Was watching Woodstock: Directors Cut and Hendrix...

Clockworkmike

Clockworkmike

Ambassador of STACKS in WV SHACKS
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Was bored this evening and turned on Woodstock: Directors Cut on HBOMax. As it got towards the end, of course you have the immortal Jimi Hendrix closing out the concert ( which is by miles, the best part) and I was noticing a few things.

First off, for people my age and far younger, we all know the name Hendrix instantly, even if a lot of people never really listened to him. But for those who actually DO listen to his music, it's clear why he's held in the highest regard if not THE highest. You watch Woodstock for example and there's not a single act over those 3 days that were even in the same area code of that guy as far as talent. Mountain were obviously fantastic rockers, as were The Who, Ten Years After and even Canned Heat brought the goods, but Hendrix was on another plane entirely. While his rendition of " The Star Spangled Banner" is the stuff of lore, his version of Voodoo Chile was the birthplace of what we now recognize as metal guitar as far as Im concerned, rather you want to accept that or not

But that brings me to my biggest point: i was noticing the crowd and its nearly empty. According to the stories, 2 different thunderstorms over the 3 days screwed up the schedule times for the performers and by the time Jimi closed out the festival, most folks already shagged it back home.

I honestly wonder if the attendees who bailed before it was all over; wake up every single day of their lives, climb out of bed and plant one of their own feet directly into their asses for such a stupid decision. Seriously, it was one if not THE most significant performances in music history and if I were given a chance to go back to any one place in time? Id probably toss this into the ring for me personally.

Lastly, my daughter asked me " Why do you say he was the best?" as I was watching the movie and it stumped me for a second. I think if i were to explain WHY he was so great? Its like Chuck Yeager showing mankind that humans couldn't be limited in speed by the Sound Barrier. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin showing that footprints wouldnt be restricted to just Earth. Albert Einstein proving that mankind could control the energy of the unseen Atom.

Hendrix showed aspiring guitar players that there wasn't this invisible wall that we couldn't pass beyond. That you could take it to unprecedented heights and unknown territories: that even the sky isn't the limit.

That's why he'll always be the best to me.

 
Think on this-
Everyone remembers hearing Hendrix at Woodstock the first time, and being blown way. Killer end to an amazing concert line up. In my humble opinion, Sly & The Family Stone was hands down the best act of the weekend; it took Jimi Hendrix to make people forget about Sly & Co....
The Filmore Live album is the other show that was Band of Gypsies, also very good live Hendrix.
 
Clockworkmike said:
Was bored this evening and turned on Woodstock: Directors Cut on HBOMax. As it got towards the end, of course you have the immortal Jimi Hendrix closing out the concert ( which is by miles, the best part) and I was noticing a few things.

First off, for people my age and far younger, we all know the name Hendrix instantly, even if a lot of people never really listened to him. But for those who actually DO listen to his music, it's clear why he's held in the highest regard if not THE highest. You watch Woodstock for example and there's not a single act over those 3 days that were even in the same area code of that guy as far as talent. Mountain were obviously fantastic rockers, as were The Who, Ten Years After and even Canned Heat brought the goods, but Hendrix was on another plane entirely. While his rendition of " The Star Spangled Banner" is the stuff of lore, his version of Voodoo Chile was the birthplace of what we now recognize as metal guitar as far as Im concerned, rather you want to accept that or not

But that brings me to my biggest point: i was noticing the crowd and its nearly empty. According to the stories, 2 different thunderstorms over the 3 days screwed up the schedule times for the performers and by the time Jimi closed out the festival, most folks already shagged it back home.

I honestly wonder if the attendees who bailed before it was all over; wake up every single day of their lives, climb out of bed and plant one of their own feet directly into their asses for such a stupid decision. Seriously, it was one if not THE most significant performances in music history and if I were given a chance to go back to any one place in time? Id probably toss this into the ring for me personally.

