Are You Experienced?


Jimi's debut album, and music hasn't been the same since. This CD is available in many formats, including the original Reprise release, this, the 1993 Alan Douglas "Remastered" release, and the 1997 Remastered version as authorized by the Hendrix Estate. When I first heard that Jimi's releases were being remastered, I was very excited. The day they came out, I immediately grabbed Are You Experienced, and Axis: Bold As Love. I would have gotten Electric Ladyland as well at the same time, but they didn't have any. First listen? Hey, these sound pretty good, better than my original CDs did. Although I did notice that Can You See Me had been either noise reduced severely in one spot (the original recording has a crackle at one point, the result of a bad edit, and left due to lack of funds) or had been edited out. Alan "The Butcher" Douglas? Editing stuff? You're kidding me right? Needless to say, I was not happy. Even if they did sound better than the CDs I had then, I worried about what else had been "remastered" by Douglas. What else hadn't I heard?

These 1993 releases feature new artwork, and a little page of 9 `stamps' inside. Kinda a neat thing, maybe pushing for a US stamp featuring Hendrix? Artwork isn't too bad, but if you're going to remaster an album to how it should sound, the original artwork is a requirement. In my opinion that is.

The 1993 and 1997 versions have an additional 6 songs that weren't on the original US version, the 3 b-sides of the 3 singles from the album, and 3 tracks which were only on the UK release. The only difference trackwise between the 1993 and 1997 is in the order of the songs.

Catalog #: MCASD 10893