Flashback Friday: Valleys of Neptune

Photo courtesy of whisty.wordpress.com

Every high school has to have at least someone like Ricky–that spunk-filled, profanity-spewing wild child who would have been right at home rolling around in the Woodstock mud or strumming his guitar on a late 60s afternoon in Haight Ashbury.

He was a character. You could count on Ricky to crack a joke during lecture or bust out an air-guitar celebration at the end of his class presentations. You could also count that he’d be wearing his favorite Led Zeppelin t-shirt and tattered jeans, while blasting the likes of Cream or the Dead like a bona fide hippie. On days where he wasn’t at school, you could probably find him in a garage somewhere cleaning up guitar licks with his hard rock cover band.

Forget the 60s documentaries, Ricky was the real deal.

But for Ricky, there was one band–one man–that stood above the rest in his musical stylings: Jimi Hendrix. If Zeppelin was Jesus, then Hendrix was God. It was Ricky’s duty to spread the gospel of Axis: Bold as Love, an album I’ve heard at least 20 times simply when he felt the need to blast it on his headphones.

Next week, a posthumous album, Valleys of Neptune, will be released and will include seven unreleased recordings from the mind of Hendrix. Below are two particular gems from the album “Valleys of Neptune” and “Lullaby for the Summer.” I know somewhere out there, Ricky’s already jamming out to the album, grinning like never before. This one’s for you bud.

-Ryan