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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Jimi Hendrix: The Star Spangled Banner

This is another clip that was deleted from Youtube that I have found on Dailymotion. This is the historically significant moment at Woodstock when Jimi Hendrix reinterpretated the Star Spangled Banner. This is significant in many ways because the times then were much like now. It didn't matter how patriotic you were, if your politics were against the war then you were unamerican. Jimi loved America, and stated many times that his version was out of love. However, the rightwing of America convinced most people that Hendrix's version of the song was unpatriotic and were able to ban the song from radio. Unfortunately as the years go by many people just assume that Hendrix was some drug addled hippie freak, when in reality he was far from it. In fact he was probably more sober then the majority of people who watched him play. The stories of LSD in his head band were myth, and he didn't OD from heroin or any heavy drugs, but an accidental overdose of sleeping pills. What furthered the tragedy is that because the paramedics thought he was a drug addict they strapped him down in the gurney and he died of asphyxiation of his own vomit. Also many people didn't know that Hendrix was a veteran of the US Army. He was a paratrooper! So here is a guy who really was pretty straight laced, and thanks to right wing myth his life has been totally rewritten into a drug addled hippie freak. All because he was against the war. The Vietnam War! Things never change do they!

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