Jimi Hendrix's Star Spangled Banner, Woodstock Music Festival 1969.
From Mike Daley:
"Hendrix adorns the simple anthemic melody with scoops and articulations like a lone gospel singer. This vocal interpretation continues through the first two stanzas, with some trumpet-like trills appearing later on. With feedback beginning to encroach on the held notes, Hendrix engages the wah pedal to up the treble ante. He follows the B section line “and the rockets’ red glare...” with the wail of a falling bomb and its subsequent explosion, mashing his Stratocaster’s vibrato bar to its lowest position. Some rolling confusion follows, screaming voices, machine gun ratatats, unearthly strangled cries, a mother’s futile wails. Then the line “the bombs bursting in air”, followed by a low-toned siren, some unplaceable sounds of unreality, another bomb assault, twisted metal and bodies, a trickle of blood. “Our flag was still there” leaps up to a keening, pure-toned quotation of “Taps”. The final stanza beginning with “Oh say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave” is given a straight treatment but is filtered through ululating pickup toggle switch effects, with the word “wave” held through successions of fed-back harmonic overtones. With a strangled stop, Hendrix resumes with “o’er the land of the free”, with the final note of the line again left for dead to have its fundamental pitch leached out by the feedback decay, and a final bomb’s fall to earth. After a short serious of portentous, incongruous chords, Hendrix segues into a perfunctory “Purple Haze”."
"Hendrix adorns the simple anthemic melody with scoops and articulations like a lone gospel singer. This vocal interpretation continues through the first two stanzas, with some trumpet-like trills appearing later on. With feedback beginning to encroach on the held notes, Hendrix engages the wah pedal to up the treble ante. He follows the B section line “and the rockets’ red glare...” with the wail of a falling bomb and its subsequent explosion, mashing his Stratocaster’s vibrato bar to its lowest position. Some rolling confusion follows, screaming voices, machine gun ratatats, unearthly strangled cries, a mother’s futile wails. Then the line “the bombs bursting in air”, followed by a low-toned siren, some unplaceable sounds of unreality, another bomb assault, twisted metal and bodies, a trickle of blood. “Our flag was still there” leaps up to a keening, pure-toned quotation of “Taps”. The final stanza beginning with “Oh say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave” is given a straight treatment but is filtered through ululating pickup toggle switch effects, with the word “wave” held through successions of fed-back harmonic overtones. With a strangled stop, Hendrix resumes with “o’er the land of the free”, with the final note of the line again left for dead to have its fundamental pitch leached out by the feedback decay, and a final bomb’s fall to earth. After a short serious of portentous, incongruous chords, Hendrix segues into a perfunctory “Purple Haze”."
No comments:
Post a Comment