Along with most other aspects of my life, this blog has been sucking pretty bad lately. I supposed that in large part it has to do with the fact that I don’t really write anything anymore. That isn’t to say that it was “so” awesome or something when I did actually put some words on a post. It is tough when so much that is currently happening in my sphere is unbloggable (in my opinion). To make up for it, I’m going to drop a music post that actually has some meat to it. It has been a while, I know.
The only way that I have been able to motivate myself to run lately, is by listening to music. Sunday when I was out pounding pavement, “Voodoo Chile” came on. It brought back a whole series of thoughts and memories.
I love the music of Jimi Hendrix. I love the idea of Jimi Hendrix. He and Jim Morrison, to me are enigmatic purveyors of the essence of rock. I imagine that the sensations I had listening to The Doors and Jimi Hendrix at a young age is probably similar to what the kids of today feel about Nirvana. I wonder what it must have been like to be a contemporary of Hendrix, to hear him play his upside-down backwards guitar live.
I had some friends that I played music with when I was in high school. At the time, we called ourselves a band. We would get together once a week (or whenever) and bang out our 5 or so original songs, followed by a few cover songs, followed by a jam session that would wax on until the neighbors called and asked us to shut it down. After that, we would generally do something like watch a movie, or talk about what gear we were going to save up for.
I remember one particular night after one of the aforementioned jam sessions, my friends and I watched a movie. One cool thing for me, is that I was the youngest member of the band. So, I was able to learn about what was going on with the older kids by virtue of hanging out with my band mates. It also means that my band mates were old enough to rent R-rated movies. I’m going to change some names to protect the innocent. So one night– there we were after band practice hanging out in Moel Marrard’s basement. Moel had a new release VHS from Blockbuster called “In the Name of the Father.” I hadn’t really even heard of it.
The film is a period piece depicting an Irish teenager who was wrongly convicted of any IRA bombing in Belfast. The film is extremely moving. My point of sharing this story is that, I was sitting there with Moel and the rest of band mates in the basement of the Marrard family residence. The movie had been on long enough that I was starting to get super captivated. Suddenly there was a very powerfully shot riot scene where all of the IRA kids were charging the cops with bricks and bottles. The soundtrack to that scene was “Voodoo Chile.” That was the first time I had ever heard it. I was blown away. The guitar, the biblical references in the lyrics, all of it. I couldn’t believe that I had spent 16 years of my life without having heard this song. The raw emotion that I felt seeing those riot images with Hendrix’s guitar blasting, literally gave me goose bumps. I almost get them just writing about it.
That was a really long way of saying that I really like this song. Turn your headphones all of the way up and give it a spin.
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