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I wanted to respond to your comments re: Jimi Hendrix on Metal
Sludge.com, as follows:
17. In your opinion, do you believe Jimi Hendrix was overrated?
Yes. He was a good guitarist, but I can only name 2 or 3 of his songs. He
influenced most of my favorite players though so go figure. I believe that
if everybody in the audience wasn\'t tripping on hallucinogenic drugs,
Hendrix and Greatful Dead and all those other hippies would have
never gone anywhere.
Let\'s clarify a few things here, Marty.
1. As a guitarist, \"overrated\" is perhaps the kindest way to describe
your derivative playing style, which can be heard ad nauseum on at least a
dozen releases from your former label Shrapnel. Like most guitarists in
your genre, you mistake technique for substance and technology for soul, a
quality sorely lacking in your music, both compositionally and in its
execution. For someone like you to be commenting negatively on a legend such as
Jimi is laughable.
2. The key to understanding Hendrix\'s contribution to modern rock music
is not his songs per se, but the sounds he created in service to those
songs. Jimi literally revolutionized the way electric guitar could be used in
the context of a song and how its sounds could be used to evoke emotions of
all kinds. He accomplished this without the aid of computerized rack
systems or Pro Tools enhancements; in fact, guitarists today are still unable
to recreate many of his sounds in spite of decades of attempts.
3. I\'m not sure the tens of millions of people who have purchased
Jimi\'s music over the years would appreciate being labeled as drug-addled
hipppies, since some of them may have also been foolish enough to purchase your
music in the past. In these troubled times for the music biz, we don\'t
want to alienate potential customers, now do we?
In short, Marty (no pun intended), I strongly recommend that you limit
your negative comments to those musicians that you have earned the right to
criticize. Given your so-called career to date, Jimi is not one of them.
Cordially,
Ira Sperling
P.S. And how many of your songs do you think will be remembered 33 years
after you die?
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