If 6 was 9

Listening to a lot of Hendrix at the moment, not sure why. I've had odds and sods of his for years, on dodgy old tapes mostly, but I've never heard the original albums all the way through.

I think he's another of those artists who it's easy to think that because you've heard all the hits so many times, there's no need to stick on a Hendrix CD at home, because it's all been absorbed by osmosis - but when something like 'If 6 Was 9' crops up on the soundtrack to a film (is it Easy Rider?) then once again you are knocked out by the guitar. Heard 'Little Wing' tonight for the first time in ages, I think I last heard it on a double live album which I lent Mike Slats in 1990 and have not seen since.

I used to have a book called Encyclopoedia Metallica, which I bought at the Virgin Megastore on Commercial Road in Portsmouth. (I bought 'Sonic Attack' by Hawkwind on the same visit). This work of metal scholarship contended that the whole genre of heavy rock commenced with The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Cream. They played massively amplified blues rock, but I guess there were other founding fathers like the MC5 and the Stooges, but I'm not going to start that debate.

Anyway, according the the Encyclopoedia Metallica, these two giants at the top of the metal family tree spawned Deep Purple, Led Zep and Black Sabbath, who in turn begat Judas Priest and UFO, who then sired the NWOBHM bands like Iron Maiden and Saxon. Simple! the whole story of Metal in three or four generations!

I wish I still had that book, there was a great photo of one of the dudes from Lynyrd Skynyrd looking particularly stupid, which made me and Ady laugh. There was a forward 'written' by Biff Byford from Saxon (once a guest lecturer at Newark tech, fact fans), where he urged the reader to 'Keep The Faith!', ie to listen only to true Metal. Ady and I kept this up for a little while until the Velvet Underground and the Doors appeared, courtesy of Southwell record library, and suddenly metal seemed a bit limiting...