| Reviews |
All Music Guide Review:
Review by Richie Unterberger
This CD is only available (quite legitimately) with the hardback comic/graphic biography Voodoo Child: The Illustrated Legend Of Jimi Hendrix. Be warned that if you're primarily (or only) interested in this half-hour disc of previously unreleased material, it only comes at a high price ($35 or so). If you want to take the plunge, you'll find the music -- recorded unaccompanied by Hendrix in New York around April of 1968 -- quite worthwhile. The guitar is electric, but this is basically Hendrix Unplugged, with much quieter, reflective, and personal versions of songs that would get the full-on electric treatment on Electric Ladyland and other albums. "1983," "Gypsy Eyes," "Voodoo Chile," and "Angel" are particularly fascinating to experience in this context, as we hear Jimi tentatively working out (and sometimes fumbling through) skeletal versions of these compositions, with some different lyrics appearing on occasion. What this lacks in typical Hendrix firepower, it makes up for in poetic delicacy. In some respects, these performances bring us closer to the tender heart of his work than the famous official versions of these classics.
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