Lastly, my daughter asked me " Why do you say he was the best?" as I was watching the movie and it stumped me for a second. I think if i were to explain WHY he was so great? Its like Chuck Yeager showing mankind that humans couldn't be limited in speed by the Sound Barrier. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin showing that footprints wouldnt be restricted to just Earth. Albert Einstein proving that mankind could control the energy of the unseen Atom.

Hendrix showed aspiring guitar players that there wasn't this invisible wall that we couldn't pass beyond. That you could take it to unprecedented heights and unknown territories: that even the sky isn't the limit.

That's why he'll always be the best to me.

Click to expand...
Not only did Hendrix set the foundation of modern guitar playing / production / recording...
(you would need to listen to Electric Ladyland to get this)
I think it was quite the epic time for Carlos Santana too. To me, Santana bridged the gap between traditional Latin music and popular music; he brought Latin music into the mainstream of pop culture.
Suddenly so many people realized how cool Latin music Latin Rhythm really was...it caught on fast.
Last but not least
Crosby Stills Nash Young Taylor Reeves left a lasting impression, or for me it did.
 
Ghostwolf said:
Think on this-
Everyone remembers hearing Hendrix at Woodstock the first time, and being blown way. Killer end to an amazing concert line up. In my humble opinion, Sly & The Family Stone was hands down the best act of the weekend; it took Jimi Hendrix to make people forget about Sly & Co....
The Filmore Live album is the other show that was Band of Gypsies, also very good live Hendrix.
Click to expand...
I like Sly quite a lot too...
but at the same time we were being bombarded by all the racist overtones of our society, and a lot of it was focused on Sly Stone. They painted Sly as a radical and made him into an outcast.
 
Very cool reading everyone else's perspectives on Hendrix and the other great bands at Woodstock as well that i forgot to give mention towards!

As mentioned above: Santana and company did great, specially going off into a frenzy with Soul Sacrifice which was insane and they had a groundbreaking style. Sly and the Family Stone played a phenomenal set ( i think it was around 3am, crazy enough) and they were one, if not THE first bands to begin bridging motown R&B with Rock N Roll and arguably creating funk simultaneously. Then there was CSNY giving their 2nd show as a band with the beautiful vocal harmonies ( although I hated that Neil Young refused to play during the acoustic sections, as he has some wonderful acoustic songs himself)

I also neglected to mention Richie Havens' high energy sweat-filled opening set, Johnny Winter's awesome midnight performance with brother Edgar on a few songs and Janis Joplin gave a great soulful show. Could've done without Sha Na Na Na however lol ( allegedly it was Hendrix who got them the gig and performing just before him!)

As Ray mentioned, yeah I guess sitting here watching this kinda recharged my old interest in Hendrix a bit. He wasn't the one who inspired me to pick up a guitar but he instantly became the benchmark for me on what you could do with a guitar ( still is really). While i tend to play hard rock and metal these days, i started out playing classic rock and i will always be drawn back to that full circle, no matter how far of a tangent i may go off too. That's honestly where my heart lies i guess lol
 
Yargnad said:
I, honestly, would've been one of those people that would've left. I hate messy situations like the mud and trash and piss and :poo: so I would've hightailed it right outta there.
Click to expand...

Same here. I don’t mind getting messy if I’m actually doing something, like working on a car or working in the yard. I’ll get dirty and sweaty without a complaint, and keep at it until the job is done. But, when it’s done, I’m right in the shower!

I can‘t muster enough cognitive dissonance to be covered in mud and hide from the rain under a trash bag and call it, “fun”!
 
I first saw Jimi on a TV show. It was around 1971, IIRC, and I was about 6 or 7 years old. This is the clip that introduced me to Hendrix:


I was really interested in his music after the Dick Cavett show performance, but, the Hendrix performance that made me want to become a performer, was this 1968 Miami Pop gig:


I started dressing wild like Hendrix and that only made me more of an outcast socially, but in "that place" that people put me, where I was an outcast and I was shunned by everyone, I was able to get away with things like bring my guitar to school and ask to be excused to take my work outside. Because I was really good at schoolwork, I could finish quickly and spend all my extra time playing guitar.

I've been practicing social distancing for 56 years....
 
