled Banner. Then of course there's Dave Matthew's Band's version that they tack on the beginning of All Along the Watch Tower. Then there is Aerosmith's cover of Train Kept A Rollin' where Joey F'n Perry just tears it up. And of course who could forget the greatest display of guitar patriotism ever in Jimi Hendrix's amazing guitar solo from Woodstock. Sadly we got none of these songs (sorry to hype it up like we did), but we did stay within the ballpark I suppose.



While it's not the National Anthem it's still Jimi and that's good enough for me. I find Hendrix's cover of Sunshine of Your Love to be funny. Not funny ha-ha-ha persay but funny interesting. First off trying to debate who the better guitar players between Hendrix and Clapton can quickly turn into a firey debate. It's either you perfer the smooth crispness of Clapton or you dig on the raw, dirtiness of Jimi. It's a preference thing really. No where in that debate should any argue that one of them is not an amazing guitar player. That would be both ignorant and stupid. What's funny about this cover is it's not a very good version of it. You can clearly tell that Jimi loved the riff and just wanted to jam out on it. It's not an attempt to seriously play the song. It happens to be more of a I have a guitar and that song is tight let me play those chords type of thing.

Not once in this version does Hendrix really try to make it his own. Yes there's distortion and you can clearly make out the fact that it's Jimi Hendrix playing, but at the same time it just doesn't seem to have the same bite. I don't know maybe it's just me, but when I listen to Hendrix play Sunshine of Your Love I just hear a guitar player admiring a fellow guitar player. It's like a "yeah dude this shit is tight, I just had to play it for myself".

I also like the fact that Hendrix doesn't try to sing. Listen no one listens to Jimi Hendrix for his vocal power, let's just call a spade a spade here. It just adds to the fact that he's playing it because he thinks it's fun to jam to. The fact that one guitar god is jamming around to the song of another guitar god is fun to me. As a matter of fact I think some where there is a song where Hendrix and Clapton jam together. I don't know on what song or when (I believe it's a live show) but I think it exists out there somewhere. If anyone knows the song or the show please remind me. It seems like something that the high school version of me should have know.

Well I'm done importing my discs time to through them on my ipod and tinker with my Want To Hear It Now list. Be jealous Shufflers...

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