Van Duerm essays

Van Duerm essays Anxious young fans swayed under open skies and heavy rains, reveling in the music and sustaining a mood of hope and renewal that would define their generation. Only some 80,000 people remained from an overwhelming 400,000 that Monday, August 18, 1969 at Max Yasgur' s dairy farm in Bethel, New York (Piccoli 112). They awaited Jimi Hendrix and his band as they prepared to close the Woodstock Music and Arts Festival. The event was becoming a special memory that no future event would ever quite be able to match in its mixture of music, magic, misery, spontaneity, and history. Those who had left before the finale would live to realize their regret. The last act walked onto the stage under a streaky morning sky with his white Fender Stratocaster slung over one shoulder and his wild black hair bound in a red headband (Piccoli 11-12). The group eventually began and tore into the classic hit "Fire" followed by an ensemble of prime works of "Isabella", "Hear My Train A -Comin, and the proclaimed new American anthem of "Voodoo Chile (Wadleigh 60). Plagued by a bad sound system, due to rain and electrical storms, a sunken stage, and adverse weather conditions, Hendrix could not quite win the crowd over. That was until he stepped away from his microphone, looking like a cowboy gypsie and cosmic hitchhiker, sounded out the first notes of the song everyone knew so well: "The Star Spangled Banner." Hendrix's guitar seemed to mock and revere the national anthem's grandiosity. The effects of one of the most electrifying performances ever was captured by Michael Wadleigh himself, the director of the famous Woodstock documentary, The experience of standing in front of Hendrix was awesome. The hair came up on the back of my neck and everybodys neck. You did not hear the sound through your ears, you heard it through your diaphragm. It vibrated. It kicked you...