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Robert Herndon said:
I first saw Jimi on a TV show. It was around 1971, IIRC, and I was about 6 or 7 years old. This is the clip that introduced me to Hendrix:


I was really interested in his music after the Dick Cavett show performance, but, the Hendrix performance that made me want to become a performer, was this 1968 Miami Pop gig:


I started dressing wild like Hendrix and that only made me more of an outcast socially, but in "that place" that people put me, where I was an outcast and I was shunned by everyone, I was able to get away with things like bring my guitar to school and ask to be excused to take my work outside. Because I was really good at schoolwork, I could finish quickly and spend all my extra time playing guitar.

I've been practicing social distancing for 56 years....
Click to expand...
That's awesome! Incentive to do good in school if you get to jam on your guitar!

We had a strings class in highschool where you "learned" guitar but our instructor was a keyboardist and could barely play the guitar himself. It was mostly reading sheet music out of Hal Leonard books. But we abused the system anyways and instead of playing Ode To Joy or Greensleeves, we used that class as just a jam session lol @froman5150 was in the same group as me and we just used it as extra time to practice band riffs.

Before the Columbine Tragedy, we could carry our guitars around and hang in the empty corridors at lunch time to play but that event ended all of that. I actually wound up with a few days detention for bringing a little Fender Mini Twin amp in my SG case and played electric. A teacher told me to turn it off at lunchtime because it violated the schools " No Battery Operated Devices" policy. Of course, I didnt listen and cranked it lmao
 
Clockworkmike said:
That's awesome! Incentive to do good in school if you get to jam on your guitar!

We had a strings class in highschool where you "learned" guitar but our instructor was a keyboardist and could barely play the guitar himself. It was mostly reading sheet music out of Hal Leonard books. But we abused the system anyways and instead of playing Ode To Joy or Greensleeves, we used that class as just a jam session lol @froman5150 was in the same group as me and we just used it as extra time to practice band riffs.

Before the Columbine Tragedy, we could carry our guitars around and hang in the empty corridors at lunch time to play but that event ended all of that. I actually wound up with a few days detention for bringing a little Fender Mini Twin amp in my SG case and played electric. A teacher told me to turn it off at lunchtime because it violated the schools " No Battery Operated Devices" policy. Of course, I didn't listen and cranked it lmao
Click to expand...

Dear God I hate when things bring back memories...


I hated school. People were very mean to me and they didn't "get" why I talked differently (I had a very strong Southern accent from being raised by Southern parents that I work diligently to this day to mask) and I dressed like the 1960's, which wasn't 'en vogue' in the later 1970's, so everyday was just torture and the guitar helped me to cope. It was like my therapy. I had a teacher at Westfield Elementary School named Mrs. Davenport. She was frustrated by my questions, but I was really asking because I wanted to know about the deeper meaning behind things...like the oil embargo of 1973 and what the deeper causes were. She made me a dunce hat and had me sit on a stool in front of her desk because "only stupid people would ask such stupid questions" and she would invite the kids to file past and tell me why it's not good to ask stupid questions. This kept on until I stopped asking questions. Then, when a second Robert came into our class, (his name was Robert Alquist) she announced that she was going to change my name to 'Lord Robert' so she could tell us apart. She brought a very wild bath robe from home and a Burger King paper crown and performed a "coronation" in which I was knighted with her yardstick. She would repeat my questions back to me I was afraid to tell anyone because I felt that it would only get worse.

Ultimately, a teacher named Walter Nelson walked by me one day and asked why I was sitting outside in my desk. (I was frequently banished from the class for all manner of things and Mrs. Davenport called it 'Royal Exile.') It was cold and foggy and you could feel the little drops of moisture in the air that morning. I just looked up at him and these big tears began to fall. I couldn't speak. I remember looking down at my desk and seeing the tears form small puddles and I just wished I could be somewhere else. He patted me on the head and he opened the door and said, "Mrs. Davenport. I'm going to be taking this student with me. We can work out all the paperwork later." He turned to me and said, "Come with me." I remember being so scared and shaking and I didn't know what to expect, but I got up and walked with him a few doors down to his class.

