Are You Experienced by the Jimi Hendrix Experience (Vinyl record album review)

Album name: Are You Experienced

Group name: the Jimi Hendrix Experience

Year: 1967

Number of discs: one

Label: Reprise Records

Collection: Brenner / Gessner

Distinguishing characteristics: “GESSNER” written inside the album sleeve and on the record, indicating that my father owned this record

Buy it on Amazon: $22.49

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

My parents didn’t play Hendrix while I was growing up, but I first downloaded this on Napster, and have listened to it hundreds of times in the past couple of decades.

What I expected

Psychedelic rock.

What it was actually like

Though “Are You Experienced” was Hendrix’s first record, when I first listened to it, I thought it was a greatest hits collection, because every song on it is such a great hit, and I think that is why some consider it to be the greatest record ever made.

With not a single note of a single song that I dislike, I can’t come up with anything negative to write about it.

About his performance at Woodstock, however, I recently wrote that “Hendrix was greatest when he was playing actual songs, and weakest when he was inventing brilliant new ways to create cacophonous noise with his guitar,” and “Are You Experienced” is exactly what I meant.

I wish this record included All Along the Watchtower.

Grade

5/5: love it