Jimi Hendrix - Snowballs at My Window (Edited Song) (1968)

A couple of days ago, the 50th Anniversary Edition of Jimi Hendrix's classic "Electric Ladyland" was released. It has a bonus disc of outtakes, most of which are unreleased. I'm not going to post that, because you should buy it, which leads to more similar releases. However, I am posting one song from it, because I've made a significant edit to it that I think improves the song.

The song in question is "Snowballs at My Window." It's just Hendrix on an acoustic guitar, apparently with his friend Paul Caruso helping out. Before the official release, I already had a copy of the song, because it had come to light due to it being up for auction. As part of that auction, a 40 second long snippet was released to reveal what was for sale. I was happy to see that it was included in the new "Electric Ladyland" release, so I could hear the full song. But I was disappointed to find out that a second or two after that fade out, the song completely breaks down after Hendrix made a flub. So there was no rest of the song. And it seems it was the one and only time he recorded the song, even though it's a song with lots of promise.

As I've shown elsewhere in the blog, I'm not afraid to make edits to songs if I feel it's an improvement for my listening enjoyment. (I'm surprised I haven't gotten flak for that from musical purists, at least not yet.)  In this case, with the song being only 40 or so seconds long, it ends before it can get very far, making it a frustrating listening experience. The second broke down midway through the second verse. So what I did was patch in the rest of the first verse right where the breakdown happens, then the chorus again. Then, using pieces of the intro, I cobbled together a short outro to give the song an ending.

This is less than ideal. It would have been much better if he'd made it through all of the second verse before the break down. The lyrics don't logically follow each other from the part of the second verse to the repeat of the rest of the first verse. But the words rush by too fast to really catch anyway, in the style of Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues," so I don't think it matters much unless you really pay close attention.

As it is, even with this edit lengthening the song, it still ends up being only one minute and five seconds long. There just wasn't much there to work with. But still, at least now it sounds like an actual song, if a very short one, instead of a mere snippet.

https://www.upload.ee/files/15239500/JimiH_SnowballsatMyWindwSongEdit.zip.html

By the way, I used the 50th Anniversary Edition version of the song for this edit. Although it didn't matter much because the song quality was pretty much identical to the existing bootleg version, at least to my ears.