When idiots are responsible for album packaging

I came across this song by accident really, although as it was on an album that I bought, I was bound to hear it eventually.

It all harks back to watching a programme on the telly, probably Sound Of The Sixties, and it showing an archive clip of Jimi playing Sunshine Of Your Love on the Lulu TV show. Jimi seemed to be the epitome of cool. I immediately wanted to be like him and saw no reason why I couldn’t. After all, we had so much in common. I picked up the guitar left-handed - although I couldn’t play it - and erm…that’s about it.

So I started flicking through CDs in record shops trying to find which album had Sunshine Of Your Love on it. I couldn’t find it anywhere. (At this stage I had no idea it was actually a Cream song).

Eventually, I was in a record shop in Sheffield’s Meadowhall, where I found a copy of Jimi Hendrix Live At Winterland, (with red rays on a white background on the cover, not blue as pictured here), with track 4…Sunshine Of Your Love! Yes, I had finally found it!

But I couldn’t listen to it for a few days, because we were visiting relatives without a CD player and there wasn’t even one in the car. Eventually, when we returned home, I raced upstairs and went straight to track 4. Only it wasn’t Sunshine Of Your Love. Or at least not in a form recognisable to me. The other tune I really wanted to hear was Wild Thing – track 13, only, when I flicked through the tracks to find it, the CD player wouldn’t go past track 11. Turns out, despite the album packaging claiming otherwise, there were 11 tracks on the CD and not 13.

Having worked out that, as Frankie Howerd would empathise with, the Prologue and Epilogue didn’t really exist, I flicked back to track 3 and revelled in the wonder-riff of Sunshine Of Your Love on track 3. But listening to the album as a whole, it was clear the standout Jimi-penned track was, and still is, Spanish Castle Magic. The best tune he ever wrote. (Although Who Knows is currently fighting for top spot). Wonderfully silly lyrics, but more importantly, what a great riff.

If ever I’m waiting for a bus or a train, I sometimes wonder if a dragonfly will come along first and take me to a groovy place with a groovy name, even if it isn’t in Spain.

Wolverhampton. Now that’s a groovy name isn’t it?