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Never has there been a name for a band more appropriate than that of The Jimi Hendrix Experience. At the tender age of 12 or 13, I found their debut album buried in a large stack of records that belonged to my parents. The psychedelic purple lettering and the green background was one of the most eye catching covers I’d ever seen in my young life. “Are You Experienced?” it asked. I was not. Not yet anyway.

The name Jimi Hendrix was certainly not new to me, but the “experience” was. I placed the album on the record player and heard the silent scratchy sound before the blaring opening notes of “Purple Haze” came pounding through my speakers. I listened and listened and then listened again. From “Manic Depression” to “May This Be Love” to “Third Stone From The Sun,” I had the full Jimi Hendrix Experience in all its rocking glory.

I knew that music would never be quite the same for me.

In that first week of discovering the album, my life began to change. I smoked my first joint and sat in a backyard beneath the stars laughing with friends.

Though I would come to love the entire Jimi Hendrix catalog, the 1967 debut release has always remained the definitive “experience.”

But The Jimi Hendrix Experience was never just Jimi. It was also the incredible 8-string bass playing talents of Noel Redding and the jazz infused beats of drummer, Mitch Mitchell, who passed away this last Wednesday at the age of 61. He was the last living member of band.

So tonight as I think back on what was one of the most important musical experiences of my life, I look to the sky knowing in heaven a band has been reunited after years of being apart. And I answer the question asked of me when I was a kid of 13. “Yes, I have been experienced.”

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