Since Michael Jackson and the Beatles are, respectively, the best and third best-selling artists of the decade (with music that wasn’t even recorded this millennium in Jackson’s case and that is four decades old in the case of the Fab Four) the record industry seems to have realized that (Taylor Swift aside) most people actually want good music rather than bland, marketing department driven ditties. Or is that the reason? Of course there is also the old music biz adage that “the only good artist is a dead artist” (lookit Elvis, for f’s sake, to say nothing of Tupac and Biggie Smalls). There’s big money in death, it’s a great career move (although one difficult to enjoy), so it comes as no real surprise that the Jimi Hendrix estate announced today that they’d be releasing a 40 year old bunch of recording Jimi made with Billy Cox and others back in ‘69, called Valleys of Neptune. There has been a fair amount of posthumous Hendrix material ranging from great to not so great. Who knows, this Band Of Gypsys era material seems like it may actually be pretty good.

From Geoff Boucher’s cover story in today’s LA Times:

South African native Eddie Kramer was the lead producer on the album, and he was also the engineer in the studio with Hendrix during the original sessions. Kramer spent months using vintage analog approaches and the latest digital tools to excavate the material. “I felt like an archaeologist using a brush who finds, underneath the dust, this marvelous gold artifact,” he said.

Kramer said the music of “Neptune” comes primarily from 1969, a time of “both frustration and real excitement” for Hendrix as he pushed his way toward “a new direction.” The guitarist had brought in an old friend, bassist Billy Cox, to play on some of the tracks; on Friday, Cox, now living in Nashville, said he is giddy at the prospect of hearing the results of his work with Hendrix.

“I can tell you that Jimi was on his way to a powerful new thing, a new direction completely, he was going back to his roots and he wanted a sound with more soul,” said Cox, later in Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys. “Who can say where it would have led him if he hadn’t died?”

 
Jimi Hendrix fans have a new experience in store (Los Angeles Times)