But among the millions of songs that we wouldn't play would be ANYTHING by the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Which is a shame, not so much for the songs (they have all been beaten to death by every third garage band since 1967), but for a hidden debt of gratitude owed to that particular group of three musicians.
Without turning this into a classic rock obit blog, it wouldn't seem right to publish this post without doffing hats for the passing of drummer Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, who died in his hotel room this morning in Portland, of natural causes, while touring with a JHE tribute outfit.
The way I remember it (and Don might dispute this), Don and I spent an afternoon in my parents' garage learning how to play the drums using Ben George's abandoned kit and a copy of the complete guitar-bass-drum tablature to the album Are You Experienced?. [Inappropriate use of period directly after question mark? -ed.] Up until then, Stickmen drumming had been a classic case of the blind leading the blind, with Matt, Victor, and I coaching Ben how to vamp REM tunes using only bass and snare drums. After that day, we at least had some actual Mitch Mitchell fills to inform the rude subterfuge of our first true arrangements with drums.
And the rest is obscurity, for everyone apparently.
