(SEATTLE, WA - April 11, 2006) -- As the greatest, most influential debut album ever released, Are You Experienced is about the musical equivalent of the Big Bang that scientists believed originated the universe. In both cases, many generations later, the world is still trying to absorb, organize and make sense of what that initiating event spewed forth.

No other Rock artist has, from the outset, violated so many rules while completely fulfilling so many expectations. The proof is that nearly 40 years after it first hit our turntables, Are You Experienced still sounds not only fresh but startling. That premise also remains true when simply looking at Jimi Hendrix as a guitarist. Ever since the release of Are You Experience, the electric guitar was a different instrument, with different sonic possibilities, tonal characteristics, even physical properties-Jimi immediately made it clear you could play more than just the strings and fretboard.

Are You Experienced was important as an album, however, for more reasons than just Jimi Hendrix's guitar playing. Like any truly great work, it succeeded on several levels, most notably, by featuring great compositions, played by a great band, and by using the past as a palette from which to create its seeming future. The album's moods are multiple: brooding, joyous, humorous, serious. Its musical modes include flat-out rock 'n' roll, pure blues, psychedelic extravaganzas, and within its own rules, elements of jazz and modernist music too. It is a marvel of recording, with layers of sound nevertheless resolving into songs that could, for the most part, be played live onstage. The singing is great rock 'n' roll, not a sweet voice but one that has learned the lessons that deep study of the blues and Bob Dylan have to teach. And it is driven by a vision, of freedom and of danger, the equal of any in rock 'n' roll.

Are You Experienced also explored the idea of the concept album as expounded on Pet Sounds, Freak Out! and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. None of those records had been able to resolve their highest ambitions within the fundamentally raunchy context of rock 'n' roll; they had sacrificed speed, power and grit for brainpower. Jimi Hendrix and company brought them all back together again, and they did it from the very first note of the very first song-"Purple Haze."

You have to start with the Big Bang to get where Jimi wanted to take you, on a circuit of his entire personal universe, an experience that would not just entertain you or enlighten you but change your life at its very core. A promise so big that only a crazed rock 'n' roller would make it, let alone try to deliver on it-which he not only tried to do but did. For me, that moment when Jimi cries, "Lately things don't seem the same" puts the whole event of the album into definitive perspective, because they never would again.

It is with this sheer impact, relevance and ageless point of musical discovery that the Library of Congress has added The Jimi Hendrix Experience's debut release Are You Experienced (1967) into their National Recording Registry. The April 11, 2006 event held in the Members' Room in the Thomas Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC marks the fourth annual selection of 50 historic sound recordings to be added to the National Registry.

Bob Hendrix, Jimi Hendrix's cousin and Vice President of Experience Hendrix, L.L.C. will be in attendance at the event and he will be joined by Martha Reeves, former lead singer of the classic Motown group Martha & the Vandellas; the Firesign Theatre Group; Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services, Library of Congress; and Gregory Lukow, Chief, Motional Picture, Broadcasting &Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress.

The National Recording Registry was established by the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000 (P.L. 106-474) "to maintain and preserve sound recordings and collections of sound recordings that are culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The purpose of the registry is to draw attention to the critical need to preserve and restore America's recorded sound heritage. This heritage is threatened by the deterioration of most of the recording media invented in the last 100 years, including modern audiotape.

The Library's Recorded Sound Section holds 2.8 million sound recordings. At last year's National Recording Registry news conference, the Library announced that historically significant concert tapes, featuring the legendary jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk and iconic saxophonist John Coltrane, had been uncovered in the Library's recorded sound collection during preparation for preservation.

For more information:

• The National Recording Registry:
  http://www.loc.gov/rr/record/nrpb/nrpb-nrr.html
• The Library of Congress:
  http://www.loc.gov

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