On March 5, Experience Hendrix and Legacy are releasing a new Jimi Hendrix album, People, Hell and Angels. Okay, so it’s not new: its previously unreleased material from some late 1960s sessions, with songs we’ve heard in other versions. “Bleeding Heart” for example, showed up on 1972’s War Heroes, 1994’s Blues and 2010’s Valleys of Neptune. But it never came out in Hendrix’s lifetime, so maybe this is the version he liked best. Who knows. Maybe this is why “Hear My Train A-Comin’,” has been on over 30 releases, including this one.
With this, his 12th posthumous studio album, not to mention the myriad live albums, Hendrix has become the increasingly common artist who releases more music after their death than when they were alive. Everything from his vault is getting release, often doled out in small doses. Albums have featured everything from his playing solo with a 12-string guitar to songs that rose from two or more aborted takes edited together.
Well, here at Bearded Gentlemen Music, we’ve got the hot poop on some other upcoming posthumous releases! It seems like 2013 is the year of the reissue, with gems coming out of the woodwork for many classic artists!
April 20 is Record Store Day and to celebrate, Cinco Entertainment is releasing a 
brand new, previously unheard recording of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young at the Fillmore East in 1970. It’s a 7” single called “You Fat Fucking Pussy,” and it’s a recording of the famous foursome fighting backstage! Listen as David Crosby swears and yells at Graham Nash while Neil Young hums and strums the lead to “Cinnamon Girl”! The B-Side is an even more rare recording: six minutes of them tuning their amplifiers at the Fillmore to an adoring crowd! Yow!
Coming a week after that, The Swinging Pig is releasing a new collection of J Dilla material, it’s called Ruffer Draft. Recorded accidentally by an over-zealous engineer, listen as Dilla cues up records and samples material onto his MPC60 for use in albums like Donuts. However, due to legal issues, the actual sampled songs are not included. But still, it’s a valuable look into his creative process!
Summer brings a new collection from the Neil Young Archives: Trans-missions. For this release, Young journeys back to 1981’s Trans, the album where he made heavy use of a vocoder. In these rough demos, listen as Young fine-tunes his Sennheiser VVSM201, programming test speeches. Die-hards fans will drool over new tracks like “Testing one two three” or “Hello hello, testing, hello.” It’s an inside look at one of Young’s most infamous periods!
Earlier this year, My Bloody Valentine released their long-awaited m b v. This fall, they’re following it up with y y e, an inside look at the recording of that album. This special release, only available on super-high-fidelity 1080 gram vinyl, contains examples of Kevin Shield’s noted devotion to creating the ideal guitar tone. On these tracks, listen as he strums and tests various new pedals and amplifiers. One standout is “Super Muff”, where Shield strums a D-Chord while adjusting his Electro-Harmonix pedal for seven whole minutes! If you think you’ve heard m b v before, this will be a revelatory listen!
Yes, 2013 is shaping up as an exciting year for music that wasn’t interesting enough to be released when it was recorded! After all, the Hendrix vaults are both seemingly unending and completely bare, with all kinds of material you’ve already heard presented in a slightly-different context, all for a premium price. After all, if you’re willing to listen to yet another collection of outtakes, surely you’ll empty your wallet on all the above releases, all not coming soon to a store near you!