Jimi Hendrix: "Sound Track Recordings from the Film 'Jimi Hendrix'" – the gatefold time capsule
Album Description:

I remember seeing this one in the racks like it was trying to look important just by taking up space. Two records. A proper gatefold. The kind of package that makes you tilt your head and think, right, what are you selling me here?

The answer, in July 1973, was: Hendrix again — but through the lens of a film, not a fresh studio statement. Reprise put it out as the soundtrack to the 1973 documentary, and Joe Boyd stitched it together from recordings spread across 1967 to 1970, with interview fragments tacked on like cigarette breaks at the end of a side.

What it actually feels like
Needle down and you are not getting a tidy “career overview.” You get moments. Big ones. Messy ones. Monterey shows up immediately (yes, that era), and the record doesn’t politely “present” the performance so much as shove you toward it: "Rock Me, Baby" into "Wild Thing" and suddenly you remember why people used words like dangerous about a guitarist.

Then it starts hopping time and place, like flipping channels in a hotel room at 2 a.m. Berkeley turns "Purple Haze" sharp and lean. Woodstock drops "The Star-Spangled Banner" in your lap like a lit match. Isle of Wight drags out "Machine Gun" and "Red House" until the air feels thick. There’s even that quieter detour with the acoustic "Hear My Train A Comin’" — not “content,” not “bonus material,” just a human being with wood and wire and nerves.

The part that still annoys me
Posthumous releases always have this faint smell of somebody else’s hands in your pockets. Hendrix can’t argue with the sequence, can’t veto the framing, can’t say: no, not like that. And the industry knew it was a gamble — the album only reached No. 89 on the Billboard chart, which tells you plenty about how excited people were to buy yet another repackaging of ghosts.

Still, I keep a soft spot for it. Not because it’s “essential” (that word gets abused). Because it’s physical proof of how Hendrix lived on stage: not polished, not careful, not designed for your playlist. You open the gatefold, you juggle two slabs of vinyl, you listen to the interviews at the end of a side, and you can almost hear the label executives arguing in the hallway. They’re still arguing. We’re still listening.

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