Jimi Hendrix Live (sort of)

It took a while to actually notice Jimi Hendrix. He didn't get frequent airplay. One experience that was very helpful was a performance given by Rudy Pacarro, Jr. at one of our high school (Punahou) assemblies. Rudy was the lead guitarist for a garage band called Sagittarius and the Vegetable Confusion. He played a Fender Stratocaster with the Andy Warhol banana decal from the Velvet Underground and Nico's album applied to the front.

Rudy played several of the cuts from Hendrix's Are You Experienced? album. I have to say that hearing Jimi's music live (even at the hand of a cover artist like Rudy) brought out the power of the music.

Even though all I owned at the time was an acoustic guitar, I realized I needed to learn how to play like Jimi. (No, duh. Me and every other guitarist!) The first step was learning the Blues Box. In its most basic form, it works very nicely over the key of E minor and its relative major, G major. This meant that with very little effort I could do a lead accompaniment to songs in both of these keys, and with a little adaptation, do the same for songs in the keys of A minor and C major. That actually covers quite a bit of material.

Next Installment: Using the Blues Box