Electric Ladyland cover

Electric Ladyland

Released

On Electric Ladyland’s “House Burning Down,” Jimi Hendrix resolves a race riot with the appearance of “a giant boat from space land[ing] with eerie grace” to remove all the casualties. By that point on his 1968 double album, he’d already extolled the virtues of a utopian Electric Ladyland (on “Have You Ever Been (to Electric Ladyland)”) and abandoned the war-torn surface world for an underwater realm (on “1983…. (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)”). Hendrix reimagined the electric guitar in rock forevermore, yes, but his hand in the founding of Afrofuturism also can never be denied.

Miles Marshall Lewis

Recommended by

Suggestions
Agents of Fortune cover

Agents of Fortune

Blue Öyster Cult
A Hard Road cover

A Hard Road

The Bluesbreakers, John Mayall
The Great Conspiracy cover

The Great Conspiracy

The Peanut Butter Conspiracy
Eat a Peach cover

Eat a Peach

The Allman Brothers Band
Ice Cream for Crow cover

Ice Cream for Crow

Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band
The Mighty Jeremiahs cover

The Mighty Jeremiahs

The Mighty Jeremiahs