Jimi Hendrix - Valleys of Neptune

Nearly 40 years after his death, Jimi Hendrix is still turning heads. The latest bout of head-turning came earlier this month, when countless publications and radio stations devoted hours of air-time and pages of headlines to the most recent collection of archived recordings released by Experience Hendrix LLC, Valleys of Neptune.

Posthumous albums can be hit or miss, uneven affairs, mostly filler discarded in favor of other tunes more worthy of release. Valleys of Neptune is no exception.

It’s hard to deny that Hendrix was a revolutionary. He turned rock music on its head in 1967 and forever changed the way musicians looked at the electric guitar. The sounds he squeezed out of the instrument seemed otherworldly, and his writhing stage persona made showmanship almost as important as technical skill.

This is why Valleys of Neptune is, on the whole, disappointing. There’s nothing mind-blowing on this set, and nothing new to stand-up to the blistering work of his three studio albums or the Band of Gypsys disc.

There’s no “Purple Haze,” “Little Wing” or “Voodoo Child” on Neptune. The songs are good – some are great – but there’s nothing exceptional. The fire that made the Jimi Hendrix experience blister on their first three albums seems to be missing.

That the fire is missing is understandable. The majority of the tracks were recorded in the early months of 1969, when the relationship between Hendrix and bassist Noel Redding began to deteriorate. It shows. Hendrix and Co. sound tired on a lot of these tracks, weary and subdued, ready to go their separate ways.

Despite the evident weariness, Valleys of Neptune does contain a few gems that remind you why Hendrix is revered as a rock god. The trio gives a blistering take on Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love.” At 6:45 the song lasts about three minutes too long, but the group sounds inspired here, each member pushing each other to do justice to Cream’s classic.

Other standouts include the funky “Ships Passing In The Night” and “Bleeding Heart,” and a hair-raising extended take on “Red House,” that finds the bands flexing its blues muscle.

On the whole, however, Valleys of Neptune will only show you what everybody knows about Hendrix, that the man who forever changed rock and roll in 1967 was years ahead of his time, and that the majority of the rock world is still struggling to catch up.

Stephen King - Under the Dome

Like him or hate him, it’s hard to deny that Stephen King is an extremely imaginative writer. Never mind his periodic lapses into hackneyed prose, and his maddening stubbornness in listening to his “muse” - even if it tells him to kill off your favorite character - he knows how to keep your ass in your seat.

And his latest work, the sprawling Under the Dome – which King attempted to write in the 1970s and 1980s as The Cannibals - will certainly do just that. Through its 1074 pages, King slams you with one disaster after another as a town in rural Maine becomes trapped from the outside world by an unexplainable invisible barrier, known as the Dome.

Of course, as with most King works, things go to Hell pretty quickly, a plane runs into the Dome, unknowing town residents drive cars into the Dome at full speed, and electric pulses from the barrier cause the pacemaker of the Sheriff – the one upstanding man in the town in a position of authority – to explode through his chest.

King’s greatest strength in this work, though, is his ability to pile on the misfortune. All of the above tragedies are only the beginning of the terror set to unfold in Under the Dome.

Riots, murders, corrupt and incompetent politicians, an out of control police force and a U.S. government powerless to intervene are just part of King’s explosive recipe for chaos. King moves through the chaos at break-neck speed as fear and paranoia set in among the residents of the town.

However, as is the case with many King works, the novel’s climax and resolution isn’t nearly as compelling as the build up. For all of the havoc that has taken place, the novel’s end will leave you asking, “That’s It?”

That being said, Under the Dome falls among King’s better works of the last 10 years, miles ahead of Blaze (2007) and Lisey’s Story (2006), though not quite on par with From A Buick 8 (2003) or the surprisingly excellent Duma Key (2008).

The lack of a satisfying conclusion, though, is what keeps it from being on that level. A novel that pulls its readers along for a thrill ride so effectively as Under the Dome should reward its readers at the end for completing the trip. Instead, it opens the door and boots its passengers to the curb.

Third time's a charm...

I need to start writing again, for real. It’s what I’ve loved doing my whole life, but over the past few years it’s stopped being fun, and started to feel like work. I can’t say that I’m surprised, because writing is work. I work for a newswire, and I spend my days writing (lately, mainly editing) short turnaround pieces on music for a client that provides music news for 500 radio stations across the country.

When I’m not working on the music news, I’m summarizing speeches and testimonies of various governors and presidents of the Federal Reserve, and covering the odd Senate meeting here and there. But, working for a newswire means getting the news out as fast as possible. I feel less like a writer than I do an aggregator.

And sure, there are job perks – covering various music festivals, the North American International Auto Show – but when I’m covering a festival or a concert, I’m not reviewing it; I’m spending 150 words telling the readers what happened during each performance.

This can be a little tough for someone who went to school to be a music critic. I know I can’t expect to be able to write exactly about what I want to while I’m paying my dues in the professional world, but that shouldn’t stop me from still writing what I want to write about, regardless of whether I’m getting paid to do it.

So if I can’t do it at work, I’m going to do it here, on this blog. This is my third try at maintaining one of these, and I can’t guarantee that I’ll be posting here with any sense of regularity, but I’m sure going to try. I need to work toward making writing fun again.

So, here goes. And to you out there reading, thanks.