TOMORROW ON THE MORNING JOLT: REISSUES!

Need any last minute gifts for the discerning rock fan in your life?  Well, tune in to SiriusXM OutQ's Morning Jolt with Larry Flick tomorrow at 9 am; we'll be discussing some great reissues that have come out in the past few months that will make great gifts.  (Don't have a SiriusXM subscription?  Go here to learn how to try SiriusXM on a trial basis).

First off is the newly released Jimi Hendrix box set, Winterland. I wrote about this a few months ago: the box set is drawn from six concerts Jimi played at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom over three nights in October of 1968. It's certainly not where I'd recommend a new fan starts, but it is an incredible collection nonetheless.  There's also a single CD version for those not looking to go the 4 CD box set route.

We're also going to talk about recently reissued Pink Floyd catalog. You can get the entire catalog as a box set for about $180, or get the albums individually.  There's also expanded versions of two of their greatest albums, Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here.

Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band recently reissued their two classic live albums, Live Bullet and Nine Tonight. I recently kind of "discovered" the greatness of Bob Seger and I wrote about it earlier tonight.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the first five Queen albums which had recently been reissued. The rest of their albums have since been reissued and I'll talk about those also.

By the way, I'll be in the studio next week as well, talking about my favorite albums of 2011.  It wasn't a great year for music, but it was a good one, and I'm having a hard time narrowing it down.

TOO MUCH HENDRIX? NO SUCH THING. WINTERLAND ROCKS!

A couple of months ago, I was driving a friend home in my car and playing the then-recently released Jimi Hendrix collection Valleys Of Neptune. I explained that it was a brand new release with (sort of) previously unreleased recordings.  He asked, "where do they keep finding this stuff?"  It's a good point -- for a guy whose career lasted about four years, there are a hell of a lot of Jimi Hendrix releases out there. And given the fact that in the past two decades, the catalog has resided at Warner Brothers, MCA, Universal and now Sony (with some live stuff licensed to Rykodisc, and the Band Of Gypsys album on Capitol), things can get confusing.

That said, the recently released Winterland box set is something you should have if you're interested in hearing some amazing live performances by The Jimi Hendrix Experience.  Recorded during a six show stand at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom in October of 1968, this was the Experience at the peak of their powers.  There's such swagger to their performance, Jimi sounds really into it, and it sounds as if he is not yet tired of playing any of these songs.  Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell are tight as hell. The band is incredible, and they all know it.  Playing distorted guitar at that point in time was still a relatively new thing, and it was probably even considered a political act, an act of liberation.  There's a lot of improvisation going on, and that was still probably relatively new in rock and roll and popular music.

The box set is 4 CDs. The first three feature full shows, and the fourth has spare tracks from some of the other shows, plus a cool interview with Jimi.  And you may wonder if you really need four more live versions of "Purple Haze."  You may, you may not.  But some of his songs that show up multiple times on the box - like "Are You Experienced?" and "Red House" have varying lengths at the different shows, and it's interesting to hear his different takes on the same song from one day to the next.  The "Are You Experienced?" versions are definite highlights here - on one, he has a flautist (Virgo Gonslaves from opening act The Buddy Miles Express) as he does on the album version. The other has no flute. "Little Wing" is amazing.  "Manic Depression" kicks ass, as does "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)."  The instrumental cover of Cream's "Sunshine Of Your Love"  is great, as is the cover of of Nordic rockers Hansson and Carlsson's "Tax Free."

For those of you who want a taste of this without having to go all in on a box set, there is a single CD version of this, but I'm a box set fan, and Sony Legacy (who provided me with a review copy) did a great job with this box, I would definitely have purchased it, and I recommend it highly.

JIMI HENDRIX - WEST COAST SEATTLE BOY

Late last year, Sony Legacy and Experience Hendrix released a new Jimi Hendrix box set, West Coast Seattle Boy.  Sony signed a deal with the Hendrix Estate for the Jimi catalog, and to put out more unreleased recordings, and create new box sets.  There's lots of deleted box sets from Warner Brothers and Universal, so what can Sony Legacy offer that we haven't gotten? (And by the way, I'll state here that Legacy provided me with a promo copy so I can write about it for you).

Well, one cool thing is that on disc 1, it's all music that pre-dates Jimi's solo career. It's hard to believe that there hasn't been a (non-bootleg) collection like this before, but it's cool to have all of this stuff together in one place. There's well known artists like Little Richard and The Isley Brothers, lesser known artists like Don Covay and King Curtis and people I'd never heard of (Rosa Lee Brooks, The Icemen). As a liner notes writer myself, I appreciate the liner notes - they really explain all of these groups and detail Jimi's involvement with them. Although Jimi's virtuosity isn't the focus of any of these songs, it's interesting to hear him try and get some shine even though he's a hired hand. I would say disc 1 is the main reason to get this.

