Sonic Terrorists

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I was following a thread this evening about Jimi Hendrix and his opinion of who was his choice for the greatest guitarist of all time: it was click-bait of course, as the man apparently never rose to his being considered such, or or ever offered any alternative to that opinion: he was a diffident and modest man after all. So why is Jimi Hendrix considered still to be the greatest [rock] guitarist of all time? Given the plethora of great guitarists out there - particularly today, when guitar music has been fully rehabilitated to its rightful place in the musical pantheon - you might argue that his technical and musical limitations pale into insignificance with the mastery of the instrument manifested by so many modern practitioners of the six-string art. I wrote a little piece a couple of years ago about what I consider to be the single most important piece of improvised [and it was improvised in entirety apart from the basic structure of the song] rock guitar music of all time: a performance of 'Machine Gun', which featured on Hendrix's 'Band of Gypsys' album from 1970, and recorded live in concert at Fillmore East. The sonic terror the man could unleash was just frighteningly new at the time: simply no-one had created any music like it in the genre: the nearest orchestral analogies I can think of are Orff's 'Carmina Burana' and Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring', which get pretty close to its ferocity and otherworldliness, and its clawing directly into our gut emotions and eviscerating established musical norms and clichés at a stroke. Priceless: listen to all three serially. I would suggest Orff first, followed by Stravinsky, and finishing up with Hendrix. You might need a large sedative of your choice afterwards, though...

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