Mr. Nelson changed my life...

Junior High at Bartlett in Porterville was a little better. Boys and girls were discovering each other and they had less time to focus on me. Once I started playing in bands, people kind of left me alone, but I still couldn't get close to people, because I always seemed to say the wrong thing and put people off. We didn't know about ASD and Asperger's back then, so you just got labeled 'weird' or a 'Fag' for the strange mannerisms and flamboyant dress. Even today, I am very nervous meeting people for the very first time.


Eventually, we formed this little band and we asked if we could play at lunchtime in the quad. By this time, I was older and less tolerant of being pushed about, and the music was my outlet. To this day, when I am performing, it's the only time I truly feel 'normal.'

Sorry...
 
Robert Herndon said:
Dear God I hate when things bring back memories...


I hated school. People were very mean to me and they didn't "get" why I talked differently (I had a very strong Southern accent from being raised by Southern parents that I work diligently to this day to mask) and I dressed like the 1960's, which wasn't 'en vogue' in the later 1970's, so everyday was just torture and the guitar helped me to cope. It was like my therapy. I had a teacher at Westfield Elementary School named Mrs. Davenport. She was frustrated by my questions, but I was really asking because I wanted to know about the deeper meaning behind things...like the oil embargo of 1973 and what the deeper causes were. She made me a dunce hat and had me sit on a stool in front of her desk because "only stupid people would ask such stupid questions" and she would invite the kids to file past and tell me why it's not good to ask stupid questions. This kept on until I stopped asking questions. Then, when a second Robert came into our class, (his name was Robert Alquist) she announced that she was going to change my name to 'Lord Robert' so she could tell us apart. She brought a very wild bath robe from home and a Burger King paper crown and performed a "coronation" in which I was knighted with her yardstick. She would repeat my questions back to me I was afraid to tell anyone because I felt that it would only get worse.

Ultimately, a teacher named Walter Nelson walked by me one day and asked why I was sitting outside in my desk. (I was frequently banished from the class for all manner of things and Mrs. Davenport called it 'Royal Exile.') It was cold and foggy and you could feel the little drops of moisture in the air that morning. I just looked up at him and these big tears began to fall. I couldn't speak. I remember looking down at my desk and seeing the tears form small puddles and I just wished I could be somewhere else. He patted me on the head and he opened the door and said, "Mrs. Davenport. I'm going to be taking this student with me. We can work out all the paperwork later." He turned to me and said, "Come with me." I remember being so scared and shaking and I didn't know what to expect, but I got up and walked with him a few doors down to his class.

Mr. Nelson changed my life...

Junior High at Bartlett in Porterville was a little better. Boys and girls were discovering each other and they had less time to focus on me. Once I started playing in bands, people kind of left me alone, but I still couldn't get close to people, because I always seemed to say the wrong thing and put people off. We didn't know about ASD and Asperger's back then, so you just got labeled 'weird' or a 'Fag' for the strange mannerisms and flamboyant dress. Even today, I am very nervous meeting people for the very first time.


Eventually, we formed this little band and we asked if we could play at lunchtime in the quad. By this time, I was older and less tolerant of being pushed about, and the music was my outlet. To this day, when I am performing, it's the only time I truly feel 'normal.'

Sorry...
Click to expand...
Sorry for what?? That's a great story man: despite the negative sides you had to put up with, it all washed out in the end for the better!

Sadly, there are far less good teachers in this world than the great ones. But when you do luck up and stumble across a one in a million, they tend to leave a big impact in your life like Mr. Nelson did for you.

For me, that was my 7th grade history teacher, Mr. Reid: a guy who was so far out there compared to any teacher ive ever seen in my life. He was a 6'1" African American with a full blown Jheri Curl Afro, who wore snakeskin cowboy boots and Muddy Waters T Shirts and he owned a bunch of muscle cars like a 1970 Chevelle SS and a 1969 El Camino. He was the first teacher to actually give a poop about me, despite the fact i was always a pretty decent student in grades. He would pull me out of random classes even in the 8th grade to "go grade papers" which meant i got to hang out in his class and talk music and guitars ( which i had just began playing).

