Friday, January 21, 2011

Vol. II No. 5

Upon re-reading Volume I, Number 3 of this blog, I would like to amend my remarks about Jimi Hendrix.

The terms I used to describe his music in the first paragraph were chosen on the fly and for the most part they are inaccurate.

One factor that should be mentioned is that all my listening to Hendrix was done on solid-state equipment, while performance amplifiers and playback gear in his era were largely tubular.

There is indeed to my mind something off-putting about Hendrix’s music but it is by no means a “Wall of Noise” or a “cacophony.”

I would welcome the opportunity to re-evaluate his music played back on a vacuum tube system.

It occurs to me very strongly as I write this that the fashion for so-called “psychedelic” music in the Sixties was doubtless attributable in large part to the improving quality of the tubular equipment and the extremely rich, hollow, ringing tone it produces. Solid state equipment naturally is much less reverberant. When we play stuff like Hendrix or the late-period Beatles on solid-state gear we are missing, I would say, an enormous part of what these artists were hearing then. This is a sad and unfortunate thing.

But the loss suffered when music from that era is digitalized is infinitely worse.

1 comment:

  1. Live music. Time for you to learn to play an instrument and create your own music. Create you own magic.

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