Another part that I loved is on disc 2, there's six songs recorded in Jimi's hotel room in New York in March of 1968.  It's just Jimi on electric guitar and singing, accompanied on two songs by Paul Caruso on harmonica and vocals. Raw but stripped down versions of Bob Dylan's "Tears Of Rage," "Hear My Train A'Comin'," "1983 (A Merman I Shall Turn To Be)," "Long Hot Summer Night," "My Friend" (which I hadn't heard before) and "Angel." The rest of the box features lots of outtakes, unreleased versions and unreleased mixes. It's not quite essential, it's pretty much for completists.  But, seeing how Jimi died at 27, it's understandable that people would want to hear every last note.

The other cool thing about this box set is the DVD, which contains a documentary, narrated in Jimi's own words, from his interviews and letters to his father.  Bootsy Collins reads the narration as Jimi, and is surprisingly sedate and sensitive.  It's a cool approach and it works well. It you're a big Jimi fan, you've probably read most of the interviews that the doc draws from, but this puts it together in an interesting new way.  Which is, I guess, what Sony does with Jimi's material on this box set.

If you're new to Jimi, my advice is get the three studio albums that he released during his lifetime: Are You Experienced?, Axis: Bold As Love and Electric Ladyland. After that, go for First Rays Of The New Rising Sun (the studio album Jimi was working on at the time of his death), BBC Sessions and Band Of Gypsys. Then Live At Monterey and Live at Woodstock if they are in print. Those are the essentials. But you can't go wrong with Jimi's outtakes, they are better than most band's greatest hits!

JIMI HENDRIX "VALLEYS OF NEPTUNE" DUE OUT IN MARCH

Over the summer, I wrote about how Experience Hendrix - the company that owns the recordings of Jimi Hendrix - was leaving Universal Music at the end of 2009 and moving to Sony Legacy. I wondered, "What could get me to buy more Jimi Hendrix CDs?" Obviously, I love Jimi, but I've purchased the all the studio albums more than once, and ditto for different versions of his BBC recordings, Woodstock, Montery, and his live Band Of Gypsys album.

Well, Experience Hendrix has answered that question: they just announced that on March 9, they will be releasing Valley Of Neptune, which will feature rare and unreleased stuff, including the title track, which was recorded at Jimi's final sessions. That song is actually on the long out-of-print Lifelines box set from 1990 ( back when the catalog was on Reprise Records). Lifelines was a four CD (or in my case, four cassette -- time to see if my car's tape deck is still working!) box set.  The first three tapes were a long BBC radio doc on Jimi (so most of the songs have narration and/or interview clips over the beginning and/or end, so the version of "Valley Of Neptune" isn't "clean"), and the 4th tape was a concert recorded 4/26/69 in Los Angeles.  Sony should reissue Lifelines, and give the option of "clean" versions of the songs. Another good box set from those days (which I also have only on cassette) was Stages, four tapes, each one a different concert from a different year.

Anyway, March 9 will also see the reissue of all three Jimi Hendrix Experience albums, the Smash Hits collection and First Rays Of The New Rising Sun, (all with documentary DVDs) and a Woodstock DVD.

"TEN MORE YEARS OF JIMI HENDRIX MUSIC"

Billboard reports that the Jimi Hendrix Estate has just resigned with Universal Music, and the interesting thing about that is the next release that they're putting out: this fall they're putting out a CD and DVD from The Jimi Hendrix Experience's 2/18 and 2/24/69 gigs at The Royal Albert Hall. A camera crew followed Jimi for about a month leading up to the shows, and that footage will be edited for the DVD. Janie Hendrix, Jimi's half-sister and the CEO of Experience Hendrix says there's "ten more years" of Hendrix music in the vaults. I kind of doubt that, unless she's talking about live recordings, in which case, bring them on.

MITCH MITCHELL 1946 - 2008

Mitch Mitchell died today - he was the drummer for The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Of course, Jimi Hendrix was the obvious focal point for the band: his guitar playing, singing, his persona, everything about him, musically, was perfect. But the name on the record is "The Jimi Hendrix Experience" instead of "Jimi Hendrix" for a reason. You just need to listen to it to understand. Listen to "Fire," Mitch is as exciting as Ginger Baker or John Bonham or Keith Moon. Even after Jimi split with bassist Noel Redding, he still played with Mitch in a group that also featured bassist Billy Cox from Jimi's other group, The Band Of Gypsys. In fact, Mitch and Billy just finished a Jimi Hendrix tribute tour. Rest in peace, Mitch Mitchell.