I never felt like i could fit in anywhere either throughout school because I sucked at sports and failed football tryouts in middle school while a few buddies made it. And while my dad busted his ass, we were more lower class i guess: not broke poor but certainly far from wealthy, so i felt more in common with the other kids like that and the outcasts. Music was the first thing that i kinda felt gave me some sort of identity and when the rich kids we always seemed to be fighting started forming bands, that was what drove me as a teenager to get one going and be in the words of Lemmy: Everything Louder Than Everyone Else.

Luckily, i found a few others like me in my brother who took up the drums and @froman5150 ( Josh aka Fro: long story lol) had become my best friend prior and he was way better at guitar than me already. Dug around and found a short lil guy in our Strings class who couldnt play guitar but he had balls and no stagefright so we convinced him to sing ( wasnt great but it worked lol). It was my older sister who got us a bassist from a babysitting gig, where the mom she was sitting for was dating a guy who had a 13 year old kid himself and he turned out to be amazing.

It lasted less than 2 years but those days i honestly believe, got me thru the hell of highschool and gave me some backbone in life
 
Robert Herndon said:
Dear God I hate when things bring back memories...


I hated school. People were very mean to me and they didn't "get" why I talked differently (I had a very strong Southern accent from being raised by Southern parents that I work diligently to this day to mask) and I dressed like the 1960's, which wasn't 'en vogue' in the later 1970's, so everyday was just torture and the guitar helped me to cope. It was like my therapy. I had a teacher at Westfield Elementary School named Mrs. Davenport. She was frustrated by my questions, but I was really asking because I wanted to know about the deeper meaning behind things...like the oil embargo of 1973 and what the deeper causes were. She made me a dunce hat and had me sit on a stool in front of her desk because "only stupid people would ask such stupid questions" and she would invite the kids to file past and tell me why it's not good to ask stupid questions. This kept on until I stopped asking questions. Then, when a second Robert came into our class, (his name was Robert Alquist) she announced that she was going to change my name to 'Lord Robert' so she could tell us apart. She brought a very wild bath robe from home and a Burger King paper crown and performed a "coronation" in which I was knighted with her yardstick. She would repeat my questions back to me I was afraid to tell anyone because I felt that it would only get worse.

Ultimately, a teacher named Walter Nelson walked by me one day and asked why I was sitting outside in my desk. (I was frequently banished from the class for all manner of things and Mrs. Davenport called it 'Royal Exile.') It was cold and foggy and you could feel the little drops of moisture in the air that morning. I just looked up at him and these big tears began to fall. I couldn't speak. I remember looking down at my desk and seeing the tears form small puddles and I just wished I could be somewhere else. He patted me on the head and he opened the door and said, "Mrs. Davenport. I'm going to be taking this student with me. We can work out all the paperwork later." He turned to me and said, "Come with me." I remember being so scared and shaking and I didn't know what to expect, but I got up and walked with him a few doors down to his class.

Mr. Nelson changed my life...

Junior High at Bartlett in Porterville was a little better. Boys and girls were discovering each other and they had less time to focus on me. Once I started playing in bands, people kind of left me alone, but I still couldn't get close to people, because I always seemed to say the wrong thing and put people off. We didn't know about ASD and Asperger's back then, so you just got labeled 'weird' or a 'Fag' for the strange mannerisms and flamboyant dress. Even today, I am very nervous meeting people for the very first time.


Eventually, we formed this little band and we asked if we could play at lunchtime in the quad. By this time, I was older and less tolerant of being pushed about, and the music was my outlet. To this day, when I am performing, it's the only time I truly feel 'normal.'

Sorry...
Click to expand...
Don't ever be sorry Robert. As completely shitty as those memories are, they are the kinds of things that shape us into the men we are today. Also, Mrs Davenport sounds like a total bitch and probably had no business being an educator whatsoever.
 
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