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JIMI HENDRIX: Are Your Experienced?, Axis: Bold As Love, Electric Ladyland CDs - 1993 MCA Records Release - booklet texts by Michael Fairchild
(these CDs were later banned by Paul Allen & Insane Jane the Evil Fujita Beast)

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"The three new Hendrix re-releases on MCA have a new amazing look to them, but they are still the first three LPs (on CD)...Michael Fairchild did the liner notes...The content of the booklets is very good. Fairchild did a good job and I suspect he had a good time writing the notes. Each booklet runs to twenty-four pages, the first six to eight pages containing a bit of the history leading up to, and about, the particular release. The rest of the pages are a very descriptive song by song commentary. Very interesting and enjoyable reading, and a wealth of knowledge for someone new to Jimi Hendrix, and some new stuff even for me. The booklets are well worth reading...Well done to all concerned."

- Jimpress Magazine (U.K.) - November 1993

WLUP DJ: "MCA re-released the first three Jimi Hendrix records, Are You Experienced?, Axis: Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland. One of the nice things about the re-issue of Are You Experienced? is that they put the three singles, which came out before the album, they tack the A and B sides on at the beginning of the album, it's very nicely done….These are the three [CDs] that matter…We want to talk about Hendrix…and examine this with our special guest, Michael Fairchild, who wrote an amazing set of liner notes for each of these three records, they're very long, very in depth, they tell his whole career story, all of his recording history, each song in depth, very interesting. Michael Fairchild is a big Hendrix head. Essentially you get a free book with each one of the CDs, it's amazing…The production company is called Are You Experienced, Ltd., our guest Michael Fairchild is a staff writer, researcher, and consultant with that company. He's also a novelist, he's written other books. He does a Jimi Hendrix tribute band, he's the guy who got to write these amazing liner notes…Does Hendrix have relevance to people of my [current] generation?"

MF: "Jimi is like a reference point, one of the analogies that pertains is that Jimi is to the 1990s what Robert Johnson was to the 1960s, a major road map, going back to the origins of rock 'n roll in jazz and blues music. If you follow his career back to this understanding, not of just the times, but the whole musical evolution throughout this century up till today. Jimi jettisoned this whole progression into world music, taking this unique American blues form and making it a staple of world music…He straddled many different styles...coming from a jazz perspective of a musician's musician, that's one of the problems. People may focus in on one aspect that they appreciate but they might not get into [his] Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock. But there's a lot about Jimi that hasn't been presented yet, his story is so fantastic…it's going to survive for many generations…In the context of the 1960s, what was happening then…many decades of…biblical tenants, non-flamboyant, nonphysical mindset. Then there was a challenge and it was shattered with the introduction of rock 'n roll and blues, starting with Elvis Presley. The story of Jimi Hendrix is as potent as the music is, it's the hottest story, for a writer, that you could ask for...it's something that you get hooked by, like you somehow get caught by something. If you respond to the music you're going to explore it. If you don't have the ear to respond to it, you'll dismiss it. And Jimi has an army of detractors, no doubt. Likewise, there's a percentage of each generation that comes up that emotionally responds to him. The music does something to them, it transforms the way they hear and the way they think…You might come from a jazz feel and you might want to hear a 25 minute solo, it's almost like a mantra that you can meditate on, it takes you someplace. For people who are tuned into the jazz artist, they love that.

"In Jimi's own words, there's a current book out from HarperCollins called Cherokee Mist - The Lost Writings of Jimi Hendrix, with a lot of his unpublished songs. He was a poet, with science fiction and space imagery, as well as prophecy and extraterrestrial life…you can see in his spiritual writings a communion with the transcendent, a supernatural aspect. Jimi is about the blues, which is the possession dance and ecstatic experience…Today, he'd probably be a multimedia figure. He built a studio right before his death, and he was writing film scripts, he had ideas for visual images. Jimi was interested in expanding mind forms, the evolution of the mind, the unexpected twist, something different…He's a transcendent historical figure who is going to be scrutinized for centuries."

- WLUP-FM "The Loop" Radio Chicago - November 14, 1993

"I'm waiting for that truck [Exhibition] thing to come through town."

MF: That was my project, I was the one who proposed that. It was at the CMJ Convention two weeks ago in New York, a university multi-media exhibition, it's got hi-tech interactive software, you can touch screens and get examples of music and pictures and quotes. There are images of Jimi created by many prominent artists. It's on a tour of campuses now, it's an offshoot of the art gallery exhibition that's been going on for several years. It'll be touring the world for the next three or four years. It's available for campuses to bring into the schools for a couple days, a walk through theme park of Jimi Hendrix.

"Michael Fairchild is in the studio, a Hendrix expert, a professional, for five years you've been getting paid to know about Jimi Hendrix. Who pays you?"

MF: Are You Experienced? A company in Hollywood, the official production company for Hendrix.

"There's a new four CD box set out, called Jimi Hendrix: The Experience Collection, when did it come out?

MF: About a month ago…We just switched over from Warner Bros. to MCA in April…and put together this box set, where the first three [Hendrix] albums were re-done with new covers…new artwork, re-packaged and re-mastered…The original covers are on the back. Right now we're putting together "The Blues"…one CD of Jimi's blues tracks that haven't been released, I'm writing the booklet.

"How come no one has mentioned the Band of Gypsys album?"

MF: For five years we've been trying to have that released…Negotiations have been going on for five years. I wrote the liner notes back in 1989 for that and it still hasn't been released. There's a black and white video of that set that a guy from Holland made.

- WCMF-FM Radio Rochester - November 15, 1993

"Hendrix on Wheels. A traveling show of art and photographs is turning into a virtual-reality jam session. 'Jimi Hendrix On the Road Again,' an art exhibition on steroids, which has turned into what its promoters describe as 'an explosion of multidimensional visual images and interactive tactile sensations driven by the music of Jimi Hendrix.' Ground zero for this explosion is an 84-foot semi trailer that is hand-painted with Jimi Hendrix images in psychedelic colors. This rolling free gallery...has swung open its doors in Boston, Philadelphia, Albany, Atlanta, and New York...next year, the exhibition will come off the truck at a series of colleges...the renewed buzz is so strong that there is already a critique of...the mythmaking machinery...The exhibition came to the Ambassador Gallery in New York last spring...the primary venues will be college campuses...the digitally enhanced, computer-assisted, interactive exhibition tour could be the way to promote new records without the hassles of hotel food and groupies."

- The New York Times - November 21, 1993

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