Relative difficulty: Easy
THEME: JIMI HENDRIX (Musician born 11/27/42) — 70th birthday tribute puzzle
Word of the Day: LILI Taylor (41A: Actress Taylor of "Six Feet Under") —
Lili Anne Taylor (born February 20, 1967) is an American actress notable for her appearances in such award-winning indie films as Mystic Pizza, Say Anything..., Short Cuts and I Shot Andy Warhol, and the acclaimed TV show Six Feet Under. (wikipedia)• • •
I don't consider myself a particularly big JIMI HENDRIX fan, but I must know something because this puzzle went down very, very easily. I think the most trouble I had involved figuring out whom the wind was crying. I wanted "Mariah." Why did I want "Mariah?" Ah ... this is why:
Now I don't feel so bad. It's a pretty straightforward tribute, with no whistles or bells—just symmetrical songs. But it works. And the grid is quite solid. Nice to see FOTOMAT (5D: Bygone company with yellow-roofed kiosks), about which I haven't thought for many, many years. I also like TRUTH OR DARE (which I once used in a puzzle about Norse gods) and LEGAL ACTION, which reminds me of "Damages," which I am currently watching (via Netflix) and enjoying.
Theme answers:
- 5A: With 67-Across, song by 56-Across ("FOXY / LADY")
- 19A: With 32-Across, song by 56-Across ("ALL ALONG THE / WATCHTOWER")
- 11D: Song by 56-Across ("FIRE")
- 42A: Song by 56-Across ("PURPLE HAZE)
- 9D: With 60-Down, song by 56-Across ("HEY / JOE")
- 54D: "The Wind Cries ___" (song by 56-Across) ("MARY") — odd to have just the lone partial, but really, it's not a big puzzle in a simple tribute puzzle like this.
Bullets:
- 64A: Pete and Julie's "Mod Squad" partner (LINC) — the show is before my time, but LINC is very identifiable to me. He had a righteous 'fro.
- 68A: Compound with a double-bonded carbon atom (ENOL) — a word I would never have encountered in my lifetime were it not for crosswords. It's LONE backwards. I'm sure this information will come in handy some day.
- 28A: Conveyance in an Ellington song (A-TRAIN) — pretty common answer, as 6-letter answers go. I know Ella's vocal version, but here's Ellington doing a gorgeous version of the instrumental.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke (March 10, 1903 – August 6, 1931) was an American jazz cornetist, jazz pianist, and composer. // With Louis Armstrong, Beiderbecke was one of the most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s. His turns on "Singin' the Blues" (1927) and "I'm Coming, Virginia" (1927), in particular, demonstrated an unusual purity of tone and a gift for improvisation. With these two recordings, especially, he helped to invent the jazz ballad style and hinted at what, in the 1950s, would become cool jazz. "In a Mist" (1927), one of a handful of his piano compositions but the only one he recorded, mixed classical influences with jazz syncopation. Beiderbecke also has been credited for his influence, directly, on Bing Crosby and, indirectly, via saxophonist Frank Trumbauer, on Lester Young. (wikipedia)
Even though I finished in a perfectly normal time, I never felt like I got traction with this one. Very choppy solving experience. Took me a very long time to get any of the 15s. I think 
This was a nice little Wednesday puzzle. I know, it's not Wednesday; I'm just as confused as you are. Actually, I thought this was a Tuesday puzzle, theme-wise, but it was made Wednesdayish in difficulty through somewhat tougher cluing and big banks of long Downs in the NW and SE corners. Started with the incorrect BOLOS (those are ties, dummy), but easily got 
This is a fine grid, but I just couldn't find the Love. I struggled quite a bit, and the payoffs rarely seemed worth it. Also, I've simply never heard of a 
I remember an "H" puzzle from several years back that followed this same general pattern. That one was *much* harder, largely because the "H"s didn't stand alone the way *all* of the Xs in this puzzle do (much easier to see / find that way). In fact, in today's puzzle, I was able to blow through the whole thing in a well below-average time without even grasping that some of the X answers were theme answers. APOLLO, GAS, MALCOLM, PLANET—with all of these, it honestly didn't occur to me (in the speed-solving moment) that there was an "X" missing. I was dimly aware that I was to be on the lookout for missing "X"s, but when you're flying along and the "X"s aren't really holding you back any, it's easy to forget what you're supposed to be looking for. Anyway, now that I look at it, the theme is cute and clever, and mostly nicely executed. I'm a little distracted about the lack of rhyme or reason to the Xs directionality. I get that all the Downs up top end in "X" and all the Downs in the bottom half start with "X," but the fact that an "X" might work in two directions or ... might not ... that feels arbitrary, and thus not great. Also, having both 
My wife and I solved this together, with me calling out clues to her while she went about the business of baking my birthday cake. It was interesting to see how many answer she could get with seeing the grid or even knowing how many letters were in each answer, though she did think 1A: Dull-colored was DUN. Me: "I said *four* letters." Her: "DUN *is* four letters: D, U, N [puzzled look, laughter]." This theme is very cute, but I like it primarily for the host of interesting long Down answers. So many easy / high word-count puzzles lack longer non-theme answers, which leads to excessive dullness (or DUN-ness, or DUNN-ness). But here, we get fantastic stuff like 
I always hear SCAL*I*WAG, or maybe I'm thinking of POLLIWOG. I knew 
