By The Jimi Hendrix Experience, 1998

Some of Jimi Hendrix's live radio broadcasts for the BBC were released by Rykodisc in 1988 on Radio One, but The BBC Sessions, remastered and fleshed out into a two-disc completist's dream, is perhaps the best document of how the Experience sounded live in 1967. From blues stomps such as Muddy Waters's "Catfish Blues" to surly R&B vamps such as the three takes of Curtis Knight's "Driving South," Hendrix explores his roots with hardscrabble passion. Meanwhile, he pushes the psychedelic-pop spectrum with surprisingly rich versions of studio-tweaked numbers like "The Burning of the Midnight Lamp." There's plenty of slop--a stumbling jam with Stevie Wonder on "I Was Made to Love Her"--and lots of horsing around and awkward interview fragments.

But in its balance of pop form, interstellar improv, R&B pedigree, and sheer charm, The BBC Sessions is about as accurate and honest a snapshot of the charismatic, still-pimply 24-year-old phenom as you're likely to hear. --James Rotondi

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