First Look: Jimi Hendrix Neptune LP

1,000,001 Jimi Hendrix fans can't be wrong... new/unreleased collection guaranteed to pry open your wallets long enough to make you salivate for the back catalog deluxe editions, too! And you don't even have to be drinkin' bootleg Hendrix Electric Vodka to dig it!

By Hal Bienstock

Despite releasing just three studio albums while he was alive, Jimi Hendrix has one of the biggest catalogs in rock history, with dozens of live performances, outtakes and remasters appearing and disappearing from print. Often thrown together haphazardly, those albums didn't serve the Hendrix legacy well.

Now, his label and his family are hoping to change that by reissuing deluxe editions of his three original albums - Are You Experienced?, Axis: Bold As Love, Electric Ladyland -and the album he was working on at the time of his death (First Rays of the New Rising Sun). But the biggest news for Hendrix fans is a fifth CD, Valleys of Neptune, that includes never before released studio recordings. Most of the material on Neptune was recorded in 1969, as the original Jimi Hendrix Experience was breaking up (some of the later tracks on this album feature Billy Cox on bass, replacing Noel Redding) and Hendrix was beginning to add more funk and R&B to his blues-based sound, something that would come to full flower soon in his Band of Gypsys.

While the band may have been in the process of splitting apart, it's in fine form here, blazing through previously unreleased songs like the title track and "Ships Passing Through the Night," as well as versions of well-known songs like "Fire" and "Hear My Train A-Comin'" that serve as studio counterparts to the expansive renditions of these songs that Hendrix had worked up for the stage.

This is Hendrix in his prime - on fire technically and creatively. Anyone wondering why he's still considered the greatest guitarist of all time need look no further for proof. These aren't scraps dug up by people trying to make a buck off a legend. Many of these tracks are full-fledged songs that Hendrix simply hadn't decided what to do with. The others are rehearsals for a major concert at Royal Albert Hall that was meant to be a theatrical film.

As with most Legacy reissues, Neptune sounds great and comes with extensive photos and liner notes that give the stories behind the songs and the sessions that produced them. (All of the other Hendrix reissues also come with DVDs with newly-created documentaries that offer fans additional insight into the making of the album and include interviews with Experience band members. Neptune doesn't.)  

If there's one flaw with Valleys of Neptune it's that it doesn't hang together as an album as well as the rest of Hendrix's studio catalog. More than anything else that has to do with the inclusion of alternate versions of songs you've heard before. (It's hard to imagine Hendrix would have released another studio version of "Fire" - no matter how good - three years after releasing the first one). But that doesn't make it any less enjoyable or important, either as a document of a transitional period in Hendrix's short career or simply as some of the best music ever made. 

If Neptune is a must-have, the other reissues are more problematic. If you bought the last round of reissues, the DVD, remastering and liner notes probably aren't enough reason to open your wallet again. But if you're still holding on to earlier versions of the CDs - especially the horrible sounding ones from the ‘80s - or haven't yet replaced your old vinyl, you'll be very happy with these new editions.

Valleys of Neptune is released next Tuesday, March 9.