Happy Birthday To Who? – Jimi Hendrix vs Mike Skinner
Only eight years separates the death of one and birth of the other, but the music these musical innovators of sorts gave/inflicted upon the world is generations apart in both its style and content. While Jimi Hendrix is renowned by people who have never heard him play a riff as the Greatest Guitarist of All Time TimeTM, Mike Skinner, under the moniker of The Streets, brought garage music to a new breed of disaffected UK youths from within.
Even though he hasn't written a decent song for a good four years, this doesn't remove the impact Skinner had. While Eminem proved white people could rap, Skinner carried an undeniably British slant in his urbanised tales of youthful shenanigans. This saw his brand of garage, focusing on club sub-culture and wry reality, cross boundaries and find eager fans in indie circles and festival crowds. Plus, when he came back with Fit But You Know It and Dry Your Eyes, everybody loved him. We've all watched his smug face sitting near that swimming pool blubbering on, even if we wouldn't admit it now.
With Hendrix, anybody old enough will claim to have been at his legendary Isle of Wight performance, or at least known about the talismanic black guitarist by the time he arrived in London from New York in the mid-Sixties. While his unparalleled histrionics and inspired instrumental experimentation brought him the prestige he commands today, many of his most significant songs aren't even his. These include early breakthrough Hey Joe and Bob Dylan staple All Along The Watchtower – recently named the best cover ever by Jarvis Cocker.
However, the likes of Purple Haze and Voodoo Chile are iconic snippets of a psychedelic freedom that seems to personify a certain part of music's ongoing personality. Hendrix is as ingrained into musical mythology as James Dean is in film, a gifted man who died young but left the world with enough of his talent to be as vital 38 years after his death as the day he threw his burning, broken guitar into a baying crowd at Monterey Pop.
Hendrix never really had time to tarnish his musical legacy as he passed away just a year after hitting his popular peak at Woodstock in 1969. Skinner, on the other hand, has been busy ruining any positivity he garnered with his early releases. He has now rejected referencing urban life in his music (apparently he recently refused to be interviewed anywhere that was too built-up), which hasn't had the Dylan-goes-electric effect he may have wanted. Instead, his new album Everything Is Borrowed has been widely panned but is at least not as offensively dull as his television show. However, he is nothing if not ambitious and the next – final, apparently – Streets album is rumoured to be influenced by Lou Reed's Berlin. Well, good luck with that Mr Skinner, but happy birthday Mr Hendrix.
Only eight years separates the death of one and birth of the other, but the music these musical innovators of sorts gave/inflicted upon the world is generations apart in both its style and content. While Jimi Hendrix is renowned by people who have never heard him play a riff as the Greatest Guitarist of All Time TimeTM, Mike Skinner, under the moniker of The Streets, brought garage music to a new breed of disaffected UK youths from within.
Even though he hasn't written a decent song for a good four years, this doesn't remove the impact Skinner had. While Eminem proved white people could rap, Skinner carried an undeniably British slant in his urbanised tales of youthful shenanigans. This saw his brand of garage, focusing on club sub-culture and wry reality, cross boundaries and find eager fans in indie circles and festival crowds. Plus, when he came back with Fit But You Know It and Dry Your Eyes, everybody loved him. We've all watched his smug face sitting near that swimming pool blubbering on, even if we wouldn't admit it now.
With Hendrix, anybody old enough will claim to have been at his legendary Isle of Wight performance, or at least known about the talismanic black guitarist by the time he arrived in London from New York in the mid-Sixties. While his unparalleled histrionics and inspired instrumental experimentation brought him the prestige he commands today, many of his most significant songs aren't even his. These include early breakthrough Hey Joe and Bob Dylan staple All Along The Watchtower – recently named the best cover ever by Jarvis Cocker.However, the likes of Purple Haze and Voodoo Chile are iconic snippets of a psychedelic freedom that seems to personify a certain part of music's ongoing personality. Hendrix is as ingrained into musical mythology as James Dean is in film, a gifted man who died young but left the world with enough of his talent to be as vital 38 years after his death as the day he threw his burning, broken guitar into a baying crowd at Monterey Pop.
Hendrix never really had time to tarnish his musical legacy as he passed away just a year after hitting his popular peak at Woodstock in 1969. Skinner, on the other hand, has been busy ruining any positivity he garnered with his early releases. He has now rejected referencing urban life in his music (apparently he recently refused to be interviewed anywhere that was too built-up), which hasn't had the Dylan-goes-electric effect he may have wanted. Instead, his new album Everything Is Borrowed has been widely panned but is at least not as offensively dull as his television show. However, he is nothing if not ambitious and the next – final, apparently – Streets album is rumoured to be influenced by Lou Reed's Berlin. Well, good luck with that Mr Skinner, but happy birthday Mr Hendrix.
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