For weeks I had a blown speaker. At first I was busy, then I was lazy, then I started digging on Roxy with a single channel, and otherwise hearing little things I had missed in songs I knew very well. You should try it with Roxy, or with one of the great dense production albums like Exile or Layla or – check it out – Cry of Love. Hendrix ain’t on youtube except for live stuff (some of which is great), and I hope that forces everybody who doesn’t own it to buy that album. I think it’s his best, which ain’t saying much unless you go for that oh wow doodling that stops all his other albums in their tracks. Makes me wanna drop Orange Sunshine into my eyes and become a strobe.

So finally I broke down and bought new ones. Actually, my sweet baby bought ’em for me today. Vic thinks of everything and makes me do things I like. So I hauled the box down to my cave and spent my usual befuddled half-hour trying to assemble the wires and plot an installing strategy. Detatching the old stuff proved impossible withour a forklift – cables running behind my massive desk-bookshelf-table-for-four – so I had to cut the wires.

The key new piece is a subwoofer. That threw me. I know mono and stereo and even remember quadraphonic but three speakers is new to me. When I hear subwoofers on the street I always have to take a shit – there’s the generation gap right there – but I have to admit the setup sounds great. We’ll see if I make it to the bathroom tomorrow morning.

Jimi live before he began indulging himself: