Classic Rock Crate Digger is a column I write for the Rhapsody Blog.

It’s 2010. The great Jimi Hendrix has been dead 40 years. This, of course, means fans are about to get pelted with a barrage of anniversary-related merchandising, everything from video games to DVDs to hot fashions for teens new to the heavy sounds of Are You Experienced? We should also expect a new wave of music. This will include both archival releases and deluxe reissues of the classics. First up is Valleys of Neptune, a collection of demos, outtakes and rehearsal recordings committed to tape in 1969 and ’70.

When reviewing any album, the primary question a rock critic must answer is this: should you, the fan, spend your hard-earned money and time on the thing? It’s a question that becomes even more important when dealing with archival releases featuring previously unreleased material. Too often these types of albums are filled with recordings that were not released for a very good reason — namely, they weren’t very good. Opening the vaults is cool in theory, but there’s no denying the milking-the-cow factor, especially when those cows are pop music’s mythical icons, such as Dylan, Elvis, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, the Doors, etc. Hendrix belongs to this group, no doubt about it. At the same time, he is unique in the sense that there is a second vital question. What does such a release, Valleys of Neptune in this instance, tell us about where he was headed, musically?

Hendrix is rock’s poster boy for the concept known as What Could’ve Been. There are two reasons for this. The first has to do with the guitarist dying before his artistic wave had crested. Sure, nearly everything you read about him says he was a stoned and extremely disillusioned young man by the end of the 1960s. However, the peaks on his last official albums — particularly Band of Gypsys — and a slew of posthumous releases of dubious legal distinction make it plainly clear that the guy wasn’t done inventing killer new fusions of hard blues, funk, psychedelic rock and even jazz. And while other rockers died young, very few possess Hendrix’s sense of untapped promise. Morrison didn’t care about the rock when he flew the coop; he was in France writing poetry. As for Janis, she was an incendiary stage performer for sure, yet she seemed incapable of making a studio album that wasn’t deeply flawed. You could argue Kurt Cobain, I suppose. He was certainly evolving at an accelerated clip. At the same time, In Utero, one of the most extreme albums ever to top the Billboard, reads like a gigantic middle finger to human existence as we know it, so much so it’s hard to think of the guy living beyond it. The only dude who rivals Jimi is Buddy Holly, whose unreleased recordings have been reissued numerous times precisely because they reek of a future never lived.

Now on to that second reason: the violent avant-garde nature of Hendrix’s artistry. Forty years after his death, and the man’s music — especially all those exotic buzzes, snaps and screams he finagled out his guitar — sound startlingly relevant. We wonder what he would be doing now because all three of his studio albums (Are You Experienced?, Axis: Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland) sound very much of the now. As fellow Rhapsody critic Philip Sherburne recently said to me, “The opening to Electric Ladyland sounds like modern noise-rock.” Now I concede that Jimi wasn’t above hippie conceits that haven’t aged well — way too many astrology references. But that’s just surface stuff. Philip is right: there’s a power, intensity and sense of the monolithic in his music that seems to neutralize time’s death grip. Plus, what’s up with the all production from outer space? There are experiments on those albums that musicians are still trying to decode, imitate, appropriate, re-create, etc. It’s amazing, really.

Keeping all this in mind, let’s now return to Valleys of Neptune. And the Crate Digger is going to be honest here: if you’re looking for a collection of Hendrix jams that will allow you to gaze into that crystal ball, this ain’t it. In fact, as far as archival releases go, VoN lacks the artistic insights of both First Rays of the New Rising Sun, an attempt to sketch out what Jimi’s next studio album would have sounded like had he lived, and Live at the Fillmore East, a reworking of Band of Gypsys that offered fans a deeper understanding of the guitarist’s radical forays into psychedelic funk and acid soul.* Then again, there is no grand design behind Valleys of Neptune. It’s basically a smattering of odds and ends that Hendrix recorded when his career was in total flux.

The bulk of the record features the Experience (bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell); on a few cuts Billy Cox replaces Redding. Regardless of the lineup, most of the music smokes. In fact, the most vital material on VoN is the blues-oriented numbers. This makes sense, considering the basic structure was already in place. All the band had to do was perform — and perform they did. Full-throttled versions of “Bleeding Heart” (an Elmore James tune) and “Hear My Train A Comin’” (a song Hendrix had been tinkering with for several years) are revelatory enough to rekindle that feeling you got when you were a 14-year-old little snot and your older brother played you “Purple Haze” for the very first time. The extended solo on “Train” is particularly vicious. Another killer blues number, one which actually ups the ante, is the eight-minute “Red House.” Both Jimi’s voice and ax are into top form here and so is Mitchell, whose herky-jerky fills give the rhythm a very visceral tug-of-war feeling.

Obviously, the title track is supposed to be the highlight of the album. Sony Legacy feels so confident about the song, the label has released a single to modern rock radio. It’s good — but there’s something light about it. Even if Hendrix had the chance to transform “Valleys of Neptune” into a finished product, it probably would’ve gone down as one of his frilly hippie-pop numbers. I prefer “Ships Passing Through the Night,” which is easily the record’s most ambitious piece. Though it feels half-finished and unedited, the rhythmic interplay is wild. Beginning with a plodding stomp, the group eventually begins to fracture by design, one of them loose-but-tight situations. By jam’s end, Hendrix and company are inventing a new genre: boogie-funk-free-jazz-metal weirdness. An added bonus is all the psychedelic effects Jimi is employing, including feeding his guitar through a Leslie speaker (always a nice touch). The Crate Digger’s only gripe is with the song’s length. “Ships Passing Through the Night” clocks in at just under six minutes when it should be, like, 15 to 20. No lie.

As for the rest of Valleys of Neptune, let’s break it down like this.

Cool but not earth-shattering:

“Stone Free”
Great live version, but we’ve all heard this song a million times.

“Mr. Bad Luck”
Embryonic version of “Look Over Yonder.” Nice acid-rocker, but in its early stages it sounds a little too much like by-the-numbers Steppenwolf. Great guitar nonetheless, of course.

“Lover Man”
Nice vocals, with a hard, hard swing. But overall, the song is garden-variety hippie-era blues-rock.

“Lullaby for the Summer”
Had Hendrix worked on this a bit more, it would’ve easily been one of the record’s best tracks. As is, it’s a super-cool instrumental that feels half-baked.

Throwaways:

“Sunshine of Your Love”
The band messing around and nothing more. Jimi covering Cream is like the Beatles covering Herman’s Hermits. Again, amazing guitar as always, but that’s not a terribly impressive selling point when we’re talking Hendrix.

“Fire”
This is a commercial jingle, right?

“Crying Blue Rain”
An original composition, sure, but it feels flawed. You can hear why this wasn’t finished. It doesn’t know what it wants to be: is it a ballad or funky jive-rock? Plus, It’s missing vocals, and it’s obvious.

So that’s the end our our journey. The verdict? Valleys of Neptune isn’t the second coming of Electric Ladyland or anything. But if you’re a fairly serious fan of classic rock, then spending some time with this record is imperative. Hendrix might have died 40 years ago, but the highs on this album make for some of the best guitar rock of our new century.

Notes:
*First Rays of the New Rising Sun, however good, does contains way too much posthumous tinkering for my taste (musicians adding tracks and stuff like that). Valleys of Neptune contains some as well but not nearly as much.