me and 'are you experienced?'

this is for jimi hendrix. this story is more about me but it has something to do with him... sorta. happy 70th.

i was 15. me and some friends met up to hang out. we didn't have much going on... no definite plans. just figured we'd meet up and see what happens. that was sorta what we did when i was 15 years old. our friend auggie shows up and he has a ton of money. where this money came from is a little uncertain and fuzzy, but for a bunch of jobless teenagers, he was loaded.

as we're talking about what to do, auggie mentions how he wants to go to a music store the next town over. at the time, that seemed like an insane distance. none of us drove. we'd have to walk it. there were about five of us there and eventually figuring we had nothing else going on, we unanimously decided to take the walk. it was cool. we bs'd along the way about life and whatever else stupid teenagers talked about in the early 90's.

when we got to the music store (i shit you not, i can't remember the name of the place and i couldn't even tell you where it used to be exactly. i remember the town and a long walk to get there. that's about it) and when we got there we hit it like ravages. this was our toy store. there were cd's and cassettes everywhere... posters on the wall. all this place needed was a bong section and we would have never left. we all spent time browsing through cd's that most of us couldn't afford.

i was in the hendrix section looking at a copy of, 'are you experienced?' auggie comes over to me and says, "do you want that cd?"

i reply, "yea, but i can't afford it."

"don't worry dude. i'll get it for you."

he made my day, week, and probably month (and maybe even more now that i'm rereading what i just wrote). i was 15 and only just beginning to explore the wonders of rock music. i didn't own any hendrix up to this point. all i really knew were the hits and that any respectable cd collection should have a hendrix album among it.

and that was mostly all i remember. i don't know a whole ton of specifics about that day. i do know that when i got home, i listened to, 'are you experienced?' over and over and over and over. i've always had a tendency to buy an album and dig into it by playing it everyday for months on end. to this day i still have a solid 4-5 albums that i'm constantly listening to. every now and then one phases out and a new one takes its place and that's kinda how i've always digested music. and if an album did make my heavy rotation, that was as good a review as i could give it. i have no fancy words to describe great music. all i can tell you is that i played the absolute rock loving fuck out of, 'are you experienced?'

i'll never forget that day, even if some of the specifics seem foggy. that's the day i officially became a true hendrix fan. i eventually would score much more of his music and dig into it all. i was rocking to hendrix through the grunge years. the whole thing seems odd in hindsight. i mean, i was into grunge and what was going on... but i was also on a classic rock kick of sorts. and hendrix was sorta a gateway into all of that... but hendrix is so much more than a gateway. dude was just a creative force not to be fucked with. he was uncompromising. he wasn't cheesy. he was real and out there and all sorts of talented. no matter what level you find yourself on, you can't really say a bad word about jimi hendrix's music. it's got something for everybody.

and it's fun to look back and see what we did for music back then. we were young and bored and had all sorts of free time. we went on adventures to score music an album at a time. being a fan of music took a lot more commitment. don't get me wrong, i enjoy the convenience of modern times when it comes to music... but i'll always remember it took an awesome mini-adventure to grab my first jimi hendrix album.

special thanks goes out to auggie and jimi hendrix. without you, this blog post and the events that happened within would not have been possible.