8-19-11
Friday! (Electric Ladyland)
Before this week, I was in the San Francisco bay area for a few weeks. I have been visiting up there from my home in Los Angeles for over 40 years. In the early 70’s, my dad was who drove me around, looking for record stores. I remember the first time I ever set foot in a Tower Records – they had yet to move into the Los Angeles market. My dad bought me a US LP for Jimi Hendrix Experience “Electric Ladyland” (on Reprise) – at the Tower Records on Columbus at Bay for $5.99 (summer of ’68?).
Reality collision! I found in S.F. a book about Jimi Hendrix “Electric Ladyland” – in the 33 1/3 series – it was one of the better books in that series, I must admit. The book makes some interesting points about that album – that it was really a solo Jimi Hendrix album etc. It makes sense to say that “Burning Of The Midnight Lamp” was ‘tacked on’ to the album, instead of recorded “for it”. It is a great album – I just listened to it again this week (the most recent CD issue of it – though I do own original US & UK LP’s of it).
For my birthday, we ate out in San Francisco at a new-to-me Indonesian restaurant downtown – good food, lots of fun. I got to do both Amoeba stores up there (SF & Berkeley), as well as several Rasputin’s stores – so much fun to look through different large inventories of product – in the flesh!
Also went to Petaluma for cheese tourism; can’t miss seeing the stuff in San Jose or Santa Cruz, too! We stayed mostly in either Piedmont and Pacifica – though we did have single nights in hotels in both Novato and Sunnyvale.
I also got to go to a record collector swap meet in Newark, CA – where I found some awesome 45’s! Ever seen one of these?
