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Since Hendrix has been popping up a lot on here, I started thinking about Vietnam war corrspondent Michael Herr's book, Dispatches. There's a great passage on Hendrix (props again to Charles Shaar Murray's great book, "Crosstown Traffic"):

Herr describes an episode where he and several other men had dropped from a helicopter into a rice paddy. They are immediately trapped by enemy fire behind a low rice paddy wall, waiting for a gunship to rescue them:


'There was a lot of fire coming from the trees, but we were all right as long as we kept down. And I was thinking, Oh man, so this is a rice paddy, yes, wow! when I suddenly heard an electric guitar shooting right up in my ear, and a mean, rapturous black voice singing, coaxing, "Now c'mon baby, stop actin' so crazy,".... and when I finally got it all together, I turned to see a grinning black corporal hunched over a cassette recorder. "Might's well," he said. "We ain' goin' nowhere till them gunships come."

That's the story of the first time I ever heard Jimi Hendrix. But in a war where people talk about Aretha's 'Respect' the way others speak of Mahler's Fifth, it was more than just music. It was Credentials... '"Say, that Jimi Hendrix is my main man", someone would say. "He's Definitely got his shit together." Hendrix had once been in the 101st Airborne, and the Airborne in Vietnam was full of wiggy-brilliant spades like him, really mean and really good, guys who always took care of you when things got bad. That music meant a lot to them. I never once heard it played over the Armed Forces Radio Network.'


Michael Herr,

Dispatches





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[Edited 12/6/06 13:08pm]

Nice insight.

Wait until you hear/see... John McLaughlin describe how Miles Davis reacts to seeing Jimi Hendrix when he took him to the Monterey Pop Festival movie.

It's part of a separate "Jimi Hendrix" chapter of the...



...Miles Davis Story DVD.



tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

theAudience said:

Kool!!! Gotta see that!!




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